On Prime Day, Amazon customers ordered 34.4 million items across Prime-eligible countries, breaking all Black Friday records. It was against all measures an absolute barnstormer.
I met Nova Smith, Founder of IT Tablet PC in Leeds on the day was thrilled with results saying “Prime Day for my tablet PC business was unbelievable. Our first item – the IT tablet – went on sale at midnight and sold out within 24 minutes! At 7am my second item “Tabl-it” went on sale for an hour selling 80% of the stock, and by 8am I had sold over 1,000 units. By the end of Prime Day my daily turnover had increased by 524% – looking forward to Prime Day next year already!”.
Christopher North, Managing Director at Amazon UK told us “The response to Prime Day has surpassed all of our expectations, Prime Day was our biggest day of deals ever – we sold even more deals than on Black Friday. We can’t wait to do it again next year”.
What does the success of Prime Day mean for sellers?
Below are some fun facts relating to the velocity of sale on Prime Day, but what’s really of interest is how can you participate next year. In reality of course we don’t have to wait a year, it’s only 3 months to Black Friday and Cyber Monday which by all predictions is due to be even bigger in the UK than in 2014.
These Amazon mega-sales really benefit sellers who use Amazon FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon). FBA allows sellers to become Prime eligible – meaning 1 hour delivery in certain London and Birmingham postcodes, free next day delivery country wide for buyers and of course the chance to take part in events like Prime Day and Black Friday.
We know that there are costs associated with FBA, but we also know from just about every seller we’ve spoken to that using FBA accelerates sales. From my own experience as a relatively new Amazon Prime customer I can see why – it’s just too tempting to select “Prime Eligible” products, which translated means products from third party sellers sold through FBA.
If you’re not currently an FBA seller, the success for Amazon sellers on Prime Day and Black Friday should be incentive enough, if not to sign up for your entire inventory, to at least seriously consider running some trials with test products and measure the acceleration in sell through rates.
Fun facts about Prime Day in the UK
- Amazon sold enough extension leads through Prime Day Lightning Deals to go all around Hyde Park
- If Amazon stacked all the PlayStation 4’s sold during Prime Day on top of one and other, they would be 7 times taller than Big Ben
- Amazon sold enough Aquadoodles to allow young artists to produce over 1,000 Mona Lisas laid side by side
- If Amazon stacked all the Spear and Jackson Pressure Sprayers that Amazon customers bought on Prime Day it would exceed the height of The Shard, London’s tallest building
- Amazon sold enough pressure washers to fill three bathtubs a second
- If Amazon stacked all the Keter Storage Boxes that Amazon customers bought on Prime Day it would exceed the height of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Saudi Arabia
- If you stacked all the pens and pencils Amazon sold end-to-end yesterday they would be taller than Mount Everest
- Customers bought enough tops and t-shirts to dress up more than every spectator watching the Ashes at the Lords cricket ground today
- Amazon sold enough Fitbit Surge Ultimate Fitness Super Watches to track the number of steps it would take to run to Pluto
- Amazon customers purchased enough Black Out Blinds to cover two football pitches
- Seven films in Seven minutes… Star Wars fans demonstrated their loyalty to forthcoming episode VII by snapping up all the available DVD deals in seven minutes
- Amazon sold 1.2 tonnes of gummy bears which is about the weight of a family car
- Customers bought enough Yorkshire Tea to make 165,000 litres of the nation’s favourite drink
- Amazon sold so many electric toothbrush heads Amazon could clean every set of teeth in Scotland and Wales before they needed to be replaced
