Amazon CEO Andy Jassy opened the company’s annual Accelerate conference in Seattle by emphasizing the importance of independent sellers and consumers to Amazon’s business. Speaking with Dharmesh Mehta, vice president of Worldwide Selling Partner Services, Jassy described the partnership between Amazon and its sellers as highly significant.
“I think our collaboration is probably the most compelling and substantial collaboration in the history of retail,” Jassy said. “If you think about the union of all the independent sellers and Amazon, and all the consumers that we have, what we’ve made possible for consumers—the selection they have, the low prices they have, the delivery speed that they have—there’s really been nothing like it.”
Jassy highlighted that Amazon continues to innovate to support its seller community. He noted that in the previous year, average sales for a seller on Amazon reached over $295,000 annually, with 55,000 sellers grossing more than $1 million each. “The way that we have built experiences for consumers, and then enabled lots of businesses together to have much larger or more meaningful businesses than otherwise would be the case, is pretty unusual,” he added.
Jassy also discussed specific examples of small businesses growing through Amazon’s platform. He cited Lillie’s of Charleston as an example—a company founded by Tracey Richardson and inspired by her family’s Gullah culture from South Carolina and Georgia. The business started locally but expanded nationally after joining Amazon during the pandemic.
“Tracey Richardson, inspired by her dad and her Aunt Lillie, built a business making spices and sauces, and they started with a small store. It was inspired by the Gullah culture, which is kind of the people and culture in the regional areas of South Carolina and Georgia and the nearby Sea Islands. It started in a small store and then started providing their products to small markets and groceries. But then during the pandemic—and this happened a lot during the pandemic—it just changed the way we all thought about our lives and we all thought about our work, and not to mention the fact that for about nine months to a year, everything was shut down, and so Lillie’s went all in on selling in the marketplace and since that time, their sales have increased 156%. Selling more broadly on Amazon—instead of having to find a way to somehow be able to spend a ginormous amount of money on advertising and then hoping you could attract them to your store or your storefront—they get to use Amazon as their marketing tool, and their focus groups, and national distribution. And I think it’s really meaningfully changed what that business has become and what it has a chance to become over time. And that’s one of many stories, and examples, that exist here.”
Jassy also commented on his positive outlook for Amazon’s grocery business as well as ongoing efforts within health care services such as One Medical’s offerings.
