‘Tis the season of giving… and apparently, Amazon thinks schools should get double the price on supplies. 😅
BLACK MARKET
Did you know school districts account for 70% of local government spending on Amazon?
Fewer staff, tighter timelines, and the pain of old-school bidding make Amazon Business’ “click, buy, done” pitch hard to resist.
But behind the convenience, The American Prospect warns it’s quietly conning schools out of their budgets.
📊 The pricing problem no one sees
A report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) uncovered huge price gaps for identical products, raising red flags about inflated pricing.
A few examples:
Smaller, understaffed districts are easy targets, and Amazon Business looks like the “easy button” even when it’s secretly more expensive.
💡 The real cost of “easy”
Amazon says the criticism misses the mark. The company argued that schools can set price caps, find local and diverse sellers, and walk away from contracts at any time.
And to be fair, some districts already have.
If you sell school supplies on Amazon: Do you think the marketplace helps districts save, or does it quietly work against them?
TOGETHER WITH THREECOLTS
You’re surviving Q4. You’re hitting your targets, but it’s chaos.
Thirty days of stress, spreadsheets, and disconnected tools that barely hold together.
❌ You can’t scale that.
❌ You can’t hire a VA to manage five different apps.
❌ You’ve hit the ceiling of what your current setup can handle.
To grow, you might think you just need more tools. But no.
You just need a better system.
Seller 365 is the unified operating system for your Amazon business.
It’s the all-in-one software bundle that scales with you, from your first sale to your first million and beyond.
Sourcing, accounting, repricing, reimbursements, and more. Every app you need, connected and working together.
This is what you graduate to when you’re ready to stop juggling and start building.
BITES OF THE WEEK
AMAZON NEWS
What happens when one of Big Tech’s biggest retailers targets the world’s top AI lab?
BWorld Online reported that Amazon is in talks to invest billions in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
🚀 The deal on the table
Big numbers, big implications, even if discussions remain “very fluid” and far from finalized:
⚖️ Winning deals for both sides
This isn’t just cash, it’s infrastructure chess:
If this goes through, OpenAI becomes a rare AI platform courted by rivals, not controlled by one.
For Amazon, it’s a hedge in the AI arms race; for OpenAI, it’s leverage and scale as AI spending explodes across retail, cloud, and commerce.And yes, maybe your ads will soon show up in ChatGPT like any other marketplace.
CASH CORNER
YOU can now have a faster, smarter way to access capital.
Lending startup Slope, backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and JPMorgan Chase, is partnering with Amazon to offer lines of credit directly through Seller Central.
🚀 Seamless, AI-driven credit
This program is for sellers with at least one year in business and $100K+ in annual revenue.
📊 Why it matters
Independent sellers account for over 60% of Amazon’s sales, making smooth cash flow essential.
By making financing fairer, faster, and more integrated, it helps sellers grow inventory, scale operations, and compete smarter on Amazon.
