Amazon Business launched in France today, expanding its presence in Europe and offering a French-language website and local delivery.
Amazon Business now operates in six countries, including the United States, selling business and industrial products from its own inventory and from third-party sellers. Amazon Business launched in Germany in December 2016 at Amazon.de/business, in the United Kingdom in April 2017 at Amazon.co.uk/business, and in Japan (Amazon.co.jp/business) and India (Amazon.in/business) in September 2017.
Amélie Véron, head of Amazon Business France
Amélie Véron has been appointed head of Amazon Business France. She had served as head of Amazon Incentive for southern Europe since March 2013. Amazon Incentive is a sales and marketing service offered to B2B companies.
Features available on Amazon.fr/business are similar to those offered on the company’s other European sites and include:
- Free premium shipping for orders over 25 euros ($30) on “millions of eligible items;”
- The ability to add a purchase order number to orders; add multiple users to business accounts; set spending limits; enable purchasing approval workflows and gain visibility into buyers’ expenditures with Amazon Business analytics;
- Configuring the Amazon Business catalogue according to a customer’s procurement policies; administrators at buyers’ companies can define purchase approval criteria and set preferred products or restricted categories;
- Reporting and analytics on purchasing patterns based on custom spending reports;
- Multiple-user business accounts that connect individuals or departments under one account and provides visibility into what a business is spending on the business site;
- Value-added tax-exclusive pricing and VAT invoicing. As on Amazon Business U.K. and Amazon Business Germany, buyers can view pricing with and without VAT on eligible products. Sellers on Amazon Business in France can access the VAT Calculation Service, which automatically creates VAT invoices on behalf of sellers;
- Capability to integrate with more than 20 third-party procurement applications for access to Amazon Business, including Coupa Software, Jaggaer and SAP Ariba.
Amazon reported in December that Amazon Business in Germany had more than 150,000 registered buyers and 40,000 sellers, and more than 90,000 buyers and 30,000 sellers on its U.K. business site. It also announced several new features on each site, developed with feedback from customers. They include improved ways to manage electronic invoices and payment records, and access to customized lists of products.
Amazon says it now has more than 1 million business customers and more than 80,000 registered sellers in the U.S. It launched Amazon Business in the U.S. in April 2015, replacing the pilot site AmazonSupply.com, which rolled out in 2012 and offered products only from Amazon itself.
In October, Amazon Business announced the launch of Business Prime Shipping, the B2B version of its Amazon Prime two-day shipping service for consumers, for its sites in Germany and the U.S. It has not announced that service for the Amazon Business sites in France, the U.K., India or Japan.
Amazon Business is No. 91 in the 2018 B2B E-Commerce 300.
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