Amazon have just released the Amazon Summer 2017 Trends Report which reveals Brit’s top 10 favourite items in a variety of categories. If you want to know the most asked questions of Amazon Alexa, the top 10 print books, the top 10 eBooks or the most streamed artist or songs then it’s all in Amazon’s Trends Report.
What’s much more interesting is the section relating to marketplace sellers. The report reveals total UK exports by UK businesses through the Amazon marketplace amounted to £1.8bn in 2016. That’s up 29% based on the previous year and Amazon say that more businesses than ever before are exporting their products via Amazon.
Half of all sales on Amazon’s global sites are made by third party sellers and FBA is becoming used on an ever increasingly basis by these businesses. By the end of 2016, over half of all units stocked in Amazon’s UK Fulfilment Centres were FBA products from Marketplace sellers (as opposed to products stocked by Amazon retail).
Amazon also state that that 74,000 people are employed by UK sellers as a result of their business selling on Amazon Marketplace (based on independent research).
In February this year we published a post “What the average Amazon seller’s business looks like“, a rough and ready reckoner of what an average business selling on Amazon achieves. Now we have an additional statistic to add – Did your exports through the Amazon marketplace grow by 29% in 2016, as if not then you’re falling behind your competitors.
(P.S. Congratulations to the Tamebay Readers featured in the report!)
One Response
Great read and seeing these levels means that more should be done at schools, universities and colleges regarding e-commerce as a viable career path. What should be noted is that 74,000 people rely on Amazon and other market places for their living. With this comes a responsibility for employers to operate in a responsible way to ensure these people keep their jobs and new jobs are introduced.
What Amazon et al need to do is understand their responsibility when flicking a switch and suspending an account and have a greater human element. We had a similar issue with Google recently regarding our Merchant Center account. Because a bot was reading it they suspended us due to an anomaly on the feedwhich was rectified 6 weeks later after a human looked at the data feed. They all have a responsibility to be less gung-ho and understand that these 74,000 people have bills to pay.