I’m Jesse Pujji and this is Business Breakdowns. Today we are covering an entire category, Amazon Aggregators. These are the companies that are buying up hundreds of Amazon’s third-party sellers. Most recent numbers peg the ecosystem at around $300bn dollars in revenue and growing faster than Amazon itself.
Our guest is Ali Hamed, a partner of CoVenture. We discuss the three superpowers Amazon sellers have, why there’s only $8bn in funding for a market doing $50bn in EBITDA, and we go into detail on how Amazon Aggregators are structured and operate. Please enjoy this unique breakdown on Amazon Aggregators.
Show Notes
[00:00:00] – Introduction
[00:03:23] – [First question] – What is an Amazon aggregator, and who sells through Amazon?
[00:05:26] – The scale and size of the aggregator market in general
[00:06:43] – The history of third-party sellers and the utility they offer Amazon
[00:08:20] – When they started inviting third parties to join their network and their market share
[00:09:47] – Amazon’s 40% take-rate and overview of the economic structure
[00:10:24] – How many individual storefronts exist and what they look like
[00:13:19] – Who is starting Amazon stores and an overview of a seller writ large
[00:14:43] – The initial insight that led to incorporating third-party aggregators
[00:21:17] – How many aggregators exist in the space today
[00:24:41] – Why vertical integration isn’t such a primary focus for aggregators
[00:26:53] – Ways aggregators find businesses and how they tend to acquire them
[00:31:29] – What the top 10 aggregators look like and their acquisition frequency
[00:32:25] – The common value add aggregators deliver post-acquisition
[00:36:47] – Deal pipelines and other sales and marketing functions
[00:40:22] – Interesting things in the space given how unique of a marketplace it is
[00:43:57] – New innovations and secondary ecosystems emerging as a result of aggregators
[00:45:13] – How an aggregator should think about Amazon and risks to their business
[00:48:29] – Why Amazon won’t use their data and customer ownership to own the market
[00:50:10] – Macro and system risks that would threaten the success of this business model
[00:52:35] – What keeps Amazon up at night and potential worries about aggregators
[00:53:54] – Reasons why they would pass on an acquisition opportunity
[00:55:32] – Contributing factors to explosive growth that exceeded expectations
[00:58:10] – Biggest takeaways for builders and investors from 3rd party aggregators
[01:01:04] – Where to learn more about Amazon’s third-party aggregators