For years, a grocery chain’s private-label food products were considered the cheap alternatives to big name brands.
That’s been changing, and Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, wants in on the action. In the coming weeks, the Seattle-based company plans to roll out its own brands of food items and baby care essentials, according to The Wall Street Journal. Think nuts, tea, baby food, vitamins, coffee even diapers.
Amazon has even dreamed up a few hipster brand names for these products such as Mama Bear, Happy Belly and Wickedly Prime.
It’s part of a play to shore up the advantages of subscribing to the company’s Amazon Prime service, which seeks to become a one-stop-shop for consumers looking to buy anything from books and clothing to food and video streaming. The online retailer recently plunged into the British grocery delivery market and it has been building facilities across the US to ensure its delivery speeds remain unmatched by other retailers.
Will consumers buy Amazon-brand food and diapers? Probably. In a 2014 global survey of 30,000 online consumers across 60 countries, Nielson found that 71% of respondents noticed private label brands had improved since the late-90s and early 2000s, when most of those brands were synonymous with “generic.”