Amazon.com sweetens holiday for third-party sellers
Amazon.com has announced that this holiday season, thousands of third-party sellers will have the opportunity to participate in its holiday deals promotion program.
Third-party sellers on Amazon will be allowed to offer holiday deals that will be featured on the Amazon holiday deal pages, including its Today’s Deals page. Holiday deals from sellers will appear on high customer traffic merchandising pages which highlight limited-time discounts on holiday items exclusively from sellers.
“It will now be easier than ever for our millions of customers to find popular and unique holiday products from our sellers,” said Peter Faricy, VP for Amazon Marketplace. “We know that customers expect to find the lowest prices on Amazon and love browsing the holiday deal pages for great bargains. We are excited that for the first time ever our sellers will be able to showcase their unique and high quality items on the holiday promotion shopping pages.”
“Our Gold Box Deal promotion earlier this year was an outstanding success. We listed a popular camera at an unbeatable price that was showcased on the premier placement of Amazon Today’s Deal page for several hours,” said Michael Silberstein, operations manager for Focus Camera, an electronics retailer based in New York City. “As a result, we received an enormous increase in sales during the promotion, especially for an item priced more than $200. The Gold Box Deal promotion helped us sell approximately 30% of the cameras we had in stock in only a few hours. Considering our large inventory, the amount of orders we fulfilled greatly exceeded our expectations. The Gold Box Deal attracted so many customers that we can’t wait for our next chance to participate during the holidays. Amazon is undoubtedly our most important sales channel during the holiday season. If our items are listed on Amazon and the price is right, sales are guaranteed.”
Sellers invited to take part in the holiday deals promotion program will have the opportunity to feature their deals for popular holiday gifting products on Amazon’s holiday shopping pages, such as Gold Box Today’s Deal page, Black Friday and Cyber Monday deal pages, and category holiday pages. The most popular holiday categories, including electronics and toys, will have numerous deals each day from various sellers throughout the holiday selling season.
Sellers looking to reach more customers and extend their holiday selling season can also choose to leverage Amazon’s fulfillment service, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). With FBA, sellers of all sizes can choose to have Amazon ship their products directly to customers and offer Amazon Prime benefits, free shipping, simple exporting to customers around the world, easy returns for orders placed on Amazon.com and great customer service.
During the 2012 holiday season, the more than 2 million third-party sellers worldwide on Amazon experienced record holiday growth. Unit growth solely from sellers in the U.S. increased more than 40% year-over-year.
“We experienced a tremendous increase in sales for the products we’ve offered as Best Deal or Gold Box Deals. Not only do our sales increase for that item but also the deal brings attention and increased popularity to the product that lasts well beyond the promotional deal,” said Stu Eisenman, president for E-Revolution Ventures, a retailer based in Delaware. “As a smaller retailer we were never able to offer our customers the same shipping savings as larger competitors. By participating in Amazon's FBA program, we can take advantage of the economies of scale. Through the FBA program we’re able to leverage Amazon's reputation for customer service into increased sales. We can focus on analyzing which items are hot sellers during the holiday season and take steps to ensure ample quantities are available.”