Amazon launches a new program to help new products get started

Recently, Amazon announced that a major new plan has officially begun to be implemented. This new plan, called "Build It" , will allow consumers to pay in advance to support their favorite products. Once the target amount is reached, Amazon will manufacture and ship them.

Some sellers who have played a lot outside the site are not unfamiliar with this. Isn't this crowdfunding? It is exactly the same as the crowdfunding website Kickstarter, which is to sell products in advance before the products are available, and then produce them after raising money.

Because you don't need to stock up in advance to test the market reaction, this model is very suitable for small sellers who have good ideas but insufficient funds to start . The crowdfunding plan launched by Amazon currently only has three products.

The price is $89.99 for the smart note printer, $34.99 for the smart nutrition scale, and $79.99 for the cuckoo clock. All three are Amazon-owned products with built-in Alexa voice assistant.

The prices of these three products are relatively high, and Amazon's new feature does not indicate the amount of money that needs to be raised like Kickstarter does. Instead, it uses a symbol similar to an LD progress bar to show the percentage of fundraising completed , and also marks the fundraising deadline.

Products participating in the "Build It" program will appear in Amazon stores as normal and will be displayed like ordinary products. The collection period for the electronic kitchen scale above ends on March 19th. If the collection is successful, it will be shipped between July and September (buyers will need to pay for the purchase only after the collection is successful, otherwise the order will be automatically cancelled).

Sellers who see the page above may find that this product page is the same as an ordinary product page except for the progress bar. Will these "Build It" products be displayed in the search results?

I did some research and found that although these products were not included in the category ranking system, in every big word search result, these three beta versions of "Build It" products were ranked first in the search results without exception! They were higher than the three ad positions in the first row and second only to the brand display ads.

Although these three products are small vertical categories with small volume, Amazon has occupied the first search display position when it has no actual products yet (in the crowdfunding stage), which is quite disgusting. It is said that the first task of the new head Andy Jassy is to deal with the antitrust pressure from the government. These operations will be caught by the antitrust agency. Maybe because these three categories are relatively niche, they are tested here first.

Of course, apart from the old problem of where to display crowdfunding products, there is nothing wrong with crowdfunding itself. Many off-site sellers have already tasted the sweetness on Kickstarter, and Amazon has not denied the possibility of opening this plan to third-party sellers in the future. The official said, "This is just the first step of the 'Build It' plan. In the future, we will regularly show consumers more things they may like and turn their expectations into reality."

Therefore, it is still possible that Amazon will gradually open this plan to third-party sellers after testing its own products. Crowdfunding will gradually become popular among Amazon sellers. Products such as innovative small appliances and toys are very suitable for crowdfunding. These categories of products account for a large proportion of crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

After Amazon required sellers to purchase commercial insurance some time ago, sellers in these categories are a little nervous. After all, electrical appliances and toys are among the categories most likely to encounter safety disputes . If Amazon starts to enforce it on a large scale one day, these categories will definitely be the first to be affected.

However, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The market for these categories is very broad, and there is also good news from this crowdfunding. We should boldly try out the products we need to understand and develop.