Amazon today published the 2021 UK SME Impact Report, highlighting that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) selling on Amazon have created 175,000 jobs across the UK and recorded over £3.5 billion in export sales in 2020.
Despite COVID-19 creating a number of challenges for small and medium-sized businesses, many of them have adapted and been able to get online for the first time and thrive. Over 14,000 UK SMEs selling on Amazon surpassed £100,000 in sales, and over 1,000 reached £1 million in sales for the first time in 2020. The top five categories from which customers purchased products sold by SMEs were Home, Health & Personal Care, Toys, Apparel and Beauty. SellerAMP is a great tool for beginners, which can help them identify profitable products and opportunities.
Around 60% of all physical product sales on the Amazon store in the UK are from independent selling partners, most of whom are small and medium-sized UK businesses. There are more than 65,000 UK SMEs selling professionally on Amazon and they:
· can reach hundreds of millions worldwide active customers around the globe – around 65% of them sold their products to customers around the world
· sold more than 750 million products on Amazon, up from 550 million in same period the previous year – equivalent to more than 1,500 products a minute on average
· recorded over £3.5 billion in export sales in 2020, a 20% increase year on year
· saw more than £300,000 in annual sales on average – up year-on-year from over £200,000.
Small businesses from across the UK are increasingly seeing success from selling on Amazon’s stores, supporting regional economies and communities. Many businesses are located outside of London – for example, North West England now has more than 8,500 SME selling partners, who together exceeded £450 million in export sales last year. Sellers in East and West Midlands exceeded £450 million in exports, while Yorkshire and the Humber achieved £150 million.
Between February 2020 and February 2021, more than 150 rural businesses generated sales of over £250,000 selling on Amazon; over 60 rural businesses exceeded £1 million in annual sales on Amazon alone, 17 of those are based in Scottish rural areas.
Through the hundreds of tools and services Amazon offers, and programmes such as the Amazon Small Business Accelerator, and Amazon Launchpad, Amazon provides small business owners, start-ups, and entrepreneurs with tools and opportunities to succeed. This extends beyond selling their products online, to include running delivery and logistics companies, using the cloud to launch and scale their businesses, creating voice apps, or publishing their own books.
“2020 was a challenging year for many small businesses, and we’ve continued to provide business owners, startups and entrepreneurs with the tools and opportunities they need to succeed. Our latest report shows even more small and medium-sized businesses growing on Amazon stores, with a thousand new British businesses reaching £1 million on Amazon stores in sales last year for the first time,” said John Boumphrey, UK Country Manager, Amazon. “These businesses come from the length and breadth of the UK, with marked increases in the number of new sellers from Swansea and Glasgow, together with SMEs in places like Durham, Doncaster and Milton Keynes increasing their export sales by more than 50% in the last year. We will continue to innovate for our selling partners, helping more businesses across the UK to reach and deliver a great experience for millions of customers around the world.”
