Amazon Aims Steamroller at Consumer Aisle

Your house is stocked with products from Procter & Gamble and Unilever, even if you don't realize it. Those companies make Tide detergent, Dove soap, Q-tips, Axe body spray, Pampers diapers and many more brands. Yet these and other powerful makers of household staples are terrified of Amazon. And they should be. It's yet another industry Amazon is threatening to break.

It's not just that Amazon has become the world's most disruptive retailer, prodding people to put Tide and Axe into their Amazon virtual shopping carts instead of taking a trip to Walmart and Walgreens. That continuing shift to e-commerce has created just one more giant, penny-pinching retailer with which the household brands need to negotiate. But now Amazon is going a step further by trying to cut out the home essentials companies entirely.