Amazon knocked it out of the park on yesterday’s Prime Day with customer orders surpassing Prime Day 2015 by more than 60% worldwide and more than 50% in the United States. Amazon said it was also the biggest day ever for Amazon devices globally and set sales records for every Amazon device category including Kindle, Alexa, Fire TV, and Fire Tablets. Globally, the Fire TV Stick was Amazon’s best-selling device.
“Prime itself is the best deal in the history of shopping, and Prime Day was created as a special benefit exclusively for our Prime members,” said Greg Greeley, Vice President, Amazon Prime. “We want to thank our tens of millions of members around the world for making this the biggest day in the history of Amazon. We hope you had as much fun as we did. After yesterday’s results, we’ll definitely be doing this again.”
Small businesses and selling partners on Amazon with Prime deals had nearly triple year-over-year sales, both worldwide and in the US. “We offered customers our best products at great deals and they responded in a big way,” said Dov Brafman, CEO of Sharkk, which offers cool and unique audio solutions and other consumer accessories. “Prime Day helped us reach our highest sales day ever.”
Prime day is in full swing and BOY do we feel it! Be sure to check out the Amazing Sharkk deals going live throughout the day! #PrimeDay
— Sharkk (@ShopSharkk) July 12, 2016
“Sales were much higher than I was expecting with that 60% growth rate,” says R.J. Hottovy on CNBC. Hottovy is a Consumer Equity Strategist at Morningstar. “That will probably put the company ahead of where it was last year. You are talking about sales in the $500 to $600 million range for this day alone. The real take-a-ways for me are that international markets seem to be adopting Prime and competing sales from the likes of Walmart don’t seem to be impacting Amazon sales at all. We estimate there are more than 70 million Prime members globally, about 80% of that, or 56 million, coming from the US. What it has shown is that there is real stickiness to this business.”
The real impact of Prime Day for Amazon is not sales but in enticing more “sticky” Prime memberships. “Sales are really besides the point, it’s about driving Prime membership,” said Shelly Banjo of Bloomberg. “One estimate had Amazon adding 6 million Prime members. What that does is lock you in an average of 7 years according to one estimate. Prime is Amazon’s secret sauce.”
People get “hooked on Prime” she says and no longer making shopping lists to go to Walmart or somewhere else. Instead they think of something to buy and with a couple clicks of the phone it’s done.
Below are the complete Prime Day 2016 stats provided by Amazon.
Prime Day 2016 highlights globally:
- Sold over 2.5x more Amazon Fire TV devices compared to Prime Day last year – Fire TV Stick was the best-selling Amazon device.
- More than two million toys and more than one million pairs of shoes were purchased by customers on Prime Day 2016.
- More than 90,000 TVs were purchased on Prime Day 2016.
- Hundreds of thousands of Kindle e-readers sold on Prime Day.
- Prime member orders on the Amazon app surpassed Prime Day 2015 mobile app orders by more than 2x.
- More than a million customers used the Amazon app for the first time on Prime Day to shop and to watch-a-deal.
- The Prime Photos sweepstakes had two million submissions worldwide during the lead-up to Prime Day, the winner will be randomly selected on or about July 14.
Prime Day 2016 highlights from the US:
- Amazon devices were up over 3x compared to Prime Day last year.
- Biggest day ever for Amazon Echo – up over 2.5x compared to previous record day.
- The most popular Amazon Dash Button brands purchased on Prime Day were Cascade, Charmin and Tide.
- Members purchased over 215,000 Instant Pot 7-in-1 Multi-Functional Pressure Cookers.
- Members purchased over 200,000 headphones.
- Members purchased over 24,000 Double Hammocks by Vivere.
- Members purchased over 23,000 iRobot Roomba 614 Vacuum Cleaning Robots.
- Members purchased over 14,000 Lenovo laptops.
- Members purchased on average one Alexa-exclusive deal per second during Prime Day using their voice.
- Prime members had exclusive access to deals on top rated TV series and blockbuster movies to rent or purchase and instantly stream on the Amazon Video app on TVs, mobile devices, Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, and Fire tablets, or online – the top three Prime Day deal titles purchased or rented were: Deadpool, Kung Fu Panda 3 and 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.
- Customers saved over $1 million on Kindle Unlimited memberships on Prime Day and the Prime Day Lead-up Deal on July 5.
- The most selected Audible audiobook on Prime Day was A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1.
Fire TV Stick was Amazon’s best-selling device globally. Other top sellers around the world, excluding Amazon devices were:
- U.S.: Instant Pot 7-in-1 Multi-Functional Pressure Cooker
- UK: Oral-B Pro 6000 CrossAction Electric Toothbrush with Bluetooth Connectivity and Smart Series
- Spain: SanDisk USB memory stick
- Japan: Calbee Breakfast Cereal 800 grams
- Italy: Lexar JumpDrive
- Germany and Austria: Tefal Jamie Oliver Frying Pan
- France and Belgium: Game of Thrones DVD – season 1 to 4
- Canada: Sennheiser HD 598 Special-Edition Over-Ear Headphones