With Jet.com firing shots in Amazon’s direction just last week, Jeff Bezos’ company today introduced a new way to highlight small to medium-sized businesses that are owned and operated in the United States. The new portion of the online retail giant’s site is called Amazon Storefronts and offers over a million products provided by nearly 20,000 businesses from all 50 states. With categories such as Back to School, Pet Supplies, Kitchen, and more, Amazon Storefronts offers products that will appeal to many consumers.
While most consumers have a strong love for Amazon, it is hard to ignore the impact that the company has had on many small and medium-sized businesses. Especially when considering that most of us routinely opt to order something using Amazon Prime instead of going to a nearby mom-and-pop retailer.
Even though this behavior has had a negative effect on some businesses, many others have embraced Amazon’s platform and have become quite successful using it. Amazon is hoping that you will choose to focus on the latter by showcasing these businesses in its ‘Storefront of the Week’.
With Storefront of the Week, Amazon will highlight one of the US businesses using its platform through ‘a fun video’ with the goal of letting you see the faces that you are supporting. At launch, Amazon has chosen to feature Little Flower Soap Co., a company based in Michigan.
“Since we started selling on Amazon in October 2016, our sales have nearly doubled. Due to our success, we have been able to hire new team members from our community, including full and part time jobs,” said Holly Rutt, co-founder of Little Flower Soap Co., the U.S. business owner featured in the national TV ad. “We believe that customers like to know the story behind what they’re buying. When there is worry about creating jobs, it’s reassuring for customers to know their purchases are helping sustain jobs in the U.S.”
In addition to Storefront of the Week, Amazon also offers what it is calling ‘Meet the Business Owner’, which it describes as a ‘rotating exploratory feature’ that profiles businesses selling on its website. Categories at launch include, Artisans, Innovator-Makers, Family-focused and Women-owned businesses.
Amazon highlighted that it invited third-party businesses to ‘sell on Amazon nearly two decades ago’ and that these companies are a ‘vital part’ of what allows the online retailer to offer such a large amount of products to its customers.
While Amazon Storefronts has likely been in the works for quite some time, it seems like the timing of this launch is spot on with Jet calling out a need to ‘rehumanize eCommerce’ when refreshing its entire website last week.
Amazon Storefronts launched earlier today, so be sure to head over and look at everything that it has to offer.
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