Amazon's Prime Day 2020 was a win-win for small businesses and customers
Prime Day 2020 highlighted small businesses and resulted in record-setting sales by independent sellers.
Amazon designed Prime Day 2020 to provide Prime members with amazing savings, and to support small businesses by helping them connect with more customers and grow their sales. The results were record-setting. In the two-weeks leading-up to Prime Day, tens of millions of customers spent more than $900 million with small businesses selling in our store. Customers shopped from small businesses across all 50 U.S. states—with Utah, California, and New Jersey seeing the biggest sales per capita.
Then, on Prime Day, independent third-party sellers—most of them small- and medium-sized businesses—had their two biggest days ever, surpassing $3.5 billion in sales. That is a nearly 60% year-over-year increase, and even more growth than Amazon's retail business. Top-selling product categories for third-party sellers included bedding, wireless accessories, nutrition and wellness, arts, crafts and sewing, and health care.
"We are thrilled that Prime Day was a record-breaking event for small and medium businesses worldwide, with sales surpassing $3.5 billion—an increase of nearly 60% from last year," said Jeff Wilke, CEO Worldwide Consumer. "We're also proud that Prime members saved more than $1.4 billion, and we look forward to providing more opportunities for our selling partners to grow and customers to save throughout the holiday season. I'm incredibly thankful to our employees and partners around the world who helped make Prime Day possible, especially the dedicated front-line teams in our fulfillment centers and delivery operations."
Investing in small business success
To expand our ongoing commitment to help small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, Amazon is spending more than $100 million on new promotional activities for Prime Day and throughout the holiday season. As part of these investments, we launched new curated collections to connect customers with small businesses leading up to, during, and after Prime Day. We also highlighted offers from dozens of small businesses on Amazon Live throughout Prime Day, and promoted hundreds of thousands of Prime Day deals from small- and medium-sized businesses.
Leading up to Prime Day, our biggest-ever small business promotion offered Prime members a $10 credit to spend on Prime Day when they spent $10 on items sold by select small businesses.
Small businesses on Prime Day: In their own words
Live by Being—Houston, Texas
Kennedy Lowery, owner of Live by Being, a skincare and wellness goods company
"2020 has been a rollercoaster for small businesses like mine, but Prime Day helped us sell a whole month's worth of inventory in two days," said Lowery. "In addition, with the Spend $10, Get $10 promotion my business saw sales double on Amazon Handmade even before Prime Day started. The increase in sales will definitely help support operations as we prepare for the rest of the holiday season."
Shop Live by Being
Furbo—Seattle, Washington
Victor Chang and Maggie Cheung, Co-founders of Furbo
"We saw 145 percent year-over-year growth just in the opening hours of Prime Day. In just one day, more Furbos were sold than in the past three months combined and we've nearly doubled sales from last year," said Cheung. "Prime Day really helps jumpstart the holiday sale and helps us reach millions of new customers worldwide."
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Simply Gum—New York, New York
Caron Proschan, CEO of Simply Gum
"This year's Prime Day exceeded all of our expectations. On day one we saw a 700% lift in units sold, leading to a record sales day for us," said Proschan. "As a small business, Prime Day has become one of the most important events of the year, not only for its sales boost, but also as a way for us to build awareness with new customers. Amazon enables us to reach an audience size we would have no way of reaching on our own."
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HONEYCAT—Irvine, California
Julie Stott and Jo Baar, Co-Founders of HONEYCAT
"This Prime Day, our sales were up 500% compared to a normal day," said Stott. "Amazon overall has been an absolute game changer and we've been able to grow tremendously. With Prime Day being in October this year, we found it's a great segue into the holidays and hope to see customers continue to support the small businesses throughout the season on Amazon."
Shop HONEYCAT
A win-win partnership
Amazon's partnership with sellers is a win-win for small businesses and customers. That's why third-party sellers now make up approximately 60% of physical product sales in Amazon's Store. Sellers have created an estimated 2.2 million jobs, and are seeing faster sales growth than our own retail business.
Over all, Amazon is on course to invest $18 billion this year to help independent businesses succeed in our store, including investments in logistics, tools, services, programs, and people. Since the beginning of the year, we have launched more than 135 free tools and services to help sellers grow their sales in Amazon's store. In the coming months, we will provide more than 500,000 U.S. small- and medium-sized businesses currently selling on Amazon with online selling guidance, education, and support. We also plan to onboard an additional 100,000 U.S. businesses as new sellers.
Prime DaySellersSmall business
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