Amazon.com’s handling of items sold by independent merchants on its site doubled in 2016, showing how the world’s largest e-commerce retailer has also become a sizable logistics titan.More than 2 billion items were delivered to customers last year through the Fulfillment by Amazon program, in which Amazon stores third-party sellers’ products and ships them to customers. In 2015, the number was more than 1 billion.
Additionally, Amazon said that there were 70 percent more sellers using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which not only pads Amazon’s revenues but also gives it a tighter grip on customer satisfaction.
Merchants, in return, don’t have to worry about shipping and handling; in addition, their products are eligible for shipping privileges through Amazon’s Prime loyalty program, which has tens of millions of members.

These merchants are an increasingly important part of Amazon’s business — to the point that Chief Executive Jeff Bezos refers to their activity as one of the three “big pillars” of the company.The disclosures, on Tuesday, are a strong indicator of how widely Amazon is spreading the gospel of FBA among the multitudes of retail entrepreneurs that use its site as a platform.
Amazon is working toward a future in which it handles the logistics of most or all of these independent actors (just as it expects pretty much every shopper that can afford it to be a member of the $99-a-year Prime program).
The data points buttress other recent signs of progress in this direction, such as a 42 percent increase in shipping revenue for the first nine months of last year, to $5.9 billion. (Shipping revenue still lagged shipping costs, however, which rose 43 percent to $10.5 billion.)
They also give analysts a hint of what to expect when the company releases its fourth-quarter earnings in the next few weeks. Wall Street is also likely to notice some other interesting data points: During the holiday season, for example, Fulfillment by Amazon shipments grew more than 50 percent. (That’s a seemingly slower clip of growth than the 60 percent year-over-year figure reported at the end of the previous holiday season.)
Amazon also said third-party sellers received orders for more than 28 million items on Cyber Monday. That’s up from 23 million items in 2015.