Amazon Australia has launched. Now what?

The launch of Amazon in Australia this week has been met with mixed results.  Given the interest in my earlier article on Amazon, I thought I would expand a little more on Amazon’s launch and my thoughts in this space.  

Although Amazon is a notoriously secretive company, they have been fairly transparent about their Australian launch, stipulating that the launch will be staged. This means limited verticals and limited category offerings during the trial phase.  So this week was essentially a soft launch by Amazon.  While we have come to expect the media to be harsh, I think they were overly critical and may have lured some Australian retailers into a false sense of security with some of their reports this week.

Since launching I have already purchased a few things through Amazon and all were competitively priced and arrived within 24 hours.  How long will it be before they get the Prime offering in Australia and can deliver within 2 hours? Who knows, but I think 24 hours is still pretty good.  At the same time, I know there are many Australian retailers who are well underway with making significant improvements to their shipping offering, so I think consumers are in for some exciting improvements to the online shopping experience in Australia.

In the US now, over 40% of all online sales are going through the Amazon marketplace. I think this is indicative of the potential power of Amazon over the longer term.  

 “There will be winners and there will be losers with Amazon launching in Australia.”

 My advice to all retailers and wholesalers is:

 “Don’t forget everything you have been doing to date and become obsessed with Amazon. But embrace Amazon by joining their marketplace and start learning how this additional sales channel can be used in your space to grow your retail or wholesale business.”

In the coming months Neto will be expanding upon our integration we released this week to the Amazon Marketplace and one of the next features will be the ability to create product listings in Amazon via the Neto platform. For anyone who wants to read more in this space, you might like to check out the articles we have been posting on the Neto blog.