Online retail giant Amazon.com is about to launch its own brand of grocery items such as milk and cereal, The Wall Street Journal is reporting. These new products are likely to be sold under the “Elements” brand and are set to include coffee, pasta, water, dog food, razors and other consumable household goods. It’s unclear whether these products will be available to all customers, or only those who are Amazon Prime members.
Naturally, store-brand products are a big part of offline retailers’ bottom lines. Last year alone, Target racked up $73 billion in sales of its Archer Farms brand. The brands are popular with us customers for obvious reasons: No frills products tend to offer comparable quality to national brands at significantly lower prices.
Grocery items are not Amazon’s first foray into selling its own brand of products. A couple years ago, the company introduced and discontinued its own line of cookware and tools. Late last year, the company tried again by launching a line of Elements-branded diapers, but they too were discontinued following quality-control and pricing issues.
Past failures aside, there’s little question that Amazon needs to get this latest effort right if it wants to make inroads into the U.S. grocery market. Already, the company has launched its Amazon Prime Pantry service, which offers free delivery of 45 pounds of groceries for a $6 flat rate. Amazon also offers same-day grocery delivery in a handful of cities via the AmazonFresh program; you can see if delivery is available in your area by entering your zip code at fresh.amazon.com.
[Image credit: Amazon]
