Powell’s Books says it won’t sell on Amazon anymore, declaring that the online retail giant undermines communities by siphoning business from the real world and replacing it with internet commerce.
“For too long, we have watched the detrimental impact of Amazon’s business on our communities and the independent bookselling world,” CEO Emily Powell wrote in a note to customers Wednesday.
“The vitality of our neighbors and neighborhoods depends on the ability of local businesses to thrive,” Powell wrote. “We will not participate in undermining that vitality.”
Portland-based Powell’s is among the world’s largest bookstores and is the city’s signature retailer. But it’s dwarfed by the inventory available through Amazon’s website.
So Powell’s, like many other retailers, supplements its business by listing its products on Amazon’s own site – and giving Amazon a share of each sale.
That puts smaller retailers at an obvious disadvantage, given that they’re depending on a much larger competitor for an important share of their sales. But many feel they have no choice but to list on Amazon given that company’s dominant market position online.
The bookstore declined to elaborate on Wednesday’s statement or say how much of its business flows through Amazon. Seattle-based Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Powell’s closed all its stores in March, when the pandemic hit Oregon. It has been reopening slowly, first allowing in-person pickup of books ordered online. This month it reopened its Cedar Hills Crossing store and part of its flagship store downtown.
Powell’s sells books through its own website, too, and enjoyed a surge of business online last spring as customers all over the country raced to show support for the business, so much so that Powell’s took many weeks to ship the backlog of orders amid new coronavirus safety precautions. Emily Powell said in May that online orders fell off considerably in subsequent weeks.
That illustrates the predicament Powell’s and other businesses find themselves in, especially during the pandemic, as online commerce steals sales from their physical business. While Powell’s stores remain largely shuttered, Amazon reported $50 billion in retail sales last quarter – up nearly 40% from a year earlier.
Online commerce has added pressure on all manner of retailers, from big department stores and suburban shopping malls to small-town retailers.
“We understand that in many communities, Amazon — and big box retail chains — have become the only option,” Emily Powell wrote. “And yet when it comes to our local community and the community of independent bookstores around the U.S., we must take a stand.”
