Amazon.com Inc. sold “millions” of Alexa-enabled devices, including Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote and Echo Dot, in the first 24 hours of Amazon.com Inc.’s 48-hour Prime Day sales event that kicked off at midnight Pacific Daylight Time on July 15, the retailer reported in a press release without revealing specifics. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on its Prime Day sales.
In addition, sales of consumable products, such as crackers, toilet paper and other non-perishable grocery items, also tripled compared with that of a normal shopping day during the first nine hours of Prime Day, according to CommerceIQ, a platform that helps consumer brands sell products on Amazon.
The results show Prime Day’s appeal stretches beyond electronics, appliances and other big-ticket purchases shoppers usually put off until there’s a big promotion. Sales of car seats, appliances and toys were up four to five times a typical day, according to CommerceIQ, which is about the usual rate for a sales event.
Over the course of the full two days, Internet Retailer projects Amazon—No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2019 Top 1000—will sell more than $6 billion worth of goods on Prime Day. This would be a 46% increase over Prime Day 2018, which was a 36-hour sales event.
Amazon doesn’t disclose specific sales information about Prime Day. Some companies are able to gain insights through their own sales on the site or estimations based on sales rankings and other information Amazon discloses.
Online retailers benefit from Prime Day
Prime Day’s growing prominence helped drive a number of Amazon competitors, including Walmart Inc. (No. 3), Target Corp. (No. 16) and eBay Inc. (No. 5 in the ranking of Internet Retailer Online Marketplaces) to launch their own sales events, which helped boost U.S. online spending.
Large retailers (those that make $1 billion or more in annual revenue) had a 64% increase in online sales on Monday compared with a typical Monday, according to data from Adobe Analytics. That’s a 12 percentage point increase from last year when online sales for large retailers rose 52% over the 36-hour sale.
The Prime Day halo effect also helped boost online sales for smaller retailers (those that make less than $5 million in annual revenue) by 30% on Monday, Adobe says. Adobe’s estimate is based on an analysis of 1 trillion visits to more than 4,500 U.S. retail websites and 55 million SKUs in one year trailing 12 months. Adobe Analytics measures transactions from 80 of Internet Retailer’s Top 100 online retailers.
One way that retailers competed with Amazon was by leveraging omnichannel advantages, such as the option for consumers to pick up their online orders in one of their physical stores. For example, the average order value for retailers’ buy online pick up in store was up 12% compared with a typical Monday, according to Adobe.
“To keep up on Prime Day, you need to be able to adapt to both Amazon’s aggressive discount strategy, as well as the behaviors of other competitors,” says Julien Gautier, marketing director at data analytics platform ActiveViam. “You need a smarter, larger approach than just alignment with Amazon to be successful on Prime Day.”
Amazon makes gains
On Amazon.com, worldwide sellers—predominantly small and medium-sized businesses— had “the biggest 24-hour sales day in Amazon history,” Amazon reported in its release.
One Amazon seller drove sales by leveraging the ecommerce giant’s livestream feature, which enables brands to showcase products and interact with Amazon customers in real time.
“The culmination of [Amazon’s seller tools], including the recently launched livestream feature, continues to make Amazon the best place to launch a new brand nowadays,” says Mike Zhang, founder of Fenrici Brands, an Amazon marketplace seller of backpacks.
“We definitely see increased clicks to product pages and questions from customers during our livestream sessions. If you can provide both information and entertainment, Amazon’s livestream team may decide to feature you,” Zhang says.
Early sales results for Fenrici Brands for July 15 Prime Day were 10 times than on an average day. Last year, Fenrici was just getting started as a brand, he says. For the last few hours of Prime Day, Fenrici Brands will be a featured livestream seller on Amazon, Zhang says.
Bloomberg contributed to this report.
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