Amazon.com opens its gates
Welcome news for online retailers looking to grow their multichannel portfolio: Amazon now allows merchants to sign-up and launch in qualified categories online without any queue, review or qualification (woohoo!). The team in Seattle is working hard on making it easy for any merchant to sell products on the site and I think this is only the first of many steps to come towards improving the selling experience (watch out eBay).
To get started simply go to www.amazonservices.com/promerchant, click on “Start Selling on Amazon”, verify that your category allows instant sign-up and follow the step-by-step instructions.
The Apparel & Accessories, Beauty, Industrial and Scientific, Jewelry and Watches, Personal Computer or Gourmet Food categories continue to be gated with review and approval by an Amazon category manager. If you’d like to sell in a gated or closed category let us know — there’s no secret sauce but we’ve developed a set of tips and best practices that have helped our merchants make a strong business case for successful admission (and no, that does not include writing anything in German).
I am a little surprised that the Books / Music / Video category sign-up still points to the Marketplaces platform. Amazon has begun the migration of this grand daddy of categories to its new Seller Central platform in Q1 2007 and plans to cease the legacy Marketplaces tool in the U.S. by the end of the year. My money is more on early to mid-2008 since I doubt that Amazon would force a migration during the busiest shopping season of the year.