Dive Brief:
-
Count Martha Stewart among the artisans that have moved to Amazon Handmade. The style maven had run her “American Made” store at eBay but is taking it to Amazon Handmade, the retail confirmed Tuesday, bypassing artisanal marketplace Etsy.
-
Since its launch last month, Amazon’s Handmade portal now features more than 10,000 sellers, double its participation at launch, and items for sale there have already grown from 80,000 to 200,000 items, Amazon spokesman Erik Fairleigh told The New York Times.
-
Like other sellers, Stewart was apparently drawn to Amazon thanks to its enormous reach and fulfillment opportunities.
Dive Insight:
Amazon Handmade is proving to be a formidable competitor to Etsy. Although many sellers are maintaining their storefronts on Etsy, and, eBay says, on eBay as well, Amazon boasts an incredible reach and fulfillment capabilities that are boons to sellers. Amazon has 285 million active accounts worldwide, compared to Etsy’s 22 million buyers. And Amazon’s logistics include free shipping to Prime members.
Stewart’s empire has shrunk from its heyday several years ago, and apparently sees Amazon as the best path to a comeback.
“It’s a much bigger audience,” Stewart told the Times. “It’s the powerhouse retailer online in the United States.” She added: “It’s a step in the right direction, I think, to showcase the vast number of entrepreneurial small companies emerging in the United States. And some of these companies might become the giants of tomorrow.”
Still, Etsy remains the leader in the space, and is poised to survive the entrance of Amazon.
It is eBay, whose performance is being closely watched after its spinoff from payments unit PayPal, that may suffer from the Amazon Handmade-Etsy competition.
