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It’s just gone past the 2-month “post-launch” mark for Amazon Australia!

So how’s Amazon Australia fairing?

Well, it depends on who you ask.

Personally I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Without doing any marketing at all, I’ve sold almost $1,000 worth of my Hibermates in about 5 weeks (before I ran out of stock and had to pull the listings down). I honestly didn’t think I’d sell anywhere near that much.

It’s not a pip on my Amazon USA sales, or indeed my direct website sales, but $1,000 bucks is a $1,000 bucks and I’ll take it any day of the week.

Reuters have been less than kind in their appraisal of Amazon Australia Post-launch, saying there have been numerous parcel delays for some regional customers. To be fair to Amazon though, there are now over 5,000 3rd Party sellers which Amazon has no shipping control over.

SmartCompany (and by extension, Adam Hudson, who’s quoted their article in a recent marketing email) has been a lot more positive, quoting several online retailers who have set up on Amazon’s new channel:

“Luke Moore, the director of Luminosity Store which lists about 5000 products, said more than 30% of its sales in the past month have come directly through the Amazon marketplace.

“It definitely positioned us well during Christmas time. People were keen to give Amazon a go,” Moore told The New Daily.

“It’s been really beneficial for the business. Hopefully that continues.”

Meanwhile, LatestBuy director Darren Campbell, said his business – which lists 700 products – experienced a surge in sales when Amazon launched.

“We had one hundred to one hundred and fifty orders per day, literally overnight,” he said.

“We had substantial volume almost immediately. It meant we had ten percent of additional sales we probably would not have had without being listed on Amazon.

“It was above and beyond what we expected.”

It also seemed while Amazon’s traffic increased to just shy of 15 million visits in December, conversely, eBay’s traffic fell away a little.

As I discussed with Scott Kilmartin in episode 12 of the podcast, Amazon Australia is just getting started.

Once they have a few more fulfilment centres built and operational, start the FBA program for 3rd Party Sellers and push the Prime Program hard to Australian consumers, THEN things will get really interesting.

Footnote: I’ll be restarting the podcast tomorrow, Friday 9th Feb after a long school holiday break and already have some amazing international guests lined up!

Also, if you’re a consumer brand I’ll be offering a consulting service this year, so please get in touch if you’d like help expanding your business in 2018.