Amazon sellers sold 2 billon items in 2014

Amazon yesterday said that sellers on the site notched up record sales of over 2 billion items worldwide in 2014.

The number of sellers on Amazon adopting the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service to help increase their businesses with Amazon's fulfillment and customer service that had also grown 65 per cent year-over-year worldwide.

FBA allows sellers to have Amazon store and ship their products directly to customers while offering Amazon Prime benefits, free shipping, and hassle free exports to customers around the world, streamlined cross-border trade, easy returns and award-winning Amazon customer service.

Currently there are over 2 million sellers on Amazon worldwide accounting for over 40 per cent of the total units sold on Amazon.

According to Peter Faricy, VP for Amazon Marketplace, it had been a record-setting year for selling on Amazon, with the company seeing strong growth from sellers listing their items across its global marketplaces.

In fact, there were now over a billion offers for customers to browse from sellers who were listing items for sale outside their home country, Faricy said. He added, the growth of mobile and the introduction of the Amazon Seller App had also been a big win for sellers this year.

Faricy said sellers were constantly telling Amazon they valued the flexibility of managing their businesses on-the-go from their tablets and mobile devices.

Amazon shifted 50 per cent more units using FBA in the run-up to Christmas 2014. Also sellers had become more adept at attracting buyers using deals; sales through deals rose by 250 per cent.

What was not clear was whether the numbers of sellers had increased significantly as Amazon reported that it had over 2 million sellers around the world in more than 100 different countries, which was what Amazon had said last year. Sellers in China and Hong Kong had reportedly grown 80 per cent.

While there were concerns that Amazon used marketplace data to undermine third-party sales to undercut on price with its own sales, it remained true that Amazon represented a key opportunity for ecommerce SMEs looking to grow.