For many modern entrepreneurs, the dream begins on Amazon.
You launch a product, sales start climbing, and before long you’re sitting on a pile of five-star reviews and maybe even a coveted “Best Seller” badge. It feels like you’ve cracked the code.
Naturally, the next step seems obvious:
“If thousands of people are buying this online, retailers like Target, Walmart, or specialty stores should want it too.”
Unfortunately, success on Amazon does not automatically translate to success in retail stores.
This is one of the most common and costly misconceptions among consumer product brands. While dominating Amazon is impressive, the strategies that drive online sales are very different from those that drive success in brick-and-mortar retail.
To successfully transition from Amazon brand to retail brand, companies must understand that Amazon operates within its own ecosystem. What works online often fails when products hit physical store shelves.
Key Takeaways
- Amazon and retail sell to the same shopper in two different states of mind. On Amazon the shopper already wants the product type and is choosing between options. On a shelf nobody is searching for anything.
- A bestseller rank measures velocity in a category where demand was already present. It is not a forecast of units per store per week, which is the number a buyer is accountable for.
- The cost structure changes shape, not just size. Amazon deductions come out per order and are visible; retail terms are agreed up front and deductions can arrive months after the sale.
- Buyers do read your Amazon listing, but they read it as a risk assessment. Negative reviews, the question and answer section and your variation count all say something about how the product will behave in store.
- Parts of the Amazon record do transfer. Unprompted reviews, regional demand data that maps to a retailer’s store list, and a clean damage and returns history are all usable in a pitch.
- Relying on one channel is a concentration risk as much as a growth ceiling. A single policy change, listing suspension or competitor undercut can remove the whole revenue line at once.
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Understanding Amazon’s Unique Ecosystem
Amazon is unlike any other sales channel. When you sell on the platform, you’re leveraging one of the most powerful commerce systems ever built.
Brands benefit from built-in traffic, world-class logistics, and sophisticated algorithms that help convert shoppers into buyers.
Built-In Customer Traffic
When customers visit Amazon, they are already in buying mode.
Their credit cards are saved. Many have Prime memberships. They arrive with the intention of purchasing something.
Unlike retail stores, you don’t need to convince consumers to walk through the door—Amazon has already done that.
Logistics and Fulfillment Advantages
Amazon’s Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) network removes much of the operational complexity for brands.
Fast shipping, delivery management, and much of the customer service are handled by Amazon. This allows brands to scale quickly without building their own distribution and fulfillment infrastructure.
Retail distribution, on the other hand, requires a completely different operational setup including:
- Retail-ready packaging
- Wholesale pricing structures
- Inventory planning
- Retail compliance requirements
- Retail logistics and chargeback management
Algorithm-Driven Visibility
Amazon success is often driven by data and algorithms.
Brands optimize their listings through:
- Keyword optimization
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising
- Review generation
- Sales velocity
These tactics help products rise in search rankings and win the Buy Box.
But physical retail doesn’t operate this way. You can’t bid on a keyword to place your product at eye level on a store shelf. That placement requires retailer relationships, buyer negotiations, and category strategy.
Why a Bestseller Rank is not a Sell-Through Forecast
A bestseller rank measures velocity inside one category, on one platform, against the products in that category at that moment. It is a relative measure, and every product it measures you against is also being shown to a shopper who typed the product type into a search box and arrived ready to buy. The rank is real. What it describes is how well you convert demand the platform already created.
A shelf has no search box. Nobody walks into a store having typed anything. Demand has to come from the category itself, from the display, from what the shopper came in for, and your product has to win a glance rather than a comparison. That is why a buyer can look at a strong rank, agree it is impressive, and still pass. The rank does not answer the question they are paid to answer.
Their question is units per store per week against the space the product would take. That is the whole economics of a shelf. A slot returns a certain amount, and whatever goes in it either beats the product it replaced or it comes out again. You cannot derive that figure from a badge, and neither can the buyer. A rank tells them people buy this when they go looking for it. It says nothing about how many people walk past a shelf and pick it up.
So bring something that points at their number instead. A regional test in a handful of independent doors produces real units per store per week, even at small scale, and it is the cheapest evidence a brand can generate. The shelf performance of the closest comparable product in the category is a fair proxy if you can source it and you are honest about the differences. A demo program, where you fund people to stand in stores and sell, gives the buyer a number and gives you one too. None of these flatters you the way a bestseller badge does. All of them are in the currency the buyer counts in.
Customer Behavior: Online vs In-Store
One of the biggest differences between Amazon and retail is how customers shop.
