Does Amazon Have a Partner Problem?
Swedish furniture giant IKEA decided in late December to end its two-year experiment in selling some of its items through Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN). The move comes not long after Nike (NYSE: NKE) made a similar choice to stop using the online retail giant as a middleman and instead develop its own direct-to-consumer digital strategy.
"We are curious and keen on exploring new areas to get new insights on how to reach and serve more people," a spokesperson for IKEA's parent company told Furniture Today. "... The project was a trial, and after it ended, it did not go live. We will continue to dialogue with different partners to test new ways to meet our customers now and in the future."
IKEA had been selling some of its smaller items through Amazon to leverage the online retailer's ability to deliver quickly. The end of that deal, along with Nike doing the same thing, shows that bigger brands may prefer doing online retail on their own rather than allowing Amazon access to their customer data.
Source Fool.com
