• American small and medium-sized businesses selling in Amazon’s stores had a record-breaking year, with more than 15,000 businesses surpassing $1 million in sales in 2019 – double-digit growth since last year
• Nearly 25,000 American small and medium-sized businesses surpassed $500,000 in sales in Amazon’s stores in 2019
• Third-party sellers sold more than 700 million items in Amazon’s U.S. store that shipped with Prime Free One-Day Delivery or faster in 2019
Amazon announced it launched more than 225 tools and services in 2019 to help third-party sellers – mostly small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) succeed in its stores. The new tools and services were part of a more than $15 billion global investment in third-party seller success last year. As a result, American SMBs selling in Amazon’s stores had a record-breaking year, with more than 15,000 businesses surpassing $1 million in sales and nearly 25,000 surpassing $500,000 in sales in 2019. Worldwide, nearly 225,000 SMBs surpassed $100,000 in sales in Amazon’s stores in 2019, up from nearly 200,000 in 2018, and more than 140,000 in 2017.
Amazon also invested billions of dollars in Prime Free One-Day Delivery last year. Driven by Prime Free One-Day Delivery, this was the largest one-year investment Amazon has ever made in Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). As a result, third-party sellers sold more than 700 million items in Amazon’s U.S. store that shipped with Prime Free One-Day Delivery or faster in 2019.
“More than half of the items sold in Amazon’s stores are from small and medium-sized businesses, so our success is deeply tied to their success,” said Nicholas Denissen, VP of Small Business at Amazon. “In many ways our store is a large collection of small businesses, and we love partnering with them to delight customers. With the investments we’re making, we are giving small businesses around the globe powerful tools and technology to help them reach hundreds of millions of customers and build successful brands.”
Tools such as Target Inventory Levels, Inventory Performance Index, and the Inventory Performance Dashboard help sellers leverage Prime Free One-Day Delivery and reach more customers with their products. Additionally, Amazon launched many free tools within the Seller Central portal in 2019 to help sellers gain richer insights, protect their brands, grow their sales, and delight customers.
Top tools and services launched in 2019 include:
- Brand Analytics and Brand Dashboard. Brand owner sellers enrolled in Brand Registry can use Brand Analytics and the Brand Dashboard to track product performance and access traffic and conversion recommendations. Amazon sellers viewed the metrics on their Brand Dashboard more than a million times in 2019.
- Manage Your Experiments. Manage Your Experiments lets sellers run experiments like A/B testing to see how content on their listings performs. These learnings help sellers optimize product content and drive sales.
- New Product Optimizer. The New Product Optimizer provides recommendations and best practices to help brand owner sellers launch new products successfully.
- Growth Navigator. Growth Navigator gives sellers personalized guidance on additional selling programs and features to experiment with to accelerate growth in Amazon’s stores. Each recommendation includes rich educational content, including Seller University videos, to help sellers learn more about the programs and features.
- Amazon Live features. U.S.-based sellers enrolled in Brand Registry can engage with customers in real-time and drive sales using interactive livestreams with Amazon Live. New in 2019, customers can now Follow brands that stream on Amazon Live, allowing sellers to connect directly with customers about their products and brands, and build an audience on Amazon.
“In a recent survey of small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S., we found that 90% trust Amazon and SMBs selling in Amazon’s stores are over two times more likely to see rapid sales and hiring growth than those who don’t,” said Shari Lava, Research Director, Small and Medium Business at IDC. “Strategic partners, like Amazon, can be invaluable to smaller firms looking to grow their online sales and the new growth figures Amazon released today certainly suggest this.”
Additional small and medium-sized business highlights include:
- It was a record-breaking holiday season for third-party sellers – mostly SMBs – with worldwide unit sales seeing double-digit year-over-year growth, surpassing a billion items sold in Amazon’s stores.
- Sales by third-party sellers – mostly SMBs – in Amazon’s stores far exceeded $2 billion on Prime Day 2019.
- Small and medium-sized businesses selling in Amazon’s stores have created an estimated 1.6 million jobs worldwide, with more than half in the U.S.
- Amazon Storefronts, Amazon’s curated destination to shop exclusively from American SMBs, has surpassed 2.5 million products from nearly 30,000 U.S. companies.
