How to shop from small businesses on Amazon’s Prime Day

It may seem ironic, but Amazon’s shopping event next week is a chance to support the smaller businesses out there trying to compete with the e-commerce giant.

Last year small and medium-sized businesses did more than $1.5 billion in sales during Prime Day — and this year it’s a two-day event. In addition, Amazon’s second annual impact report from May noted that small and medium-sized businesses made up almost 60 percent of total sales on Amazon last year.

Amazon Storefronts opened up last year as a way to highlight and showcase smaller businesses and their wares. For the first time this year, Prime members in the U.S. can shop on a dedicated page of Prime Day deals only from Storefronts’ small and medium business. It’s called “Storefronts Deals.”

Amazon Storefronts has more than 1 million products from almost 20,000 U.S. small and medium-sized businesses (the rest of Amazon is massive, with more than 100 million items). You can go directly to the Storefronts page and search for deals for kitchen items, office products, baby clothes, electronics, jewelry, and so much more, with results only coming from smaller businesses. 

Alex Shvarts, CTO of FundKite, a funding platform for smaller businesses, also suggests heading to Amazon Launchpad for deals from small and emerging brands. “This is a great way to narrow your shopping search to ensure you support small to medium business, but the onus is ultimately on consumers to do their research,” Shvarts wrote in an email.

That means digging a bit and checking out the brand you’re buying from instead of mindlessly clicking. You may need to go to the company’s website and read up on its background. 

But ultimately this way you can feel like you’re helping a small, independent shop when loading your virtual cart on Prime Day. It’s almost guilt-free shopping.