2012 was a record-breaking holiday season for businesses selling on Amazon, with more than two million third-party sellers reporting record holiday growth.
Amazon said unit growth solely from sellers in the US increased more than 40 percent year-over-year. Sellers sold hundreds of millions of units worth tens of billions of dollars worldwide.
“We value the breadth and depth of selection that businesses selling on Amazon offer our more than 188 million active customers worldwide,” said Peter Faricy, VP for Amazon Marketplace.
Sellers around the world continued the rapid adoption of Amazon’s innovative fulfillment service, which allows sellers to have Amazon ship their products directly to customers and offer Amazon Prime benefits, Free Super Saver Shipping, simple exporting to customers around the world, and easy returns for orders placed on Amazon.com.
Sellers using Amazon’s numerous other e-commerce services also had a big holiday season.
During the holidays, Amazon said its third party sellers shipped items from around the globe to customers in all 50 US states and countries worldwide from Aruba to Zambia.
It said the sellers sold enough Santa Hats for Santa to be able to wear a new hat every day for the next 137 years. They also sold enough smartphone and tablet screen protectors to cover the field of every NFL stadium, four times over, as well as enough tea lights to keep a votive illuminated continuously for over 200 years.