Amazon spent the last 25 years building Amazon com. It now serves over 300 million active customers a wide selection of goods at competitive prices. You may be one of them. But different customers have different needs. Amazon has long known that businesses and organizations were shopping for office supplies and other goods in bulk on its store. To better serve them, the company launched Amazon Business in 2015. “Everything we do at Amazon starts with the customer, and we kept asking ourselves, ‘How can we better serve those business customers?’” said 20 year Amazon veteran Alexander Gag non, vice president of Worldwide Amazon Business. “The procurement space is ready for innovation. We have leveraged the size, expertise, technology, and infrastructure we have built at Amazon, and adapted it for businesses and organizations of all sizes.” Amazon Business has since become one of the fastest growing ventures in Amazon’s history. It reached $35 billion in annualized sales in 2023.
"I’ve been excited about Amazon Business since the day it launched,” said Doug Harrington, CEO of Amazon Worldwide Stores. “The Amazon Business team is committed to long term success of their business and its customers. Day in and day out, we dig into the specific purchasing needs of businesses and organizations and come up with innovative ways to deliver great prices, extensive selection, and consistent, reliable convenience. Businesses and organizations need different tools and features for their purchasing, and Amazon Business has built those tools. But we know that’s not enough, and we’ll keep iterating to make the customer experience even better.”
How does Amazon Business work?
Amazon Business gives organizations of all sizes the ability to buy from a large selection of hundreds of millions of items directly from the Amazon Business store, which has the same easy to use and intuitive interface as Amazon
“One of the best things we have as a tailwind for Amazon Business is all of the work we've done for the last 25 years for consumers on Amazon,” Hermes said. “We've got a catalog with a wide selection, a world-class fulfillment capability, and a great customer experience that you're used to. It’s easy to use with no training necessary. The search experience, the reviews, the shopping cart, and other popular features are all the same, and on top of that we’ve built business specific features that allow companies of all sizes to integrate their procurement policies into the buying process.”
What does Amazon Business offer beyond vast selection, low prices, and convenience?
“We are so much more than a B2B store or a procurement organization,” said Aster Angara, vice president and head of commercial, public, and strategic sector at Amazon Business. “Amazon Business is designed to be flexible and can support customers of all shapes and sizes. We continuously develop salable solutions by customer size and industry vertical. We work with our customers to solve their biggest procurement challenges by giving them incredible technology such as Amazon Business analytics and Guided Buying, available with eligible Business Prime memberships.” “Amazon Business lets our customers use a set of policies or rules to ensure that certain types of products they buy meet those requirements,” Hermes said. “So, you could say, ‘I want to buy local,’ ‘I want to buy products with sustainability certifications,’ ‘I want to buy from veteran-owned or diverse suppliers.’
How do customers use Amazon Business?
Angara said Amazon Business helps large and small customers leverage what they're doing today in the area of spend. But Amazon Business can also help them source products with sustainability certification or goods sold by local, diverse, and other businesses. “We are really giving customers control and visibility of these purchases and knowing where they spend their money,” she said. “If you're a teacher and you want to be able to buy specific books or tools for your class, you no longer have to go through a series of people in the process. You can go to the Amazon Business store, and you will be able to purchase what you need for your students. Utilizing the set budget that is designed for you, you can actually spend it over a semester or a year or a month however you want to manage it.” These benefits also translate to tangible savings. “We make it really easy for them to procure at competitive prices and save money that can be then reinvested,” Gag non said.
