A dedicated Amazon Academy has been announced and it will have a rural focus. The event is to be held at the Rural Entrepreneur Show in the Birmingham NEC on the 8th and 9th November. The Rural Entrepreneur Show is expected to attract over 6000 rural businesses looking to develop their enterprises.
The event coincides with the release of new research revealing that rural small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who export forecast twice as much revenue growth and triple the jobs growth in the coming year compared to those who don’t export.
The new YouGov survey of over 1000 SMEs from across the country found that over the next 12 months, rural SMEs who export forecast +2.1% revenue growth and +0.9% jobs growth, compared to +1.2% revenue growth and +0.3% jobs growth for rural SMEs than do not export.
Over the course of two days, rural businesses attending the Amazon Academy will hear from senior Amazon experts and successful rural e-commerce entrepreneurs on:
– How to grow revenue online, manage logistics and increase their export sales through Amazon Marketplace
– How rural artisans and craft experts can grow their business through Handmade at Amazon
– How rural businesses and organisations can reach customers and communities through Amazon’s new cloud-based voice service, Alexa.
Amazon UK chief Doug Gurr says: “We’re seeing thousands of rural SMEs use Amazon to export and successfully grow their business, so it’s great to see the projected export revenue and jobs growth reflected more broadly in today’s findings. With our Amazon Academy at the Rural Entrepreneurs Show we hope to help unlock the digital potential for rural businesses, and additionally hear the challenges they face and the opportunities they see to feed into Rural England’s upcoming report.”
If you’re a rural based SME interested in selling on Amazon, or if you want to get started, this sounds like an excellent opportunity.
