Amazon investing over $5 billion in small business success and stability during a difficult time
This continues to be an incredibly difficult year for entrepreneurs and small business owners around the world. Nobody had a playbook for how to keep a business going through a global pandemic, but you continue to meet the challenge and serve customers every day. We’re inspired by your efforts and want to help you be successful during these times. Our communities are depending on Amazon and all the small businesses who sell in our store to keep as much in stock as we can and to deliver products to doorsteps while keeping our employees and partners safe and healthy.
We’re working hard and investing heavily to support you and your business. Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve invested more than $10 billion in COVID-19 related operating costs. We’ve increased square footage across our fulfillment and logistics network by 50%, opening dozens of new delivery stations and fulfillment centers around the world. We’ve hired over 400,000 employees in the biggest peacetime workforce ramp-up by any company in history. And we’ve spent more than $2.5 billion on pay incentives and bonuses. We continue to be thrilled by how successfully hundreds of thousands of you have leveraged our investments during 2020. It has benefited everyone—you, us, our customers and communities. While many other companies have passed along costs through surcharges and fee changes in 2020, we have absorbed over $5 billion of those costs on your behalf. And we expect to invest billions more in the first half of 2021 in helping selling partners like you as we all try to return to normalcy.
Now, as we look ahead with vaccines on the horizon, other logistics providers have already announced their annual fee increases for 2021. In a normal year we’d be doing the same, but this isn’t a normal year and we’ve made the decision to postpone our annual fulfillment fee adjustments and continue to absorb the costs we are incurring on your behalf until June 1, 2021. We’ll share more details in the spring. We are doing this because we want to provide stability and support for you during what will likely remain a challenging winter as vaccine distribution gets underway.
Our focus throughout this holiday season has been on getting the most selection for customers while enabling your success. That has included limiting ordering for our own retail business in the U.S., and allocating the majority of space in our fulfillment centers for seller inventory so that your products are in stock for customer orders. As we write this email today, sellers using Fulfillment by Amazon carry enough inventory, on average, to support 25% more days of sales than our own retail business, and more than 60% of products in our fulfillment centers worldwide are from sellers.
Sellers surpassed $4.8 billion in worldwide sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, growing about 60% from last year. Your businesses continue to grow faster than Amazon’s own first-party retail business, and we’re glad. What’s good for you is good for Amazon, our customers, and communities around the world.
You, and the more than 1.7 million small- and medium-sized businesses serving Amazon customers in our store, have never been more important for our communities, and we want to thank you for your continued partnership and support. We remain more committed than ever to supporting your success, and we hope you and your families stay safe this holiday season.
Thank you,
Jeff Wilke
Seller_XFj8akGqahG0f
Jeff Wilke, You brag about what Amazon has done and the amount of fulfillment your company has created and blew smoke up our skirts However; you have never mentioned what Amazon hasn’t done. Amazon hasn’t fixed the seller support Issues. Amazon Seller Support is the worst in the business. Your seller support speaks but doesn’t comprehend English. Your Seller Support can’t make decisions. Your Seller Support doesn’t know policy. I might suggest taking someone of that fulfillment space back from sellers and using for Amazon. Sellers aren’t complaining about fulfillment space. Sellers are complaining about the worst in the industry Seller Support Amazon is offering. Would it be possible to fix the issues that Sellers find as issues instead of what Amazon thinks is the issues. What do you think Jeff?
Seller_7BChbkjsQJqPg
That’s great, but when are you going to hire some people in seller support in America as well as give them some other tools then just says " I understand what you are saying" and then just read a form answer that doesn’t answer our question. When are you going to hire a group of people to find the over 10k of inventory I sent in 6 months ago and the only response i get from the “person” investigating it is a form letter that says have patience.
Invest in the little guy by giving us the support we need with and deserve paying thousands a year in fees
Seller_jZWpyInw8RkYT
Seller_AU5icLgDtemHU
What would actually be helpful is a news post on how you’re going to help entrepreneurs and small business owners around the world on dealing with the massive USPS delays. Maybe a news post on how amazon is going to be following / clarifying your own policy’s pertaining to buy shipping.
How Amazon is going to help buyers and sellers to overcome the delays in a way thats beneficial to everyone.
Seller_9I26CpItIyjcn
While this is cool and all I still have basic needs as a seller that cannot be met such as a very simple to resolve support case that has been open for 110 days now and with each contact I am told “we will have an answer in 2-3 days”
I think starting with fixing seller support would be best right now.
Seller_0tynPj3q7cEqN
While this is great, sellers need some transparency into when their shipments will be checked-in, please provide an estimated check-in date for their inventory received at the FC, and perhaps a dashboard with what is going on at each FC with regards to inventory check-in.
Seller_c43DFVZfTMqPC
I missed the part where you talk about what you are doing to reimburse 3rd party merchants for all refunds Amazon issued due to delays in the USPS system and how Amazon is protecting its “valuable” sellers.
Seller_RyHDiPzKVWCW3
Just take that gold medal and hang it on your neck Jeff Wilke. Pat yourself on the back too. Huge investments, lots of storage space added, the importance of small sellers. Right…this all just sounds nice when in reality 2020 was a time when Amazon not only failed to help us, but put a lot of sticks in the wheels. Surprise ASIN limits, standard storage space limit due to not being able to reach higher and higher IPI in ridiculously short time, bank loan taken, new products made, but unable to be shipped because…no storage space. Oh yes, and absolutely the worst seller support. Sorry, we did not get any help from Amazon. All these talks sound like a joke to me.
Seller_cy9errRioq6yi
More hogwash, fix your seller support and help the FBM merchants who are taking a hit from all the USPS late/non deliveries. Not all of us are FBA and with Amazon’s attitude I guess we don’t matter. Provide some help where help is needed. Thank you…!!!
Seller_uhciJcQe4eeIf
What a load of bullsh*t.
