Amazon's Shop Direct now has a free sign-up portal. A playbook for CPG brands that don't sell on Amazon.

A week ago we argued that Amazon is building a shelf for brands that don't sell on Amazon. On November 4, it opened the door to that shelf a little wider.

The new Shop Direct Merchant Workspace is a free, self-service portal. An eligible merchant can register for Shop Direct, connect a product feed, and see which products are live for Amazon shoppers and in Alexa for Shopping. Before this, the main route in was through one of a few feed providers.

Tip 39 covers the "should we?" question. This post is the "how": a short playbook for a direct-to-consumer food, beauty, pet or household brand that has decided Shop Direct is worth trying, or wants to check what is already showing.

What Amazon launched

Amazon's announcement lists three steps to join: create a Shop Direct merchant account, verify your business website, and share your catalog. The catalog can come through a solution provider whose app connects it for you, or through a direct integration with Amazon's Selling Partner API (SP-API). The named providers are Feedonomics, Salsify, CEDCommerce and VersaFeed.

The workspace accepts widely used shopping feed formats, so a brand can reuse the catalog it already sends to Google Merchant Center or other channels. Through the portal, merchants submit feeds, manage participation and see which products are active.

The terms are simple. There are no fees. Merchants choose which items to include and can opt out at any time. They keep handling inventory, pricing, fulfillment and customer service. Shop Direct is available to US customers on Amazon.com, the Amazon Shopping app, mobile web and Alexa for Shopping.

When a shopper finds a Shop Direct product, they can tap "Shop Direct" and go to your site, after a notice that they are leaving Amazon. For eligible products, they can tap "Buy for Me," confirm address, taxes, shipping and payment on Amazon, and Amazon's AI completes the purchase on your website.

How big the program has become

Amazon has given several figures this year. They measure different things, so we would not chart them as one line.

Date	What was reported	Source
March 11, 2026	Over 100 million products from more than 400,000 merchants; tens of millions available through Buy for Me	Amazon
October 28, 2026	Shop Direct links grown to 250 million, citing The Information	PYMNTS
November 4, 2026	Tens of millions of customers have discovered hundreds of millions of unique products; Shop Direct products appear in hundreds of millions of searches monthly	Amazon

Sources: Amazon, March 2026, PYMNTS, October 28, Amazon, November 4.

Amanda Doerr, Amazon's vice president of Core Shopping, framed the goal in the announcement: "Customers are increasingly trusting Amazon and Alexa for Shopping as the place to start any shopping journey, whether what they're looking for is in our store or somewhere else on the web." PYMNTS covered the launch as a new connection between merchants and Alexa for Shopping.

For brands, the important fact is in the middle row. Shop Direct is large enough that your products may already be in it. If a feed partner or Amazon's own crawl put them there, you should know what they say.

The playbook

Step 1: Look before you join

Search Amazon for your brand name and your three best sellers, in the app and on desktop. Look for results labeled Shop Direct. Then ask Alexa for Shopping the same questions. For each result, note the product name, size or count, flavor or scent, price and image, and whether it is current.

If nothing shows, you start with a clean slate. If something shows and is wrong, the workspace is now the most direct way to take control of it.

Step 2: Decide what belongs

You can choose which items to include. We would not send the whole catalog by default. Good candidates:

• Your hero products, the ones people search for by name.
• Products that ship well and have stable stock.
• Items with a clear page on your site: full ingredients, sizes, claims and price.

We would hold back limited editions that sell out, bundles your checkout builds dynamically, and anything with a subscription-only price. Those are the items most likely to show a price or option that doesn't match your site.

Step 3: Clean the feed you already have

Most brands already send a feed to Google Merchant Center. That is a good starting point, and also where most errors live. Check each field against the product page.

Field	What to check	Common CPG mistake
Title	Brand, product, key attribute, size	"Variety Pack" with no count or flavors
Size and count	Matches the pack you ship	Old count after a pack change
Variant (flavor, scent, shade)	One variant per item, named the way shoppers say it	Internal flavor codes
Price	Matches the one-time purchase price on your site	Subscription price in the feed
Availability	Updates with stock	Sold-out flavors still marked in stock
Image	Front of pack, current design	Old packaging or lifestyle shots
Description	Plain facts: ingredients, claims, who it suits	Marketing copy with no specifics

The table is our checklist, based on the fields shopping feeds use and the errors we see most often in CPG feeds; it is not from Amazon. Amazon says its AI connector gives shoppers near real-time product information, which makes the accuracy of what you send more important, not less. Tip 5 has more on keeping facts identical across channels.

Step 4: Choose your route

For most small brands, the provider route is simplest, especially if you already pay one of the four named companies for other channels. Ask whether they have switched on the Shop Direct connection and how often they sync price and stock. The SP-API route makes sense for brands with their own engineering team or a large catalog. Either way, the account and website verification happen in the workspace.

Step 5: Test Buy for Me as a customer would

Buy for Me orders arrive through your own checkout, placed by Amazon's AI with the shopper's details. Before you rely on them, place a test order through the flow yourself if your products are eligible, and check:

• Does the order show the right item, size and price?
• Does your confirmation email reach the shopper's address?
• How does your team handle a return or a question from a customer who thinks they bought on Amazon?

The last one matters. Amazon says shipping, delivery, returns, exchanges and customer service are managed by the merchant. Brief your support team, and add a short line to your help pages about orders placed through Amazon's Buy for Me. Our checkout audit covers the settings that tend to block agent orders.

Step 6: Watch what Alexa says

Shop Direct puts your products into Alexa for Shopping, which means an assistant may describe them. Ask Alexa for Shopping the questions shoppers ask in your category and note whether your products appear and how they are described. Some teams track this across assistants with tools such as SearchPanel from XENA Intelligence; a short monthly list of questions works too. Our Alexa for Shopping playbook has a fuller routine.

Step 7: Recheck monthly and after every change

Use the workspace's view of active products once a month. Recheck after any price change, pack change, flavor launch or discontinuation. If the program stops working for you, Amazon says you can opt out at any time.

When we would wait

Shop Direct is not right for every brand. We would hold off if:

• You sell on Amazon already. Shop Direct is mainly for products not in Amazon's store. Amazon says existing sellers may be eligible to list items they don't currently sell there, through a separate request, so check before setting anything up.
• Your feed is unreliable. If your Google Merchant Center account regularly shows price or availability errors, fix that first.
• Your margins depend on retailer exclusives. Sending shoppers from Amazon to your site can affect retail partners. Have that conversation before switching on.
• Your support team is stretched. Buy for Me orders bring customers who may not know who sold them the product.

The short version

Amazon has made Shop Direct a self-service channel with no fees and an easy exit. For a DTC brand that doesn't sell on Amazon, the question is less "should we be there" than "what are we already showing, and is it right." Start by looking, fix the feed, test one order, and keep checking. The shelf exists either way. Joining through the workspace means you control what is on it.