Amazon is boasting that it had the largest holiday shopping season to date as in-store shopping plummets amid the pandemic.
The online retail giant revealed that independent sellers on its platform saw over $4.8 billion USD (about $6.2 billion CAD) in sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday worldwide, depicting a 60 percent increase from last year.
“Through Cyber Monday, 2020 has been the largest holiday shopping season so far in our company’s history thanks to customers around the world,” Amazon wrote in a blog post.
The company says that 71,000 small and medium-sized businesses worldwide surpassed $100,000 USD (about $129,000 CAD) in sales so far.
Amazon’s own products are also doing well this holiday season, as it says that customers purchased “more Ring, Blink, and eero devices on Amazon than during any previous holiday shopping weekend.” Its new Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick 4K also saw an increase in sales.
It’s no surprise that Amazon is seeing record sales this year given the current restrictions on in-store shopping in parts of the world.
This comes as thousands of Amazon workers around the world organized strikes and protests on Black Friday as part of a global movement, as reported by VICE. The protests took place in 15 countries around the world, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Australia and India.
The various protests demanded action from the online retailer to increase pay, participate in union activity and improve working conditions.
Source: Amazon
