Every October, Amazon throws a sale. It picks the dates, writes the rules, hangs the bunting and, through its own vendor business, buys in much of the stock and funds many of the discounts. It is, in every meaningful sense, Amazon’s party. This year in the UK, the guests had a better time.
Over Prime Big Deal Days, sales by third-party sellers on Amazon UK rose an estimated 27.5 percent on last year’s event, while Amazon’s own first-party business managed 13.9 percent. The sellers did not get there by shouting louder at the till, either. Products sold mostly by sellers were marked down an average of 3.5 percent; products sold mostly by Amazon, 6.3 percent. The house cut deeper and still sold less, rather like the organiser of the village fete undercutting every cake stall on the green and going home with most of its own Victoria sponge.
The winners were not, for the most part, the names on the posters. Apple’s 11-inch iPad sold around 1,500 units in the event week, against roughly 12,300 a year earlier. Meanwhile medicube, a Korean skincare brand the committee would struggle to spell, went from £0.2 million to £4.2 million, about 95 percent of it through its own seller account, and is now a top-ten brand across the whole of Amazon UK.
Slowest of all were the brands with a foot on each stall, selling partly through Amazon and partly for themselves. They grew 5 percent, which is what tends to happen when a split arrives by default rather than by design: the downsides of both tables and the takings of neither.
Here is the week.
Events Calendar
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Tweet of the Week
He Bought the Factory That Makes Your Packaging. He’s 29.
Amazon UK took an estimated £1.06bn in its October Prime Big Deal Days week, up 22 percent, which sounds like a triumph until you notice it was already running 21 percent ahead before anyone discounted anything.
The interesting part, as Andy Banks of Venture Forge lays out for ChannelX after tracking around 1.6 million products, is who did the selling: third-party sellers grew 27.5 percent, Amazon’s own vendor (1P) business 13.9 percent. Inside:
Sellers cut prices by 3.5 percent on average, vendors by 6.3 percent, and the vendors still grew more slowly
Mostly-3P brands grew 41 percent, mostly-1P brands 15 percent, and the accidental hybrids just 5 percent
medicube went from £0.2m to £4.2m in event-week sales, around 95 percent of it through 3P
1P sales in Computers & Accessories fell 37 percent, while Electronics and Sports went the other way
The three questions to ask about your own 1P/3P split before Black Friday
(Holding your own stock and setting your own price turns out to be a competitive advantage. The sellers, to be fair, had suspected as much.)
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Quick Shots
Olivia Kory The WSJ analysis making the rounds this week shows YouTube now takes the biggest share of U.S. TV viewing time, ahead of Netflix, Disney and every network group (Nielsen data).
Nick Shackelford I’M BEGGING YOU: Remind new subscribers why they signed up. Show them how to use what they bought.
Nate Lagos Everyone is nostalgic. Everyone looks at the past through rose colored glasses.
Ron | e-comm owner & operator We have now closed 28 stores in 1.5 months since the start of the lead gen funnels.
David Herrmann Why do we lose trust in you? When you pull off things like this product browsing toggle being turned on existing ads automatically.
Here for the Memes
Top Headlines this Week
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Run your tongue across your teeth.
You’ll feel a film.
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Stat Attack
That is the week. Amazon held the fete, bought the cake, cut the price and was outsold on its own lawn. Somewhere in your account is a split between the two tables that nobody remembers choosing, and on Black Friday it will be chosen for you, one way or the other.
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