Understanding these behavioral differences is critical for brands trying to expand into retail.
Search-Driven Shopping on Amazon
Amazon shoppers usually arrive with a specific problem to solve.
For example, a customer might search:
“stainless steel garlic press”
If your product appears in the search results with strong reviews and competitive pricing, you have a strong chance of winning that sale.
The shopping journey is direct, transactional, and comparison-driven.
Discovery-Driven Shopping in Retail
Retail shopping often works very differently.
Consumers browsing the kitchen aisle at stores like Williams Sonoma or Target are often discovering products rather than searching for them.
This means your product must stand out through:
- Eye-catching packaging
- Strong brand messaging
- Clear product benefits
- Shelf presence
A plain box designed only for Amazon shipping may perform well online but can fail quickly in a physical retail environment.
The difference is not that in-store shoppers are less informed. It is that they arrive without a query. On Amazon the shopper has already named the product category before they see you, so your job is to win a comparison. On a shelf nobody has named anything, so your job is to interrupt. Packaging does that work, and it is the reason Amazon-native brands with excellent listings often have packaging that cannot survive a shelf.
Pricing and Trust Differences
Amazon creates an extremely price-competitive environment.
Consumers can compare multiple products instantly, which often leads to aggressive price competition.
Because customers trust Amazon’s review system, they may purchase lesser-known brands if they have strong ratings.
Retail works differently.
In physical stores, trust is often transferred from the retailer to the product. If shoppers trust a retailer like Whole Foods, Sephora, or Best Buy, they are more willing to trust the products on the shelf.
However, without online reviews next to the product, consumers rely heavily on:
- Brand recognition
- Packaging quality
- Product messaging
- Retail placement
Your product must communicate value without relying on digital reviews.
Pro Tip: Work your retail cost out from the wholesale price before you quote, not from your Amazon selling price minus fees. The two arrive at different numbers because retail terms include commitments that never appear in a settlement report. If the wholesale number does not leave a margin you can live with at your current cost of goods, that is a manufacturing conversation, not a negotiation one.
Amazon Economics versus Retail Economics
Amazon takes its money per order. Every deduction sits in the settlement report, it lands at the moment of sale, and the cash that reaches your account is already net of it. You can be wrong about your margin on Amazon, but you cannot stay wrong for long, because the report corrects you every cycle.
Retail works the other way around. The deductions are negotiated before the first purchase order, then applied months later against invoices for goods you have already shipped. The margin you agreed to in a meeting is not the margin you keep, because allowances, a returns provision and compliance penalties all come out afterward. First-time retail vendors almost always budget for the wholesale discount and almost never budget for the rest. Do not attach a percentage to any of these lines from an article. Take them from your own signed agreement and the retailer’s routing guide, because they vary by retailer, by category and by year.
| What it costs you | On Amazon | In retail |
| The channel’s cut | Referral and fulfillment fees, charged per order and itemized per unit | A wholesale discount off the retail price, agreed before the first purchase order and fixed for the term |
| Getting the goods there | Inbound shipments to Amazon on your own schedule | Freight to the retailer’s distribution center, on their routing guide, with a penalty for ignoring it |
| Marketing | Pay-per-click you control daily and can switch off in an afternoon | Promotional allowances, co-op funds and circular fees, committed for a season before you see any result |
| Returns | Charged per return as it happens | A returns or damage allowance applied across the account, deducted later |
| Non-compliance | A suppressed listing you can fix yourself | Chargebacks for late delivery, wrong labeling, carton packing and missing shipment notices |
| Packaging | A pack that survives a courier | A retail pack, an inner pack and a case, sometimes a case that becomes the shelf display |
| When you get paid | On the platform’s disbursement schedule, after the sale | On the terms stated on the purchase order, after delivery |
| Where you find out | The settlement report | The vendor agreement, the routing guide, and the remittance advice that arrives short |
Why Brand Building Is Essential for Retail Success
This is where many Amazon-native brands struggle.
It’s possible to generate millions of dollars in Amazon revenue without building a strong brand. Some companies succeed simply by offering a good product with strong listing optimization.
In retail, this approach rarely works.
Retail buyers are not looking for another generic product. They want brands that bring incremental value to their category.
Buyers want to know:
- What makes your brand unique?
- What problem does your brand solve?
- Why will their customers care?
Strong brands build customer loyalty, making them harder to replace with cheaper competitors.
Building a Retail-Ready Brand
To succeed in retail, companies must invest in brand building beyond Amazon optimization.
