Short answer: yes, but not the way the headlines in 2021 made it sound. The era when a stranger emailed you an unsolicited seven-figure offer for a two-year-old brand is over. Aggregators are still buying in 2026, there are just far fewer of them, they are much pickier, and most of them are not interested in a business the size that a typical solo seller runs. If you are sizing up your exit, it pays to know who is actually writing checks now.
This is a spoke off our full guide to selling your Amazon business. Read it alongside what your business is worth so the numbers below land in context.
What actually happened to the aggregator boom
At the peak, roughly 100 aggregators had raised a combined 16 billion dollars to roll up Amazon brands. Cheap money and pandemic demand made the model look unstoppable. Then interest rates went up, demand normalized, and FBA costs kept climbing. The math stopped working.
Thrasio, the poster child, filed for Chapter 11 in early 2024 carrying over 3 billion dollars in debt. It emerged a few months later having wiped out close to 500 million dollars of that debt, with a new CEO and a much smaller, more selective appetite. Others merged or quietly wound down. Razor Group swallowed Perch, Factory14, Valoreo, and Stryze to become the largest survivor. By early 2026 the trackers count somewhere around 57 aggregators still technically active, but only a handful are buying at any real scale.
Who is actually buying in 2026
The buyers did not disappear. They changed shape. Today the money comes from four places:
- Surviving aggregators like Razor, Heroes, Berlin Brands Group, and Olsam. They are still acquiring, just at maybe 10 to 20 percent of the old pace and only for brands that already print profit.
- Strategic acquirers, meaning real consumer-products companies buying a brand that fits their category. These pay the best multiples because they can fold your product into an existing machine.
- Private equity targeting profitable brands, generally above roughly a million dollars in annual profit, priced on EBITDA rather than seller earnings.
- Operators and individual buyers, often funded by an SBA loan or seller financing. This group dominates the under 1 to 2 million dollar range, which is where most sellers actually live.
The takeaway: if your business is smaller, your buyer is far more likely to be one motivated operator than a fund with a rollup thesis. That is not a downgrade. Individual buyers often close cleaner and care more about the brand you built.
What they pay now
Multiples have reset. Amazon-native brands are trading around 2.5 to 3.5 times seller discretionary earnings in 2026, roughly a third below the 2021 highs. You push toward the top of that range with a registered trademark, patent protection, category leadership, and sales off Amazon. You slide toward the bottom with single-product concentration, one supplier, or heavy dependence on you personally. Below about a million dollars in revenue, interest thins out fast and offers often come in as a fraction of revenue rather than a healthy earnings multiple.
None of this is a reason to panic. It is a reason to prepare, which is exactly what our acquisition-ready checklist is built for.
What this means for a Canadian seller
Two practical notes if you are running your brand from Canada. First, the aggregator question probably does not apply to you at all, because most Canadian-owned Amazon businesses sit in that sub-2-million-dollar band where the buyer is an individual or a broker deal, not a fund. Second, almost every serious buyer is American and the offer will land in US dollars, so the size of the check is not the whole story.
The one decision that moves your after-tax result more than the negotiation is whether you sell the assets or the shares of your corporation. That is tax planning, not sale prep, so we leave the mechanics to the pros: our accounting firm, Jones and Cosman, walks through the whole choice in their exit planning guide for Canadian online sellers.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Thrasio model dead?
The version that bought anything with a pulse using borrowed money is dead. The underlying idea, buying good brands and running them better, survives in a leaner form. Thrasio itself still operates after its 2024 restructuring, just far more selectively.
Do aggregators buy small Amazon businesses?
Mostly no. Most surviving aggregators want brands already producing meaningful profit, often a million dollars a year or more. Under that line, your realistic buyer is an individual operator or a private buyer found through a broker.
Who buys Amazon FBA businesses now?
Four groups: a handful of surviving aggregators, strategic consumer-products acquirers, private equity chasing profitable brands, and individual operators using SBA or seller financing. The last group is the most active buyer for normal-sized sellers.
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