Brooke Sutherland, Columnist

This Amazon Threat Just Got Even More Real

Lest there be any doubt, the e-commerce giant is serious about selling industrial parts -- and the effort is going quite well, thank you.

July 27, 2017 at 1:21 PM UTC

By Brooke Sutherland

Brooke Sutherland is Bloomberg News' Boston bureau chief and writes the Industrial Strength Newsletter. She was previously a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering deals and industrial companies and an M&A reporter for Bloomberg News.

1501161957_pic — Photographer: JOSHUA LOTT/Bloomberg

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

The Amazonian nightmare is only just getting started for distributors of industrial odds and ends.

The mere presence of the e-commerce giant in the marketplace for business-to-business sales of office supplies and machinery parts has been enough to wreak havoc on the stock prices of traditional competitors, most notably W.W. Grainger Inc. Such freakouts tend to be commonplace when Amazon.com Inc. enters a new industry, and it can be hard at first to gauge how serious these forays are and how real the competitive threat is. While industrial distributors from Grainger to Fastenal Co. and MSC Industrial Direct Co. have fended off endless questions about competition from Amazon, the e-commerce company itself has said fairly little about its aspirations for Amazon Business.