Amazon launched a free self-serve portal called Shop Direct Merchant Workspace, where merchants can join Shop Direct and manage products that surface through the program.
Quick Backstory: Shop Direct is Amazon’s AI discovery experience that shows products from outside its own marketplace by integrating with third-party feed syndicators and indexing the greater web. It launched in beta in February 2025 and now includes over 250M product listings.
Amazon has faced backlash over Shop Direct for several reasons:
- Merchants are included by default and have to opt out, and many didn’t know their products were listed.
- Listings have shown wrong product names, details, or information.
- Some listings link to unauthorized resellers instead of the brand’s own site.
- Buy for Me, the feature that lets Amazon complete a purchase on a merchant’s site for the shopper, places orders using Amazon’s own e-mail addresses, which keeps Amazon in the middle between merchants and their customers.
The new Shop Direct Merchant Workspace aims to solve at least some of those issues.
Merchants can submit the same product feeds they already use elsewhere, either directly or through providers like Feedonomics, Salsify, CEDCommerce, and VersaFeed, which should cut down on listings with wrong details. They can also choose which products to include and see which ones are currently live on Amazon. Merchants keep handling pricing, fulfillment, and returns, pay no fees, and can opt out at any time.
However, the Workspace doesn’t fix the biggest complaint, since merchants are still included by default unless they opt out. Though at this point, the world seems to have accepted that AI participation is opt-out by default, so Amazon is just following the pack on that one. Amazon’s announcement also doesn’t mention traffic reporting, which it told The Information it’s building, or any change to how Buy for Me places orders.
Either way, I applaud Amazon for launching a portal that gives independent merchants more control over how their listings appear (or don’t appear) through Shop Direct. It should’ve been offered from day one, but better late than never.
