Amazon today unveiled Storefronts, a section of its website dedicated to small and medium-sized business.
The page kicks off with a “curated collection” of more than 1 million products made by 20,000 small and medium-sized across the U.S. The site features a rotating “Storefront of the Week” profile and 25 product collections in areas like back to school, Halloween, travel, electronics and more.
Coinciding with the opening of Storefronts, Amazon is running a national TV ad campaign highlighting small businesses on its platform. The focus of the ad is The Little Flower Soap Co., a Michigan-based company that focuses on handmade gift boxes.
Amazon has been at the forefront of a digital revolution, changing how people shop. But those changes have decimated Main Street small businesses and caused major brick-and-mortar retailers to lay off hundreds of thousands of workers in recent years.
Amazon is a common scapegoat in this trend, and to counter that the tech giant often trumpets the representation of small businesses on its platform. Right on the front of the Storefronts page is the text “half of everything sold on Amazon comes from small & medium sized businesses.”
The company says more than 1 million small and medium-sized U.S. businesses sell on Amazon. Last year alone, Amazon says, more than 300,000 small businesses started selling on Amazon.
