Online marketplaces, such as those provided by Amazon and Walmart, present incredible selling opportunities for fashion and consumer goods companies. However, to make the most of this opportunity, brands must offer quality products and meet precise fulfilment and customer service requirements.
These are significant challenges to overcome, but if you master them, then the opportunities are endless. Discover the obstacles you need to overcome, and what getting past them can do for your fashion eCommerce Amazon business.
What are the opportunities of having an eCommerce Amazon business?
Online sales opportunities
There is no question that online sales are growing, but how much are consumers opening those virtual wallets on Amazon? The statistics are astounding.
Between Black Friday and Christmas 2021, U.S.-based third-party Amazon sellers sold an average of 11,500 products per minute, according to Amazon.
Amazon, which reported $469.8 billion in 2021 sales across its businesses, had $222 billion in online store revenue in 2021, including $66 billion in the fourth quarter.
Comscore’s 2022 State of Retail research study found that U.S. digital commerce spending rose 31 percent for Q4 2021 vs. Q4 2020, hitting $281 billion for the quarter, an all-time high. Amazon raked in almost one-quarter of those sales.
Mobile eCommerce – which is shopping from mobile phones and other mobile devices as opposed to desktop computers—“skyrocketed” 44.1 percent year-on-year.
The apparel and accessories industries are a top category that consumers are buying from their phones. From Q1 2019 to Q4 2021, eCommerce apparel sales on mobile devices grew from $4.1 billion to $17.8 billion, Comscore reported.
Global reach
Selling on Amazon immediately opens the door to a worldwide customer base without the need to build out your own international infrastructure. With Amazon’s presence in over 180 countries, fashion brands can reach customers across multiple regions while leveraging Amazon’s trusted logistics and fulfilment network. This global exposure can be transformative for small and medium-sized businesses that would otherwise struggle to break into overseas markets.
Beyond simply reaching new customers, global expansion through Amazon allows brands to test products in different geographies quickly and cost-effectively. For example, a fashion label can launch a new accessory in Europe while simultaneously gauging demand in North America, using the insights to adjust marketing, production, and inventory strategies with minimal upfront investment.
Data-driven insights
Amazon provides sellers with a wealth of performance and consumer data, from keyword searches and click-through rates to product reviews and purchase trends. For fashion and consumer goods brands, these insights can inform product development, pricing strategies, and promotional campaigns far more effectively than relying on traditional retail feedback loops.
By leveraging Amazon’s analytics tools, brands can spot rising trends earlier, identify underperforming SKUs, and fine-tune product listings to maximise visibility. This creates a continuous feedback cycle where customer behaviour directly shapes inventory planning and product design, ultimately driving both sales and customer satisfaction.
The common challenges faced by e-commerce Amazon businesses
Here are four common hurdles facing many fashion and consumer goods brands and manufacturers when they engage in eCommerce with Amazon:
Limited visibility – Brands often struggle to track inventory levels, order status, and sales performance across multiple channels, which can lead to stockouts, overselling, or poor customer experiences.
Lack of automation – Manual processes for order management, inventory updates, and data entry slow down operations and increase the risk of costly errors.
Compliance problems – Amazon has strict requirements for product data, labelling, and shipping; failure to meet these standards can result in penalties, delays, or even account suspension.
Planning complexity – Rapid shifts in demand, seasonality, and the fast pace of fashion and consumer trends make it difficult to forecast accurately and align supply with customer expectations.
BlueCherry helps you overcome these challenges. Our eCommerce integration makes it easy for you to link your supply chain with top eCommerce websites, like Amazon. Learn more about our eCommerce Integration.
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How do you overcome eCommerce Amazon business challenges?
These challenges make selling on Amazon hard. Some things you can do to overcome them include:
Defining business objectives
At BlueCherry, one of our first priorities is to understand your objectives when parting with an eCommerce platform like Amazon. Our process always begins by working with customers to understand their business goals with online marketplaces. Then CGS helps clients identify processes and technology to support those goals.
“It’s really important to help customers find the best fit to achieve their goals,” says Jason Roth, Vice President of CGS. “We collaborate with customers on their business strategy before any technology comes into play. Where do they want their product to be? What do they want to gain? Market share? Sales growth? Greater profits? Faster fulfilment times? Streamlined processes? First, we have to know our client’s end goals and the business requirements. Then we can implement the best technology solution.”
Align objectives with technology
Once you outline the objectives, it’s time to align them with the right technology solutions to make them happen. The business requirements of Amazon and other platforms are always changing. Even brands with their own eCommerce sites need a technology partner who is continually investing in the R&D to know what’s coming next from the big online marketplaces, whether it’s Walmart.com, Target.com, Macys.com, Etsy or Amazon.
It takes end-to-end automation, such as integrated enterprise resource planning, to grow online sales efficiently and profitably. The right solution must help you master order management and fulfilment, a major emphasis in working with online marketplaces.
For example, BlueCherry’s Amazon Connector and eCommerce integration tools enable automatic retrieval of Amazon orders, corresponding updates to inventory, generation of pick tickets, packing instructions, and shipping labels, and transmission of shipping information and confirmations to both Amazon and the consumer.
Success online also requires digitalised and streamlined processes for:
Omnichannel planning — Embracing a holistic strategy across channels and business disciplines. Planning a targeted mix for each channel, including Amazon as its own channel, if needed.
Product Lifecycle Management — Moving fast to design and spec out products so that you can respond to quickly evolving online demand trends.
Shop floor control — Manufacturing products rapidly, with transparent tracking, monitoring and quality control, so you can speed goods into available-to-sell status as efficiently as possible.
Last, but certainly not least, lean into integrated business analytics. Amazon is a business built on analytics. Other marketplaces are very analytically savvy, too. Suppliers have an imperative to use analytics to perform well on Amazon and other platforms.
How BlueCherry supports your e-commerce Amazon Business
Solutions such as BlueCherry Business Intelligence draw on analytical data feeds from Amazon and other marketplaces and combine those insights with forecasts and projections gleaned from other information analyses. This makes it so much easier to create an eCommerce Amazon Business.
Are you ready to automate your business for success on Amazon and other online marketplaces? Download our ebook on Doing Business with Amazon, to uncover operational tactics and technology to help grow your business not only on Amazon, but all online marketplaces.
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