Experience

You might have seen some data on Prime Day last week. Some of it was bad (early sales were reportedly pacing below YoY comps) and some of it was good (Amazon said after the event that it was the highest grossing four-day period connected to a Prime Day sale), but none of it was easy to sort out.

Sort of like the experience itself.

For brands, higher cost of goods due to tariffs meant they had less margin to offer deals (or, at least, less generous deals). For consumers, fewer deals meant Amazon was harder to navigate—a recurring, growing theme among those who are critical of the retailer.

Now, it seems, consumers may be starting to agree.

In our Fractures in the Funnel report we released earlier this month, we shared some data that showed consumers have increasingly positive sentiment toward buying directly from brands (and increasingly negative sentiment toward buying from marketplaces (like Amazon and Temu).

That tracks with what we saw early in Prime Day data: While some ecommerce vendors saw in their data that Amazon sales were down 41% YoY on Day 1, our data showed Day 1 DTC sales were up 15.5%.

Now, there’s the combined factor that consumers maybe just aren’t spending as much right now.

But if DTC data suggests growth and Amazon data suggests a struggle, then perhaps that experience is starting to weigh?

Our bet right now at Stamped is that we can make that DTC experience even better for consumers. I started to tease out what this bet looks like last week, but the short version of it is that our starting point is a reviews tool that actively listens to what your customers are saying and takes action on that. (If you want more details, you can join our waitlist to learn more.)

Though I won’t take the bait in terms of criticizing Amazon too much, I will say this feels to me like an area where brands will differentiate that DTC experience going forward. Amazon does, in fact, listen to consumers, but it is just too big, and has too many sellers with competing interests, to ensure that the actions they take end up creating great experiences for the consumer.

And, as we’re starting to see, that might just be the way that brands end up winning.