AmazonSupply, billed as the store for business & Industry, says it aims to offer “Earth’s largest selection of essential products for businesses, labs, workshops and factories.”

AmazonSupply offers:

  • More than 600,000 essential products for business and industry (with more being added every day)
  •  A 365-day return policy
  • Everyday low prices
  • A dedicated customer service team and technical help at 1-800-220-4242
  • FREE Two-Day Shipping on eligible orders $50 and over
  • Easy payment with an Amazon.com Corporate Credit Line

Safety products include flags, floor markers, gloves, hazmat storage units and cans, label markers, LOTO products, chain barriers and warning signs.

The company is owned by Amazon.com, and uses the same safe and secure shopping technology pioneered by Amazon.com.

Analysts say AmazonSupply.com is focused on both unplanned purchases and convenience. Product breadth and fast shipping is Amazon’s niche. It would be difficult for many small and mid-sized distributors to compete on the same level of transactional websites of Amazon and others, such as Grainger and McMaster Carr.

Grainger’s perspective

Grainger’s (NYSE: GWW) multichannel model gives it an edge over competitors like AmazonSupply.com, according to Ron Jadin, senior vice president and CFO, responding to a question on Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) after his presentation at the Raymond James Institutional Investors Conference earlier this month. Amazon launched AmazonSupply.com with more than 500,000 products targeted at business, industrial, scientific and commercial customers in April 2012.

“Ninety-five percent of our business is with the large and medium customers,” Jadin said. “We think the greatest threat with an Amazon or anyone like them is with our small customers.”

He said that small customers — on average five employees in a company — behave more like consumers. “Amazon has a great consumer model,” he said. “We think our medium and large customers value our services we offer and having a sales rep call on them. There’s more complexity in what they need. We think our model is relevant there.”

From the pricing perspective, he said Grainger’s pricing for medium and large customers is competitive. “We don’t see a pricing threat [from Amazon] there,” he said.

Grainger CEO James Ryan told For Distributors Only at this year’s Grainger Customer Show in Orlando that he doesn’t see AmazonSupply as a major threat. He said Grainger expects 50% of its sales to come from online purchases by 2015.

Grainger’s online sales in 2011 totaled $2.2 billion from a total $8.1 billion in global sales, or roughly 25%. In 2012, online sales accounted for 30% of all sales and grew at twice the rate of the rest of the business. Grainger customer use of mobile devices is up 400%, according to the company, and sales via mobile tablets and smartphones increased 50% over three quarters. Still, Ryan believes in Grainger’s business model. In fact, the company recently hired 160 sales specialists.

Branch Network - With more than 711 branches — 400+ in the U.S. — customers can go to their local Grainger location to pick up their order the same day or have it shipped directly to them. Knowledgeable customer service associates at branches nationwide also assist customers via telephone and fax.

The Grainger Catalog - An icon in the industry for more than 85 years, the 2012 catalog offers customers a resource with more than 400,000 facilities maintenance products.

Grainger.com — Grainger’s e-commerce solution — gives customers access to more than 1 million products online, which can be shipped directly to customers or picked up at one of our 368 U.S. locations. Grainger.com was the first transaction capable web site in the industry and achieved 2.2 billion in eCommerce annual sales in 2011.

What happened to SmallParts.com?

SmallParts, Inc., joined the Amazon family in 2005. In the past seven years, the dedicated team at SmallParts helped us expand our service and selection until we have grown well beyond our original focus of tubing, parts and fasteners for the medical supply and research industries. We have chosen the name AmazonSupply to help communicate our new, broader selection, but we continue to carry on the SmallParts tradition of providing responsibly engineered products to the business, research and scientific communities.

We continue to sell more than 10,000 items branded as SmallParts that maintain the same high quality standards. You’ll find SmallParts products in tubing, fasteners, and materials.

AmazonSupply.com, will fill any size order, no matter how small. In keeping with that commitment, the company places no minimum order threshold on any of the items stocked.

Technical product support

AmazonSupply.com has Technical Product Specialists available to assist with specific product information not available on its web site. The Product Specialists can be reached by emailing from the Contact Us form. Customers can also call 800-220-4242 (Monday through Friday, 8:00 am to 8:00 pm and Saturday & Sunday 8:00 am to 5:00 pm ET) for more assistance.

Order by phone

A Customer Service Specialist will take orders by telephone Monday through Friday, 8:00 am to 8:00 pm and Saturday & Sunday 8:00 am to 5:00 pm ET. Call 800-220-4242 to be connected to a customer service specialist. Customers calling from outside the U.S. can reach us at 206-922-0894.

