Amazon is sponsoring SF Small Business Week. The shopkeepers were upset

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Eileen McCormick, store manager of Green Apple Books on Clement Street, was surprised to receive an email from the local merchant association promoting San Francisco’s Small Business Week. Major sponsor? Amazon, the corporate behemoth that helped kill independent bookstores and other small businesses.

Like Coca-Cola promoting Diabetes Awareness Week or Exxon Oil promoting an event focused on addressing climate change, it fell on deaf ears.

What’s worse? The email invited her to attend events called “How to Get Started Selling on Amazon” and “Amazon Small Business Panel.”

“It’s in incredibly poor taste,” McCormick told me. “It’s an insult. It’s so funny.”

When the manager of Green Apple Books on Clement Street learned that San Francisco's Small Business Week was sponsored by Amazon, she described it as a killer for small businesses.

When the manager of Green Apple Books on Clement Street learned that San Francisco’s Small Business Week was sponsored by Amazon, she described it as a killer for small businesses.

Yalonda M. James / Chronicle

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce hosts San Francisco Small Business Week, which ends today. A website promoting the week hails Amazon as the “champion of small business,” with an article extolling its virtues. “Amazon strives to be Earth’s customer-centric company, Earth’s best employer and Earth’s safest place to work,” he says.

Uh-uh.

Rodney Fong, the local chamber’s president and CEO, did not return requests for comment on the sponsor’s selection or questions about how much Amazon paid for the rights. A council spokesman said Fong was too busy to speak. It’s not the first time big businesses have supported Small Business Week; A big sponsor last year was Meta, Facebook’s new name.

Amazon spokeswoman Kelsey Friedrich said the company is proud to have nearly 500,000 small and medium-sized businesses selling products on its site.

“Partnering with local organizations like the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce is one of the ways we help create new opportunities for the small business community,” said Friedrich.

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