Amazon brings Prime shipping to Amazon Business
Amazon is finally bringing Prime-style shipping to its Amazon Business service.
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Launched in 2015, Amazon Business is a B2B marketplace where businesses can purchase a range of products -- anything from IT equipment to food service supplies -- and also access business-specific perks such as bulk pricing and purchasing analytics. The program exceeded $1 billion in sales within its first year.
As for the shipping situation, Amazon Business was free to verified businesses but customers only got free two-day shipping on orders worth more than $49.
Now, customers in the US and Germany can sign up for an annual Business Prime Shipping membership and receive free two-day shipping on eligible items for all users on the Amazon Business account. Pricing is tiered based on the number of users linked to an account: $499 for up to 10 users, $1,299 for up to 100 users, and $10,099 for more than 100 users.
"Business Prime Shipping enables businesses with multiple users to further simplify their procurement procedures and increasingly rely on Amazon Business to deliver," said Prentis Wilson, VP of Amazon Business. "Customers can now get unlimited fast delivery across their organization on a vast selection of products while maintaining increased visibility on their business purchases."
Amazon has been pushing into the estimated $1.2 trillion B2B sales segment for several years. The Amazon Business program was a replacement for Amazon's wholesale site Amazon Supply, which had been around since 2012. Combined with the enterprise cloud offerings from Amazon Web Services, Amazon Business rounds out the company's efforts to dominate in both general ecommerce and B2B services.
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