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SEATTLE-As VP of consumer electronics for Ama-zon. com, Ben Hartman heads the third-largest CE retail operation on the planet. In this exclusive inter-view with TWICE, the onetime investment banker and financial analyst shares his thoughts on showroom-ing, UPP, vendor relations, third-party sellers, mobile commerce and the industry's most promising new products and technologies.
TWICE: How's business?
Ben Hartman, Amazon. com: 2013 is a very ex-citing time in CE, particularly for customers shopping on Amazon. com. Amazon's sales are growing both in established categories like PCs and cameras, and in newer areas which are driving accelerated growth. We're seeing opportunity as manufacturers intro-duce products across many categories that work with a broader ecosystem of connected devices, both at home and on the go.
We're seeing the most growth among products and categories that easily integrate digital services like streaming content and cloud storage, and allow customers to access their content, on demand, wher-ever they are.
TWICE: What is your third-party sellers' share of Amazon's total sales? How do they shape or influ-ence Amazon's own CE assortment?
Hartman: Third-party, or 3P, sellers are thriving on Amazon-our millions of third-party sellers had a tremendous holiday season in 2012 with more than 40 percent unit growth year-over-year. Third-party sales now represent 39 percent of total units sold on Amazon.
Within CE, our third-party platform ensures cus-tomers have access to a broad selection, with the availability to purchase items with limited supply, including end-of-life items that may no longer be in production, emerging technologies that may not yet be mainstream, and popular items that are in high de-mand.
There are several services for sellers to leverage in addition to the Amazon Marketplace, such as Fulfilled By Amazon [FBA], Webstore, our payments platforms and Product Ads.
TWICE: What is Amazon's reaction to manufactur-ers' UPP and MAP policies that limit how you can price their products?
Hartman: We believe in delivering the best pos-sible value to our customers and we want Amazon to be the place they trust to find competitive prices. We also believe it is in the long-term interest of manu-facturers to focus on providing a fair and transparent shopping experience that best meets the needs of customers. We do not believe price controls are in the best interest of...