Amazon opens free Shop Direct portal to outside merchants

Retailers that sell through their own websites have been handed an easier way into Amazon's search results without becoming Amazon sellers. Amazon announced the Shop Direct Merchant Workspace, which it describes as "a free self-service portal that makes it easy for eligible merchants to connect their stores to Amazon". For a brand or independent retailer, the question is less about the sign-up process and more about who owns the customer's first moment of discovery.

How it works

Merchants create a Shop Direct account, verify their business website and share their catalogue. Amazon said the workspace "accepts widely adopted shopping feed formats", and that merchants can connect through "established third-party app providers like Feedonomics, Salsify, CEDCommerce, and VersaFeed", according to the announcement. In practice that means a catalogue already built for other shopping channels can be reused rather than rebuilt.

The commercial terms are simple. Amazon stated: "There are no fees to participate in Shop Direct, and merchants can opt out at any time." It added that "Shipping, delivery, returns, exchanges, and customer service are managed directly by the merchant", so the retailer keeps its own operations and service costs (Amazon).

Scale, as Amazon tells it

Amazon said "tens of millions of customers have discovered hundreds of millions of unique products from other stores" through Shop Direct, and that "Shop Direct products are appearing in hundreds of millions of searches monthly" (Amazon). These are Amazon's own figures. The announcement does not say how many merchants take part, how many of those discoveries became sales, or what conversion rates look like once a shopper leaves Amazon for a merchant's site.

Amanda Doerr, vice president of Core Shopping at Amazon, said in the announcement: "Shop Direct makes it simple for merchants to have their selection discovered by Amazon customers." She also said "Customers are increasingly trusting Amazon and Alexa for Shopping as the place to start any shopping journey" (Amazon).

What it means for retailers

The mechanism matters more than the portal. Amazon said "Through our AI connector, Shop Direct provides Amazon customers near real-time information about merchants' products", and that eligible shoppers can use Buy for Me, "which handles the entire purchase process on the customer's behalf" (Amazon). That puts Amazon's AI between the shopper and the merchant's own website, at both search and checkout.

For a retailer, the benefit is reach without marketplace fees. The cost is less visible: Amazon sees the search demand, frames the comparison with competing products and, with Buy for Me, may complete the purchase itself. Retailers weighing whether to join would want to know what happens to their data, how Amazon ranks outside products against its own listings, and whether customers acquired this way come back directly. The announcement answers none of those questions.

Shop Direct "is available for all U.S. customers on Amazon.com, the Amazon Shopping app, mobile web browsers" (Amazon), so for now this is a US story. Retailers elsewhere should watch whether Amazon extends it, because an AI shopping layer that treats the whole web as its catalogue changes who controls discovery.