According to emails sent to sellers registered to sell on Amazon Australia, the marketplace will open it’s doors to a small number of customers tomorrow (Thursday 23rd November at 2pm Australian Eastern Standard Time).
We know that the full launch of Amazon Australia is imminent, but the marketplace has yet to confirm a date to sellers and indeed in the emails sent today say that “In the lead up to the launch of Amazon in Australia we will provide updates via email regularly“.
Whilst many of the papers are breathlessly announcing the launch for this Thursday, it is definitely invite only to Amazon Australia customers. How long the closed test phase will last for we don’t know – One might take the regular ‘updates via email’ to mean a launch is imminent and to expect regular almost hourly emails for a Black Friday launch or one could equally guess that the emails will be spread over a number of days and there won’t be a launch this week.
Sellers who don’t wish (or aren’t quite ready) to participate in pre-launch sales have been advised to temporarily set their accounts to inactive within Seller Central using holiday settings. For those ready to go ahead and start selling, Amazon advises to ensure that prices and stock availability is up to date as well as double checking shipping settings and VAT information. They also remind sellers to add their bank details so that they can be paid on Amazon’s fortnightly disbursements so you’ll want to ensure you have access to an Australian (real or virtual) bank account if you’re based outside of Australia.
It’s perfectly possible that if all goes well Amazon could launch in Australia this Black Friday, but the smart money is on them launching later in the month or possibly the 1st of December. Watch this space!
