Amazon is here. And it's going to reshape Nordic e-commerce, as has been the case in the other markets in which Amazon has made its entry.
In October 2020 Amazon opened its Swedish branch. and Denmark is by many retail experts expected to be next on the list, followed by Finland.
So, if you haven’t already made plans for how to use this platform to sell products in the Nordic region, now is the time to get started.
Why should you care?
Amazon launched back in 1994 and has since become one of the world's largest online retailers. Books, CDs, cars, toys – you can find all of these and much more in the Amazon Marketplace.
You might not think that Amazon's launch in Scandinavia is a big deal. It's just another website, right? Sweden, for example, has online retailers like Ikea.com, Netonnet.se, and Elgiganten.se, which together generate millions of visitors.
Why should you care? Well, Amazon is an entirely different beast. It sells more products than many Nordic retailers combined – 606 million products worldwide, to be exact. Plus, it dominates e-commerce in the United States and European countries like the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany.
Amazon generates a huge amount of revenue: The platform made a massive $289 billion in total sales in 2019 alone. To put that into perspective, Finland's total GDP is $276 billion! Amazon shows no signs of slowing down, either. In 2020, Amazon Prime Day sales amounted to an estimated 10.4 billion.
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How you prepare yourself
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Can Amazon replicate its success in Scandinavia? There's no reason why it can't. Services like Amazon Prime have pioneered lightning-fast online retail delivery – the platform offers same-day shipping in some countries, which is not common in the Nordic region. Plus, the company is already an established brand here. People in Scandinavia already place orders on Amazon.com - actually Amazon already accounts for 2% of online sales in Denmark through Amazon in Germany.
A Scandinavian Amazon will enable customers to order products from local warehouses and have their items shipped in a speedy timeframe. There are also plenty of opportunities for retailers.
Capitalize on Amazon's launch in Scandinavia
Want to make money from Amazon's Scandinavian launch? With no exact launch date just yet, there's plenty of time to prepare your products and plan your online store. The most successful retailers on the platform all have one thing in common: They excel when it comes to customer service and logistical infrastructure. You need to do the same.
"Thank the customer for contacting you, tell them you’re happy to help and ask if they need anything else," says RepricerExpress, whose mission is to help companies get as much profit as possible on Amazon.
"Make them feel like helping them was the best part of your day – even if you would have preferred a root canal."
You should also start thinking about a product niche. The most popular products on Amazon in countries like the U.S. and U.K. tend to be electronics – smartphones, tablets, headphones, those sorts of thing. It might be different in Scandinavia, though. Research shows the most popular product category online in Sweden in 2020 was beauty and healthcare, followed by clothing and footwear, and books and media. (Home electronics ranked in fourth place.)
Aside from focusing on what products to sell, improve the quality of your product information before you sell on Amazon. This will prevent your products from being declined on the platform. There may be holes in your product feed (missing descriptions, EAN numbers, color information, pictures, etc.) so that products will be declined from Amazon.
So, time to get ready to board the Amazon train in Scandinavia. Get your product information ready, plan your store and discover a product niche. This way, you can be one of the retailers in Scandinavia making cash on Amazon, instead of losing business to the new competitor.
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Updated December 2021