Inside the Complicated World of Amazon’s Private-Label Businesses

The retailer and third-party sellers are both partners and rivals

In Amazon’s early days, enterprising merchants carved out lucrative niches for themselves by identifying what wasn’t being sold on the site, sourcing those products at low prices and offering them as third-party sellers. This phenomenon helped the ecommerce platform serve more consumers while mitigating its risk and made Amazon the so-called Everything Store it is today. Eventually, it also inspired a change in the mega retailer’s business model.

In 2007, Amazon launched its own private-label business by taking a page from third-party sellers: Find popular products on the site and sell them at a lower price, in this case under a “brand” name created by Amazon itself.

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This story first appeared in the May 6, 2019, issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.