It's business as usual for Amazon.com
Special delivery, with love from Amazon
The new site will supply businesses and industrial customers both big and small with around 500,000 items. What's really impressive is the wide selection of products available. For example, you can get everything from office supplies like paper clips to harder-to-find equipment like a centrifuge. While no minimum order is necessary, free two-day shipping is available from Amazon Prime if you spend more than $50 on an order.
If you're not familiar with Prime, let me get you up to speed. The program entices customers to spend more (and more frequently) by offering free two-day shipping on an unlimited amount of deliveries for just $79 a year. Prime now applies to both Amazon.com and AmazonSupply.com. Whether you choose to fill your cart with at least $50 worth of merchandise or make a one-time payment for annual unlimited shipping, both seem like winning options to me.
Amazon's Prime service is costing the company money now. However, that's starting to change as the retail giant gets more subscribers hooked on the offering. You see, Prime members spend more shopping on Amazon.com than non-Prime members do. According to a Wells Fargo analyst, members spend more than three times what they would without the service. As a Prime member myself, I can attest.
Disruptive supply and demand
The new direction puts Amazon in direct competition with business-to-business heavyweight Staples
However, Staples isn't the only B2B operation that may lose customers to AmazonSupply.com. Last year, Lowe's
This is another smart play by the e-tailer. Amazon spent years fine-tuning its consumer sales model. We will have to wait and see whether Amazon can successfully apply that knowledge to the B2B world. Lisa Reisman, managing director of MetalMiner, says: "Amazon can be a strong player in smaller-sized businesses that don't have integrated processes and systems, but companies that operate fully integrated vendor replenishment businesses will not be so quick to switch to Amazon. Nonetheless, it's a disruptive offering and will be interesting to watch over the longer term."
Big growth in B2B
To give you an idea of just how quickly B2B e-commerce is growing, data from the U.S. Commerce Department indicates that online wholesale transactions increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34% from 2000 to 2009. This explains why retailers like Staples and Lowe's are investing heavily in their online offerings.
Another company beefing up its B2B site is industrial-supplies distributor W.W. Grainger
Then again, I doubt Amazon will dethrone Grainger in the industrial space anytime soon. According to Internet Retailer, only 25% of Grainger's sales come from e-commerce. However, the company made a move to change that last month by investing $40 million to expand its online sales channel. Nevertheless, this adds another high-speed growth market to Amazon's collection.
I own shares of Amazon and plan to continue building my position in the stock going forward (once the holding period is up). The stock has been a longtime favorite of mine in Motley Fool CAPS, and I suspect that it will continue to grow in value as the company's investments start to pay off. It's important to remember that Amazon isn't the only company disrupting the industrial and manufacturing space. Get a free report from The Motley Fool titled "3 Stocks to Own For The New Industrial Revolution." In this special video report you will discover one of Jeff Bezos' pet investment projects and find out how you can get in on the action.