Amazon, the brand buster!

Venturing into private label business appears to be a deft move

It started with a simple battery. Around 2009, Amazon quietly entered the private label business by offering a handful of items under a new brand called AmazonBasics. Early offerings were the kinds of unglamorous products that consumers typically bought at their local hardware store: Power cords and cables for electronics and, in particular, batteries - with prices roughly 30 per cent lower than that of national brands like Energizer and Duracell.

The results were stunning. In just a few years, AmazonBasics had grabbed nearly a third of the online market for batteries, outselling both Energizer and Duracell on its site.

Inside Amazon's