Demdaco is an artisan gifts business that has been selling on Amazon for roughly the past five years. It won’t be holding any sales around Prime Day.
Source: Demdaco PR
Shoppers booting up a web browser and expecting to see big discounts for Amazon’s annual Prime Day megasale on Monday and Tuesday might come away disappointed.
Experts say Prime Day deals this year could be particularly limited due to supply-chain obstacles that have been caused by the pandemic. Also, with consumer spending robust, many brands don’t feel the need to slash prices to compete. Others have inventories that are already too stretched to prime the pump any further. CNBC spoke with businesses that are looking for other ways to win eyeballs — and customer loyalty — online this week.
Demdaco, an artisan crafts and gifts purveyor that sells on Amazon and other wholesale channels, is hopeful that it can use Prime Day to build brand awareness, but it won’t be putting its merchandise on sale.
“We’re not trying to be the low-cost leader,” said Marisa Lytle, vice president of e-commerce and consumer engagement at Demdaco. “We’re just trying to get visibility. And because Prime Day offers great visibility, we invest heavily in the advertising opportunities because Amazon is getting tons of traffic.”
Lytle, who used to work in the consumer electronics sector, noted that Amazon has historically used Prime Day to discount its own tech gadgets. Items like the Amazon Echo, the Fire Tablet or Fire TV often end up being promoted heavily on Amazon’s home page. She said that’s one reason why it’s not worth Demdaco trying to compete with the e-commerce giant by offering its own deals.
According to a report by Adobe Analytics, the best discounts around Prime Day 2021 will be on electronics and toys. The sweetest deals won’t come until later this year though. Bargains across all categories of retail are expected to be an average of two-times steeper during what’s known as Cyber Weekend, Adobe said. That’s the post-Thanksgiving period between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Grabbing attention during the hunt
Instead, Demdaco — which has been selling its Mother’s Day mugs, monogrammed teddy bears and other gifts on Amazon for about five years now — has been ramping up advertisements online and in the mail ahead of Prime Day. The company is encouraging shoppers to buy gifts for celebrations like birthdays, graduations, anniversaries and summer barbecues.
“We make sure that we marry up the campaigns that we’re running on other channels, like social media channels, to whatever it is that we’re promoting on Prime Day,” Lytle said. “Things to grab people’s attention while they’re there shopping for their great deal … but making ourselves relevant to what’s going on with them right now.”
Cosabella, a luxury lingerie and sleepwear brand, took a slightly different approach. It held a two-week sale on bras and underwear in the days leading up to Prime Day, rather than during the event. Guido Campello, co-CEO of Cosabella, said the approach was a way for the company to show how much it values having a direct relationship with its customers, outside of Amazon.
“We’d like to position Cosabella.com as the key destination for our customers to find the newest styles, largest inventory of our most popular items and latest deals,” he said. A range of Cosabella’s merchandise is also available for sale on Amazon.
