Neato Raised $25 Million to Prove That Brands Deserve a Better Deal on Amazon Than 1P or 3P

If you sell consumer packaged goods and your products are on Amazon, you have probably experienced some version of this situation. You either sell directly to Amazon at wholesale prices through the first‑party vendor program, which hands Amazon control over your pricing, your listings, and your product pages in exchange for reliability. Or you sell through the third‑party seller marketplace, which gives you control but puts your entire operational burden on your team, from inventory management to advertising to buy box defense to customer service.

Neither option is particularly good. The first‑party program erodes margins and cedes brand control. The third‑party program is operationally overwhelming for most brands and rewards scale in ways that favor the biggest players.

Anthony Connelly founded Neato in 2018, launching its second‑party commerce model in 2020, on the premise that a third option was possible: a partner that bought brands' inventory outright, assumed the operational execution risk, and ran the full selling infrastructure on the brand's behalf, with incentives fully aligned because Neato only wins when the brand wins. On April 14, 2026, Neato announced it had raised $25 million in growth capital to expand beyond Amazon and into a fuller omnichannel model.

The 2P structure works like this. Neato purchases product inventory directly from the brand on transparent, brand‑friendly terms. It then becomes the seller of record on Amazon and other channels, managing advertising, listings, creative, pricing, logistics, demand planning, and brand protection through specialized in‑house teams. The brand retains strategic control and final authority on brand decisions. Neato handles execution and carries the inventory risk.

What makes this model commercially interesting is the incentive structure. Unlike an agency that charges monthly retainer fees regardless of performance, Neato's economics are tied entirely to the revenue it generates from selling the brand's products. When sales go up, Neato benefits. When sales go down, Neato's economics worsen. This creates the alignment that traditional agency models structurally cannot provide.

The portfolio Neato has assembled reflects the breadth of the opportunity. It manages large CPG brands across:

• Pet products
• Hard goods
• Grocery
• Beauty and skincare
• Supplements and health
• Personal care

Some of its documented results include climbing to the number one market share position for licorice on Amazon for one client, a 204% year‑over‑year growth rate in salmon chew products through precision targeting, and triple‑digit acceleration in seasoned pretzel sales through rank defense and pricing strategy.

Connelly described the commercial logic behind the raise: "Most brands at our scale have two bad options: hand your business to a massive operator where you are one of hundreds, or try to figure out Amazon yourself with a patchwork of internal hires, agencies, and consultants. We built a third option. We buy the inventory, manage everything from advertising to logistics to brand protection, and run a portfolio where every brand gets a team that wakes up thinking about their business every day."

The $25 million funds two immediate infrastructure investments. Neato is opening two new operations centers, in Las Vegas and Chicago, expanding its capacity to manage the logistics, fulfillment, and in‑market operations that its growing brand portfolio requires. The geographic distribution of these centers reflects the logistical reality of Amazon fulfillment: proximity to major distribution hubs reduces inventory replenishment times and improves buy box competitiveness.

The expansion beyond Amazon is the more strategically significant part of the story. Neato's model is already being applied across TikTok Shop, Shopify direct‑to‑consumer channels, and social commerce, with the same full‑stack execution approach it developed for Amazon. As the marketplace landscape diversifies, with TikTok Shop, Walmart, and Target building meaningful e‑commerce volumes alongside Amazon's dominance, the brand that can manage a unified inventory pool across all these channels simultaneously has a structural advantage over both pure Amazon operators and multi‑agency configurations.

More at neato.com