Marketplace Briefing: Consultants that support online merchants see business slowdown amid tariff pressure
This is the latest installment of the Marketplace Briefing, a weekly Modern Retail+ column about the ever-changing e-commerce marketplace landscape. More from the series →
As tariffs continue to roil the e-commerce landscape, consultants and agencies that help brands grow on platforms like Amazon are feeling the ripple effects, most notably in the form of slowing inquiries, cautious clients and shrinking service contracts.
“Of all the years that we’ve been doing this, this is probably the quietest year we’ve ever had,” said Gwen McShea, president of Amazon consultancy Lean Edge Marketing in Vermont, which works with about 20 brands. While McShea noted the stability of her existing clients, many of whom manufacture domestically, she said she’s seen a steep drop-off in prospective clients reaching out since January. “Even among prospective new customers who are inquiring, I don’t feel like there’s a lot of appetite for actually moving forward,” she said.
The slowdown comes on the heels of a volatile spring and summer for online merchants, many of whom import goods from heavily tariffed countries such as China. As Modern Retail previously reported, tariffs have thrown a wrench into brands’ long-term planning. For agencies, that uncertainty is taking a measurable toll.
Adam Wilkens, founder of Dotcom Reps, which has around 30 clients, has seen a slowdown, as well, with new business inquiries down by about 30% since late 2024, he said. The agency has also lost four clients this year, mostly brands with struggling margins amid rising costs.
“Brands are afraid of spending right now,” Wilkens said. “Businesses just don’t know what direction the winds are blowing with tariffs and the geopolitical space, and they start to look at our fees and the retainer and go, ‘These numbers don’t work.’”
Brandon Fishman, CEO of Prime Team Agency, a consulting agency that works with about 80 brands, said that while new business inquiries remain steady, many brands are pulling back on their advertising budgets.
“Most people that are affected by tariffs are cutting their ad spend by at least 10%,” he said. “It’s harder to grow these clients. If their pricing goes higher, conversion rate goes lower, and if they have less ad spend, it’s harder to grow quicker.”
Jason Boyce, a veteran Amazon merchant who now runs Avenue7Media, a consulting business for sellers, described a similar pullback in brand spending and decision-making. He said four of his clients paused or delayed Amazon CTV campaigns during the second quarter, while new prospects are increasingly wary of signing on for full-service contracts. “Many are opting for less than full-service work or waiting for the tariff dust to clear,” he said in an email.
Some brands are already shutting down due to tariffs. One of Fishman’s former clients, a company that sold a high-priced product through Costco, was forced to close about two months ago after tariffs made the item “too expensive and unsellable.” Fishman declined to share additional specifics about the brand or product.
New services, new marketplaces
To navigate the downturn, many agencies are trying to diversify, either by expanding their service offerings or entering new marketplaces.
AmpliSell, a marketing firm, for example, launched an influencer marketing arm about a month ago to meet demand from brands eager for top-of-funnel growth. “If you’re a brand and you want to grow, you need to be on socials, and you need to be partnering with creators,” said Joshua Rawe, co-founder of AmpliSell.
While the expansion was not directly prompted by tariffs, the new service is helping to mitigate the impact of tariffs. AmpliSell’s revenue fell 30% in the first quarter, which Rawe attributed to tariffs as clients scaled back on services. However, sales in the third quarter are expected to show growth.
Similarly, Fishman said his team is increasingly more focused on growing clients’ sales on more channels beyond Amazon, including Walmart and TikTok Shop. The idea is to reduce brands’ reliance on Amazon and hedge against instability tied to the broader macroeconomic environment.
Some agencies, like McShea’s, are proceeding more cautiously when it comes to expansion. McShea is experimenting with new offerings, such as advertising for Whole Foods products on Amazon, but has avoided jumping into platforms like Walmart. “It’s just as much effort without as much of a reward,” she said, citing smaller market share and thinner returns.
McShea estimates her agency’s revenue is down 24% year over year, though she’s hopeful that peak shopping events in the fourth-quarter, like Cyber Monday and Black Friday, could still turn things around.
“Amazon is a hockey stick,” she said. “What you see this time of year isn’t reflective of what you’ll see at the end.”
BigCommerce rebrands as Commerce with new focus on AI-powered agentic shopping
On Thursday, BigCommerce, the e-commerce platform, unveiled a sweeping corporate rebrand to “Commerce.” The move reflects its evolution into a parent brand encompassing BigCommerce, Feedonomics and Makeswift. Alongside the name change, the company is zeroing in on “agentic commerce,” where AI-powered systems like ChatGPT or Perplexity search, compare and eventually even make purchases on behalf of consumers.
Modern Retail spoke with Travis Hess, CEO of the newly renamed Commerce, about the company’s rebrand and why it’s betting on agentic AI to power its business.
Why rebrand now?
“This was an intentional effort to integrate the three brands into a holistic portfolio. It felt like a good time to expedite the transformation of the business.
On AI, in particular, we needed to be in a better position to take advantage of the velocity and pace by which some of the technology is actually being adapted into consumer behavior.”
Are consumers really ready to let AI shop for them?
“People get a giant dopamine rush out of buying stuff, hence why 80% of sales are done in-store. People like to shop. They don’t want people shopping for them. But the conversational nature of how people are using these tools has really reshaped how people discover brands and discover solutions and products. As a result, industries, brands and merchants are having to shift the way they optimize their products.
I might discover it online and buy it in-store. I might discover it in-store and buy it online. The key here is being where customers are — at scale, with value, and with speed and agility to optimize that experience and that discoverability.”
How is Commerce helping merchants adapt? What kind of partnerships are you pursuing?
“People are having conversations, and they’re asking, ‘What would look great for me at a wedding next weekend? My budget is X, and I need to receive it within three days.’
We are helping optimize the discoverability of merchants that we work with through those contextual conversations, taking both structured and unstructured data on behalf of our merchants and optimizing and synthesizing it in a way that is optimized for [Perplexity], as we would with other partners that we’re aligning with, be that Google or other answer engines.”
Are enterprise clients embracing this shift faster?
“The big guys have the most to lose here. They also have the means by which to respond to it in a faster capacity.”
Other e-commerce platforms have taken steps to block AI agents from scraping merchant sites or product listings. How does BigCommerce’s approach compare?
“Our approach is an open one. We don’t have a moat to protect. We’re not a bank. Agentic favors the open, not the closed. We believe more disruption and innovation will come by way of third parties than we could ever produce ourselves. That’s why we’re making that ingestion easy. It’s kind of liberating to not have to try and do it all by yourself.”
What I’m reading
- Amazon has updated its website to block Google’s AI-powered shopping agents, alongside similar tools from firms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, per The Information.
- CNBC reported that the Trump Organization sued unnamed Amazon, eBay and Walmart merchants, accusing them of selling counterfeit merchandise promoting President Donald Trump.
- Amazon will pay The New York Times between $20 million and $25 million in cash each year to license its content for AI, per The Wall Street Journal.