Amazon Prime Day 2021 – Meet some of the independent small businesses set to benefit
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This Prime Day, and for the remainder of 2021, Amazon has pledged to spend more than $100 million globally on promotional activities to encourage customers to shop small. In the run-up to the two-day event (until 20 June), Prime customers will receive £10 credit to spend on Prime Day for every £10 they spend with a small business.
Amazon’s Prime Day event for 2021 will be held across 21-22 June, offering Prime customers over two million deals worldwide across every category. More than a million of these deals come from independent selling partners, many of whom are small and medium-sized businesses.
Amazon has a long track record of supporting small businesses across the UK. During the 12 months ending May 2020, UK selling partners sold more than 600 million products on Amazon stores, up 100 million from the previous year – that's 1,200 products sold per minute.
Tens of thousands of UK-based small and medium-sized businesses sell their products in Amazon’s stores, and they support more than 85,000 job opportunities in the UK. More than 60% of these businesses export to customers all over the world. Last year the company launched the Amazon Small Business Accelerator with business support network Enterprise Nation to provide 200,000 small businesses with free training on a variety of topics, including social media marketing, selling online, scaling production and hiring. Businesses across the UK can sign up for free today here.
In addition to the usual promotions, from now until Prime Day, for Prime customers and first-time users of the charity initiative AmazonSmile, Amazon will donate an enhanced five per cent donation to customers’ chosen charities – ten times the regular donation.
The following artisan small businesses are just some of the companies set to benefit from a sales bump this Prime Day.
Based in Ringwood, Hampshire, Manta Makes - a family business designing and making personalised, engraved wedding decor and keepsake gifts - was set up in 2016 by founders 36-year-old Samantha Riley and her 38-year-old husband, Paul Riley. As new parents, they wanted a better work/life balance to spend more time with their new baby.
Samantha Riley commented: "People always think of Amazon as this massive company, but for many normal people and businesses like ours - especially if you're stuck in the middle of nowhere - Amazon is a business lifeline and key to our success and growth.
"As a small business owner, Prime Day has had a huge impact on our sales year-on-year. Last year it helped our business grow rapidly and enabled us to employ more local staff with a 50% staff increase around Prime Day to keep up with orders in the last part of 2020.”