Our colleague Dana Matioli has spent months reporting on a company that you've probably never heard of.

Big River Services International. It sells products on sites like eBay, Shopify, and Amazon.

Things like beach chairs and walks and industrial-sized tubs for food.

On its face it looks just like a mom and pop or a small business that's selling their

goods.

If you go to Big River's website and click on the who we are section, it doesn't actually say much about who they are,

just that they're entrepreneurs, thinkers, marketers, and creators.

It's like very much boilerplate,

like it looks like a WIC site

that was thrown up in like 20 minutes.

There's some like typos.

They spell Seattle wrong in one instance.

So why have you been paying attention to this relatively generic looking company?

So it looks like totally benign and not very sophisticated at first glance, but I learned a few months ago that this actually isn't just some small third-party seller or mom and pop.

This is a shell company created by Amazon. The purpose of the shell company to gather intelligence on its rivals. Sensitive information, pricing information, things of that nature, and fed it back to

Amazon senior leaders to incorporate into their own businesses.

Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutzen.

It's Monday, April 29th.

Coming up on the show,

Inside Amazon's top secret project curiosity. This episode is brought to you by Empower.

If you're like most people, you've had your fair share of financial questions.

Questions like, will you be able to afford a third kid?

...