News Flash: Jewelry still a very hot item on Amazon
Feb 12th, 2008 | By Max Leisten | Category: Amazon Announcements, Selling StrategiesContinuing its tradition of sharing select category successes, Amazon announced this morning that its Jewelry category has grown over 100% during the holiday season (compared to Q4 2006).
“We’re very excited about the growth in our Jewelry store,” said Peter Lai, Director, Amazon.com Jewelry & Watches store. “Not only are our customers choosing to purchase shoes, electronics and beauty items from Amazon.com, but they are also choosing to make, at times, very personal purchasing decisions with us, such as diamonds, and we take that very seriously.”
The press release has a LOT of good information in it if you are already selling jewelry on Amazon (congratulations for getting and staying in this gated category) or if you’re trying to get your products onto this site. Top sellers included:
- 14k White Gold Journey Curve Pendant
- Platinum Diamond Stud Earrings
- 2 Carat Round Cut Stone
- Diamond-encrusted watches
- Black diamond jewelry
- Black and White Diamond Infinity Pendant
- Cartier Tank Divan 18k Yellow Gold Diamond Mini Ladies Watch
- Chopard Happy Sport Ladies Watch
- Movado Kara Watch
Amazon also shared that “gemstones did extremely well during the fourth quarter. Top-selling gemstone styles included the 14k White Gold Coated Swiss Blue Topaz Teardrop Earrings, the 14k White Gold Round Blue Topaz and Diamond Pendant and 14k Yellow Gold Channel Set Round Coated Blue Topaz Hoop Earrings.”
And, for the savvy “must absolutely get into this category” 3P sellers among you, getting to know and conveying true additive value of your products to Amazon’s protected jewelry category to Peter Lai, Director, Amazon.com Jewelry & Watches store is a must. There are a few best practices for formulating a business case that highlights your qualifications — ping me if you are interested in learning more about this.
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Hi. Iam interested in comments/suggestions on getting into the jewelry category in Amazon. Looking forward to your feedback. Thank you.
Maria, the biggest factor in Amazon’s decision process to accept new jewelry sellers is the uniqueness of the products. Meaning that if it’s not already being sold on the site and it’s significantly different from anything being offered on the site, then your chances should be pretty good.
Even being a long-established jeweler with multiple websites won’t get you in the door. Recently tried to get a company formed in 1903 onto Amazon but the selection simply wasn’t unique enough. Another seller who manufactured his own jewelry was turned down because his jewelry was too similar to products already being sold on the site.
If you feel that your products fit the bill (unique) and you’re a somewhat established online retailer (not brand new), then the next step should be to apply at http://www.amazonservices.com.
Follow-up with a business case (call it an application) that describes your business, how your treat your customers (hopefully very well), your products (incl. images, prices) and your history (link to existing sites, feedback scores, etc.). Send it to seller-performance@amazon.com as a PDF and reference your online application.
Hope this helps.
Hello, we are interested in selling our line of brazilian jewelery on amazon. We went to amazon services
and send our information, amazon got back to us asking for pictures of our products which we send them
to contact@amazon.com. Since October 26,2008 we are waiting for a response regarding our review process
and products. We are new to this but know exactly how amazon works. We are a big establish company in Brazil and have a distributor in the U.S. which is us that are interested in selling with amazon. What do you
suggest. Can Ebay be profitable also? Please respond to us we need your opinion.
Best Regards,
John
Hey John — Assuming you sent your photos conforming to the main Amazon image requirements (white background, no watermark), you should hear back shortly. If you do not hear, I would also send an email to seller-performance@amazon.com and inquire on your application.
I definitely recommend that you look at a variety of US-based sites to sell your products, including eBay, Overstock Shopping and Buy.com. eBay will charge you a minor listing fee but has its advantages over other fixed-price marketplaces (for example, you own the customer and can market to them after the sale and have a lot of flexibility around branding).
Send me an email to max at amazonstrategies.com to discuss tools to make it easier to reach all of these sites.
Hello,
Thanks for your opinion. Is buy.com easy to start selling or complicated like amazon. We are considering Ebay and Buy.com. Amazon is very good but its quite difficult to get into the jewelery category. We are still waiting for their response. We are new for Amazon so we just have all our factory information and website from Brazil but dont have any online experience that we can show them, is that a problem for amazon?
Thank You for your support, your blog is great.
Jonathan.
Jonathan,
Buy.com is somewhat similar to Amazon in that you can list both with a Buy.com ID (think of it as an ASIN) but need to provide detailed product attributes when you want to sell a new item. It’s not quite as strict and only has two types of templates with its newer categories (such as jewelry and sports & outdoor) requiring a little more data to give consumers more information. Jewelry is currently not restricted and Buy.com welcomes sellers in this and any other category.
If you do not have an e-commerce website that Amazon can use to gauge how experienced of an online retailer you are, then they may be willing to consider other information to help understand the opportunity.
Max