How Amazon has changed e-commerce

The rise of Amazon has completely changed the game for e-commerce, and the pandemic has only driven Amazon's success further. Now, investments are being poured into companies that are aggregating brands that are doing well on the e-commerce giant. In fact, Amazon third-party sellers sold over 55% of the goods on Amazon in the last quarter of 2020, making the business of helping these sellers scale more lucrative than ever. 

How it works 
Amazon seller acquisition companies or marketplace aggregators find opportunities with successful third-party brands selling on Amazon and buy their Amazon account, inventory, and intellectual property. Some companies will offer a revenue share model or a complete buy-out. The acquiring company will then leverage in-house experience in logistics, marketing, and other areas to turn already successful Amazon hits into revenue generators rumored to reach up to 4X the pre-sale revenue profile of a particular brand. 

The players and the money
This business model isn’t actually a new one. Empire Flippers were founded in 2011 and have been turning around businesses since. But the buzz with newcomers like Thrasio, which has already reached unicorn status, can be tied to the pandemic and backing by deep-pocketed VCs and corporations. Thrasio's latest funding in February was a whopping $750MM, and other smaller startups are getting similarly attractive funding, including:
💰 Branded, which started operations in 2020, just raised $150MM in February led by Target. 💰 Boosted Commerce, also founded in 2020, raised its first round of equity in September 2020 from multiple angel investors as well as VCs. 
💰 Unybrands, another 2020 company, raised its first seed funding in February. 
💰 Perch was founded in 2019 and has had three rounds of funding, with its last one in October at over $120MM. 
💰 Win Brands Group was founded in 2017 and raised its latest round of $50MM of funding in February.