Amazon to expand B2B marketplace

Amazon is relaunching its business-to-business marketplace in a renewed push to disrupt the wholesale sector, which is worth more than $7tn a year in the US alone.

The ecommerce group said in a statement on Tuesday that it was launching its Amazon Business marketplace offering access to "hundreds of millions of products", ranging from IT equipment to food service supplies with "business-only selection and pricing."

The offering will replace Amazon Supply, the B2B supply chain portal set up in 2012, from May 13. An announcement on the Amazon Supply homepage said: "Amazon Supply is being upgraded to Amazon Business, a new marketplace on Amazon.com with hundreds of millions of additional products and a suite of features built for business."

The B2B market in the US dwarfs the consumer sector and is worth $7.3bn annually compared with $4tn generated from retail sales, according to Forbes.

Amazon's move to strengthen its wholesale offering comes after it disclosed last week that its cloud computing subsidiary was one of its most profitable businesses. Amazon Web Services rents out computer infrastructure and software to IT professionals and is the biggest cloud supplier in the world by usage.

Amazon Business will offer free two-day shipping on orders of $49 or more as well as services such as multi-user business accounts and corporate credit facilities.

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