“Over 50% of everything that gets sold on Amazon actually comes from small and medium-sized businesses.,” says Amazon’s VP of Small Business, Nick Denissen. “Their success is our success so we’re definitely focused on doubling down on that. We have over 1.9 million small and medium-sized businesses in the US who work together with Amazon to conduct their business. Those include our sellers, authors, and skilled developers. They’re just a very important part of the customer experience we serve up.”

Nick Denissen, vice president of small business at Amazon, discusses the huge impact that small businesses have on Amazon sales in an interview on CNBC:

Over 50% of Everything Sold On Amazon Is From Small Businesses

Over 50% of everything that gets sold on Amazon actually comes from small and medium-sized businesses. Their success is our success so we’re definitely focused on doubling down on that. We have over 1.9 million small and medium-sized businesses in the US who work together with Amazon to conduct their business. Those include our sellers, authors, and skilled developers. They’re just a very important part of the customer experience we serve up.

The 58 percent I just culled out they are actually the part of the business that is growing faster than our first-party business. We definitely have our interests aligned with small businesses on all fronts. As I pointed out, 58 percent of everything that gets bought is from small and medium-sized businesses. Many customers don’t realize that.

Amazon Storefronts Shed a Little Bit More Light On Small Businesses

Last year, we launched Amazon Storefronts to shed a little bit more of a light on small businesses. Amazon Storefronts is essentially a curated shopping experience where customers can dedicatedly shop from local small businesses. They’re all US-based small businesses. When we opened that Storefront last year a little bit over a year ago we had 20,000 sellers. To date, we’re excited to announce that we actually have 30,000 sellers.

We’ve also developed special technology for them to share more content. They can actually share their story. Those sellers have reached 70 million customers in the last year and sold over 250 million products. I think those numbers speak for themselves that we really are helping and that small businesses can get discovered on Amazon.

Amazon Announces Small Business Spotlight Awards

Today, we’re super excited to announce our Small Business Spotlight Awards. We’re continuing to shine a spotlight on many of these exciting small businesses where they can share their stories. We’re announcing 18 finalists across three categories. There’s Small Business Woman of the Year Award, Entrepreneur Under 30, and Small Business of the Year Award. When we asked our sellers to nominate themselves for this process we actually had over 1300 nominations. Since it’s the first time we did it we really didn’t know what to expect.

Starting today our customers can vote until November 8th for their favorite small business in this category. One thing that we’ve learned is that customers do like to learn more about these small businesses, about their stories, and also other small businesses get a lot of inspiration from small businesses. We’re pretty excited to have these sellers on this journey with us.

Small Business Winner Will Get $80,000

We’re also conducting two live seller events in the US today where we’re enabling small businesses to meet customers and to actually conduct a sale. I just want to call out that one of the nominees, one of the finalists in the Small Business of the Year award, is  Damhorst Toys and Puzzles. They are a multi-generational company. They’ve been in business for 48 years. They hand manufacture their wooden toys in Missouri and now they found their way online with Amazon. They’re growing and it’s great to see those types of companies.

The winner will get an $80,000 award so we’re pretty excited to have them continue to grow and prosper on Amazon. One of the things we hear from small businesses is it’s not easy to find the skill sets to help them drive an online business, in particular businesses who have started offline. That’s one of the areas we’re also looking at. How can we help small businesses on that front?  So stay tuned on that.