26 Jul

Prime Day Results: Looking at it from Under the Hood

By Jim Cahill In Amazon /   No Comments

Another Prime Day is in the books for Amazon. As we heard, the outage that affected users for the first ninety minutes of Prime Day did not affect Amazon’s overall revenue of that day. Prime Day continues to evolve, and Amazon is changing its approach from a traditional warehouse clearance sale to a more focused campaign that extends the reach of the Prime value proposition and its branded electronics, new clothing brands and Whole Foods.

We’ve seen the numbers, and we talked about those numbers in a webinar we ran, last week. One thing we didn’t touch on, was top products sold during that day. It doesn’t come as a shock that Amazon branded products led the way.

In particular, the Amazon Alexa powered devices like Echo and the Fire TV Stick led the way and drove the sales for Amazon based products. The Fire Tablet did not feel left out as it was another top seller for the day.

Small to medium size businesses did their part on Prime Day making up for $1 billion in revenue during the 36-hour event.

What can we make of it? For one even with the hiccup people went in to Amazon excited about the deals, once described as a way for Amazon to clean out its warehouse to now have legitimate deals. Another thing we can make of it is how this will shape the holiday buying season. They use this day as a stepping stone to guide how Black Friday and Cyber Monday will do. All signs point to it doing well.

We’ll cover more about Amazon and more as we lead into Holiday Season 2018.

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28 Mar

What Will Amazon Do Next? First Quarter Edition

By Jim Cahill In Amazon /   No Comments

Predicting what Amazon does next is fast becoming a favorite topic of this and every eCommerce blog.  The fact is the answer to that simple, yet, complex question could yield answers that differ from the location of HQ2, to who they will buy next.

Today we look at some thoughts on their next possible big purchase, will it be technology to add to their arsenal of enabling solutions or, drum roll please, a large brick & mortar retailer?  The Robin Report speculates on some likely suspects, some of whom have dipped their toe in the Amazon pool recently.

Prime speculation is on Kohls, in part because of well, their prime real estate and because they are working with Amazon on some dedicated space for returns.  Kohls is also hard at work re-imaging how they use their existing floor space and options include everything from subleases for purveyors of hardware to food. They do offer large numbers of prime locations of reasonabley sized stores that can be both retail and distribution, think of it as Omnichannel on steroids.

The article also mentions Target, which we had identified as a possible target as part of our 2018 Trends post and Sears.  To many any change in ownership of Sears would be welcome and certainly an alternative to what has happened to another retail icon Toys R Us.

Much of this speculation is rooted in the convergence of several market influences and their impact on the retail market in general and on Amazon in particular:

  • The need for traditional retailers to accelerate their Omnichannel strategy and to build in store traffic by any means possible
  • Retailers seeking to differentiate their brand by providing consumers with unique instore shopping experiences which emphasize the convenience factor through their Omnichannel operations, be it their own products or by acting as an adjunct to Amazon
  • Amazon’s continued push toward a greater brick and mortar presence as shown in a variety of ways, Whole Foods, Kohls partnership and future deals

If anyone at Amazon would like to provide us with the inside scoop, that would be great!  But until then we will all have to wait to find out.

As always feel free to contact us to talk about how all things Amazon affect your eCommerce business at marketing@freestyelsolutons.com.

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