BREAKING NEWS: Amazon A No Show, As Millions In Stock Sits In Warehouses

It’s 10 past 2.00pm and at this stage Amazon Australia is a no show.

The local site is still flogging books, music and little else. Their Prime site is still offering Australians goods from their US Black Friday Sale, however shipping is expensive.

ChannelNews has confirmed that several big retailers have put in place promotional programs to compete head-on with Amazon, with distributors such as Synnex and Ingram Micro holding stock for these promotions.

According to sources, these retailers are committed financially to this stock, and it is being held separately from Amazon stock at distributor locations.

We have been told that the ACCC has informed retailers that should they run a promotion to compete against Amazon, they must have stock in the country to fulfil promotional orders.

It appears Amazon has delayed their launch.

We have spoken to two Marketplace participants, who were told that their products would go live at 2pm today, but at this stage no products are live.

We have also been told by Marketplace participants that they had to have stock in country, to facilitate the launch and expected influx of trading.

Apparently, Amazon took key partners at their word when it came to the volumes currently being sold in Australia.

Sources have informed us that Amazon matched the volumes for several tier-one vendors, who are currently key partners with retailers in Australia.

The initial testing phase – or ‘soft launch’ – was limited to a small number of select customers, who were originally set to access the site Thursday afternoon. For the majority of Australians, the bulk of the website currently remains invisible.

The e-commerce giant has not publically announced its launch date, however, is set to come out in full swing Friday morning.

Earlier this week, Nielsen revealed that Amazon US is already the second most popular mass retailer in Australia, coming short of Woolworths. As such, the e-commerce giant is in good stead to launch its Black Friday sale tomorrow.

As one person said of the delay, “At least you can buy a book”.

More to follow…

About Post Author

David Richards

David Richards has been writing about technology for more than 30 years. A former Fleet Street journalist, he wrote the Award Winning Series on the Federated Ships Painters + Dockers Union for the Bulletin that led to a Royal Commission. He is also a Logie Winner for Outstanding Contribution To TV Journalism with a story called The Werribee Affair. In 1997, he built the largest Australian technology media company and prior to that the third largest PR company that became the foundation company for Ogilvy PR. Today he writes about technology and the impact on both business and consumers.