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Amazon Prime Day Sales Up 12% in First Hours of Event

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Bloomberg Jul 16 23:47 · 7544 Views

Amazon’s Prime Day sales rose almost 12% in the first seven hours of the event compared with the same period last year, according to Momentum Commerce, which manages 50 brands in a variety of product categories. Momentum Commerce CEO John Shea joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Technology."

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Transcript

  • 00:00 You have such a breadth of type of things being sold and being demanded by the consumer.
  • 00:04 Is it everything?
  • 00:07 Yeah.
  • 00:07 Thank you so much for having me.
  • 00:08 Yeah.
  • 00:09 Everybody should, should get their
  • 00:11 figurative wallets open because there's great deals on Amazon today that momentum commerce.
  • 00:16 We support brands across all kinds of categories
  • 00:19 and that's certainly one trend we're seeing so far
  • 00:22 in the
  • 00:22 early innings of Prime Day today,
  • 00:25 where,
  • 00:26 you know, historically Prime Day's been
  • 00:28 an event with great participation from consumer electronics, gadget brands, back to school
  • 00:35 offerings, trying to pull that demand forward.
  • 00:39 And,
  • 00:40 and a lot of Amazon's own devices this year, we're seeing
  • 00:44 great offers
  • 00:45 from
  • 00:46 jewelry brands, fashion brands, home
  • 00:50 and, and kitchen brands.
  • 00:51 So
  • 00:52 beauty brands are, are participating really widely.
  • 00:55 So
  • 00:55 it really is the everything store.
  • 00:57 And, and
  • 00:58 with Prime Day today, we're seeing deals across the board.
  • 01:02 John, Amazon's
  • 01:03 kind of
  • 01:05 jumped around a little bit on the timing of Prime Days.
  • 01:07 They've experimented at different, different parts of year
  • 01:10 July.
  • 01:11 Is there any sort of seasonality factor that motivates consumers to go out, spend early, catch deals in the summer rather than say later in the year like in October?
  • 01:22 Yeah.
  • 01:22 I mean, I think,
  • 01:23 you know, a few years back, Amazon shifted to October for the first time
  • 01:27 as as a
  • 01:28 function of COVID and disruption from COVID.
  • 01:31 And
  • 01:32 then they've held that and sort of done two Prime Days the last few years.
  • 01:36 You know, what we see in the data certainly is that the July, the summer Prime Day
  • 01:42 is really been seared into the minds of the US consumer in particular.
  • 01:46 And we're now seeing the entire retail industry follow suit.
  • 01:49 So if you wander around the web and go to any DTC site, you're going to see callbacks to Prime Day offerings,
  • 01:55 even on a, a direct site.
  • 01:57 And certainly you see Target and Walmart and others all all running similar events
  • 02:02 timed around Amazon.
  • 02:03 So
  • 02:04 this is the 10th Prime Day
  • 02:07 and it's certainly become part of culture
  • 02:10 this year, which is really exciting.
  • 02:12 What's different for Amazon now,
  • 02:14 I think,
  • 02:16 is
  • 02:16 the influence and competition
  • 02:19 from some of the Chinese players.
  • 02:21 Aliexpress team.
  • 02:22 Aliexpress went so big on the EUR, even on Fox Sport here in the United States, but we still have 13% growth in the first six hours.
  • 02:31 What do you see in the market more broadly through this Prime window?
  • 02:35 Yeah, well, you know, keep in mind
  • 02:38 a non trivial percentage of goods that are sold on Amazon are from factory brands in China that are coming direct
  • 02:45 via the Amazon marketplace.
  • 02:48 And you know, Amazon has designs to compete more directly with Timo and the likes with a discount section that's going to be added to the site.
  • 02:55 So there definitely is
  • 02:56 competition in that area,
  • 02:59 but you know, none of those players can compete with Amazon on logistics and distribution.
  • 03:05 I mean, I bought some Legos for my kids this morning on Amazon and they're going to arrive tomorrow,
  • 03:13 you know, and, and, and, and that
  • 03:15 premium convenience
  • 03:16 is really challenging for Aliexpress and Team mood to get to compete with.
  • 03:20 So it's a different proposition there,
  • 03:22 John.
  • 03:22 You do that in the UK and it arrives the same day, which is also pretty phenomenal.
  • 03:26 And
  • 03:27 it's interesting, you're obviously buying for your children.
  • 03:29 We see more broadly the macro picture of retail sales looking resilient today.
  • 03:34 Every time I open Tiktok, I got an ad for 16th, 17th Prime Day, and it was Megan Lee Stallion.
  • 03:40 You talk about this being a cultural moment.
  • 03:43 How much are we seeing Gen.
  • 03:44 Z driving the money?
  • 03:45 How much is it you driving the money?
  • 03:47 Who is demographically purchasing right now?
  • 03:50 Yeah, I think historically it's been across the board, but
  • 03:53 it hasn't been as strong with with Gen.
  • 03:55 Z and younger demos.
  • 03:56 And and I think that's probably certainly
  • 03:59 part of the reason why Amazon chose Meg Stallion as the as the spokesperson to
  • 04:04 promote the event.
  • 04:04 I think they did a great job with the lead in promotions.
  • 04:07 They also did great.
  • 04:08 You know, I, I,
  • 04:10 you know, sadly get an Amazon package at my house every day.
  • 04:13 And the packing tape for the last month has been really cheeky kind of promotions, getting everybody excited about
  • 04:20 Prime Day.
  • 04:21 So the lead in has been really terrific.
  • 04:23 And
  • 04:24 I think we're seeing demographics across the board leverage Amazon because it's so convenient.
  • 04:29 This election is
  • 04:31 so wide.
  • 04:32 A lot of the brands we work with are
  • 04:33 beauty brands that are targeting a younger demographic
  • 04:36 and they're all participating
  • 04:38 pretty aggressively in in Prime Day this year.
  • 04:41 One of our clients, First Aid Beauty has incredible
  • 04:44 discounts available today.
  • 04:46 So
  • 04:47 seeing a lot of different offerings.
  • 04:49 I think that's the piece that is is most interesting this year that the event seems to be on pace.
  • 04:54 Our our data suggests 13% year over year growth through 10:00 AM Eastern.
  • 05:00 Generally, peak shopping for prime days between 10:00 AM and 1:00 PM Eastern.
  • 05:04 So it's still really early.
  • 05:05 But if we hold that track, that's going to be 450 million items sold in two days.
  • 05:11 Consumers are going to save about $3 billion.
  • 05:14 And I think the distribution of those sales is going to be across a lot of different categories appealing to very different
  • 05:20 demographics.
  • 05:22 So it's the everything store and the Everything sale and people are excited.