If you follow our blog posts, then you will already be aware that 2015 has been a busy year for the online retail giant Amazon, who has been rolling out a series of innovative services and technology solutions.
As we come towards the end of the year, we take a look at the most recent innovations Amazon is now offering their customers.
At the beginning of November, two decades after Amazon started selling books online and became one of the world’s most renowned online book retailers, the ecommerce giant opened its first physical bookstore.
The shop, called Amazon Books, looks a lot like regular bookstores across US malls and offers more than 5,000 best-seller titles, as well as Amazon.com customer favourites.
Located in University Village, an upscale shopping mall in Seattle, Amazon’s bookstore is also the first brick-and-mortar retail shop in the company’s history.
After Amazon announced the launch of a number of private-label grocery products earlier this year, the online giant now considers expanding into the apparel sector by producing its own clothing line.
Over the last few years, Amazon has been working quite hard to build up Amazon Fashion, the company’s division dedicated to courting brand-name clothing lines to sell on the ecommerce site.
So, Amazon’s intention to manufacture its own version of products that it can’t get from the fashion brands is actually the company’s bold attempt to fill any product gaps in its fashion online marketplace.
In an attempt to further feed its fashion ambitions, in July this year, Amazon opened up a new photo studio in Shoreditch, London. The studio is considered to be one of the largest of its kind in Europe and will allow Amazon to add more than 500,000 images of clothes to its sites every year.
With this move, Amazon hopes to reinforce its position in the international online fashion scene and ramp up its fashion sales, selling more items itself while also helping third parties sell more on its marketplace.
After Amazon targeted food and clothes as two of its major growth opportunities over the coming years, the online giant has now stepped into another niche but growing industry – the market for handcrafted-goods. A little more than a month ago, on 8th October, Amazon rolled out its arts-and-crafts bazaar online.
The new marketplace is called Handmade at Amazon and its initial proposition featured about 5,000 sellers, offering more than 80,000 items in six main categories — home, jewellery, artwork, stationery and party supplies, kitchen and dining, and baby.
2015 has been a truly busy year for Amazon when it comes to launching new platforms. In July Amazon introduced another programme, this time geared towards start-ups, called Amazon Launchpad.
Amazon Launchpad is aimed to help entrepreneurs launch, market and distribute their products. The platform provides access to a bespoke storefront, custom product pages, inventory management and marketing materials. To gain further competitive advantage, start-ups launched on the platform will also be able to make full use of Amazon’s storage facility, customer service centre and shipping arrangements.
Black Friday is just a few days away, but Amazon launched its Black Friday deals store as early as the beginning of the month, incorporating a countdown to what has become one of the biggest shopping days of the year.
Although Black Friday has been highly anticipated by both, price-conscious consumers looking for killer deals and retailers gearing up for huge order volumes, the day itself has become less important. Amazon is changing the game by having started their big holiday sales during the days leading up to Black Friday and will continue them afterward, as well, promising tens of thousands of deals on technology, toys and clothes up until 22nd December.
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