Free two-day shipping on orders over $50.00 at AmazonSupply.com

Customers don’t have to be a Prime member to receive Free Two-Day shipping. To receive Free Shipping, order $50 worth of eligible products and check out. Certain restrictions apply.

Free two-day shipping on AmazonSupply.com for Amazon Prime members

Amazon Prime members can now use Prime benefits to get unlimited free two-day shipping on over 100,000 eligible items on AmazonSupply.com.

On both Amazon.com and AmazonSupply.com Amazon Prime members enjoy:

  • Unlimited Free Two-Day Shipping
  • No minimum order size
  • One-day shipping for $3.99/item

Amazon.com announces fourth quarter sales up 22% to $21.27 billion

 Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) announced financial results for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2012.

Operating cash flow increased 7% to $4.18 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $3.90 billion for the trailing twelve months ended December 31, 2011. Free cash flow decreased 81% to $395 million for the trailing twelve months, compared with $2.09 billion for the trailing twelve months ended December 31, 2011. Free cash flow for the trailing twelve months ended December 31, 2012 includes fourth quarter cash outflows for purchases of corporate office space and property in Seattle, Washington, of $1.4 billion.

Common shares outstanding plus shares underlying stock-based awards totaled 470 million on December 31, 2012, compared with 468 million one year ago.

Net sales increased 22% to $21.27 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $17.43 billion in fourth quarter 2011. Excluding the $178 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales grew 23% compared with fourth quarter 2011.

Operating income increased 56% to $405 million in the fourth quarter, compared with $260 million in fourth quarter 2011. The favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter on operating income was $2 million.

Net income decreased 45% to $97 million in the fourth quarter, or $0.21 per diluted share, compared with $177 million, or $0.38 per diluted share, in fourth quarter 2011.

“We’re now seeing the transition we’ve been expecting,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “After 5 years, eBooks is a multi-billion dollar category for us and growing fast — up approximately 70% last year. In contrast, our physical book sales experienced the lowest December growth rate in our 17 years as a book seller, up just 5%. We’re excited and very grateful to our customers for their response to Kindle and our ever expanding ecosystem and selection.”

Full Year 2012

Net sales increased 27% to $61.09 billion, compared with $48.08 billion in 2011. Excluding the $854 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the year, net sales grew 29% compared with 2011.

Operating income decreased 22% to $676 million, compared with $862 million in 2011. The unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the year on operating income was $14 million.

Net loss was $39 million, or $0.09 per diluted share, compared with net income of $631 million, or $1.37 per diluted share, in 2011.

Highlights

Amazon announced the launch of AutoRip, a new service that gives customers free MP3 versions of CDs they purchase from Amazon. Additionally, customers who have purchased AutoRip CDs at any time since Amazon first opened its Music Store in 1998 will find MP3 versions of those albums in their Cloud Player libraries — also automatically and for free.

  • Amazon’s digital media selection has grown to over 23 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, books, audiobooks, and popular apps and games in 2012, an increase from 19 million at year-end 2011.
  •  Amazon launched Kindle Stores for Brazil, Canada, China, and Japan, with a large selection of the most popular books, including thousands of local-language books.
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the launch of its newest Asia Pacific Region in Sydney, Australia, now available for multiple services including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). Sydney joins Singapore and Tokyo as the third Region in Asia Pacific and the ninth Region worldwide.
  • AWS announced that SAP Business Suite is now certified to run on the AWS cloud platform. Enterprises running SAP Business Suite can now leverage the on-demand, pay-as-you-go AWS platform to support thousands of concurrent users in production without making costly capital expenditures for their underlying infrastructure. AWS also announced that SAP HANA, SAP’s in-memory database and platform, is certified to run on AWS and is available for purchase via AWS Marketplace.
  • AWS continued its rapid pace of innovation by launching 159 new services and features in 2012. This is nearly double the services and features launched in 2011.

First quarter 2013 guidance

  • Net sales are expected to be between $15.0 billion and $16.6 billion, or to grow between 14% and 26% compared with first quarter 2012.
  • Operating income (loss) is expected to be between $(285) million and $65 million, compared to $192 million in the prior year period.
  • This guidance includes approximately $285 million for stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets, and it assumes, among other things, that no additional business acquisitions or investments are concluded and that there are no further revisions to stock-based compensation estimates.