Building a successful business on Amazon is a major accomplishment. Brands that thrive on Amazon have mastered digital marketing, inventory management, customer service, and marketplace optimization.
However, for many growing companies, Amazon is only the first step.
If your goal is to increase revenue, reach new customers, and build a stronger brand, expanding into retail stores can be a game-changing opportunity. Moving from Amazon to brick-and-mortar retail allows you to diversify your sales channels and create a more resilient business.
While the transition requires planning and preparation, the rewards can be significant. Increased brand visibility, higher sales volume, and stronger customer loyalty are just a few of the benefits.
In this guide, we’ll explore why brands should expand beyond Amazon and how to successfully enter the retail market.
Key Takeaways
- Your Amazon reviews and repeat purchase rate are the most persuasive evidence you own. Lead with them, not with total revenue.
- Retailers often pay on Net 30, Net 60 or Net 90 terms, so you fund production long before payment, unlike marketplace sales.
- Wholesale pricing, retailer markups, chargebacks, promotional allowances, slotting fees where they apply and retail-ready packaging all come out of the same retail price.
- Amazon packaging protects a unit in transit. Retail packaging has to sell the product from six feet away, before anyone picks it up.
- Your geographic sales data tells you which region to start in. No other brand entering retail has that head start.
- The biggest change is losing the ability to iterate. You cannot adjust a listing mid-launch when the listing is a shelf.
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Why Expand from Amazon to Retail Stores?
Although e-commerce continues to grow, physical retail still accounts for the majority of consumer purchases. As a result, brands that focus exclusively on online sales may be missing substantial growth opportunities.
Beyond revenue potential, there are several strategic advantages to selling in retail stores.
Increase Brand Visibility and Credibility
Consumers often perceive products sold in retail stores as more established and trustworthy.
When shoppers see your product on the shelves of major retailers such as Target, Walmart, or Nordstrom, it provides instant credibility. Retail placement serves as a powerful endorsement of your brand and can strengthen consumer confidence.
Additionally, retail exposure often creates a “billboard effect.” Customers who discover your product in-store may later purchase online, visit your website, or follow your brand on social media.
Create a Better Customer Experience
Unlike e-commerce, retail stores allow customers to interact with products before making a purchase.
They can touch, examine, and compare products firsthand. This experience is especially important for categories such as:
- Apparel
- Beauty products
- Home goods
- Consumer electronics
- Health and wellness products
As a result, physical retail can help increase conversion rates while building stronger customer relationships.
Reach New Customer Segments
Not every consumer prefers online shopping.
Many shoppers still enjoy visiting retail stores for convenience, immediate product access, or the ability to compare products in person. By expanding into retail, your brand can reach customers who may never discover you through Amazon or digital advertising.
Furthermore, retail stores can generate impulse purchases that are difficult to replicate online.
What Transfers from Amazon and What Does Not
A marketplace business is a real business and a retail buyer knows it. What a retail buyer does not assume is that any of it carries over unchanged. Some of what you have built is genuinely persuasive in a retail meeting, some of it needs translating before it means anything, and some of it will work against you if you present it as is.
| What you have | Does it transfer? | How a buyer reads it |
| Reviews and ratings | Yes, fully | Third-party proof shoppers like it |
| Sales history | Yes, once translated | Needs converting to rate of sale per store |
| Geographic sales data | Yes, and it is an advantage | Tells you which region and doors to start in |
| Keyword and search demand | Partly | Evidence of category demand, not of your product |
| Listing photography | No | A shelf is not a screen |
| Prime-optimized packaging | No, often works against you | Protects a unit, does not sell a facing |
| Ability to iterate | No | The listing is now a shelf you do not control |
The biggest change is not on that list, because it is not an asset. It is the loss of iteration. On a marketplace you can change a title, swap a hero image, adjust a price and read the result within days. Retail does not work that way. Your packaging is locked the moment it goes to press, your position is set at the reset, and your price sits in a system. Whatever you got wrong stays wrong until the next review. Brands expanding from Amazon to retail usually underestimate how much of their success came from fixing things quickly, and how much more has to be right before the first purchase order ever ships.
Challenges of Expanding from Amazon to Retail
Although retail expansion offers tremendous opportunities, it also introduces new challenges.
Understanding these obstacles before launching can help you avoid costly mistakes.
