Why Prime Day Matters for Small Businesses

This week marks the 10^th Amazon Prime Day, a major milestone for both Amazon.com and independent sellers that sell on its marketplace.

Amazon’s significant investments in marketing, merchandising, operational infrastructure, and people that drive independent seller success result in an end-to-end experience that boosts sales for small businesses. In fact, Prime Day 2023 was the biggest Prime Day event ever for independent sellers, whose sales growth in Amazon’s store outpaced Amazon's retail business.

Today, more than 60 percent of Amazon’s sales are from independent sellers — most of which are small and medium-sized businesses. This Prime Day, members in the U.S. can shop more small business deals than ever before.

In an interview with Total Retail, Natalie Angelillo, director of external relations at Amazon, discusses the importance of Prime Day for small businesses and how Amazon supports their success with powerful tools and services.

Total Retail: Why is Prime Day a critical event for small businesses?
Natalie Angelillo: We're using the power of Prime Day to increase the discoverability of small businesses in our store by spotlighting their incredible deals and products. In fact, Prime Day 2023 was the biggest Prime Day event ever for independent sellers, whose sales growth in Amazon’s store outpaced Amazon's retail business. Selling in Amazon’s store unlocks a powerful and proven economic engine for small businesses, giving them 24/7 access to hundreds of millions of Amazon customers worldwide. Amazon makes it easy for these customers to shop small.

Natalie Angelillo, Director of External Relations, Amazon.com

TR: What is Amazon doing to support small businesses, both during Prime Day and throughout the year?
NA: The wide selection of unique products that independent sellers — most of which are small and medium-sized businesses — offer are a huge reason why our customers love Prime Day, and we want to ensure it’s a big success for them as well. We're helping sellers prepare for Prime Day by offering helpful tools they can employ to maximize customer engagement and drive sales, providing recommendations and support for their deals strategy, and helping them prepare their inventory.

Amazon proactively provides sellers with recommendations for deals that have the highest likelihood of delighting customers. Sellers can use these recommendations to guide their overall Prime Day strategy, including whether to run deals vs. coupons or discounts, and how best to leverage sponsored products. Deal recommendations are presented to sellers in Seller Central, where they have the ability to edit and tailor their deal, coupon and discount attributes in preparation for the event. Sellers have several deal options, such as Best Deal on Prime Day or Lightning Deals, and we support them by making recommendations on which to pursue for specific products. We also help sellers with inventory readiness by providing them with recommendations on products to restock to ensure sufficient inventory levels.

Year-round, we connect customers with small businesses at amazon.com/supportsmall. Customers can shop across collections, including from Black-owned, women-owned, military family-owned, Hispanic-owned, AANHPI-owned, and LGBTQIA-owned businesses.

TR: How did Amazon promote its small business sellers in advance of this year's Prime Day?
NA: We made sure Prime members don’t have to wait to shop with early access to deals on must-have products from small businesses like Brilliant or BS, Solawave, Toyish, and Lyrically Correct at amazon.com/primedaysmallbusiness. Customers can also look for the Small Business badge to identify products from small businesses and artisans while shopping in Amazon's store. Amazon also continues to support and drive discoverability of small businesses and other independent sellers in our store by spotlighting incredible deals and unique products from around the country this Prime Day. Additionally, we’ve been featuring small businesses in national advertising campaigns across the U.S.

TR: What can shoppers expect from Amazon sellers during this year's Prime Day sale?
NA: This year, Prime members in the U.S. will enjoy more small business deals than ever before. To make it easy for Prime members to discover deals from small businesses, we've curated a selection of deals from small businesses and artisans, including from RMS Beauty, Playpits, OSEA International, Touchland, The Beard Club, Pattern Beauty, and more.

TR: Can you share an example of a small business that successfully leveraged Prime Day to drive increased sales? How did the company do it?
NA: At Amazon, supporting small and medium-sized businesses is fundamental to our work — our success depends on their success. Last year, Caraway, True Classic, and TUSHY increased their average daily sales in Amazon’s store by over 18x during the first day of the Prime Day event when compared to the rest of 2023 leading up to Prime Day. Additionally, last year during Prime Day, The Beard Club, a beard-first men’s grooming brand, saw incredible success with sales on its Precision Beard Trimmer, and is excited to bring it back for this year’s event. The team also plans to discount its beard growth line, including the Advanced Beard Growth Kit, Essential Beard Growth Kit, and Derma Roller. The Beard Club has been leveraging Amazon’s brand analytics tool, which has been invaluable in analyzing its Prime Day performance and ensuring it continues to deliver the best grooming solutions to customers. This is just a few examples of the many small businesses that have experienced success during Prime Day.

TR: What can small businesses learn from Prime Day that they can use for the busy Q4 holiday shopping season?
NA: Last year was the biggest Prime Day event for Amazon sellers. Stemming from those results, we saw small businesses refine their strategies and ride the momentum through the holiday season. Amazon provides sellers with a wide range of tools and resources to help them prepare their store and inventory for the holiday shopping season to maximize customer engagement, including discounts, promotions, and outlet deals. And last year during our record-breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday holiday shopping event, Prime members ordered more than 500 million items from Amazon’s independent sellers.