On-AMZN: In October 2002, I was the Director of Merchant Integration at Amazon and we launched the Amaozn marketplace along with a new retail category, apparel. We started with about 30 merchants including Macy’s, Nordstrom and Gap. Within 18 months we had added thousands of merchants and 12 more categories including sporting goods, home, electronics, and musical instruments. “Scale” balanced with a trusted customer experience were the two balancing design principles forcing us to innovate many capabilities and build a wide variety of great tools for sellers. Today the Amazon Marketplace is over 40% of all units sold at Amazon, over 2 million sellers, international in scope and likely responsible for most of Amazon’s operating profits. The key trend to pick from this article is that FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) continues to grow as an almost compulsory component to being a successful merchant at Amazon. Why? Because when stored in Amazon’s fulfillment network, items are “Prime eligible”.
Geekwire: Amazon’s third-party marketplace sales double in 2014, hitting 2 billion units sold worldwide
By Tricia Duryee
The growth of third-party sellers on Amazon was staggering last year, with two billion items sold worldwide, representing double the amount of volume seen in 2013.
Amazon said its marketplace set a new record, selling more than 2 billion items worldwide last year. In a similar press release issued last year, the company said sellers sold half as many units, or 1 billion worldwide.
While the number of units being sold has skyrocketed, the number of new sellers coming on board has remained flat. For both years, Amazon said the number of marketplace sellers, who use Amazon’s fulfillment service (FBA), grew by 65 percent worldwide.
That business accounts for a large percentage of Amazon’s overall sales. At the end of 2014, there was 2 million sellers, who sold 40 percent of all units on Amazon.
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