Amazon Business says it is bringing its procurement services to Mexico.
The launch, announced Wednesday (March 13), makes Mexico the 10th country where Amazon Business is available, joining the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Japan, Germany, France, Italy, India, and Spain.
“We are excited to enable businesses in Mexico to simplify their sourcing process so they can focus on what is most important to them,” Pedro Huerta, the country manager for Amazon Mexico, said in a news release.
“We are also committed to growing small businesses by enabling sellers — through our B2B store — to expand and grow by selling directly to large companies.”
The release notes that the B2B store is particularly important because 99% of Amazon Mexico’s national sellers are small and medium sized businesses (SMBs).
“These sellers also benefit from Amazon’s eCommerce expertise , gaining visibility into their entire product catalog in an established online store and greater access to business customer decision-makers to help increase sales,” the release said.
PYMNTS spoke last year with Todd Heimes, Director and General Manager of Amazon Business, about the company’s ongoing effort to help SMBs move from the process of ordering business products to a procurement mindset.
Cutting down on the time spent buying supplies, expanding payments choice and offering credit and installment options can bring about what Heimes termed “smarter business buying” by purchasing the right form sizes and “packs” of those goods.
Heimes added that since a wealth of business data crosses Amazon’s platform, the company is able to come up with working capital solutions to bolster those SMBs.
“For our small business customers,” said Heimes, “we feel Amazon Business can be more than a ‘one-off’ purchasing solution — it can be integrated into the business and help to digitize the procurement function, which lets them focus on their core missions.”
And as recent reporting here has shown, SMBs are struggling to find the funds to keep that core mission alive.
A Goldman Sachs survey found that more than three-quarters of business owners have been worried about their ability to get their hands on capital, while PYMNTS Intelligence research finds that less than half of firms with up to $10 million in yearly revenues had access to business or personal financing. Roughly a quarter of firms said they would look to increase their use of credit products this year, with more than half of them looking to business credit cards.