Dive Brief:

• As of the end of Q2, Amazon sold, through its site or its marketplace, some 365 million products, says R.W. Baird investment analyst Colin Sebastian. 

• That’s an increase of 63% year over year and 29% from Q1, according to Internet Retailer magazine. Third-party retailers account for 45% of Q2 sales.

• But research from analytics vendor Ugam, which excluded products offered by marketplace merchants, found that while Amazon offers a lot of products at affordable prices, it doesn’t always carry popular brands. In women’s running shoes, for example, Ugam found that Amazon carried the most SKUs, but did not carry 12 of the trending products in the category.

Dive Insight:

This research bolsters the idea that Amazon could thwart upstart Jet’s ambitions thanks to its superior (and vast) assortment. But it also shows that Amazon actually has room to grow when it comes to stocking the most popular, heavily trending items that many customers are seeking.

There could be several reasons why such top brands aren’t found on Amazon. Many bigger brands are reluctant to essentially be third-party sellers on Amazon’s marketplace, ceding so much control of their brand to the e-retail giant. Adidas a few years ago stopped sales through Amazon and eBay for that reason.

Otherwise, Amazon may restrict sales from its marketplace out of fear that goods could be counterfeits or stolen, problems that have hampered the reputations of the marketplaces at Alibaba, eBay, and even Etsy.