Apparently this Amazon Prime Day didn’t go to the dogs after all.
Amazon Prime members purchased more than 100 million products on Monday and Tuesday in the fourth annual Prime Day, setting another new record as the “biggest shopping event in Amazon history,” the Seattle-based e-commerce giant announced this morning.
The result came despite widespread site glitches Monday that frustrated Prime members trying to take advantage of deals during the manufactured shopping holiday. Many people attempting to buy products and search on Amazon.com were greeted instead by “dogs of Amazon” error pages.
Amazon did not address the problems this morning. Apart from saying there were 100 million products sold, the company focused on factoids while giving few actual sales numbers in the announcement, and provided none that would allow for meaningful comparisons to years past.
Record sales aren’t a surprise. The bigger question is what this means for Amazon’s profits.
“Amazon’s Prime Day ‘early jitters’ with website glitches had minimal impact on the sales success of the annual event, with our view that given Amazon’s prodigious spending, it is safe to say that any day compared to the prior year should be much better from a sales perspective, with the continuing challenge for the company driving margin and profitability in its retail business,” said Charlie O’Shea, lead retail analyst for Moody’s, in a statement on the Prime Day results.
The company reports earnings for the second quarter later this month, when it could provide more anecdotal information about Prime Day results, but the actual numbers won’t be reflected in that report because the shopping event took place after the quarter ended.
In addition to registering record Prime Day sales, Amazon said it added more Prime members on Monday than in any other day in its history. The company didn’t provide a number, but continued Prime membership growth is key to the company’s long-term growth because of their spending patterns, buying about two times as much as non-Prime members, Moody’s said.
Earlier this year, the company said it surpassed 100 million Prime members, but Amazon hasn’t disclosed official numbers since.
Competing retailers including Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Macy’s, and Nordstrom conducted their own sales events this week, to take advantage of the buzz around Prime Day, and some benefited from Amazon’s website glitches as frustrated shoppers went elsewhere in search of deals. Target this morning said its One-Day Sale on Tuesday was its biggest online shopping day of the year, led by small appliances, beauty and personal care items, baby gear and home and tech products.
For Prime Day, Amazon’s own Fire TV Stick and Echo Dot were this year’s global best-sellers, the company said, putting Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant into even more homes worldwide. Amazon said it was also the “biggest event ever” for its Echo devices with screens, the Echo Show and Echo Spot.
For the first time this year, Prime Day expanded to a day-and-a-half, and Amazon said it surpassed Cyber Monday, Black Friday and last year’s Prime Day when comparing 36-hour periods.
As of Tuesday evening, Amazon said sales by small- and medium sized businesses had topped $1 billion during the Prime Day event.
Two companies acquired by Amazon also saw big Prime Day sales: Ring, the video doorbell maker, had its biggest day ever on Amazon on Monday, as its Video Doorbell Pro sold out; and savings by Prime Members at Whole Foods Market reached into the millions of dollars, the company said.
