Even when you support small businesses, Amazon is likely handling the delivery. Amazon now controls roughly four out of every 10 dollars Americans spend online. On May 4, 2026, Amazon announced the launch of Amazon Supply Chain Services, opening its warehouses, trucks, and delivery network to outside companies of any size. Procter & Gamble, 3M, Lands' End, and American Eagle are among the first customers. The headlines framed it as a logistics story, but the bigger shift is one consumers cannot see, and it has to do with how they support small businesses.
The Hidden Role of Amazon in Small Business Orders
A 2024 Pew Research survey found that 86% of Americans say small businesses have a positive effect on the country. For millions of shoppers redirecting dollars away from corporate giants, the May 4 announcement raises questions about whether that effort still means what they think. Scholars of consumer behavior and marketing see a growing dilemma: if you pick the small brand instead of the giant, part of your payment actually goes somewhere you do not expect.
Dragon Glassware, a small kitchenware company that began in a garage in Sacramento in 2017, has orders picked, packed, and shipped from an Amazon warehouse. Poppi, which started at a Texas farmers market and went viral on TikTok, had its cans shipped by Amazon before being sold to PepsiCo for nearly US$2 billion in 2025. These are not rare cases. Amazon's Multi-Channel Fulfillment program now serves more than 200,000 U.S. merchants, and the network grew by roughly 70% in 2024 alone. The same service handles fulfillment for sellers on Shopify, Etsy, eBay, and TikTok Shop, with packaging left unmarked by design.
What Changed on May 4
Amazon opened this service for all businesses, not just small brands. Peter Larsen, the executive quoted in the press release, said Amazon is doing for shipping what Amazon Web Services did for the internet. The comparison highlights the invisibility Amazon is building underneath physical things. Amazon collects a fulfillment fee on every order it ships for an outside brand, roughly $15 for a three-pound package shipped in two days, plus monthly storage fees. It also gathers real-time visibility into what every competitor sells, to whom, in what quantities, and at what moments of the year. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy described Supply Chain Services as a major growth opportunity.
Why Small Brands Use Amazon
Small brands are not selling out; they are doing the math. A small kitchenware founder shipping out of her own garage can only get a wine glass to a customer in three to five days. Amazon's network can get there in two. After 15 years of Amazon Prime, two-day delivery is what shoppers expect. Independent fulfillment companies exist, but Amazon's service is typically cheaper and integrates directly with platforms like Shopify, Etsy, TikTok Shop, and eBay.
Amazon now controls roughly four out of every 10 dollars Americans spend online. A small brand that wants to be discovered by new customers has little choice but to be on Amazon. Once there, the path of least resistance is to use Amazon's warehouses for everything. The economics make the choice a decoy, and the more small brands are routed through Amazon's network, the more Amazon can raise fees and change terms. Multi-Channel Fulfillment prices have already risen for three years running.
The Consumer Dilemma
For consumers, the impulse to shop values is not naive, but it is becoming harder to act on. For small businesses caught in the middle, deeper dependence on Amazon's logistics means rising fees with no leverage to push back. The mug will arrive Tuesday, beautiful and handmade, wrapped in brown paper tied with twine. The truck pulling up outside will not have a logo on it. None of that is an accident. All of it is by design.
Yuanyuan (Gina) Cui and Patrick van Esch are marketing scholars at Coastal Carolina University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
