Prime Day Day One commentary

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How have your sales on Amazon been today, on Prime Day Day One? Have you seen any uplift on other sites? With Prime Day in full swing, we’re already seeing some delivery times for orders placed early today pushed out to Wednesday, which is no surprise considering the volume of goods Amazon are expected to sell, but will they beat last year’s sales? Jason Stuckey, GM at Linnworks thinks this would be a big ask:

“Every year, Amazon Prime Day is strategically timed to buoy sales in traditionally slow periods for most categories. According to Linnworks proprietary data, April marked the first decline in MoM e-commerce sales since the start of the pandemic, which ties in with a normal shift in discretionary spend from goods to travel and leisure. This is also now in tandem with rapid recovery from the pandemic in the U.S. Last year was an anomaly to regular trends, and this year is unique as we come off a record year for e-commerce sales. Record data has clouded predictive models and the lack of clarity around economic recovery made it challenging to predict inventory needs for 2021.

Prime Day was pulled forward this year and Amazon has sent notices to some sellers about forced downsizing of their inventory blocks in Amazon warehouses. This may mean that Amazon is trying to solve for overstocked inventory. The U.S. is fully reopening the week before Prime Day; however, sales should remain strong. I’d be surprised to see a beat of 2020 levels, but the numbers should easily exceed 2019’s $7.16B. Seller sentiment is still extremely bullish on Prime Day. More retailers will be involved this year as e-commerce has become a “prime” focus for every seller globally.”
– Jason Stuckey, GM, Linnworks

Meanwhile, the OnBuy marketplace have taken a playful poke on Prime Day Day One with a simple ad in the OnBuy brand colours (not to be confused with the Amazon’s Prime blue colour) that conveys a straightforward message – OnBuy offers amazing deals all year round, supporting known brands and independent sellers alike with no need for a paid subscription whatsoever. Plus the marketplace says, when they do hold a sale they fund it out of their own money without requiring merchants to slash their margins and sell at little or no profit:

“We believe in a simple set of core values at OnBuy, and offering a level playing field to both our sellers and our customers is at the top of them. We offer competitive pricing all year round regardless of marketing budgets and without the need for any subscriptions. When we do drop our prices for sales events, it comes out of our own commission, so sellers both large and small don’t feel the pressure to lower their prices to stay afloat, which is vital in today’s economy.”
– Aron Cody, CMO, OnBuy

Anecdotally, we’ve seen on social media people posting their Prime Day Day One purchases, but can Amazon maintain the hype for the seventh year in a row or will they have to rely on adding new countries to the Prime programme in order to continually have record breaking sales events?

Tamebay.com