Amazon unveils holiday version of Prime Day
Prime members will have their own special two-day holiday sale.
Amazon will debut Prime Early Access Sale, a new two-day global shopping event exclusive to Prime members, Tuesday, Oct. 11 through Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022. The event takes places in 15 countries: U.S., U.K., Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey.
Prime Early Access Sale amazon.com/earlyaccess will offer Prime members hundreds of thousands of deals. As part of the event, Amazon is introducing a Top 100 list of popular and giftable holiday items. New deals from the list will drop throughout the sale, offering savings across all top Amazon categories, including electronics, fashion, home, kitchen, pets, toys, and Amazon devices.
In addition, Amazon is currently offering a Holiday Gift Guides feature that highlights top items from the toys and home categories. The toys gift guide features the most popular toys and games of the holiday season. It also includes the “Toys We Love” list of more than 60 items only available at Amazon from national brands including Hasbro, Disney, Fisher-Price, Bluey, and National Geographic.
Meanwhile, the home gift guide includes home products from brands including Amazon Basics, Christopher Knight, De’Longhi, iRobot, Shark, simplehuman, and ZINUS.
Amazon kicked off its holiday season promotion in October 2021 with what it called “Black Friday-worthy” deals. However, those discounts were made available to all shoppers, not just Prime members. That month also saw Amazon launch a Holiday Beauty Haul promotion, which was also open to all customers.
In 2020, Amazon held its Prime Day sales extravaganza, normally held in the summer, in October due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2022 edition of Prime Day occurred July 12-13, generating record-breaking sales totals.
This marks the first year Amazon is essentially hosting two full-blown versions of its members-only Prime Day promotion. The retailer has not yet said if it will also provide any type of early holiday (pre-Thanksgiving) promotion open to all consumers. Chief Amazon rivals Walmart and Target are both running October holiday sales events for all shoppers.
All three retail giants are making an early holiday push amid what many experts are predicting will be a modest holiday season. Deloitte’s annual holiday forecast predicts that year-over-year holiday sales will increase 4% to 6%. By comparison, sales grew 15.1% in 2021.
Prime membership costs $14.99 per month, or $139 per year. In the U.S., that includes free, fast delivery. Amazon also offers two discounted Prime membership plans with the same benefits for students and EBT/SNAP participants.
Anyone can join Prime or start a free 30-day trial to be eligible to participate in Prime Early Access Sale.
“We are so excited to help Prime members kick off the holiday season with Amazon’s new Prime Early Access Sale—an exclusive opportunity for members to get deep discounts on top brands we know they are looking for this time of year,” said Jamil Ghani, VP of Amazon Prime. “And members can start enjoying exclusive Prime benefits and offers now, plus find gift ideas for the family with our holiday gift guides and this year’s Toys We Love list.”