Different Cost Structures
Amazon sellers are accustomed to marketplace fees, advertising costs, and fulfillment expenses. Retail operates differently.
When selling through retailers, you must account for:
- Wholesale pricing and margins
- Retailer markups
- Chargebacks
- Promotional allowances
- Slotting fees (when applicable)
- Retail-ready packaging costs
In addition, retailers often pay on Net 30, Net 60, or Net 90 terms. Consequently, brands must carefully manage cash flow to support retail growth.
On Amazon you are paid when the customer pays. In retail you ship, then wait on Net terms, and the money can be reduced by compliance deductions before it arrives. That is two changes at once, a delay and a variable, and both land in the same quarter as your largest production run. It is the single most common reason a successful marketplace brand struggles in its first retail year.
Pro Tip: Rebuild your unit economics at wholesale before you approach anyone, and include the costs that have no Amazon equivalent: promotional allowances, chargebacks, retail-ready packaging and the possibility of slotting fees. Amazon sellers routinely price off their marketplace margin and find nothing left once the retailer’s markup and the co-op costs are applied. Repricing after a purchase order is far harder than pricing correctly before one.
More Complex Inventory Management
Managing inventory across multiple sales channels can quickly become complicated.
Retailers have strict requirements for shipping, labeling, pallet configuration, and delivery schedules. Failure to meet these standards can result in costly chargebacks and damaged retailer relationships.
Therefore, brands must develop reliable inventory forecasting and supply chain processes before pursuing large retail accounts.
Additional Staffing and Support
Selling to retailers requires a different set of skills than selling on Amazon.
As your retail business grows, you may need:
- Retail sales representatives
- Account managers
- Merchandising support
- Customer service staff
- Trade show and marketing personnel
Investing in the right team can significantly improve your chances of long-term retail success.
5 Strategies for Successfully Expanding from Amazon to Retail
The most successful brands approach retail expansion strategically rather than trying to enter hundreds of stores at once.
Here are five proven strategies to help guide your transition.
1. Use Your Amazon Data to Support Retail Sales
One of your biggest advantages is the wealth of data you’ve collected through Amazon.
Retail buyers want evidence that consumers already want your product. Fortunately, Amazon provides valuable insights that can support your retail pitch.
Consider using:
- Geographic sales data to identify strong retail markets
- Customer reviews as social proof
- Sales growth trends to demonstrate demand
- Repeat purchase data to show customer loyalty
These metrics can help convince retail buyers that your product deserves shelf space.
How to Turn Amazon Data into a Retail Buyer Argument
Amazon data is the strongest card an Amazon seller holds, and most sellers play it badly by bringing the numbers that flattered them rather than the numbers a retail buyer uses to decide.
What to bring, and how to frame each one:
Repeat purchase rate. This travels furthest, because it answers the question underneath every buying decision: will the shopper come back for the second one. Present it as a rate over a defined period, not as a count of loyal customers.
Review volume and rating. Lead with volume. A rating is easy to dismiss as a small sample, while a large number of reviews is evidence that a lot of people bought the thing and enough of them cared to say something. Bring the themes too, because what reviewers repeatedly praise is what your packaging should be saying on the shelf.
Geographic concentration. Show where your sales cluster by state or metro area. This is the argument for which region to launch in and, inside a chain, which doors. It is also one of the rare pieces of evidence that helps a buyer plan rather than simply reassuring them.
Category search demand. Use this to frame the size of the opportunity, not the merit of your product. It says the shopper is looking for this. It does not say the shopper is looking for you.
Then do the translation before the retail buyer has to. Monthly marketplace units is not a number a retail buyer thinks in. They think in rate of sale, meaning units per store per week. Convert it, state the assumption you used, and let them check your arithmetic. A brand that arrives having already turned its own data into the retailer’s unit of measurement looks like a brand that understands what it is asking for.
What to leave out:
- Total revenue with no denominator. A big number with nothing under it invites the question you do not want, which is across how many units and at what price.
- Best seller rank screenshots. A retail buyer has no benchmark for what a subcategory rank means, so you are asking them to be impressed by a scale they do not use.
- Advertising spend. Pointing at what you spent to generate demand tells a retail buyer you bought the demand rather than earned it, which is the opposite of what they need to believe before they hand over a facing.
