ONLINE retail giant Amazon's Spanish division has branched out into groceries and household cleaning products, hoping to compete with major distribution chains such as El Corte Inglés, Carrefour and Alcampo.
Three new 'shops' on Amazon.es feature health and beauty items, non-perishable foodstuffs, and non-edible supermarket goods.
In the same way as books, DVDs, CDs and other items already well-established on Amazon, individual, independent sellers can use the site as a 'window' and point of sale for their own goods.
This means small local businesses involved in food production can literally go global by becoming an Amazon seller.
Although, logically, the bulk of sales are likely to take place in Spain, since Amazon's online supermarket will be among only a small number in the country which offer home deliveries, in theory orders could be made from anywhere in Europe or even beyond.
Given that a number of food items sold are likely to be very Spain-specific and unlikely to be found in many – or possibly any – other countries, grocery deliveries abroad may well be popular, especially with Spanish expatriates missing their home favourites.
Essentially, retailers in Spain, right down to local village shops, now have a chance to reach literally millions of customers.
At present, Amazon is not retailing fresh food produce in Spain – only Amazon.com does this, in some of the main cities in the USA – its newly-opened catalogue of groceries features several thousand high-quality branded Spanish products.
