(Amazon photo)
Amazon said on Wednesday that this week’s Prime Day sales event, which ended on Tuesday, was the largest two-day period ever for the e-commerce giant’s third-party sellers.
Amid an intense antitrust review of how it operates its marketplace, Amazon’s post-prime PR has driven the company’s ongoing narrative about how good Amazon is for small and medium-sized businesses on its platform.
Amazon said Prime members in 20 countries bought more than 250 million items and “saved more than any Prime Day before,” but the company was reluctant to disclose a dollar amount for sales, as it did at the event last year The fall was when it said outside traders sold more than $ 3.5 billion in goods.
Total US online spending by all retailers exceeded $ 11 billion on Monday and Tuesday, up 6.1% from Prime Day last October, according to the Adobe Digital Economy Index. This dwarfs the record online sales for Cyber Monday last year of $ 10.9 billion.
The conclusion of the annual shopping extravaganza comes as Amazon responds to proposed antitrust laws put in place by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Brian Huseman, vice president of public policy for the company, said in a statement that five proposed bills would “have a material adverse impact on the hundreds of thousands of American small and medium-sized businesses selling in our store and on tens of millions” of consumers, buy the products from Amazon. “
In promoting ahead of the event, Dave Clark, CEO of Amazon Worldwide Consumer, also made the third-party community the centerpiece of Prime Day.
The small business focus isn’t new, but it stands out this year as Amazon also faces a lawsuit from the Washington, DC Attorney General alleging that Amazon is illegally manipulating the e-commerce market for its own benefit by it penalizes third party vendors who offer products at lower prices on other platforms.
Prime Day started in 2015 and has grown into one of the most important annual events for the company, creating a second busy season six months after the holiday season. The company promised more than 2 million deals worldwide for its 200 million paying members.
Amazon shared a few stats from this week’s event:
- The world’s best-selling products for the supplied iRobot Roomba 692 robot vacuum and the Keurig K-Slim coffee machine.
- Prime members bought more than 1 million laptops and 1 million headphones.
- The top selling non-Amazon devices in the U.S. included a Waterpik Electric Water Flosser, 23andMe Health DNA Test, and an Instant Pot Duo Plus 6 Quart 9-in-1 Pressure Cooker.
- The most popular Amazon device was the Fire TV Stick 4K with Alexa voice remote control.