Shoppers don’t give any Fs about heritage when the search results tell a better story.

A recent Consumer Goods report caught my attention because it quantifies a shift I have been watching accelerate for years.

Emergents and challenger brands are now outselling legacy CPGs in 16 of 18 Amazon categories.

In fifteen of those, the lead is more than fifteen percent.

Heritage is nobody’s moat on Amazon.

Visibility is.

Third-party sellers are beating major brands because they understand the modern battlefield.

They master search.

They structure their listings using product AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) for ChatGPT and Perplexity.

They use retail media super-intelligently.

They launch quickly, fail cheaply, and replace underperformers, never having to convince a retail buyer to give them a slot on a physical shelf.

Legacy CPGs cannot move that fast.

And the data makes it painfully obvious.

Eighty-four percent of major brands fail to even appear in their own top three unbranded keyword searches.

That is a huge fail in a marketplace where the shopper begins and ends with search inputs, instead of good ol’ brand loyalty.

The lesson for founders is simple and pretty uncomfortable, but can be your secret weapon.

Speed and discoverability now matter more than reputation.

Small brands win because they focus on listing structure, search intent, product data, and iteration.

Those winners do not discount heavily, because they don’t need to.

They win the algorithm first.

No longer are you competing against the biggest brand.

You are competing against the challenger who understands the platform best.

Want to make your product irresistible? That’s what we do as product marketing consultants at Graphos Product, helping innovators turn need-driven ideas into market-ready successes.