Including at fulfillment centers in Wakefield and Knowsley, Amazon.com said it would hire 4,000 people in the UK this year, bringing its permanent staff to 75,000 and elevating it to one of the top-10 private-sector employers in the nation.
In the first half of the year, 56 percent of the new employees in the British operations teams of the company—which launched its largest-ever “Prime Day” worldwide shopping extravaganza on July 12 and 13—were either previously unemployed or had come straight out of school.
In response to lackluster sales, Amazon.com Inc. has begun to cut back on the quantity of products it offers under its own brands, according to sources who were familiar with the situation.
In order to lessen regulatory pressure, the corporation has reportedly talked about possibly completely quitting the private-label industry, according to the newspaper. Amazon, though, insisted that it has never thought about shutting down the private label division.
According to a company spokeswoman, “We continue to invest in this area, just as our numerous retail competitors have done for decades and continue to do now.”
According to the article, the decision to scale back many of the in-house brand products was partially motivated by disappointing sales.
According to the source, the company’s leadership has also discussed cutting its in-house label assortment in the United States by more than half and has asked its private-label staff to decrease the list of products and not reorder many of them over the past six months.
According to the source, Dave Clark, a longstanding Amazon executive who was appointed president of its worldwide consumer division in January 2021, reviewed the company, which led to the decision.
With the European Commission accusing Amazon in 2020 of abusing its size, influence, and data to promote its own items and gain an unfair advantage over competitor merchants who also use its platform, the company’s house-brand business has generated controversy.
