Food companies set up shop in Seattle to woo Amazon
Bentonville, Ark., was an unlikely place for a major food company’s office until hometown hero Wal Mart began to dominate the grocery retail scene.
Bentonville, Ark., was an unlikely place for a major food company’s office until hometown hero Wal Mart began to dominate the grocery retail scene. The gold rush in the 1990s and 2000s of food companies heading to Bentonville to service their Wal Mart account (and likely No. 1 customer) is being replicated today in Seattle, Wash., where major CPG firms are setting up shop to work more closely with Amazon, reports an article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Nestlé, the world’s biggest food company, said that it will open a Seattle office dedicated to only serving Amazon. Colgate-Palmolive Co. is also opening an office there, and Unilever and others already have their troops on the ground. CPG companies want their products displayed prominently on Amazon and are looking to expand their knowledge of digital selling and e-commerce.
More than 60% of U.S. shoppers purchase goods from Amazon—about the same percentage of consumers who shop at Wal Mart. While only about 2% of U.S. shoppers buy groceries online, that number jumps to about 4% for France, 6% for the U.K., and 8% for China.
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