Amazon said Wednesday that this week’s Prime Day sales event, which ended Tuesday, was the biggest two-day period ever for the e-commerce giant’s third party sellers.
In the midst of intense antitrust scrutiny about how it runs its marketplace, Amazon’s post-Prime PR pushed the company’s ongoing narrative about how good Amazon is for small- and medium-sized businesses on its platform.
Amazon said Prime members in 20 countries purchased more than 250 million items and “saved more than any Prime Day before,” but the company stopped short of putting a dollar figure on sales, as it did for the event last fall when it said outside merchants sold more than $3.5 billion of goods.
According to the Adobe Digital Economy Index, total U.S. online spending across retailers on Monday and Tuesday surpassed $11 billion, representing 6.1% growth compared to last October’s Prime Day total. That eclipses record online revenue for last year’s Cyber Monday of $10.9 billion.
The wrap on the annual shopping extravaganza comes as Amazon responds to proposed antitrust legislation introduced by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Brian Huseman, the company’s vice president of Public Policy, said in a statement that five proposed bills “would have significant negative effects on the hundreds of thousands of American small- and medium-sized businesses that sell in our store, and tens of millions of consumers who buy products from Amazon.”
In promotion leading up to the event, Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO Dave Clark also pushed the third party seller community as the heart of Prime Day.
The focus on small businesses isn’t new, but stands out this year as Amazon also faces a lawsuit from the Washington, D.C., attorney general that alleges that Amazon illegally manipulates the e-commerce market to its own advantage by penalizing third-party sellers that offer products at lower prices on other platforms.
Prime Day began in 2015 and has become one of the most important annual events for the company, effectively creating a second peak season, six months after the holiday shopping rush. The company promised more than 2 million deals would be available globally for its 200 million paid members.
Amazon shared a few stats from this week’s event:
- Top-selling products worldwide for included iRobot Roomba 692 Robot Vacuum and Keurig K-Slim Coffee Maker.
- Prime members purchased more than 1 million laptops and 1 million headphones.
- The best selling non-Amazon devices in U.S included a Waterpik Electric Water Flosser, a 23andMe Health DNA Test, and Instant Pot Duo Plus 6 Quart 9-in-1 Pressure Cooker.
- The most popular Amazon device was the Fire TV Stick 4K with Alexa Voice Remote.
