Amazon’s one-day Prime Day shattered previous event records with sales up 60% over 2016. Offered to its Prime loyalty program members around the world, the theme for this year’s sales could be best described as “Echo Dots and instant pots.” Retail analysts Cowen estimated total one-day sales at between $2.5 billion and $2.9 billion up from pre-sales estimates of $1 billion for Amazon products alone. Amazon said sales for Amazon Prime Day grew 60% over 2016.
An estimated 10 million Prime members shopped with the Amazon app in 13 countries and shopped till they dropped until midnight last night. Members bought seven times more of the popular Echo Dot speakers, apparently buying 6,000 of the devices every minute at times 
during the day. The Amazon Fire TV Edition of the Element 55-inch 4K Ultra HD smart LED TV was Amazon’s best-selling TV deal ever. Other popular US products purchased included the Instant Pot pressure cooker; 23andMe DNA tests; the TP-Link Wi-Fi Smart Plug, and Sony Playstation 4.
Analysts see the one-day event as a critical growth strategy for Amazon, attracting new membership-paying Prime members who spend much more online than the average consumer. Matt Sargent, senior vice president of retail at Frank N. Magid Associates told Retail Dive Amazon is defying the laws of “retail physics” with its continued growth.
One Click Retail reports Amazon is on track to surpass Macy’s as the US’s largest apparel retailer by year-end, in part due to the success of underwear sales for men and women estimated at more than $415 million in 2016. Morningstar says nearly 79 million US households have an Amazon Prime membership which includes Amazon Prime Video. That 
represents a future challenge to the estimated 90 million households that subscribe to cable TV.
James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness, Crespi, Hardt says Amazon’s impact on the consumer packaged goods industry is negatively impacting brand value, causing lower marketing spending and less innovation by CPG companies. By the way, if you’re reading this at the office, you’re not alone. CNBC suggests up to $10 billion in lost productivity on Prime Day from Amazon members checking their internet devices for deals. Back to work all!
Amazon’s Prime Day Generates Estimated $1 Billion in Sales
Amazon.com Inc. said its third annual Prime Day sales event was the biggest day ever for the e-commerce giant, with revenue surpassing traditional retailing blowouts like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
The 30-hour sale, featuring discounts on a broad assortment of goods, generated about $1 billion in revenue for the Seattle-based web retailer, according to separate estimates from analysts at Cowen & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co.. That’s triple its average daily e-commerce revenue in 2016, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Amazon used steep discounts to turn its Echo speaker line into a best-seller. Even if Amazon loses money on the device sales, it gets a toehold for its Alexa digital voice-assistant platform to become more connected to shoppers who can use it to check the weather, stream music, hail an Uber, order pizza — and of course buy more from Amazon — by voice command. Via bloomberg.comthis
Amazon Prime Day Press Release: ‘Prime Members Enjoyed Biggest Global Shopping Event in Amazon History”
On a day with incredible deals reserved exclusively for Prime members, sales on July 11 surpassed Black Friday and Cyber Monday, making it the biggest day ever in Amazon history.
With hundreds of thousands of deals, this year’s Prime Day was too big for 24 hours – so Prime members had 30 hours to shop. The Prime Day 2017 event grew by more than 60 per cent compared to the same 30 hours last year, and sales growth by small businesses and entrepreneurs was even higher. More new members joined Prime on July 11 than on any single day in Amazon history.
Tens of millions of Prime members made a purchase on Prime Day 2017, more than 50 per cent higher than the prior year. Via corporate-ir.net
Amazon’s Prime Day shatters sales record
The exclusive sale for Prime members, held on Tuesday, broke the e-commerce titan’s single-day sales record for the second year in a row. Amazon said Wednesday that overall sales grew by 60 percent from a year earlier and that more new members joined Prime than on any other day in Amazon history.
Prime Day raked in an estimated $2.5 billion to $2.9 billion in global sales, including sales from third-party vendors, financial firm Cowen said Wednesday.
Especially following last year’s sales, the record isn’t too surprising. Amazon also mentioned Tuesday evening that it was “on pace to be the biggest global shopping event in Amazon history,” helped along by Prime Day’s expansion into China, India and Mexico this year. Still, the strong showing points to Amazon’s continued dominance in online commerce and growing influence in retail overall, with the company continuing to grow quickly while traditional retailers are flagging. Via cnet.com
Amazon’s Prime Day was the biggest sales day in its history, up 60% on 2016 led by the Echo
We said yesterday that all signs pointed to Amazon’s Prime Day sales event smashing through its own numbers, and that is exactly what happened: the company today announced that the 30-hour sale, which saw deep discounts on Amazon’s own Echo products as well as a host of other bargains (hundreds of thousands of items, in Amazon’s words), was the biggest sales day in the company’s history, and up 60% compared to a year ago.
“To those customers who tried Prime for the first time and our long time members, thank you for a great Prime Day,” said Greg Greeley, Vice President, Amazon Prime, in a statement. “Our teams around the world will keep working to add more and more to your membership, so Prime continues to make your life better every day. We are already looking forward to our Prime Day celebration next year.”
As we noted before, Prime Day was extended by some hours, and covered three more markets than before, but those expansions only accounted for some of the growth. The biggest engine, according to our internal sources and Amazon’s own public statements, was a huge appetite for Amazon’s Echo line, home speakers powered by Amazon’s Alexa intelligent voice system, which come in small and larger sizes. Via techcrunch.com
Amazon Prime Day breaks record; sales grew by more than 60 percent
Prime Day sales grew by more than 60 percent from the same 30-hour window in 2016, with a “record number” of Prime members shopping across 13 countries, Amazon said. It added that “tens of millions of Prime members” rang up purchases during the event, up more than 50 percent from last year’s shorter Prime Day.