Pro Tip: Convert your marketplace volume into rate of sale before the retail buyer does it for you. Units per month across a whole marketplace is a number a retail buyer cannot use, so translate it into what it would mean per store per week at the door count you are proposing. Doing the conversion yourself shows you understand how they measure a listing, and it stops them from reaching a lower number than the one you intended.
2. Start Small Before Scaling
Many brands dream of launching in thousands of stores. However, starting too large can create operational challenges.
Instead, consider testing your retail strategy through:
- Independent retailers
- Regional chains
- Specialty stores
- Pop-up retail locations
This approach allows you to gather valuable feedback and refine your retail program before pursuing national distribution.
Pro Tip: Pick your first retail region from your own Amazon shipping data rather than from a target list. You already know which metro areas order most, which is a demand map no other brand entering retail has. Starting where your shoppers already are means your first sell-through numbers come in strong, and those numbers are the argument for every door after that.
Where an Amazon Brand Should Start in Retail
Start small is the advice in every article on this subject, and it is correct without being useful, because it never says where. An Amazon seller has one advantage nobody else has for answering that. You already know where your shoppers live.
Pick the region before you pick the retailer. Look at your geographic sales concentration and choose the market where your product already sells without anyone ever seeing it on a shelf. Concentrated demand in one region is the strongest reason to launch there and the easiest thing to explain to a retail buyer.
Independents and specialty stores in that region first. They buy in small quantities, pay faster than a chain, and will tell you plainly what shoppers say at the counter. What you are buying here is not revenue. It is sell-through evidence from a physical shelf, and it is the only kind of evidence a retail buyer treats as directly comparable to their own numbers.
Then a regional chain. This is the tier where operations start to be tested. You will meet purchase orders bigger than anything you have shipped, real delivery windows, and the beginning of formal compliance requirements. Getting through a regional chain without chargebacks is the qualification for the next step, and failing here is survivable in a way that failing at a national account is not.
Then a national account. By this point you can show rate of sale per store per week from real doors, an in-stock record, and the ability to meet a compliance specification. That is a different conversation from the one you would have had at the start, and it is a much shorter one.
The temptation for an Amazon brand is to skip the middle, because marketplace scale feels equivalent to retail scale. It is not the same operational problem. Shipping large quantities into a fulfillment center in your own cartons on your own schedule has almost nothing in common with delivering palletized, labeled, on-time product into a distribution center against a purchase order, with a chargeback attached to every requirement you miss. The tiers exist to build that capability while the cost of getting it wrong is still small.
3. Invest in Retail-Ready Packaging
Packaging plays a different role in retail than it does online.
On Amazon, product images and reviews help drive sales. In a retail environment, your packaging must do much of the selling.
Effective retail packaging should:
- Stand out on crowded shelves
- Clearly communicate key benefits
- Reflect your brand identity
- Protect the product during shipping and handling
- Meet retailer requirements
Strong packaging can significantly improve retail performance and increase sell-through rates.
Pro Tip: Print your current packaging at actual size, put it on a shelf next to the two products the retailer already stocks, and photograph it from six feet away. If you cannot tell what it does from that photograph, neither can a shopper or a buyer. This is the test a retail buyer applies in the room, from the same distance, and it costs you an afternoon to run first.
What Your Packaging Has to do Differently on a Shelf
Amazon packaging and retail packaging solve different problems at different moments. Yours was built to get a single unit through a parcel network intact, and it is first seen after the sale by someone who has already decided to buy. Retail packaging is seen before the sale, from a distance, next to competitors, by someone who was not looking for you and has no page to scroll.
What changes in practice:
The front panel has to work at a glance. It has to answer what this is and who it is for before the shopper’s eye moves on. Everything else, the story, the specification, the ingredient panel, the certifications, moves to the back or the side. This is the change Amazon sellers resist hardest, because a listing page has room for all of it and a front panel does not.
Format is dictated by the category, not by you. Whether your pack hangs on a peg, stands on a shelf or sits in a tray is decided by how the retailer merchandises that aisle. Walk the aisle you want to be in and build for what is already there.
Case pack and inner pack are the retailer’s numbers. Get them in writing before you tool anything. Case configuration affects freight, replenishment and the depth of your facing, and changing it after packaging is printed is expensive.
Barcoding has to meet their specification. Placement, size, quiet zone and the presence of a case-level barcode are all checkable in advance, and all common reasons a submission stalls after a retail buyer has already said yes.
