Amazon's brand acquirer team expands with the addition of well-known brands

In addition to specialized Amazon brand acquirers, some well-known brands have also begun to join the ranks of acquiring Amazon stores.

Grove , which describes itself as one of the largest wholesalers of plant health products in the United States , is understood to be setting up a division and creating a website called Upexi to acquire sellers who sell their products on online platforms such as Amazon .

Currently, Grove has four brands under its umbrella and had revenue of $ 24.1 million in 2020. The company’s CMO   Grove’s strategy is to acquire a small number of market brands each year (it expects to acquire about 10 per year) and use Grove’s existing infrastructure , such as factories, to grow those brands, Stavseth said.

Stavseth said the company has been looking at Amazon brand acquirers for the last year . But Stavseth said, "A lot of these companies are just doing DTC integrations , and they lack the vertical integration capabilities that we have . "

Tavseth said that when Grove acquires products that can be manufactured in its factories, it brings those products in-house. "Because of our facilities and capabilities in the factories , we are able to produce and manufacture products faster and bring them to market, " he said.

Amazon brand acquirers have been on the rise over the past year or so , and have collectively raised nearly $10 billion in funding . But these companies operated first as portfolio companies: They didn’t have any brands of their own before they started acquiring. Now, a handful of companies, including those that already have their own brands, are looking to acquisitions as a way to expand their product offerings.

Grove isn’t the first brand to make such a move. Some larger Amazon sellers, like Goja, a consumer goods company that has been selling on eBay and Amazon since 2009 , have also begun buying smaller brands on Amazon, buying 13 brands in 2020 .

However, although both companies acquire Amazon sellers, there are some differences between mature brand companies and Amazon acquirers when acquiring. On the one hand, a mature brand company may only acquire sellers with good profitability and mature products, while brand acquirers value the potential of sellers' products more. In addition, brand companies will consider products that match their existing product portfolio when acquiring, while acquirers are more willing to consider diversified products.

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