WSJ: Amazon cuts down on own-brand products due to poor sales and antitrust pressure

Wall Street Magazine In a special report, it was stated that e-commerce giant Amazon has reduced the number of products it sells under its own brands due to low sales in recent months. The company is also facing intense regulatory pressure on its private label business, which has been accused of using other brands’ sales data on the Amazon platform to seize their customer base using low-quality copies of its products.

In an article titled “Amazon cuts down on private label choice among low sales” Wall Street Magazine He reports that Amazon has begun to drastically reduce the number of products it sells under its own brands and is considering leaving the private label business due to low sales and increased regulatory pressures.

WSJ author:

With 243,000 products under 45 different private brands in 2020, Amazon’s private label business is controversial as it competes with other sellers on its platform. People said the decision to cut down on in-house brands was partly due to poor sales of many products. Also, the retail and tech giant has faced criticism from lawmakers and others in recent years for preferring its own brands to the cost of products sold by other vendors on its site.

People said that for the past six months, Amazon management has instructed the private label group to reduce its product list and not rearrange most of it. According to one of them, executives are discussing reducing the coverage of private brands in the US by more than half.

The move was initiated following a business review by long-time Amazon executive Dave Clark, who took over the global consumer business in January 2021. Mr. Clark left the company last month. As a result of this review, Mr. Clark forced the team to focus on best-selling products such as Target Corp.’s “Up & Up” brands. or “Great Value” of Walmart Inc. They say it currently produces a wide range of products instead of offering it to Amazon.

WSJ He previously reported on how Amazon employees use data from the platform to develop Amazon-branded products that can compete with other sellers on the platform. Many brands resent the products Amazon designs for their own labels, which look a lot like theirs, claiming that the tech giant is copying their designs and using sales data from the platform to kill their business.

At the time, Amazon said it was launching an internal investigation into the matter and how private label employees used the seller’s data. “I can’t guarantee you that policy has never been violated,” said then-CEO Jeff Bezos, speaking before Congress.

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