Key brand-building investments include:
- Professional packaging design
- Brand storytelling
- Public relations and media exposure
- Influencer partnerships
- Social media engagement
- Retail marketing strategies
These elements help demonstrate to retail buyers that your brand has long-term potential, not just short-term online sales spikes.
Pro Tip: Pull your Amazon orders by zip code and overlay them on the store list of the retailer you want. If your demand clusters in regions that retailer is strong in, you have a regional test proposal instead of a national ask, and a regional ask is far easier for a buyer to say yes to. If it clusters where they have no stores, pick a different retailer before you pitch.
The Risk of Relying Only on Amazon
While Amazon can be an incredible growth engine, relying on a single platform creates risk.
Amazon controls the ecosystem and can change policies, fees, and algorithms at any time. Accounts can be suspended and successful products often face competition from Amazon’s own private label offerings.
Expanding into retail provides important diversification benefits:
- Reduces reliance on one platform
- Expands customer reach
- Builds brand credibility
- Opens new revenue streams
For many brands, the best strategy is a balanced multi-channel approach that includes Amazon, direct-to-consumer sales, and wholesale retail partnerships.
Pro Tip: Before you spend anything on retail, write down what happens to your business if your Amazon listing is suspended for thirty days. If the answer is that the business stops, channel diversification is not a growth project you do when there is time. It is the risk control that funds everything else.
What a Retail Buyer Actually Does with Your Amazon Record
A buyer who is interested will look you up before the meeting. A buyer who is not interested will look you up instead of taking the meeting. Either way the listing gets read, and it gets read very differently than a shopper reads it. The buyer is not deciding whether to buy one unit. They are deciding whether this product will move off a shelf they are answerable for. Your listing is free research, and some of what it tells them works against you.
Review count and recency. A large review total built up steadily over years reads as repeat demand. The same total earned in one short burst reads as a launch push, and a buyer who spots the burst will ask what sales did afterward. Recent reviews arriving at a steady rate are the strongest single signal on the page, because they suggest the product keeps selling without anything propping it up.
The questions and answers section. This is your objection list, written by your own customers. Every question asked there is a question a store associate will be asked in an aisle, with no answer sheet and no time. A buyer reads it to judge how much explaining the product needs, and a product that needs a lot of explaining is a hard sell on a shelf.
Negative reviews. Read these as a packaging and instructions audit rather than as a rating. Arrived damaged, missing a part, could not figure out the setup: those are the exact complaints a store fields at the returns desk, and returns come out of the retailer’s numbers before they come out of yours. Buyers scan the low-star reviews specifically for them.
Variation count. Every color, size and bundle you list online is a SKU you may try to push onto a planogram. Online the shelf is infinite. In a store you are competing for a fixed number of facings, so arrive with a recommendation for which two or three variants earn the space and a reason the rest stay online.
Price history. Your listing is the opening position in the margin conversation whether you meant it to be or not. If the price has been discounted often, the buyer knows your floor before you have quoted anything, and a wholesale price that implies a higher shelf price than shoppers are used to paying will get questioned.
Review recency, answered questions and a clean damage record help a pitch. A long tail of variants, a discount-heavy price history and a stack of packaging complaints quietly damage one, and the buyer will never tell you that is what happened.
A Brand That Successfully Made the Jump: Anker
One strong example of an Amazon-native brand successfully transitioning into retail is Anker.
Anker initially built its reputation selling charging cables and power accessories on Amazon. Through strong product quality and competitive pricing, they became one of the platform’s leading electronics accessory brands.
However, they didn’t stop there.
The company invested heavily in branding, product development, and packaging. As a result, Anker products are now widely sold in major retailers such as Best Buy, Walmart, and airports worldwide.
Amazon helped them prove demand, but brand building enabled retail expansion.
Read the Anker example for the sequence, not the scale. What transferred was a category that shoppers replace often, packaging that explained the product without a listing page, and enough review volume that a buyer could verify demand independently. A brand without all three is not ready for the same move regardless of its Amazon revenue.
Why Many Amazon Brands Fail in Retail
On the other hand, thousands of Amazon sellers struggle to make the retail transition.
Many operate under generic brand names and rely solely on digital marketing tactics.
When pitching retailers, they bring strong Amazon sales data but lack:
- Brand identity
- Retail-ready packaging
- Marketing support
- Consumer awareness
Retail buyers are rarely interested in stocking products that customers have no emotional connection with—even if they sell well online.
