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 are 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 are working hard and investing heavily to support you and your business. Since the start of the pandemic, we have invested more than $10 billion in COVID-19 related operating costs. We have increased square footage across our fulfilment and logistics network by 50%, opening dozens of new delivery stations and fulfilment centres around the world. We have hired over 400,000 employees in the biggest peacetime workforce ramp-up by any company in history. And we have 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 a vaccine on the horizon, other logistics providers have already announced their annual fee increases for 2021. In a normal year we would be doing the same, but this is not a normal year and we have made the decision to postpone our annual fulfilment fee adjustments and continue to absorb the costs we are incurring on your behalf until June 1, 2021. We will 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 the 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 EU, allocating the majority of space in our fulfilment centres for seller inventory so that your products are in stock for customer orders. As we write this email today, more than 60% of products in our fulfilment centres 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 are 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
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 are 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 are working hard and investing heavily to support you and your business. Since the start of the pandemic, we have invested more than $10 billion in COVID-19 related operating costs. We have increased square footage across our fulfilment and logistics network by 50%, opening dozens of new delivery stations and fulfilment centres around the world. We have hired over 400,000 employees in the biggest peacetime workforce ramp-up by any company in history. And we have 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 a vaccine on the horizon, other logistics providers have already announced their annual fee increases for 2021. In a normal year we would be doing the same, but this is not a normal year and we have made the decision to postpone our annual fulfilment fee adjustments and continue to absorb the costs we are incurring on your behalf until June 1, 2021. We will 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 the 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 EU, allocating the majority of space in our fulfilment centres for seller inventory so that your products are in stock for customer orders. As we write this email today, more than 60% of products in our fulfilment centres 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 are 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
100 replies
Seller_57FvLL5OeoWEP
As a small business, the best thing you could use all that money on, is having ‘actual’ people for business users to contact. Not the ridiculous joke of a ‘support’ which basically answers, says ‘I can do nothing’ then claims it as resolved… A fair AtoZ claim system that doesn’t aid scammers and thieves. Actually look at the facts before awarding them the goods AND their money back. Ebay manages that side soooo much better. I have so many higher priced items I would sell through here, but I cannot trust Amazon when the scammers start to steal it.
Seller_0xavPE91kwzcZ
Wow…it’s so generous of the multi billion dollar company to postpone any increases in fees until June, 2021. We are all so lucky.
Seller_skKjD1EelqjA7
Who is Jeff Wilke? Why is he so out of touch with actual human sellers? It sounds like inferior AI wrote that post. Edit: So Jeff Wilke is stepping down from Amazon, just like Doug Gurr. 53 is a nice age to retire, but if you enjoy your work, like Warren Buffet does, you don’t retire that young. Doug Gurr going to the science museum. Maybe they don’t agree with the how Amazon has grown without a conscious.
While Amazon has the lion’s share of B2C e-commerce market, the actual attention they pay to sellers is bordering on inhumane.
Our account was blocked in August for a reason which we have learnt is not really our fault, as in nothing malicious was done, it was because of series of unfortunate events.
However, Amazon refuse to even look at new evidence when escalating to a VP, it is simply forwarded to reviews-appeal department and they automatically say they looked of the information and decided not to reinstate. But there are companies out there that can send you actual photographs of the screens of your account inside Amazon, proving they don’t even look at anything and refer everything back to the original case.
All Amazon has to do is look at its own Seller Forums to see the grief sellers have to deal with on a daily basis. Amazon has been fined TWICE this year and is under investigation by the EU for breaching antitrust rules. For sellers, Amazon is simply not good enough in proper communication and understanding. For customers, all they do (to be the most customer-centric company), is refund immediately no questions asked.
What does Amazon do well? Logistics. What does Amazon do really badly, dealing with humans.
Amazon has long way to go in improving.
We have our local member of parliament involved and soon arbitration and court case, unless they buck up their ideas.
Seller_ExkX6IN03C3IM
“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.”
