Amazon Saw Strong Sales from Third-Party Sellers This Holiday Season

Amazon said unit sales by third-party sellers worldwide grew by double digits this holiday season, calling it record-breaking.

Sales by independent third-party sellers – mostly small and medium-sized businesses surpassed a billion items sold in Amazon’s Stores.

And despite reports of delivery delays impacting Amazon and other retailers, it touted its fast delivery: “This holiday season, the number of items that were delivered with Prime Free One-Day and Prime Free Same-Day Delivery nearly quadrupled compared to the same time period last holiday season, making this Amazon’s fastest holiday yet.”

Amazon issued its annual post-holiday press release that as usual lacked specifics – industry observers will have to wait until the company’s fourth-quarter earnings release expected in mid-January to try and parse more meaningful data about the October – December sales period.

In the meantime, you can find the full announcement on the company’s AboutAmazon.com website.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.