Amazon.com sold a lot of stuff on Wednesday.
Yesterday was the company’s first-ever “Prime Day,” a major online Black Friday-like shopping event created by Amazon to celebrate its 20th anniversary and reward Prime members with discounted products.
Amazon said today it sold more units on Prime Day than its biggest Black Friday sale ever, as customers ordered a whopping 34.4 million items at a clip of 398 per second. It was also Amazon’s largest device sales day ever worldwide.
“Going into this, we weren’t sure whether Prime Day would be a one-time thing or if it would become an annual event,” Amazon Prime VP Greg Greeley said in a statement. “After yesterday’s results, we’ll definitely be doing this again.”
Here are some of the ridiculous stats from Amazon:
- Members ordered tens of thousands of Fire TV Sticks in one hour, making it the fastest-selling deal on an Amazon device ever
- Fire tablet sales on Amazon exceeded sales on Black Friday last year
- Members ordered thousands of e-readers and thousands of Echos in just 15 minutes
- 56,000 Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy sets
- 47,000 Televisions sold, which was 1300% year-over-year growth
- 51,000 Bose Headphones, compared to 8 the previous Wednesday
- 28,000 Rubbermaid 42-Piece Easy Find Lid Food Storage Sets, compared to 428 the previous Wednesday
- 24,000 Instant Pot 7-in-1 Programmable Pressure Cookers, compared to 182 the previous Wednesday
- 14,000 iRobot Roomba 595 Pet Vacuum Cleaning Robots, compared to 1 the previous Wednesday
- 12,000 Fifty Shades of Grey Unrated Edition on Blu-ray, compared to 121 the previous Wednesday
- 10,000 Meguiar’s X2020 Supreme Shine Microfiber Towels, compared to 244 the previous Wednesday
However, despite those big numbers, many customers did not seem happy with the deals Amazon offered. Some wondered how many items were actually in stock, while others questioned the quality of the deals and whether the items were of much value even on sale.
To be sure, many of the highly sought after items, like the discounted Amazon Echo and cheap TVs, sold out in minutes.
The Prime Day sale was unusual in that it was only available to Prime members, who spend $99 a year to be part of the two-day shipping program which offers other benefits like access to Prime Instant Video content. Customers were also given the option of signing up for a 30-day trial on Wednesday.
Amazon noted that it had more new members try Prime than ever before on Wednesday, which is key — perhaps the number of Prime membership signups on Prime Day is the number that Amazon is paying the most attention to, versus the sales performance it revealed today. Analysts estimate that there are now 44 million Prime members in the U.S. who spend an average of $1,200 a year, compared to about $700 a year for non-members.
