Chris

Amazon sent an email to hundreds of Australian sellers yesterday (including me) to get ready for a ‘soft launch’ on Thursday

I reckon they’ll be up throughout the day and night, bug fixing in time for Friday’s hard launch!

My buddy Scott Kilmartin has been engaged by Amazon to sell Ice Creams at Southern Cross Station in Melbourne as part of the launch (Amazon specified they wanted orange and white Ice Creams!).

Cute.

What will Amazon be selling when they open?

Well, we know they have some listings (unavailable) on Amazon at the moment for Batteries, toys, headphones, underwear and a bunch of other product categories – but whether the range is massive, out of the box remains to be seen.

Personally I don’t believe they’ll have a massive range to begin with. They can’t. They simply don’t have enough 3rd Party sellers on the platform yet.

In terms of opening up the Amazon Australia marketplace to 3rd Party sellers, it’s been a bit hit and miss who’s been invited/allowed access after signing up. I signed up 5 months ago but only last week was sent an email granting access.

Other folks have been waiting longer and have heard nothing.

It won’t take too long though and Amazon will open the marketplace up properly like in other countries. Then it’ll get interesting.

Given that 3rd Party Marketplace sellers make up the bulk of sales in other Amazon marketplaces, it’s an urgent strategy that Amazon needs to roll out as fast as possible.

I also expect that pretty soon, Amazon’s going to be saturating TV’s, Radio and online with ‘Join Prime Ads’, encouraging Australians to sign up, but not straight away…

If it can open up the marketplace allowing 3rd Party Sellers to increase the width and breadth of products, it’ll be much easier to convince Australians to sign up for Prime Membership…