Amazon Singapore is an exciting and emerging selling channel for brands looking to expand their global footprint. Launched in late 2019, it arrived just in time for the global pandemic, which saw consumers worldwide swap their shopping trolleys for their browsers. For millions of consumers worldwide, online shopping has since then shifted from a convenient luxury to a daily necessity.
Why should you sell on Amazon Singapore? This emerging marketplace is full of potential and ideal for sellers with a smart, agile strategy. As a growing marketplace, Amazon Singapore can position your brand to connect with purchase-ready shoppers to help drive sales.
Singapore is a small multicultural, multiracial and multilingual country, with English as its main language. Its internet penetration rate is impressive, standing at 90% in January 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, the number of internet users in the country increased by 146 thousand people – an increase of around 2.8% of the country’s entire population in a single year.
Alongside its extremely high internet penetration rate, e-commerce has a very strong presence in Singapore: Statista projects that Singaporean e-commerce market revenue will reach $2.793 billion in 2021, with 16.1% growth year-on-year. The market’s 3.3 million shoppers are expected to have an Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) of US$846.96 in 2021, compared to US$784.52 in 2020.
A Growing Marketplace
As part of Amazon’s proven global brand, Amazon Singapore is in good company and enjoys all of the benefits that are conferred to other competitive marketplaces under Amazon.
Amazon’s global reach includes 20 Amazon Stores with a physical presence in over 20 countries. Global e-commerce is approaching $5 trillion this year, and in 2020 56% of US, UK, German and French shoppers indicated that their first port of call is Amazon when searching for a product.
Amazon Singapore is giving sellers the advantage of getting into the marketplace in the early phase of its rollout and slowly expanding their presence from there, utilising all the benefits that the infrastructure of its parent company has to offer. This presents a competitive advantage for sellers that could be the difference between a hugely successful, vibrant and popular online business and a weak, poorly performing one.
Amazon holds an annual, two-day event for Amazon Prime members called Amazon Prime Day. Since its launch in 2015, this event has become one of its most important retail and marketing events, and in 2020 Amazon stated that third-party sellers on its marketplace earned over $3.5 billion in the event, constituting an increase of close to 60% compared to the year prior.
That same year – Amazon Singapore’s first year of participation – over 12,000 small- and medium-sized businesses took part in Amazon Singapore’s Prime Day sale event. Categories such as electronics, PC, home, toys, and health and personal care proved to be particularly popular among online buyers.
For sellers who are already selling domestically on Amazon, expanding to international marketplaces such as Amazon Singapore is relatively quick and easy, and can be achieved in a few short steps:
- determine which Amazon marketplaces suit your business,
- register and list your products, and
- select your fulfilment method.
To make things easy, Amazon allows sellers to transfer all current listing details and reviews from the US to the Singapore marketplace. And to help sellers get started, Amazon Singapore is waiving the fees for professional selling accounts until 31 December 2021. Also, sellers can take advantage of free resources and live fortnightly webinars to learn more about the marketplace and how to get their products in front of the right consumers at the right time.
With a global house-bound population and the importance of platforms like Amazon thrown into stark relief over the past year, the opportunities afforded by an emerging marketplace like Amazon Singapore cannot be overstated.
Rithum fully supports Amazon Singapore and can help sellers quickly launch on this marketplace. For existing customers, this opportunity is available through your Rithum integration and can seamlessly help your business list and sell products directly to buyers in Singapore.