Water filtration brand Hydros’s founder and CEO Winston Ibrahim was pleasantly surprised to see an unexpected 10% spike in sales for Hydros pitchers and water bottles on Amazon this summer. Ibrahim told Retail Brew the “big sales spike over the last two weeks [in August]” was “most likely” thanks to back-to-school shoppers scrambling at the last minute.
Ibrahim also said August was the best month, in terms of sales, the company has seen since it set up its store on Amazon in 2020. Anecdotally, these sales numbers would make any brand selling on Amazon’s superstore jump for joy because it’s been hard to gin up sales on the platform given the rising fees attached to Amazon.
Apart from water bottles, brands that sell stationery supplies also reported an increase in sales on Amazon this summer, per estimates from e-commerce insights firm Profitero. Separately, Mark Power, CEO and founder of Amazon consultancy Podean, said brands selling school essentials from brands like Elmer’s, Scotch, and Crayola racked up sales, in addition to Amazon’s in-house brand Amazon Basics.
To be sure, the back-to-school online sales season has undergone a sea change thanks to Amazon’s two-day summer deals bonanza known as Prime Day. Amazon experts who spoke to Retail Brew agreed that Prime Day has moved up the window for back-to-school shopping to July. But it’s the inexpensive items that seemed to fly off the digital shelves, as parents prioritized needs over dorm room indulgences.
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