Amazon’s Prime Day 2020 was a win-win for small businesses and customers

Amazon designed Prime Day 2020 to provide Prime members with amazing savings, and to support small businesses by helping them connect with more customers and grow their sales. The results were record-setting.

Prime members in the UK saved more than £75 million during Prime Day, taking advantage of deep discounts and incredible deals over the two-day event—some of the top categories members shopped and saved in the UK included Hardware, Spirits, Small Devices and Skin Care.

Hazel Reynolds, Founder of Gamely Games.

Third-party selling partners—most of which are small and medium-sized businesses—surpassed $3.5 billion in global sales on Prime Day—a nearly 60% year-on-year increase worldwide, growing even more than Amazon’s retail business.

The Echo Dot was the most popular item purchased on Prime Day globally and in the UK. Outside of Amazon Devices, best-selling products in the UK included the Shark Upright Vacuum Cleaner, Celebrations Chocolate Bulk Box, Halloween Party Bag Fillers, and Oral-B Smart 6 6000N CrossAction Electric Toothbrush, among others.

“We are thrilled that Prime Day was a record-breaking event for small and medium businesses worldwide, with sales surpassing $3.5 billion—an increase of nearly 60% from last year,” said Jeff Wilke, CEO Worldwide Consumer. “We’re also proud that Prime members saved more than $1.4 billion worldwide, and we look forward to providing more opportunities for our selling partners to grow and customers to save throughout the festive season. I’m incredibly thankful to our employees and partners around the world who helped make Prime Day possible, especially the dedicated front-line teams in our fulfilment centres and delivery operations.”

Investing in small business success
To expand our ongoing commitment to help small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, throughout Prime Day and the festive season Amazon is spending more than £75 million on promotional activities to help small businesses around the world increase their sales and reach new customers.

As part of these investments, we launched new curated collections to connect customers with small businesses leading up to, during, and after Prime Day. We also highlighted offers from dozens of small businesses on Amazon Storefronts throughout Prime Day, and promoted hundreds of thousands of Prime Day deals from small- and medium-sized businesses.Leading up to Prime Day, our biggest-ever small business promotion offered Prime members a £10 credit to spend on Prime Day when they spent £10 on items sold by select small businesses.

“Small and medium-sized businesses selling on Amazon had the biggest two days ever this Prime Day,” said Doug Gurr, Amazon UK Country Manager. “Compared to last year, these businesses saw an increase of more than 75% in product sales in the UK alone – it’s great to see them embracing online sales for the first time. We are committed to helping our customers save and supporting selling partners with further promotional programmes throughout the season ahead.”

Small businesses on Prime Day: in their own words

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Manta Makes – Bournemouth

Gamely Games – Brighton

Nudie Snacks, Glasgow

TORRO Cases, Tyne and Wear

Manta Makes – Bournemouth

Samantha Riley, Owner

“Prime Day was extremely successful for our business. Our 2020 sales grew by over 300% compared to last year’s event. Our Deals for Prime Day have shown to be successful especially mid-mornings, where we had an influx of orders. When we give reductions on events like this, we find it greatly increases our sales.” Shop Manta Makes.

Gamely Games – Brighton

Hazel Reynolds, Founder

“We sold more than 1,000 games in total on Day One of Prime Day – 10 times what we’d normally sell in a day in October.” Shop Gamely Games.

Nudie Snacks, Glasgow

Tracey Hogarth, Founder

“I can comfortably say Prime Day has been one of the best trading periods with Amazon this year. I look forward to the momentum continuing to build during the season ahead, to help us get through the upcoming challenges.” Shop Nudie Snacks.

TORRO Cases, Tyne and Wear

William Johnson, Co-Founder

“Prime Day is really good for our business as it massively increases the traffic to the Amazon website, which naturally increases the volume of eyes on TORRO products and provides a nice boost in sales prior to the high traffic gifting season.” Shop Torro Cases.

A win-win partnership
Amazon’s partnership with selling partners is a win-win for small businesses and customers. That’s why third-party sellers now make up approximately 60% of physical product sales in Amazon’s Store.

Tens of thousands of UK-based small and medium-sized businesses sell their products in Amazon’s stores, and they support more than 85,000 job opportunities in the UK. More than 60% of these businesses export to customers all over the world.

We recently launched the Amazon Small Business Accelerator with business support network Enterprise Nation to provide 200,000 small businesses with free training on a variety of topics, including social media marketing, selling online, scaling production and hiring. Businesses across the UK can sign up for free today.

Overall, Amazon is on course to invest $18 billion globally this year to help independent businesses succeed in our store, including investments in logistics, tools, services, programs, and people. Since the beginning of the year, we have launched more than 135 free tools and services to help sellers grow their sales in Amazon’s store.

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