Amazon said over 300,000 US-based small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) joined its Marketplace in 2017, and it said those businesses sold “billions” of items to Amazon customers around the world.
Amazon previously reported that third-party sellers sold over a billion units worldwide in 2013 and over 2 billion items worldwide in 2014.
Half of items purchased by customers on Amazon are from small and medium-sized businesses selling through the Amazon Marketplace, the company said today, spinning the news as “Shopping Local on Amazon” and also touting its Fulfillment by Amazon service
An Amazon spokesperson told us, “US SMBs are increasing going online as another sales channel to sell direct to customers and are making more and more doing it.” He noted that in 2017, more than 140,000 SMBs on Amazon made over $100,000 – “this is a 40 percent YOY increase,” he said.
Amazon is generally tight-lipped about its business – for years it has said first it had “about 2 million sellers,” more recently “over 2 million.” We don’t recall it updating those numbers in recent quarters as it also expands internationally to India, the Middle East, and this year, Australia. (We asked the company spokesperson for an update on the number of sellers on Amazon and will update this post if it’s provided.)
We took a look back at some other statistics you might find interesting related to the number of sellers and how much they sell.
APRIL 2016
“There are over 70,000 entrepreneurs with sales of more than $100,000 a year selling on Amazon.”
DECEMBER 2017
Referring to the 2017 holiday season: “More than one billion items were ordered from small businesses and entrepreneurs worldwide this season.”
JANUARY 2018
“In 2017, more than five billion items were shipped with Prime worldwide.”
And from today’s press release under “2017 Marketplace Facts”:
– More than 300,000 SMBs in the U.S. started selling on Amazon.
– More than 140,000 SMBs selling on Amazon surpassed $100,000 in annual sales.
– Fulfillment by Amazon shipped billions of items worldwide.
– Amazon Lending surpassed $3 billion lent to small businesses on Amazon since the program started in 2011.
– Amazon Handmade expanded to encompass 10 categories offering customers more than one million handcrafted items from thousands of artisans and small business owners across all 50 states and more than 60 countries.
– During the Holiday Season, customers ordered more than 1 billion items from SMBs on Amazon, with more than 140 million items ordered between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.
