EXCLUSIVE: Amazon readies small business sellers for Prime Day
Amazon offers small- and medium-sized businesses selling on its platform a variety of solutions and services to help ensure Prime Day success.
Chain Store Age recently spoke with Natalie Angelillo, director, seller external relations at Amazon, to find out more about why Amazon considers small- and medium-sized businesses a vital part of its upcoming Prime Day sales extravaganza and how it supports their Prime Day efforts.
What role do small businesses play in Prime Day?
Today, more than 60% of Amazon’s sales are from independent sellers, most of which are small and medium-sized businesses, providing a vast selection of products with competitive prices and great convenience for consumers. Once again, we are using Prime Day to increase the discoverability of small businesses in our store by spotlighting their deals and products.
In 2023, the most-shopped categories from U.S. selling partners in Amazon’s store included health & personal care, home, beauty, grocery and apparel.
What kinds of tools and assistance does Amazon provide small businesses for Prime Day?
We are helping sellers prepare for another Prime Day by offering tools they can leverage to maximize customer engagement and drive sales, providing recommendations and support for their deals strategy, and helping them prepare their inventory.
Amazon proactively provides sellers with recommendations for deals that have the highest likelihood of delighting customers and performing well on Prime Day. Sellers can use these recommendations to guide their overall Prime Day strategy, including whether to run deals, coupons or discounts, and how best to leverage sponsored products.
Deal recommendations are presented to sellers in the Seller Central hub, where they have the ability to edit and tailor their deal, coupon, and discount attributes in preparation for the event. Sellers have several deal options, such as "Best Deal on Prime Day" or "Lightning Deals," and we support them by making recommendations on which to pursue for specific products.
Amazon also helps sellers with inventory readiness for Prime Day by providing them with recommendations on products to restock to ensure sufficient inventory levels.
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What have results for small businesses been in years past as a result?
Prime Day supports sellers by helping them boost their sales. In fact, Prime Day 2023 was the biggest Prime Day event ever for independent sellers, whose sales growth in Amazon’s store outpaced Amazon's retail business.
Last year, small business brands like Caraway, True Classic, and Tushy increased their average daily sales in Amazon’s store by over 18x during the first day of the Prime Day event when compared to the rest of 2023 leading up to Prime Day.
Selling in Amazon’s stores provides selling partners with 24/7 access to hundreds of millions of Amazon customers worldwide, and Amazon makes it easy for these customers to shop small.
Are there any new small business offerings for Prime Day 2024?
This Prime Day, we’ve made it easy to save big on incredible products from small businesses with new deals dropping all the time. We’re excited that many small business brands are back again this Prime Day to offer incredible deals as well as exciting deals from new and emerging small business brands.
Members in the U.S. can shop more small business deals than any other Prime Day event. All year long, customers can also discover and shop more small businesses in Amazon’s store – including Black-owned, women-owned, military family-owned, Hispanic-owned, AANHPI-owned and LGBTQIA-owned businesses and independent artisans.
