Amazon has announced that Bearhug from Cardiff has been shortlisted at the first ever Amazon Small Business Awards.
The Amazon Small Business Awards will celebrate inspiring and unique UK small businesses selling on Amazon. The awards recognise small businesses across three categories: Small Business of the Year, Exporting Small Business of the Year, and Innovative Small Business of the Year.
Bearhug, an innovative company that creates and manufactures support products for sport, has been shortlisted in the Innovative Small Business of the Year category.
“Our company has gone from strength to strength this year and to receive a nomination for an Amazon Small Business Award caps off an impressive 12 months for us” said Rhys George, Managing Director, Bearhug. “To get this recognition from Amazon is a great testament to the dedication of our team and I’m looking forward to celebrating this achievement with them.”
“Small businesses like Bearhug are the backbone of Amazon’s drive for offering customers great value, selection and convenience,” said Simon Donegan, Head of UK Seller Services, Amazon, who announced the shortlist at the Amazon Academy held in Birmingham today. “These awards give us the opportunity to recognise and showcase some of the most impressive small businesses in the UK, and help others learn from their successes, and we are thrilled to be able to offer the winners a trip to our global head office in Seattle.”
Small Business winners from each category, due to be announced on 4th December, will receive a prize package including six months of dedicated account management, £10,000 of Amazon advertising credit, and a trip to Amazon’s Seattle head office to meet senior business leaders and receive 1-2-1 training on growing their business.
The nominees have been evaluated on a range of criteria in keeping with Amazon’s own customer obsession and dedication to offering the best available product selection and utmost convenience. The awards aim to identify small businesses that demonstrate deep customer centricity; that offer unique products that address customer needs innovatively; and that have a truly inspiring origin and company vision.
Since opening its sites to smaller, independent sellers nearly 20 years ago, Amazon has been a growth engine for millions of small businesses around the world. In 2000, 3 per cent of physical gross merchandise sales on Amazon came from third-party businesses. By 2018 this increased to 58 per cent, following years of investment in technology, infrastructure and selling tools to help them grow their business. Tens of thousands of UK-based small businesses now sell their products on Amazon’s global sites, helping to support more than 80,000 UK jobs and achieving over £2bn of export sales in 2018 alone.
In June, Amazon launched its Clicks and Mortar programme to help small businesses grow on both the high street and online. Over the course of the programme, more than 100 small online brands are being given the opportunity to test physical retail for the first time in pop-up shops around the country. Amazon is also helping create over 150 full-time apprenticeships in small online businesses through a £1 million SME Apprenticeship Fund, while the Amazon Academy training programme, which is running today in Birmingham, provides free digital training to help businesses to grow their sales and boost exports.
Amazon customers with a valid Amazon.co.uk account are invited to select the winner, by voting for their favourite nominee in each category, until 11:59pm GMT on Sunday 24th November. When customers vote by visiting: http://www.amazon.co.uk/small-business-spotlight they will enter a prize draw with up to 100 prizes on offer.