Ah, thanks Amazon for absorbing the cost!
Here I am just half an hour ago got an A-Z granted for shoes being worn for 2 months but yet the ‘damage’ would of course be due to us. /s
Seller_b0NlnRh7rlcSs
Invest some the money in a UK call center with real people that can make decisions and take actions to really support small businesses.
Seller_jxSDcRXbIhVcn
If amazon is so concerned about helping SMALL BUSINESSES they should reduce the monthly selling fees which is way too high and per item sold fees it is way too high . for a massivley rich company i need to know they are helping strucgliing businesses like myself and not themselves but i am not getting this impression at the moment thanks
Seller_sl2gzL0NNVKDz
That’s great and all Jeff but I’m not FBA and my sales have dropped off a cliff as Amazon has been estimating my delivery eta as 4-8th Jan next year!!! I notice that all FBA sellers had arrival in plenty of time for Xmas, are these bully boy tactics to get me to sign up?
Seller_n9cZxyNEBBMMI
I just despair at the constant stream of sarcasm and negativity on these seller forums. It must be so dispiriting for the thousands of Amazon employees who work hard to deliver a good service.
Amazon has done a fantastic job in almost impossible circumstances this year. More generally, the Amazon marketplace in combination with FBA enables businesses like mine to grow much more quickly and profitably than we could hope to achieve alone.
Sure there are problems and deficiencies which need to be fixed but we’ve just had our best year by miles and it’s all down to Amazon’s truly impressive ability to upscale its global logistics capacity in the blink of an eye.
For those of you who think Amazon fees are too high, try doing everything they do for yourself and see how quickly you go bust.
So come on people, give some credit where it’s due and stop blaming Amazon for everything that goes wrong with your businesses.
Thank you Jeff Wilke and I hope all at Amazon have a very Merry Christmas!
Seller_sFEUMUfeW5484
Amazon, you are getting it wrong. Your sellers are telling you this, they are screaming it from the roof tops. You are NOT listening. At the moment, there is little alternative but to sell on Amazon, due to the volume of traffic you provide, do NOT confuse this with loyalty.
If you could do one thing, it would be to provide seller support based in the country of the sellers main account. This way the support team would be better placed to understand the actual issues we sellers go through. At the moment, your support team generally add to the issue rather than provide any productive help to solve it.
An alternative to Amazon will appear in time, when it does your platform will quickly empty of all the good honest sellers you have spent so much time and money bringing in. It’s quite simple to fix, just listen AND act on what your sellers are telling you daily.
Seller_0kjDoOPggKt1x
I agree with a lot of sellers on here Jeff… all you need to do is read some of the forum topics, be in their shoes, its painful and soul breaking when we work so hard in providing a service, but trust me its no walk in the park, we wake up every morning wondering if Amazon has deactivated our account on the comments of some customer who does not want to wait for an item, which is genuinely delayed due to no fault of the seller, an A-Z claim from a spiteful customer where Amazon side them no matter how much evidence the seller provides that the item was delivered, the customer messages answered within the 24 hour time required, where customers return items after having used them for over 30 days… who takes the brunt for all this “THE SELLER” … we are not a multi million company, so every penny matters, again only if we are lucky enough to get a sale that is if Amazon don’t under-cut us on the products we sell, all I am saying is if you are there siding your sellers through the toughest time in the last decade, i think you need to listen to their problems, have real people who are willing to look at each case on an individual basis as opposed to copy pasting an answer, give your sellers an opportunity to give their side of the story… Don’t get me wrong Amazon is one of the biggest market places to be on, and i am sure its a real challenge to run such a massive organisation, but please look at a sellers circumstances before taking any abrupt decisions. Scammers are getting away with murder, where as genuine sellers are getting their businesses shut shut down due to no fault of their own except that they were not helped and listened to. I have to apologise for the rant and for talking on behalf of a lot of people on here, but this is my personal view and again I apologise if others think otherwise.
