Amazon has announced Amazon Small Business Academy, an initiative to help entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses harness the power of the internet to reach more customers, build their brand, and grow sales. The initiatives includes in-person seminars, community college courses, and webinars.
The Amazon Small Business Academy program also includes a grant to the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) to help fund curriculum development and instruction of digital business courses in community college classrooms across the U.S. The classes will cover the fundamentals of online business strategies, marketing, merchandising, inventory management, and more. The curriculum will provide sixteen hours of beginner, intermediate and advanced content, created in collaboration with NACCE and the program’s lead schools.
The Amazon Small Business Academy program also offers webinars to help current and aspiring small business owners throughout the country gain digital skills. The online seminars will provide best practices for successful selling in Amazon stores and include live Q&A with experts. Registration is now open for an initial webinar.
Altogether, U.S.-based small and medium-sized businesses sell on average more than 4,000 items per minute in Amazon’s stores. Overall, independent third-party sellers – primarily small and medium-sized businesses – made up 58% of all physical gross merchandise sold in Amazon’s stores last year and their sales far exceeded $2 billion on Prime Day in July this year.
In little more than a year, U.S. companies with products in Amazon Storefronts have sold more than 250 million items to more than 70 million unique customers. Amazon has released more than 150 tools and services in 2019 to help independent small and medium-sized businesses grow their sales online, which is part of the more than $15 billion the company is on track to invest this year in the success of its selling partners.
Amazon recently announced the finalists for its first-ever Small Business Spotlight Awards, an awards program established this year to honor and celebrate top entrepreneurs and small businesses across the country selling in Amazon’s stores.