Amazon is unambiguous about the fact that third-party sellers allow it to offer customers a greater selection of inventory at competitive prices. Last year for the first time, Amazon demonstrated its commitment by opening up first its Gold Box deals, and then its holiday deals program, to third-party merchants.
This week, it announced it was expanding the holiday deals program to more sellers and would also expand the program internationally. “The holiday deals from sellers will now appear on the Amazon Today’s Deals page, Black Friday Store, Cyber Monday Store and many other high customer traffic site features,” Amazon explained. “Participating sellers will be offering thousands of deals throughout the holiday season across most product categories.”
Holiday deals from sellers will be available worldwide on Amazon sites across the U.S., the EU, China, India, Japan, and Canada, the company said.
This is good news for sellers who are invited into the program. One seller explained that what generally takes him up to three weeks to sell can be sold in a matter of hours using Amazon’s Lightning Deal during the holidays.
What do you do if you aren’t already in the program and don’t receive an invitation? Amazon spokesperson said sellers interested in submitting a Holiday deal for consideration should email 2014-holiday-deal@amazon.com with details about the deal they would like to offer. “Their email will be reviewed by the appropriate teams internally,” he said.
Amazon revealed in its press release that “selling on Amazon experienced record growth during the holiday season last year”:
- On Cyber Monday alone, more than 13 million units were ordered worldwide from sellers on Amazon with businesses of all sizes, growing the total units ordered by over 50 percent year-over-year.
- In total for 2013, more than a billion units worldwide were ordered from sellers on Amazon.
Amazon Marketplace Vice President Peter Faricy said in Tuesday’s release, “It’s a huge benefit to customers during the holidays to have millions of small and mid-sized businesses from around the world selling on Amazon. We have heard from customers that they value the breadth and depth of unique products only offered by sellers.”
If you’re curious about how the program works, you can find detailed information in this interview with Faricy from a year ago. For instance, Faricy explained that seller offers from the holiday deal promotions were included in Amazon’s email marketing campaigns and other merchandising activities.
Sellers interested in selling on Amazon or learning more about the Amazon Services offering can visit this page.