The pack has to survive being handled and put back. Shoppers pick things up. A pack that looks shopworn after a handful of customers costs you the facing whether it sells or not.
The check that costs nothing: take your product into a store, set it on the shelf beside the competitors already stocked in that category, step back across the aisle and photograph it. You will see right away whether the name reads, whether the benefit reads, and whether it disappears against its neighbors. Do that before you send anything to a retail buyer, because it is the exact test the retail buyer will run in their head.
4. Develop an Omnichannel Retail Strategy
Your online and offline channels should work together rather than compete against each other.
An effective omnichannel retail strategy creates a seamless customer experience across all touchpoints.
For example, you can:
- Promote retail availability through email marketing
- Use social media to drive store traffic
- Include QR codes on packaging
- Offer online resources that support in-store purchases
When customers can engage with your brand across multiple channels, loyalty and lifetime value often increase.
5. Strengthen Your Supply Chain
Retailers expect consistent product availability.
Before approaching buyers, evaluate whether your supply chain can support larger purchase orders and recurring replenishment.
Ask yourself:
- Can your manufacturer scale production?
- Do you have adequate inventory capacity?
- Can your logistics partners meet retailer compliance requirements?
- Do you have systems for tracking inventory across channels?
Reliable execution is one of the most important factors in maintaining successful retail partnerships.
Why an Omnichannel Future Matters
Today’s most successful brands rarely rely on a single sales channel.
Instead, they combine Amazon, direct-to-consumer sales, retail distribution, and other channels to create a diversified growth strategy.
Expanding from Amazon to retail stores allows brands to reach new customers, strengthen their market position, and reduce dependence on a single platform.
Although the transition requires investment and operational planning, the long-term benefits can be substantial.
By leveraging your Amazon sales data, creating retail-ready packaging, strengthening your supply chain, and building an omnichannel strategy, you can position your brand for sustainable retail growth.
Ready to Take Your Brand Beyond Amazon?
Moving from Amazon to retail is more than just adding another sales channel—it’s an opportunity to transform your business into a nationally recognized brand.
The shelf space is waiting.
The question is: Is your brand ready to claim it?
If you’re ready to bring your product into major retailers but need help navigating the process, Retailbound can guide you every step of the way. Schedule a free consultation with one of our retail experts and discover how to get your product retail-ready, connect with the right buyers, and drive long-term retail growth.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I get my products into retail stores?
The route is the same for an Amazon seller as for anyone else: confirm you are retail-ready, choose a first tier of retailer you can serve, find the buyer, pitch with evidence the product already sells, then survive vendor setup and compliance. What is different for you is the evidence, because your marketplace data is stronger proof of demand than most new vendors can bring.
Is selling on Amazon enough proof for a retail buyer?
It is a strong start and rarely sufficient on its own. Reviews and repeat purchase rate carry real weight. What a buyer still wants is a reason your product works on a shelf, in their category, at their price architecture, which marketplace performance does not answer.
Can I keep selling on Amazon after I go into retail?
Yes, and most brands do. What changes is that the two channels now have to be managed as one, because retailers pay attention to your Amazon pricing and promotions. Undercutting a retailer on your own marketplace listing is one of the faster ways to lose a listing.
What does it cost an Amazon seller to move into retail?
There is no single figure, because the costs are structural rather than one-time. Expect wholesale pricing and retailer markups, promotional allowances, chargebacks, retail-ready packaging and possibly slotting fees, all against Net 30, 60 or 90 payment terms. What that adds up to depends on your category, your retail price point and which retailer you start with.
Should I start with a national chain or a small retailer?
Smaller first, in the region where your own sales data is strongest. Each tier builds the sell-through evidence and compliance experience the next tier requires, and a national listing you cannot service is worse than no listing at all.
About the Author
Yohan Jacob is the President and Founder of Retailbound. Retailbound is a comprehensive retail channel management consultancy that helps brands launch and scale their products in over 150+ retailers in both the US and Canada. Specializing in bridging the gap between product creators and retailers, Retailbound offers a range of services from retail strategy development, buyer engagement, sales management and channel marketing support. Whether the client is a startup or an established brand, Retailbound provides expert guidance to increase their retail presence, navigate buyer relationships, and drive sales growth both in-store and online.
