Amazon Sellers know that Amazon’s immense e-commerce platform has tremendous benefits, but they are also all too familiar with its hard-to-navigate downsides.
On the pros side, the Amazon online marketplace is a truly transformative platform in terms of allowing sellers to easily reach and sell their products to a massive global customer base. Product sellers of all sizes and types can successfully market and sell large volumes of their products across the world across numerous product categories.
Third-party sellers began to join Amazon in 1999 and now account for 58% of Amazon sales.[1] Third-party sales on Amazon are a popular avenue for sellers as there are benefits that first-party sellers do not enjoy, such as improved margins through better pricing control, more favorable payment terms and less reliance on the relationship with Amazon.[2] Between 2014 and 2021 Amazon third-party seller services sales have increased from $11.74 billion to $103.37 billion.[3] In 2020 alone, Amazon generated approximately $80.5 billion in third-party seller services, an increase of nearly 50 percent over the previous year.[4] In 2020, more than 200,000 new third-party sellers from around the world began selling on Amazon, a 45% increase from 2019.[5] Globally, independent third-party sellers in Amazon’s stores increased their sales by more than 55% from April 15, 2020, to January 15, 2021.[6]
