Through our 22 stores world-wide, our selling partners in Austria can reach 300 million active Amazon customers in more than 200 countries and regions, including over 200 million Prime members. This potential is increasingly used by more than 2,500 SMEs from Austria selling on Amazon, as evidenced by the most recent figures on the development of export sales by our Austrian SME selling partners. Compared to the previous year, sales in 2022 grew by an extra 10%, totalling over 550 million euros, continuing the positive trend in international sales. Amazon’s selling partners in Austria were able to sell a total of around 20 million products.
“An increasing number of companies are using e-commerce as a sales channel to increase their sales – often as part of a multichannel strategy. Especially when it comes to international expansion, marketplaces such as Amazon offer fantastic, low-threshold opportunities for small and medium-sized companies,” says Iris Thalbauer, Managing Director of the Federal Trade Division of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce. “The future will see the increase of smart integrations between offline selling and online sales. Both channels have their justification and their audience. More and more customers shop both online and in brick-and-mortar stores. Businesses that also sell online will of course face many challenges, but they will also find new opportunities. Especially for small businesses, marketplaces can be a good place to start as they offer the opportunity to sell internationally. The window to the world is huge.”
That is why we have created our knowledge platform Quickstart Online in cooperation with the Federal Trade Division of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and many other partners. The platform offers access to comprehensive resources and is free of charge and accessible to all interested parties. Know-how is shared in webinars, videos, brochures and one-on-one coaching sessions. “Quickstart Online is one of many Amazon initiatives to support SMEs. We have supported these initiatives with European investments of more than 8 billion euros in 2022 alone. This way, we can specifically help SMEs increase their efficiency and expand easily with just two clicks,” says Markus Schöberl, Director Seller Services, Amazon Germany and Austria: “Thanks to the launch of our European Expansion Accelerator, existing selling partners can sell their products on all our EU stores within three business days. Previously, this process took about 45 days per marketplace.”
EU-wide sales and significant growth in global exports
Of the more than 2,500 Austrian SMEs that sold on Amazon in 2022, around 2,300 exported to other EU countries, achieving around 465 million euros in export sales. Last year, more than 100 Austrian SMEs crossed the sales threshold of one million euros. One of these businesses is D&D Living. Founded in 2018 by Daniel Ender and Daniel Schlacher, the Vorarlberg-based company designs clever home products, and was able to quickly develop their exports thanks to Amazon’s pan-European shipping network: “In the past three years, we have increased our sales on Amazon throughout Europe by 150 percent per year on average. We recently reached 3 million euros in sales,” the founders say. Ender and Schlacher are childhood friends who turned their passion for DIY into a successful, fast-growing company with four team members and three freelancers. They plan to continue expanding internationally and beyond the EU, hoping to launch in the US before the end of this year: “We see great potential for further significant growth together with Amazon.”
The development of SME export sales outside the EU, with the US market making up the largest share, shows that this is a promising approach: global sales of the approximately 1,500 Austrian SMEs exporting worldwide have increased significantly from over 50 million euros in 2021 to over 85 million euros in 2022.
Sales to Germany make up the largest share of all Austrian SME exports, according to Salzburg-based NAKED Optics: “The majority of our sales are made from the German market. We have seen great developments compared to previous years, especially during the winter,” says founder Florian Pflanzl. After Germany the largest export markets for our Austrian selling partners are the US and France. Most of the products were sold in the following categories: home, computer & accessories, sports & leisure as well as drugstore & personal care and toys.
Strong export growth across all regions – metropolitan areas retain consistent growth
With more than 150 SMEs selling on Amazon, Salzburg has the strongest growth in export sales when comparing the individual Austrian federal states. The total sales of 70 million euros show an increase of more than 25 percent compared to 2021. Exports by SMEs in Styria and Vorarlberg have also developed strongly, with the international sales of the 300+ Styrian SMEs increasing by more than 20 percent to around 70 million euros. The more than 100 SMEs from Vorarlberg selling on Amazon were able to increase their international sales by more than 20 percent.
When comparing export sales by cities, the federal capital, Vienna, remains in first place. With more than 600 SMEs, Vienna generated over 150 million euros in export sales in 2022, followed by Graz and Linz, each with more than 150 SMEs selling through Amazon. Graz-based SMEs generated export sales of more than 20 million euros. The increase of export sales by Linz-based SMEs was particularly impressive – an increase of more than 55 percent to a total of around 25 million euros.