Not everyone agrees with me that Amazon will buy a bricks-and-mortar industrial supply company in the next 18 months.

One analyst told me the idea was so 2014. Maybe back then Amazon would have purchased a giant B2B distributor such as Grainger. But these days, he told me (on the condition that I not use his name or affiliation), Amazon sees itself more as a marketplace —happy to skim off a portion of other people’s transactions as a third-party seller without the bother of brick-and-mortar stores or other tangible assets.