Excluding Amazon’s own devices, a top-selling item in the U.S. was an Instant Pot pressure cooker; in the U.K., shoppers were seen picking up more Sony Playstation 4s; in Japan, Amazon sold a lot of its Happy Belly bottled water; and in Germany and Austria, the Soda Stream was popular.
“Never is there a better day to illustrate just how far ahead Amazon is compared to other retailers,” Radial’s Stefan Weitz, the commerce technology firm’s senior vice president of technology, told CNBC. “This is highlighting a massive differentiation between Amazon and everyone else.” Via cnbc.com
5 takeaways from Amazon Prime Day 2017
Amazon’s third annual Prime Day has come and gone. This year’s event now ranks as the biggest sales day ever in Amazon history, surpassing both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, according to an Amazon statement emailed to Retail Dive.
Prime Day 2017 — which lasted 30 hours this year compared to 24 hours for the two previous events — grew by more than 60% compared to the same 30 hours last year, and sales growth by small businesses and entrepreneurs was even higher, Amazon said.
“Amazon is defying the traditional laws of retail physics which dictate that growth slows after a retailer reaches 25% market share. This demonstrates how different Amazon is from any other retail entity,” Matt Sargent, senior vice president of retail at Frank N. Magid Associates, told Retail Dive in an email. “The ability of Prime to build aggressively upon its base (42% of US consumers) demonstrates that Amazon is succeeding in its strategy to build an ecosystem that is undeniably attractive to all customers.” Via retaildive.com
9 reasons why Prime Day matters
Amazon is having an outrageously good year — its stock price has hit an all-time high and it recently announced the acquisition of Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion — and now the retailer is throwing its own holiday to celebrate: Prime Day.
This year will mark the third annual Prime Day, which began as a 24-hour event similar to Alibaba’s Singles Day. It’s designed to mimic a marathon, with new deals launched every five minutes. This year, Prime Day will begin on Monday, July 10, in advance of the official July 11 start, and will run for 30 hours. But deals actually launched even earlier than that: Early access became available on Friday July 7, with exclusive offers launched through Alexa for members placing voice orders.
Last year, Prime Day was Amazon’s single biggest day in history, with sales up 60% worldwide and 50% in the U.S. over the previous year’s Prime Day. And while the nature of what is for sale and whether each deal represents a real value is heatedly debated, there is little confusion as to whether Prime Day is a boon for Amazon. But the retailer’s strategy and reason for Prime Day extends well beyond breaking sales records. The event is more than just a big sale — it’s a massively ambitious bid to deepen Amazon’s reach with U.S. shoppers. Via retaildive.com
Underwear sales are driving Amazon’s fashion takeover
Amazon is expected to surpass Macy’s to become the biggest apparel seller in the US this year. While Amazon has dominated overall online sales in the US for years, the site is a relative newcomer to the fashion world.
The company’s swift success is due, in large part, to underwear sales, according to a new report by retail consulting firm One Click Retail.
Men’s and women’s underwear and intimate apparel accounted for two out of five of Amazon’s top-selling apparel categories last year, for a total of $415 million in sales, according to the report. Via businessinsider.com
Amazon Prime is on pace to become more popular than cable TV
Someday soon, more U.S. households will be subscribers of Amazon Prime than cable or satellite TV, according to recent estimates of Amazon’s popular shipping and entertainment service.
According to estimates from Morningstar, nearly 79 million U.S. households now have an Amazon Prime membership*, up from around 66 million at the end of last year.
That compares to a projected 90 million U.S. households that will pay for cable or satellite TV this year, according to S&P Global. The implication here is not that Amazon’s Prime Video service is more popular than TV; the main reason most people subscribe to Amazon Prime is still the fast delivery of products. Via cnbc.com
Amazon is taking away the power of brand names, throwing another industry into turmoil
Consumers influenced by Amazon’s approach are shopping based on price rather than the brand name, which is causing them to avoid physical stores, said James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness, Crespi, Hardt. While Amazon’s effect on physical retail stores is well-chronicled, Cakmak says that the major brands that are sold in those stores are now dealing with the results as well.
As Amazon and Wal-Mart make bigger pushes into the packaged-goods categories, brand names are spending less on marketing and backing away from their original models, Cakmak wrote in a Monday note. The $800 billion consumer packaged-goods category includes name-brand detergents, foods and personal care items, with large companies such as PepsiCo Inc and Mondelez International Inc.
In the past, these companies were able to dominate their sector by controlling how the goods were distributed and placed on the shelf at retail stores. With prime presentation in stores, the companies would spend heavily on marketing, which made up 20% to 25% of their budgets, to influence consumers’ buying decisions.
Now, instead of fighting for shelf space, Cakmak says the companies appear to be scaling back spending. In his quarterly check with major advertising agencies, he found that consumer packaged-goods companies were spending less on marketing. More worrying were reports that these companies were more focused on protecting the bottom line, rather than investing in growth and new innovative strategies to combat the online models. Via marketwatch.com
Amazon Prime Day: Billions in lost productivity
While you’re looking for a good deal on Amazon Prime Day, your company and the country are likely being dealt an economic blow. Consider how much productivity employers are losing from their workers staring at Amazon.com today rather than doing their work.
We tried to estimate the value of all that lost work and came up with a rough number around $10 billion. Think of it this way: The full Prime Day lasts 30 hours, but people are only in the office for about a third of that time. Consider the estimated 85 million people on Amazon Prime already, and assume they each spend about one minute for each of the five minutes that new deals roll out, or 12 new ones an hour, to see if the deals are right for them.
A whopping 78 percent of members said they’d consider deals on Prime Day while at work, according to data from Fluent, a marketing company. Only 22 percent said they wouldn’t shop while on the job. Via cnbc.com