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Is Amazon‘s German marketplace worth 10 billion euros? The platform seller may have given away its German turnover by accident, but the company denies the figures.
“Seven times more turnover in the US”
A leaked mail suggests that Amazon achieves 10.2 billion euros of gross merchandise volume on the German market, as Wortfilter calculated based on an advertising mail intended for Amazon’s trade partners in Germany. In the mail, the online retailer encourages sellers on its platform to sell their products in the United States as well, but in doing so, the mail inadvertently gives away the regional turnover figures.
Amazon is the biggest marketplace in the world, according to the mail, and 50 % of all turnover is generated the US marketplace, making it bigger than “all European marketplaces combined”. An interesting revelation in itself, but it is followed by more details: although the American platform only has half the amount of active sellers, the mail says that “Amazon.com generates seven times more turnover than Amazon.de”.
Since Jeff Bezos recently told shareholders that last year’s global turnover was 277 billion dollars, 160 billion of which came from platform sales, the German amount can be calculated to be 11.42 billion dollars (10.2 billion euros). Excluding returns and cancellations, net turnover would be 8.57 billion euros – meaning Amazon.de represents almost a third of the entire German e-commerce market at almost double the size of Zalando, which is Germany’s biggest domestic online seller with a Gross Merchandise Volume of 6.6 billion euros.
“Wrong figures” in own marketing
Since it is almost a taboo to disclose such information given the fierce competition between the various platforms, Amazon now formally denies the leaked numbers. The American retail giant says that the e-mail was based on wrong figures that “have nothing to do with the sales of third parties on Amazon”.
The revealed figure is “by no means correct” and it would be “wrong to assume that the figures reveal anything about Amazon’s business numbers either in Germany or worldwide”, according to a spokeswoman. Not that its make the situation much better, because would that not mean that Amazon is trying to seduce (or mislead) its own sellers with incorrect information?
