The first SME Growth Tracker of 2017 has found that SMEs have raised their revenue growth projections for the third quarter in a row – and are now forecasting +2.3% revenue growth for the coming 12 months.
The SME Growth Tracker is a quarterly report by Capital Economics commissioned by Amazon UK and Enterprise Nation that assesses growth prospects and views on the broader UK economy from small and medium-sized enterprises (SME).
“We are seeing a big rebound in confidence amongst British SMEs after a significant decline in December, but small businesses leaders remain concerned about the impact of rising supply costs and higher price inflation. “Small businesses are optimistic but do see potential risks”
– Simon Johnson, UK Director of Seller Services, Amazon
Across the regions, North East SMEs expect the sharpest improvement in business conditions for their own companies in the coming twelve months, with an SME Confidence Index score of +11, well above the national average. In contrast, Welsh SMEs are the only businesses, on average, expecting conditions for their own company to deteriorate in the coming year, with an SME Confidence Index score of -2.
Scotland, despite largely voting against Brexit and possibly now facing another independence referendum to add to business uncertainty, have a Confidence Index well above average of +6.
The SME Growth Tracker is very clearly a much broader report than just the typical Amazon seller. We estimated that the average Amazon seller is seeing growth of some +30-40% per year, so the +2.3% of the 1,082 SMEs polled likely represent a cross section of UK business rather than the typical Amazon seller.
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“We estimated that the average Amazon seller is seeing growth of some +30-40% per year”
Surprisingly high, probably limited to FBA sellers as FBM is becoming much more challenging with Prime heavily prioritised in Amazon search results.
Categories are increasingly becoming flooded with overseas FBA sellers (primarily Chinese) with generic private label products.