San Francisco– Amazon is reportedly reducing the number of its in-house brands on its marketplace as it seeks to cut costs and avoid antitrust scrutiny.
According to The Verge, the retail giant plans on cutting 27 of its 30 private-label clothing brands.
The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Amazon has created dozens of private-label brands across a variety of departments over the years, the majority of which operate without Amazon branding, such as Solimo, Wag, and Mama Bear.
However, with this reduction, the tech giant will only have three in-house clothing brands — Amazon Essentials, Amazon Collection, and Amazon Aware.
“We always make decisions based on what our customers want, and we’ve learned that customers seek out our biggest brands — like Amazon Basics and Amazon Essentials — for great value with high-quality products at great price points,” Matt Taddy, vice president of Amazon Private Brands, was quoted as saying.
The company is also ditching some private-label furniture brands, including Rivet and Stone & Beam.
According to the report, Amazon will continue to sell products from the now-discontinued brands until they run out.
The tech giant had 2,43,000 products for sale from over 45 different private-label brands as of 2020.
Amazon’s decision to streamline its private label business coincides with the possibility of a US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) antitrust lawsuit, the report said.
Meanwhile, Amazon has posted strong financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, with net sales increasing 11 per cent to $134.4 billion and net income at $6.7 billion, compared with a net loss of $2 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Its Cloud arm AWS segment sales increased 12 per cent year-over-year to $22.1 billion.
AWS segment’s operating income was $5.4 billion, compared with an operating income of $5.7 billion in the second quarter of 2022. (IANS)
