Excite IT signs deal with Amazon

Online reseller's entire product range will be made available on Amazon.co.uk

Online reseller Excite IT has become one of the first channel players to sign a deal with Amazon. The move will see Excite’s entire product range made available on Amazon.co.uk.

The agreement, which goes live this week, is part of Amazon’s Merchants@Amazon programme.

Sacha Wilson, UK sales manager for Merchants@Amazon, told CRN: “The Merchants@Amazon programme has been running in the US for four years and we launched it globally last month. We allow other retailers to sell within Amazon and they appear on our site as an Amazon merchant. We handle the whole transaction and take a commission for each sale.”

Merchants@Amazon is open to any e-tailer that sells goods which fit into Amazon’s product categories.

“We approached Excite IT as we liked its price points and its product range and thought it would be a good fit for us,” Wilson added.

Excite IT began trading on 12 September 2005, purely targeting the consumer market. However, from 1 November, Excite will be launching a business-to-business site called Excite IT Business.

Paul Graham managing director of Excite, told CRN: “We were approached by Amazon about a month ago to join the programme. They said they liked what we were doing, particularly our customer service.

“Amazon has predicted that we will receive an extra 2,000 orders a week during peak times.”

James Roper, chief executive of the Interactive Media in Retail Group, the industry body for e-tailers, said: “Amazon is proving its dominance as an online retailer so any company associated with Amazon will benefit.”

Roper said the deal is likely to be fruitful in the run up to Christmas. IMRG predicted that 25 per cent of electrical goods will be sold online in the run up to Christmas this year.

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