One of the world's biggest companies has launched a dedicated platform for small and medium-size companies (SMEs) to sell their products, in a bid to position itself as a champion of independent business.

Amazon Storefronts, which launched yesterday, will feature over a million products from more than 20,000 small retailers across the UK and the US, as reported by Retail Gazette.

The new platform will be accessible via Amazon's homepage and will promote SMEs by offering Deals of the Day from independent businesses, a weekly Storefront of the Week feature which will include a video of the seller and its story, and Meet the Business Owner profiles.

Having long been criticised for preventing the growth of small independent retailers, Amazon states on its Storefronts homepage that "half of everything sold on Amazon comes from small & medium sized businesses".

Just this month, Amazon became the second US company in history to be valued at over $1 trillion (£780 billion), only weeks after Apple hit the milestone.

In recent years Amazon has invested heavily in its UK operations, building distribution centres, offices and tech hubs while creating thousands of local jobs.

Punchline said: "We can't help but think that is too little, too late. With its low overheads, Amazon has been beating both independent businesses and high street chains on price for too long. This year has been a tough one for the high street, with companies like Maplin and Toys R Us going out of business and others, like New Look, forced to close stores to survive. This is largely due to competition from Amazon. So this new initiative feels rather like Amazon protecting its own reputation in the face of criticism that it is destroying smaller retailers."

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