CEO Andy Jassy says Amazon’s partnership with independent sellers is the most 'substantial collaboration in the history of retail'

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said consumers and independent sellers are "at the very top" of the list of customers whose lives Amazon tries to make better and easier every day, as he opened the annual Accelerate conference in Seattle this week. He said the company is constantly innovating and inventing to help support the seller community.

In a fireside conversation with Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of Worldwide Selling Partner Services, Jassy said he believes that the partnership Amazon and sellers have, and the work they're doing together, is "wildly important and strategic to all of us, and to me."

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on stage with Dharmesh Mehta, VP of Worldwide Selling Partner Services, during a fireside chat at Amazon Accelerate 2025.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy (left) and Dharmesh Mehta, vice president of Worldwide Selling Partner Services (right), at Amazon Accelerate 2025.

“I think our collaboration is probably the most compelling and substantial collaboration in the history of retail,” Jassy said. “If you think about the union of all the independent sellers and Amazon, and all the consumers that we have, what we’ve made possible for consumers—the selection they have, the low prices they have, the delivery speed that they have—there’s really been nothing like it.”

Jassy said the average seller in Amazon’s store grossed over $295,000 in annual sales, while 55,000 sellers grossed over $1 million in annual sales last year: “The way that we have built experiences for consumers, and then enabled lots of businesses together to have much larger or more meaningful businesses than otherwise would be the case, is pretty unusual.”

Jassy cited one small business in particular—Lillie's of Charleston—that has found success on Amazon, discussing how the company expanded from selling in local shops to national distribution of their family's line of products.

“Tracey Richardson, inspired by her dad and her Aunt Lillie, built a business making spices and sauces, and they started with a small store. It was inspired by the Gullah culture, which is kind of the people and culture in the regional areas of South Carolina and Georgia and the nearby Sea Islands. It started in a small store and then started providing their products to small markets and groceries. But then during the pandemic—and this happened a lot during the pandemic—it just changed the way we all thought about our lives and we all thought about our work, and not to mention the fact that for about nine months to a year, everything was shut down, and so Lillie’s went all in on selling in the marketplace and since that time, their sales have increased 156%. Selling more broadly on Amazon—instead of having to find a way to somehow be able to spend a ginormous amount of money on advertising and then hoping you could attract them to your store or your storefront—they get to use Amazon as their marketing tool, and their focus groups, and national distribution. And I think it's really meaningfully changed what that business has become and what it has a chance to become over time. And that's one of many stories, and examples, that exist here."

Jassy said he believes AI is going to be the most transformative technology of our lifetime, discussing how Amazon is working hard to apply it to seller tools like Seller Assistant, Enhance My Listing, and A+ Content, to make it easier for sellers to offer broad selection and low prices to consumers.

“I think what we're doing together is very unusual," Jassy said. "I think the transformation that we're seeing with AI is going to make it even easier and more compelling for you all to be able to sell and for us to collectively be successful together, and I'm really appreciative that we're on this adventure together. I still think it's very early days.”

For more, you can watch the full fireside chat.