Amazon has been making life easier for consumers for 30 years. Now Amazon Business is doing the same for tradespeople. Whether you’re a sole trader trying to cut down on admin or running a team across multiple sites, Amazon Business is built around the way trades actually work.
Andrew Gaved, Editor at Large for elemental and Installer, sat down with Todd Heimes, VP at Amazon Business – Small Business, Prime, and Marketing, to find out more about its value to trades customers.
But first – create your free Amazon Business account, get 40% off up to £150 on your purchases until 30 June 2026, and get the chance to win a trade tool prize worth up to £300. T&Cs apply.
AG: I reckon everybody in the UK knows Amazon, but let’s talk a bit more about Amazon Business. Perhaps you can give us a bit of a walkthrough, Todd.
TH: Thank you. I love talking about Amazon Business, so it’s a perfect opportunity!
We have just celebrated our 10th anniversary and we remain very excited about the opportunity that Amazon Business really does for business customers what Amazon has done for the last 30 years for consumers.
In short, it gives access to a huge selection of products at great prices – and that’s thanks to our sellers. We have thousands of sellers from across the UK offering millions of items to our business customers,
If you add to that fast, free shipping, it all adds up to convenience. You could think of Amazon Business as everything you love about Amazon, now for your business buying needs.
And the great thing is that whether you’re a sole trader or the owner of a construction company with many employees, we can help you lower your costs. So, for instance, if you are running multiple sites, instead of having to go to multiple different sellers, you can go to Amazon Business and access what you need, whether it’s fittings, appliances or safety gloves, in a very convenient and accessible experience.
We think small business customers effectively want three things: They want speed, they want reliability, and they want control.
AG: Did you just say ‘millions’ of items, Todd? That’s a pretty impressive claim.
TH: That’s right. Having millions of items for sale is really a critical part of the success of Amazon Business. We believe that this really helps tradespeople to work smarter, not harder.
We think that selection alone is a game changer but to add to that, on many of those items, we offer business-only pricing and quantity discounts. And back to that subject of convenience, we offer a range of different payment methods, including a pay-by-invoice feature for eligible customers.
We know that margins really matter in industries like plumbing or heating or construction. And so along with the discounts, we offer a suite of analytics so that businesses can not only track what they’ve purchased but they can track what their employees have purchased too.
AG: You’ve got some other useful tools on the platform too, I see.
TH: Yes. One of those is the ability to create a list and so that they can reorder items easily, which is going to be important if you’ve got a lot of items. And then there is a simple reorder facility, so things that tradespeople might need often, they can order again easily. It’s that convenience again.
We also offer a Subscribe and Save feature, which gives the customer the opportunity to save money on items that they are repurchasing over and over. What it amounts to is that trades can spend their valuable time working on their businesses, not on ordering supplies. We are giving you back time!
AG: You mention some terms there that are familiar to those of us who use Amazon as consumers, such as Subscribe and Save. So I guess that familiarity with the process is a useful benefit too?
TH: That’s true, Amazon Business has benefited a great deal from all the work that we’ve done on our consumer site for the past 30 years. That runs from the filters in the search results to star ratings and customer reviews – all of those things we still offer on our Amazon Business site. So that also means that no training is necessary, because most of our customers have shopped for their personal items on the Amazon consumer site.
We have made it super easy for customers to add Amazon Business to their experience – solopreneurs can even use the same credentials to log in. You can literally get started right away.
AG: When we do surveys with installers, the burden of admin often comes up as one of their biggest bugbears. So this simplification and transparency and the whole concept of taking the pain away from the admin is, I guess, a key driver.
TH: Yes, it is our goal to make it a pleasant buying experience – we call it ‘smart business buying’. I mentioned how easy it is for the solopreneur to get started, but if you’re a larger business with multiple employees, we have worked hard to simplify that too.
You can add multiple employees to your account, and you can share payment methods and billing addresses, allowing them to buy the things that they need for work.
AG: I believe you also have a Prime programme for trades customers too. What does that offer?
TH: Yes, Business Prime offers the customer the best of what Amazon Business has to offer! It is available in different tiers, depending on the size of customer, but offers benefits such as a guided buying solution, which allows customers to set rules in place and to home in on the products or the sellers that they want their employees to purchase from.
Business Prime also gives access to our Amazon Business analytics tool, which allows customers to view the different types of spend in their organisation, and to set budget limits and include approvals where appropriate.
And like the consumer version of Amazon Prime, our Business Prime gives you access to one-day and even same-day delivery on many eligible items. We can also deliver to many different locations – whether that’s a production facility, or a construction site, or even Amazon Lockers.
AG: I guess you could add ‘the home where the installation will be’ to that list.
TH: Yes and I’ll also mention as part of Business Prime, if our customers are ordering in really large quantities, we have consolidated shipping opportunities, and that allows us to consolidate the items into the fewest packages, which means less deliveries to the loading dock. We know that our customers really appreciate that feature.
AG: I presume that it will be for an additional subscription cost, just like with Prime for the consumer.
TH: Yes, depending on the company size, there is a subscription fee. We have a five-member tier, a 20-member tier, and then it continues on up for a very, very convenient and accessible price. But the great news is that for solopreneurs who already have a consumer Prime account, we offer our Business Prime membership as a free benefit of their consumer Prime.
AG: In the UK, the world of trades is dominated by one-person operations. So that is indeed great news.
TH: One more key thing to add about Business Prime is that it gives customers the opportunity to buy from local sellers.
In fact, we were inspired by the UK government to work together to help customers set policies to this effect. The Guided Buying solution that I mentioned previously allows customers to set policies to only buy certain products from sellers who are local to them.
But now we also offer the opportunity to use the guided buying to buy from sustainable sellers, as well as diverse sellers. So, if customers have goals around buying local; or from buying from sustainable sellers; or from diverse sellers, they can.
AG: I think that the whole idea of being able to select a sustainable business for your products is a great idea, because in the UK at the moment, there is increasing focus on the Net Zero targets.
TH: I think to sum it up, we’ve talked about how the ability to select brings convenience. And we also know that prices are really important, and access to fast free delivery is really important. But on top of all that, layering the capability to select local or sustainable on top of all that has really been a huge benefit for us to offer to our business customers.
To sign off I want to say thank you for the opportunity to be a sponsor and to help small businesses in the UK know more about Amazon Business.
Visit the Amazon Business stand (4I16) at InstallerSHOW 2026, 23–25 June, NEC Birmingham.
