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The SCOE seller conference in Seattle was one of the last places an online merchant could hope to speak to an Amazon.com executive in person, but this year, the company has pulled out of the conference. In an announcement on the conference website, organizer Rhonda Schneider blamed scheduling conflicts for Amazon's absence.

However, she wrote, "We will take advantage of the opportunity to explore new content areas. For example, this year we are freed up to address multi-platform selling, and will be scheduling speakers to discuss selling on venues such as Etsy, Buy.com, eBay and others."

SCOE, which stands for the Sellers Conference of Online Entrepreneurs but has commonly been referred to as the "Amazon conference," began in 2001 as a small gathering of online booksellers. In the past, Robert Grothe organized the conference with Schneider.

Amazon has always sent executives to the conference and, until last year, allowed attendees to tour its headquarters. In 2009, Amazon Vice President of Seller Services Peter Faricy gave the keynote address. So the company's decision not to attend this year comes as a surprise to attendees and exhibitors.

MediaScouter is again sponsoring the conference, but when it learned Amazon executives would not be attending, it decided to rethink whether it should attend the event. In an email to customers sent last week, it wrote, "September can be a very busy month around here typically, more so than July. But we did like going out there to meet our members and get their point of view. So we are wondering if any of you attend other conferences that you would like to see us at? As much as we adore the west coast, we have been there for quite a few years and would like to meet some more of you in other areas."

Would-be attendees also said the Amazon pull-out would deter them from registering for the conference. On SCOE's Facebook, a seller wrote, "For me the only reason to attend would be the one and one sessions with Amazon. I was really looking forward to a few days in Seattle with my family but without face to face with amazon I cannot justify." Another seller agreed, writing "without Amazon there for face time, the trip is not justifiable."

Another seller wrote, "After reviewing the conference website, I have concluded that you are keeping the terrible location, changing the dates to inconvenient ones, and discontinuing the only real reason to attend, which is the Amazon day. I was looking forward to attending, but I can't justify crossing the country for that!"

Not everyone agreed, however. One seller wrote, "Curious as to why people are uninterested in going to scoe if they can not meet with an actual Amazon rep for 15 minutes? Amazon reps are available every day with in your amazon account at the bottom of your page where it says "Contact Seller Support". If you've actually been to SCOE before and met with them, what is it you have gained in those 15 minute meetings that would make it worth coming to SCOE? I've found that the majority of what I take away from SCOE is what I learn from other sellers, networking, and learning about the 3rd party software. Not saying I wouldn't appreciate them being there, but I certainly wouldn't base my trip on it. Wondering why so much weight is put on that subject."

Schneider and an Amazon spokesperson did not respond to inquiries by press time. In her announcement on the SCOE website, Schneider wrote, "We spent many weeks working with (Amazon staff members) trying to resolve scheduling conflicts of their key people, but in many cases were unable to do so. This year, Amazon staff is unable to participate. There was some thought to scaling down their participation, but Amazon conveyed that if they were unable to go full out, they wouldn't be participating at all. We decided, therefore, to find alternate sources of high-quality content."

She wrote that "Participation of Amazon staff" ranked third in the list of reasons attendees cited for participating in the conference, "with about 15% of survey participants indicating that direct interaction with Amazon staff was a major influencing factor in their decision to attend."

Update 7/15/12: Schneider responded after press time. She said attendees had never been given a tour of Amazon, but were invited to a conference room at the company's offices for a panel discussion. She said after last year's event, Amazon said they would attend this year's conference, but because of scheduling conflicts, they would only have been able to send lower-level people, which they did not want to do - "it was all or nothing" for Amazon, Shneider said.

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About the author:

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.

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