Amazon quietly launched a major internal initiative called “Bend the Curve” to delete billions of underperforming product listings from its marketplace, targeting ASINs that are inactive, have no inventory, or haven’t been updated in years, according to an internal planning document obtained by Business Insider.
The project aims to reduce the number of active listings to under 50B, down from an estimated 74B , while maintaining growth in actual product selection. Amazon says the move is designed to eliminate clutter, improve customer experience, and reduce AWS hosting costs. The company estimates that it saved over $22M on AWS server costs in 2024 alone, and projects to save $36M in 2025.
As part of the effort, Amazon introduced “creation throttling” to restrict large, low-performing seller accounts from adding more listings, affecting around 12,000 sellers and preventing 110M new listings. Some sellers were initially confused, but Amazon insists only unproductive accounts were targeted and has pledged clearer enforcement and communication going forward.
The project reflects CEO Andy Jassy’s broader cost-cutting strategy while trying to preserve Amazon’s reputation as the “Everything Store” — two goals that can be in conflict with one another sometimes. Business Insider sources say that the Bend the Curve project has been hotly debated internally.
Customers have noticed Amazon's shrinking product selection, according to Evercore ISI's annual online retail survey.
In 2022, 84% of respondents said Amazon had the best selection. That figure fell to 79% in 2023, and declined further to 68% in 2024, marking a record low in the survey's 12-year history. It could also simply be that customer's' expectations for product selection have evolved over the past decade.
An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that the company is planning to continue to expand its active product listings, the initiative is intended to clean up data, not curtail selection, and that Amazon added millions of new items to its product catalog last year.