MGR Amazon Weekly Update | July 23, 2019
Top News This Week
This Year’s Prime Day Surpassed Black Friday & Cyber Monday Combined
Prime Day was a massive success for Amazon and sellers. Amazon reported that this was their “largest shopping event in history.” Here are some quick numbers. Third party sellers did over $2 billion in revenue. There 175 million total items sold. The top selling category was toys with over 1 million sold. As the success of Prime Day continues, there are rumors that Amazon may expand and have multiple Prime Days every year. But for now, let’s just enjoy this moment.
Amazon is Facing Regulatory Pressure From All Sides: Last Week Congress, this Week Europe
According to a new Bloomberg report, “a formal, ‘full-blown’ antitrust investigation into the Amazon is likely to start within days.” One of the main focuses of the investigation could actually help third party sellers. The EU is alleging that Amazon is taking advantage of third party sellers (3PS) by controlling all customer data and using it to create products that compete with sellers while also giving their own products higher search rankings without having to work for them. Amazon now has dozens of its own brands that compete on its own platform.
From MGR: How to Break the Rules, Go Viral, and Gain Millions of Users in the Process – Joshua Browder, CEO of DoNotPay
This week, we spoke with Joshua Browder. He’s been featured on Forbes’ ’30 under 30′ list, received a Thiel Fellowship, and is the founder and CEO of DoNotPay, an app that started as a robo-lawyer and has expanded into being an AI assistant that takes care of many annoying tasks like dealing with customer service problems, making appointments at the DMV, filing insurance claims, and much more.
Other Notable News:
After scrutiny from German courts, Amazon updates Seller Agreement worldwide – ECB
‘Life Straw’ was the best selling item on Prime Day, reportedly selling over 200,000 units – TODAY
Amazon’s new suspension policy has led to many sellers getting unexpectedly booted – CNBC
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