Amazon Seller Registrations Hit Decade Low in 2025
"Amazon.com registered just 165,000 new sellers in 2025, the lowest annual total since Marketplace Pulse began collecting data in 2015 and down 44% from 2024. "
" Despite fewer new sellers joining and active sellers dropping from 2.4 million in 2021 to 1.65 million by the end of 2025, opportunity per seller has expanded. "
“Chinese sellers represented 59.9% of new registrations, down from 62.3% in 2024.”
As a shopper, I applaud this move. It’s hard enough to find anything on Amazon now. More sellers doesn’t make it better/easier to find genuine products.
Amazon has learned that getting new sellers locked into the $39.99/mo plain is not worth it then it costs Amazon more then $39.99 to verify and kick out the unqualified sellers
Get rich quick guru’s may be on the decline
New sellers are seeing all the barriers going up (verification, location restrictions, sourcing restrictions) and are realizing that selling on Amazon is not a side gig, it’s a job
Especially after this story hit on Retail Dive today (hard to feel sorry for them) –
"In filings Wednesday, the e-commerce giant called out its $475 million of preferred equity in Saks Global … “That equity investment is now presumptively worthless after Saks continuously failed to meet its budgets, burned through hundreds of millions of dollars in less than a year, and ran up additional hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid invoices owed to its retail partners,” Amazon said. "
I suspect that Andy has someone analyzing the benefits of this news and preparing further culling of the herd in the future.
The opportunity to learn from today’s cattle ranchers who are making record profits on smaller herds should be irresistible.
And many Amazon sellers should be cheering this news and hoping for further reduction in late to the party competitors who are driven by greed and desperation.
Don’t even worry about “genuine”. I often have to go to the second or third page to find something that even comes close to matching the description I searched for (you wanted “Knife”? Here’s a nice set of BBQ Tongs; and since you like this, check out this BBQ Apron!)
My premise has always been that we’re only here as a stop-gap until Amazon can source, store, sell, and move everything on the site without all those pesky sellers, who keep insisting that Amazon uphold their end of the bargain.
They need sellers to absorb the losses vendors find unacceptable like with customer returns and shipping damages. Many vendor contracts do not have the fee structures or return losses sellers eat that manufacturers with any power, would push to Amazon. I strongly doubt Apple or Samsung let Amazon dictate a blank check return policy pushed to them.
Which is why Amazon got into the electronics business. I’m not saying this will happen overnight, but Amazon is betting on “stickiness” to get buyers to eventually decide that the Amazon-branded product bundled with their everything-else-Amazon is “good enough”. We’re only part way down the ensh*ttification curve … turning on their consumers is still a ways down the road for this monstrosity of a monopoly, but I expect 20 years from now people will be using Amazon phones and computers to do their shopping on Amazon for everything they don’t already have an Amazon subscription for. You’ll probably say that’s far-fetched, but look at e-comm 20 years ago vs. today. Amazon went from a niche book seller to putting many mom-n-pops (and Amazon sellers) out of business, and they continue to spread wider and taller (and abuse-ier) every day.
Amazon cannot redo what Wal Mart did 20+ years ago. It is just Amazon stealing market share from manufacturers now. Sellers are irrelevant and only give the platform width not depth of inventory.
They need sellers to shovel in Dump Truck Loads of cash daily into their advertising conglomerate.
Without advertising (AND THUS SELLERS), Amazon (other than AWS), and other side-ventures is a worthless company.
Unless Amazon figures out how to import counterfeit hundred dollar bills from Alibaba and launder it, sellers will be around for the foreseeable future.
The vendors/manufacturers are paying for the ad space or the deals are so deep there is no room for a “seller”. Its the race to the bottom with private label stuff. Cuddl Duds isn’t propping Amazon up, China’s vendors are… Just like they did for Wal Mart in the 90’s - 2000’s when downtowns and malls could not compete for eyes and dollars..
I’m just saying that the quarterly reports point to Advertising as their profit center. I would venture to believe that the majority of that comes from desperate sellers that come and go. The fact that fewer are coming will hurt I presume.
PS - Just bought 3 space heaters today (shipped / sold by Amazon).
Other than Rollo, no other American seller on the first page. No Zebra, No Pitney Bowes, All Chinese bang your hands on the keyboard names. That is who is paying the bills for Advertising for many categories.
