Amazon is removing some of its private label brands, the company told CNBC. This move comes as part of its broader efforts to cut costs.

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Amazon, which has produts of retailers, third-party sellers, etc, it also sells goods that are produced in house, similar to how a store brand does. The number of its private label brands has rapidly expanded over the years to include Rivet furniture, Goodthreads apparel, Presto paper towels and Amazon Basics batteries.

The vice-president of Amazon Private Brands Matt Taddy in a statement said the company had been looking to eliminate some of its in-house products after they didn't resonate with customers, CNBC reported.

“We always make decisions based on what our customers want, and we’ve learned that customers seek out our biggest brands – like Amazon Basics and Amazon Essentials – for great value with high quality products at great price points,” CNBC quoted Taddy as saying.

The firm has not said how many private brands it is planning on eliminating. The Wall Street Journal had said dozens of brands were expected to be cut, leaving the company with less than 20 house brands, CNBC reported.

Amazon is paring back its apparel and furniture brands significantly. Some of them will remain on its site till they are out of stock, WSJ reported, citing sources. The move is part of the company’s wider cost cutting initiatives, but also in anticipation of a possible antitrust lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, the WSJ said.

CEO Andy Jassy has been slashing costs across the company aggressively as Amazon reckons with an economic downturn and slowing revenue growth. Jassy targeted some of Amazon’s more unproven bets such as grocery and devices, while freezing corporate hiring and slowing warehouse expansion, CNBC reported. The firm also laid off 27,000 employees recently as part of the largest job cuts in its history.

Amazon’s private label business landed it in the crosshairs of antitrust regulators after third-party sellers raised concerns that Amazon executives improperly accessed merchant data to develop their own competing products, CNBC reported. Brands accused Amazon of copying their products as well as pricing them at levels that made it difficult to compete.

The issue came to a head during a 16-month probe by the House antitrust subcommittee into competitive practices at Amazon as well as other big tech firms. When asked about the practice, Amazon founder and then-CEO Jeff Bezos said, “What I can tell you is, we have a policy against using seller-specific data to aid our private label business, but I can’t guarantee you that that policy has never been violated.”

The FTC is reportedly gearing up to file a long-awaited lawsuit against Amazon as soon as this month. The agency has been probing Amazon on a number of fronts, including using its retail dominance to squeeze third-party sellers into its marketplace, CNBC reported.

Amazon has said sales from private label brands represent just a percent of its total retail sales. As of 2019, the company had said it had 158,000 private label products across 45 brands, as well as other brands sold by its online grocery service Amazon Fresh.

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