One day before kicking off a 2-day virtual conference for sellers, Amazon published a report on how third-party sellers benefit from its marketplace, revealing, for example, that over 200,000 small and medium-sized businesses from around the world began selling in Amazon’s U.S. store in 2020 – a 45% increase over the previous year – while 20,000 US sellers launched globally to accelerate international sales using Amazon’s worldwide network.
Thousands of US sellers will attend the second annual Amazon Accelerate conference, which begins on October 20th, where Amazon will announce new products and services. In addition to sessions featuring Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO Dave Clark, attendees will hear presentations from sellers and can choose from 30 sessions offering insights and strategies for entrepreneurs – both current and aspiring.
Whetting attendees’ appetites, Amazon released the 2021 Small Business Empowerment Report on Tuesday, outlining, in its words, “how the company provides opportunity, tools, and services to help more than 500,000 third-party selling partners in the U.S. reach hundreds of millions of customers, increase revenue and profits, and create good jobs across America.”
Some of the interesting data – in the 12-month period ending August 31st, over 65,000 American sellers had over $100,000 in sales (up 10% year-over-year), and over 27,000 American sellers had over $500,000 in sales (also up 10% year-over-year).
The report lists the top 10 states with the most sellers per capita and the top 10 states with the most year-over-year sales growth for sellers.
The number of American small and medium-sized businesses that surpassed $1 million in sales grew by nearly 15% – and, according to the report, in the 12 months ending August 31, 2021, American sellers:
- Sold more than 3.8 billion products, averaging 7,400 every minute.
- Averaged more than $200,000 in sales, up year-over-year from about $170,000.
- Had nearly $2.2 billion in international export sales, up year-over-year from nearly $1.5 billion.
One stat showed the exposure listings get when sellers use Amazon’s FBA fulfillment service: “On average, sellers see a 20–25% increase in sales after adopting FBA,” according to the report.
Amazon also boasted about its ecosystem: The Seller Central Partner Network offers over 6,200 Amazon-vetted service providers and tools that are used by over1 million sellers worldwide to help them build, manage, automate, and scale their business.
Amazon also said it had over 24,000 employees focus on supporting sellers across the company. You can find a link to the report on the About Amazon blog.
Sellers can register for this week’s Amazon Accelerate at no charge. Thursday’s morning keynote looks particularly interesting for sellers, with Dharmesh Mehta, Vice President of Worldwide Customer Trust and Partner Support, announcing new tools and services.
Mehta will then conduct a fireside chat with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy “to discuss his vision for the company, the critical role that sellers play in that vision, and his thoughts on the road ahead in light of the global challenges over the past 18 months.”
More information about the conference is available on AmazonAccelerate.com. For those attending, feel free to share your thoughts on the most interesting and useful sessions.