Pro Tip: Read your own one and two star reviews and sort them into product problems, packaging problems and instruction problems. The packaging and instruction complaints are the ones that become returns at a service desk, and a buyer will find them in the same five minutes you did. Fix those before you pitch, because a return in store costs the retailer more than a return costs you on Amazon.
Beyond the Buy Box: Expanding Into Retail
If you’re a product manufacturer looking to scale your brand, selling through major retailers can unlock tremendous growth opportunities.
However, brands must recognize that retail success requires a different strategy.
The transition requires a shift from:
- Keywords → storytelling
- Conversion optimization → brand connection
- Commodity products → recognizable brands
Amazon can be an excellent launchpad, but it should not be the final destination.
Brands that invest in strong branding, retail strategy, and multi-channel distribution are far more likely to achieve long-term success.
Which Parts of Your Amazon Record Do Carry Weight
Not everything you built on Amazon stays behind. Some of it is exactly what a buyer wants, and most brands never think to put it on the table. Each of these is worth a line in the pitch, not a mention in passing.
A body of unprompted reviews a buyer can read. Not the star average, the reviews themselves. Send the buyer three or four that describe the problem the product solved in the customer’s own words. A buyer reading a real shopper explain why they bought it is worth more than any claim you make about the category.
Demand with a map on it. Your sales by region tell a buyer where the product already has pull. Put that against the retailer’s store footprint and you are no longer asking for national distribution, you are proposing a specific set of doors with a reason attached. That is a far easier yes for a buyer to give and a far easier one to defend internally.
Proof the product ships without damage. Years of units going out the door, plus a low damage and return rate, are operational evidence you cannot fake and a new brand cannot produce. Bring the rate, bring what you changed to get it there, and bring the current pack that achieves it.
A customer service record. Response times, the volume of contacts per units sold and the issues that came up most often. It answers the question a buyer will not ask out loud, which is how much of your problem is going to become their problem.
Content and photography already paid for. Images, video, lifestyle shots and copy that has been tested against real buying behavior. Retailers need assets for their own site and their own listings, and a brand that turns up with a complete, ready-to-use set removes work from the buyer’s team on day one.
Ready to Expand Into Retail?
If your brand is performing well online and you’re ready to explore retail opportunities, the right strategy and partnerships are critical.
Retailbound helps product brands successfully launch and scale with major retailers across North America.
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
Is there a difference between Amazon Marketplace and Amazon retail?
Yes, and it matters to a brand. Marketplace means you sell to the shopper directly and keep control of pricing, listing and inventory. Amazon retail means Amazon buys from you as a wholesale customer and resells, which puts price and reorder decisions with Amazon. The second is closer to how a physical retailer works, which is why brands that have sold to Amazon retail usually find a first retail negotiation less of a shock.
Is it more profitable to sell on Amazon or Walmart?
It depends on the deal rather than the platform. Marketplace selling on either site leaves you setting the price and paying per-order fees. Selling into a retailer’s stores means a wholesale price and promotional commitments, so the per-unit margin is lower and the volume per order is higher. Work both out at your own cost of goods before deciding, because the answer changes by category and by the terms you are offered.
What are the pros and cons of selling on Amazon versus retail stores?
Amazon gives you speed, control of pricing and direct customer data, at the cost of concentration risk and constant price competition. Retail gives you shelf presence, a shopper who is not comparison shopping in the aisle, and a demand signal that other retailers respect, at the cost of lower per-unit margin, longer decision cycles and commitments made before your first order ships.
Can I keep selling on Amazon after a retailer picks up my product?
In most cases yes, but the retailer will care what your Amazon price is. If your listing undercuts their shelf price, that becomes a conversation quickly. Agree on a pricing position across channels before the first purchase order rather than after a buyer notices.
Do retail buyers look at your Amazon reviews?
Assume they will. Reviews are the fastest independent check a buyer has on whether demand is real and what the product does in a customer’s hands. That cuts both ways, since the packaging and instruction complaints in your one and two star reviews are the ones a store will field at the returns desk.
About the Author
Yohan Jacob is the Founder and President of Retailbound, a leading retail channel management consultancy that helps brands launch and scale their products with more than 150 retailers across the United States and Canada.
Retailbound specializes in bridging the gap between product manufacturers and retailers by providing services including:
- Retail strategy development
- Buyer introductions and engagement
- Sales management
- Channel marketing support
Whether working with startups or established brands, Retailbound helps companies increase retail presence, strengthen buyer relationships, and drive sustainable sales growth both online and in stores.
