About a month after officially launching Amazon Business and sunsetting AmazonSupply, Amazon's transformation of its B2B space is complete, something that Amazon Business vice president Prentis Wilson outlined in Amazon’s B2B Move Reduces Threat.
“(Amazon Business) is an e-commerce channel that’s designed to support the needs of businesses, the way that they purchase,” Wilson said. “And it’s also designed to enable them to get access to a broad range of sellers and products, all in one location. It’s something that our customers have been asking for for a long time.”
Will distributors flock to Amazon Business' marketplace, whose model potentially gives distributors e-commerce opportunities that might not otherwise exist? That remains to be seen. But whether or not they do, the shift from AmazonSupply to Amazon Business does reduce the competitive threat to distributors – including apparent targets such as Grainger, Fastenal and MSC Industrial – according to analysis from investment banking firm Robert W. Baird & Co.
"By broadening AmazonSupply and making it a part of Amazon Business with a much wider scope seems less threatening relative to the specific industrial supply space, which felt targeted,” said David Manthey, Baird’s senior research analyst, Industrial Distribution Services.
Read more about what the retail giant's shift means for distributors in Amazon’s B2B Move Reduces Threat.
