On Prime Day, Amazon marketplace merchants offered their own deep discounts to capture revenue during the high-sales day. Amazon says sales by marketplace merchants “far exceeded” $1 billion during the 36-hour sales event.
While Amazon’s figure for marketplace sales is large, individual sellers and marketplace management vendors report mixed results.
Internet Retailer estimates marketplace sellers’ sales only account for about a third of total Prime Day sales, whereas on a typical day about 50% of the units sold on Amazon are sold by marketplace sellers. Many of Prime Day’s most-hyped and best-selling products are Amazon products. For instance, Amazon’s Fire TV Stick and Echo Dot were the retailer’s best sellers worldwide. Plus, items sold by Amazon are traditionally higher-dollar values than third-party sellers, says retail analytics firm One Click Retail.
Pricing software vendor Feedvisor says sales from its 1,000 retail clients that sell on Amazon increased 24% for Prime Day 2018 compared with Prime Day 2017.
Sales increased even more—by 59%—when looking at the comparable time period a week earlier, Feedvisor says.
The 25 online retailers Amazon consulting agency Red Rocks E-commerce Consulting represented fared a bit better, with sales increasing anywhere from 50-200% more than an average sales day, says partner Irina Balyurko.
Individual sellers shared their Prime Day 2018 experiences with Internet Retailer:
- Instant Brands Inc.’s Instant Pot was one of the most-sold products during the sales event in both the U.S. and Canada. Instant Pot sold more than 300,000 of its Instant Pot 6 Qt 7-in-1 Multi Use product to U.S. Prime members during the Prime Day sale.
“Instant Pot was sold out in 19 hours, including four hours of technical glitch, rendering our product unavailable,” says CEO Robert Wang. “We saw two- to four-times higher sale velocity this year.” That’s saying something. The manufacturer’s Instant Pot product was one of the top 10 sellers during Prime Day 2017. - Marketplace seller Jam Paper and Envelope also saw large increases in Prime Day sales in the U.S. and Canada. Sales increased 49% for Prime Day 2018 compared with Prime Day 2017 in the U.S. and 256% on Amazon.ca, says Kelly Ennis, director of marketplace strategy and analytics, Jam Paper & Envelope.
“Tuesdays are typically significantly busier days for us than Mondays, but Monday, July 16, had about 8% more orders than Tuesday,” Ennis says. “So, even though Prime Day didn’t start until 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, we were busier Monday than Tuesday.” - Marketplace seller of car accessories FIXD also says orders were higher on the debut day on July 16 over July 17, says FIXD CEO John Gattuso. FIXD’s sales increased five-times more during the 36-hour sales event compared with an average day, he says.
- Not all marketplace merchants are feeling rosy about Monday’s sales, however. During the first few hours of the Prime Day sale, Amazon had technical issues that prevented some shoppers from browsing deals, checking out or adding items to their cart.
“We definitely lost sales due to Monday’s snafus,” says Jason Boyce, co-founder and CEO of Dazadi, which sells recreation and sporting goods on Amazon and Dazadi.com.
Dazadi’s sales on Amazon were down 22% for all day July 16 and July 17 compared with Prime Day 2017 and the day before, Boyce says.
“I know we would have had growth without that first-day site crash,” Boyce says. “Either the first-day bugs killed the momentum, or Amazon’s private-label brands stole most of the real estate, or both. Overall, [it was] a huge disappointment for us.”
Internet Retailer estimates that total sales on Prime Day from both Amazon and its marketplace merchants were between $4.01 billion and $4.38 billion globally, which is at least a 66% increase over Prime Day 2017.
Amazon is No. 1 in the Internet Retailer Top 1000.
Fareeha Ali contributed to this article.
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