Many Companies Won’t Survive the Pandemic. Amazon Will Emerge Stronger Than Ever

Many Companies Won’t Survive the Pandemic. Amazon Will Emerge Stronger Than Ever

The pandemic has upended businesses across the world, but it has been very good for Amazon. Every lockdown "click to purchase“ nudged the company a little further toward utter domination of online shopping as total e-commerce sales nearly doubled in May. But if bigger was better for everyone, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos would not be appearing before Congress on Wednesday for an antitrust hearing.



Charlene Anderson, and sellers like her, are one reason why he'll be there. Anderson is among the many merchants who sell goods on Amazon “” and who together account for more than half of sales on the site. But they pay, too: Amazon charges Anderson a $39.99 monthly fee to post her knitting and craft supplies on its site, and it takes a cut of about 30 percent on each item she sells. Anderson's seller experience has worsened during the pandemic as Amazon exercised the power of what she calls "dictatorship“ over the vast internal marketplace it alone controls.



In mid-March, for example, Amazon notified sellers that during the pandemic, its warehouses would accept only household staples, medical supplies and "other high-demand products," but it failed to explain how it determined what it