287,000+ clothing items sold by Amazon UK on Prime Day as own-brands join in

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
Jul 18, 2018

More than 287,000 items of clothing and 400,000 beauty products were purchased by Britons on Amazon Prime Day this year, marking the busiest shopping event of the year in the UK so far.

Amazon’s exclusive shopping event for Prime members ran for 36 hours this year, offering Prime members more time to shop than previous events.

The online giant said on Wednesday its most popular items purchased in the UK included Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, Finish Dishwasher Tablets and the Bosch Cordless Drill.

However, the fashion and beauty categories also performed strongly. It was the first time Amazon’s private fashion brands, including Find and Truth & Fable, were available as Prime Day deals.

The heatwave hitting the UK over recent weeks is likely to have contributed to the shopping bonanza, with summer dresses, sandals and denim styles emerging as popular purchases.

But Prime Day didn’t run as smoothly as expected, as several glitches made Amazon’s website crash in the US and other countries, including the UK. The company said the technical issues were due to the high volume of orders, as customers in the US purchased more items in the first hour of Prime Day than in the first hour last year.

The technical meltdown was resolved within the same day, however customers complained of a delayed and lacklustre response from Amazon.

Doug Gurr, UK Country Manager, said: “The event is now so popular with Prime members that Prime Day 2018 became Amazon’s busiest shopping event of the year so far here in the UK. Hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses also experienced success on Prime Day with some of our most popular deals purchased from sellers.”