Reiser's Pieces: What’s the Right Play After Your Amazon Honeymoon Ends?

If you sell on Amazon as a 3^rd party (3P) seller through the Amazon Marketplace, you know the drill. Build the listing, dial in ads, earn reviews, watch velocity climb, and think you’ve cracked it.

And then your Amazon honeymoon is over.

Growth slows, costs rise, and the questions start to come: Should I stay in the Amazon Marketplace and keep trying to scale as a 3P seller? Or would I be better off on as a 1st party (1P) direct supplier to Amazon, where Amazon buys inventory directly from me? Would the 1P model, where inventory becomes PO-driven and Amazon owns the retail rules day to day, even work for me? Yes, 1P can unlock purchase orders that move numbers. But it also comes with a different operating cadence: forecasting, purchase order cycles, compliance, chargebacks, and extending payment terms in a way that turns sporadic volume into consistent, scalable revenue.

Here’s the reality: The capabilities that got you traction in 3P are not the ones that win in 1P. In 3P, you can outwork the system with content, conversion, and media. In 1P, you win with operational discipline.

But if all of that still sounds like the “promised land” and fits your model, the next question arises:

How do I even get an invitation to become a 1P vendor to Amazon?

There is a third way, and what I’ll call democratizing 1P: creating a practical path to vendor-style scale without waiting for Amazon to tap you on the shoulder, and without rebuilding your company into a wholesale operations and finance organization overnight.

So what does that look like?

Brands are using operating partners who already have vendor-grade infrastructure and established 1P relationships, and can selectively bring new assortment into that 1P motion. Product gets produced, staged and stored in the right places, and positioned to support sell-through. The partner runs the vendor cadence day to day (forecasting, POs, compliance, chargebacks). You keep your team focused on product and demand.

The other piece is capital, and it’s not optional.

In 1P, payment terms can stretch 60 to 90 days, while inventory is funded months ahead.

For a brand growing 40% year over year, that timing gap can strangle cash flow.

Capital support matters because it bridges that gap so growth isn’t limited by balance sheet timing.

One important nuance: this isn’t automatically “better” for every brand. Some will do better under 3P. Others under 1P. The right answer is math, not emotion: margin structure, ad efficiency, cost-to-serve, returns and chargebacks, and what happens to total contribution when you shift models.

Quick fit checklist. You’re a stronger candidate for a partner-enabled 1P path if you have proven velocity, a SKU set that can support forecasting and wholesale cadence, enough margin to absorb wholesale terms, and a real constraint (ops bandwidth, vendor readiness, or capital timing) blocking the next stage of scale.

In some cases, brands are leveraging partners (including firms like MPG) to pressure-test 3P vs. 1P vs. hybrid models and to fill the operational gaps that often stall progress – such as vendor cadence, supply chain and compliance requirements, warehousing and inventory flow, and the working capital constraints created by extended payment terms.

And for anyone who assumes 1P is automatically a margin killer, it’s more nuanced than the hot takes suggest. One industry survey found 56% of surveyed vendors reported profit margins with Amazon that were equal to or above those with other retailers.

So, now that the honeymoon is over, are you trying to scale Amazon on a model that still fits the business you’re building, or are you forcing a structure that’s quietly capping your growth?

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Jason Reiser is Chief Executive Officer, Market Performance Group