Everybody knows Amazon – or at least, everybody thinks they do. Hundreds of millions of consumers count on its huge selection and fast shipping when they need a last-second birthday present or forget to pick up dog food on their way home from work. But what they don’t see is who’s really behind the brand.
I don’t mean Jeff Bezos, though a lot of the narrative around the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit against Amazon has been focused on the people up top. I mean the sellers and small business owners: people like me, my stay-at-home mom friends and all my fellow handmade crafters across the country. Everyday Americans are the faces behind Amazon. We are the people who truly make Amazon’s marketplace thrive.
We are also the people with the most to lose if the FTC successfully breaks up Amazon. Policymakers and consumers need to know who is really behind the term “Amazon sellers” and what Amazon services actually mean to them.
I started Pink Door Wreaths in 2013 while working as a full-time CPA and parenting two young children and trying to make ends meet. I started to grow through Etsy sales and was even able to hire a few of my friends as part-time employees. We worked on orders in my basement from 9 p.m. to midnight, after the kids were tucked in bed. But it wasn’t until Amazon launched its Handmade community in 2015 that my business really started to take off.
Now, eight years later, I quit my day job and run my small business full-time. We have outgrown my basement and sell wreaths and wreath-making supplies from two warehouses. Amazon Handmade was so pivotal to my success that I coach other artisans about how to sell on the platform as well.
My business isn’t ultimately about profits, it’s about providing for my children and giving my friends the opportunity to provide for themselves and their families. That’s my passion: creating beautiful, handmade products that allow me to care for those I love.
When I was trying to take my business to the next level, Amazon offered unprecedented access to millions of otherwise unreachable potential customers. I had the idea and the skills to make my custom products, but I didn’t have the time nor the resources to promote and advertise my wreaths as much as I would have liked. As an Amazon seller, however, I was able to reach an unbelievably broad audience of nearly 300 million users virtually overnight. This was the missing piece that benefitted my business tremendously and enabled our rapid growth.
Surely, as a small business owner who uses Amazon daily, I’ve also seen the platform’s shortcomings. For instance, I’m well aware that Amazon’s fees carve out a considerable portion of my sales. Our products are big, which means more expensive to store in Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) warehouses and to ship. As an entrepreneurial coach, I tell my clients to approach selling on Amazon similar to wholesale: You may make less per sale, but you are able to make many more sales overall. Good business owners are always considering the cost in relation to the benefit and making decisions like this to do what’s best for our bottom line and our employees.
In my case, that means being selective about which products we use FBA for, and which we are better off shipping directly. It also means selling on a variety of sites, including Etsy and my own. I owe it to myself, my family and my employees to implement the best business practices possible. In my experience, that means making Amazon a central piece of my business model and making sure I’m not putting all of my eggs into that basket.
Would I benefit from lower fees and higher profits? Absolutely. Who wouldn’t? But the FTC’s current effort to take down Amazon doesn’t help the sellers they reference 368 times in their lawsuit. It doesn’t help me or my friends or our families.
Amazon isn’t perfect by any means. But it is more than a massive, faceless conglomerate with billions to spare: it is an integral pillar of my business and countless other hard-working Americans like me. If the FTC is successful in its case against Amazon, the CEOs and Amazon executives will be fine. But the people like me who need Amazon to follow their dreams and support their families might not be.
So as we talk about “Amazon” and “Amazon sellers” in light of this lawsuit, let’s not forget who it is that we’re talking about. There are thousands of small businesses that rely on Amazon’s reputation, platform and customer base to pay their bills and feed their families. We are the true faces behind Amazon sellers – and we need to be seen.
