Amazon's record-breaking holiday season saw third-party sales increase 50 percent

[Shawn Knight]

In brief: Amazon’s share value is trending upwards after announcing another record-breaking holiday season in which the e-commerce giant delivered billions of items to customers around the globe. We’ll get a better idea of just how well Amazon performed over the holidays when the company releases its next quarterly earnings report, likely at the tail end of January.

Amazon in a recent blog post said the 2020 holiday season was the best ever for independent sellers on its platform. Small- and medium-sized US businesses sold nearly a billion products in Amazon’s store during the season. Worldwide sales by third parties, meanwhile, grew more than 50 percent compared to the same period in 2019.

In total, more than 1.5 billion toys, electronics, home products and beauty / personal care items were delivered during the 2020 holiday season. Among the best-selling items were the Nintendo Switch standard edition, iRobot’s Roomba 675 robot vacuum and Amazon’s own Fire TV Stick with Alexa voice remote.

The company’s performance isn’t all that surprising, especially if you’ve been keeping up with retail trends this season. Earlier this month, Amazon said independent sellers saw shipments grow more than 60 percent year-over-year across Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which are traditionally two of the biggest shopping days of the year.

Amazon's stock is up roughly $130 on the news.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/88111-amazon-record-breaking-holiday-season-saw-third-party.html

 

[p51d007]

Remember when Walmart was considered (and to some still is) evil? Same for Amazon?

 

[Uncle Al]

Amazon did pretty good by me. They only "lost" two packages and immediately refunded me for both. I got a fair amount of stuff from them but I still long for the days when they were 15-20% cheaper than the retail stores. Now they seem to be an equal match. The only real benefit is not having to go out in a crowded store and having things that I simply cannot obtain locally. I do think that when you are a faithful shopper and your spending goes beyond $2,000 they should refund you the annual fee.

 

[Reehahs]

Amazon did pretty good by me. They only "lost" two packages and immediately refunded me for both. I got a fair amount of stuff from them but I still long for the days when they were 15-20% cheaper than the retail stores. Now they seem to be an equal match. The only real benefit is not having to go out in a crowded store and having things that I simply cannot obtain locally. I do think that when you are a faithful shopper and your spending goes beyond $2,000 they should refund you the annual fee.

You got it. It is the convenience of not having to go to ten different stores to find the best deals.

 

[scavengerspc]

Yeah all online shopping for me this year.
But next year. Every last gift I buy will be from a retail store and I will ship it myself when necessary.

 

[netman]

Their mobile app shows a 4 hour window on the day of delivery. When the driver is in your neighborhood, the app show how many stops is left (usually three) before the driver reaches your home...! However, they never ring your door bell or knock at your door...! This delivery monitoring is good because you can stand by your front door to check the packages in case it is the wrong one for another destination....!