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Retail Business Review | Thursday, June 11, 2026
While disruptions are becoming more frequent within the fulfillment process, the role of ecommerce service agencies is also transforming in the direction of supply chain coordination to provide smooth flow into the Amazon distribution centers. It used to be enough to keep high level of Amazon marketplace visibility, yet nowadays brands struggle to ensure proper inventory supply and sales.
This transformation is driven by an inherent contradiction that many companies face. While it is quite easy to drive traffic to a website through ad campaigns, it takes much more effort to ensure proper supply. In particular, brands using Amazon FBA often see their rankings go down due to inconsistent supply and, thus, inventory shortages.
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Thus, there has been a certain evolution of expectations regarding what an ecommerce agency should be doing. While previously the focus used to lie on listing optimization and ad campaigns, now service providers are offering to help brands with supply coordination. There are cases when firms are presenting supply coordination services as the only solution to improve performance.
Seasonality creates additional problems here. Many brands operate without any inventory safety stocks due to low overheads. During promotion season, longer lead time may pose additional risks for fulfillment, making it difficult for a brand to maintain its ranking positions, even if it had a successful catalog before.
In addition, smaller companies are also prone to difficulties with supply management due to lack of internal forecasting department. In particular, many of them initially operate without any dedicated structure in the way how supply and marketing functions work. After having launched their own catalogs, such companies struggle with proper fulfillment process management.
The new reality affects agencies. Many agencies started looking at inventory problems as an integral part of the conversation around campaign preparation. In particular, many ad managers request insights into upcoming shipments to ensure sufficient inventory supply before investing additional money into ad budget.
At the same time, this approach solves some buyers' frustrations about internal organizational problems. Many brands often find themselves in the position where their marketing departments complain about supply problems while the opposite happens. Such brands may find it easier to work with agencies that can help to resolve both issues.
In general, this new approach to supply management is encouraged by Amazon ecosystem. While product ranking is mostly influenced by its performance during peak traffic periods, it also requires consistent availability of stock. Thus, any delays or inconsistencies may influence traffic placement as well. Campaign-only agencies will have trouble maintaining performance due to fulfillment disruptions.
However, the transformation also has its challenges and risks. For example, supply coordination implies a higher risk for agencies due to potential forecasting errors. In addition, many agencies will need to develop a new skill set to properly assess supply chains. It will be interesting to see how this new liability influences agency landscape in the coming years.
Ultimately, we may witness a certain segmentation of the entire services market. On the one hand, some agencies will remain dedicated creative producers or marketplace media buyers. Others will evolve into commerce management agencies handling supply and storefront operation at the same time.
The reason behind that is the need to minimize any possible disruptions between demand generation and product availability in Amazon ecosystem. Increasingly, marketing and fulfillment processes become interconnected when discussing marketplace expansion strategies.
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