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Back-to-school season worked for brands selling not so pricey items on Amazon

Essential items and inexpensive stationery were a big draw for BTS shoppers.
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Francis Scialabba

4 min read

Water filtration brand Hydros’s founder and CEO Winston Ibrahim was pleasantly surprised to see an unexpected 10% spike in sales for Hydros pitchers and water bottles on Amazon this summer. Ibrahim told Retail Brew the “big sales spike over the last two weeks [in August]” was “most likely” thanks to back-to-school shoppers scrambling at the last minute.

Ibrahim also said August was the best month, in terms of sales, the company has seen since it set up its store on Amazon in 2020. Anecdotally, these sales numbers would make any brand selling on Amazon’s superstore jump for joy because it’s been hard to gin up sales on the platform given the rising fees attached to Amazon.

Apart from water bottles, brands that sell stationery supplies also reported an increase in sales on Amazon this summer, per estimates from e-commerce insights firm Profitero. Separately, Mark Power, CEO and founder of Amazon consultancy Podean, said brands selling school essentials from brands like Elmer’s, Scotch, and Crayola racked up sales, in addition to Amazon’s in-house brand Amazon Basics.

To be sure, the back-to-school online sales season has undergone a sea change thanks to Amazon’s two-day summer deals bonanza known as Prime Day. Amazon experts who spoke to Retail Brew agreed that Prime Day has moved up the window for back-to-school shopping to July. But it’s the inexpensive items that seemed to fly off the digital shelves, as parents prioritized needs over dorm room indulgences.

“Sellers leaned into Prime Day as a kickoff for [back to school],” Power told Retail Brew via email. “In terms of uniqueness, the big difference is the drawn out duration…The event has stretched, with customers starting to search and shop earlier.” Amazon said it had its biggest Prime Day ever on July 16 and July 17, this year.

Staples for the class clown: No surprise then that, as of early July, more than half (55%) of back-to-school and college shoppers had already begun shopping for the school year, a report by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics found. With online sales expected to account for nearly 35% of back-to-school sales, per eMarketer, Amazon is expected to grab a higher market share.

With Amazon increasing the number of sale events it offers, Power said, “brands are considering the Prime Day to Labor Day period the true BTS event.”

“Consumers are prioritizing essentials over discretionary and that’s just a reflection of where consumers are at,” Mike Black, chief growth officer at Profitero, told Retail Brew. “Amazon grew in that [stationery] area, which means that consumers know that Amazon has a reputation for being a place where you can find good deals.”

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Summer of supplies: Sales of stationery supplies were up 17%, and unit sales were up 31% this year compared to last, according to Profitero’s estimates. Black said that means brands sold a lot of SKUs at a discounted price. “They played very aggressively in the price space this year to try to win consumers,” he said.

To be sure, these estimates are for stationery brands that sell through the invite-only 1P program on Amazon. Brands that sell through Amazon’s 1P program act as wholesale suppliers to Amazon.

Phil Masiello, CEO of CrunchGrowth, an agency that helps brands scale their business on Amazon and other marketplaces, said that in certain categories, like “furniture and high-ticket items,” sales may have been more challenging.

But among Masiello’s clients, that was not the case. He said his clients that sell electronics saw an increase of 12%–15% in sales on Prime Day over last year, while home textile sales were up 11%. “And that’s not inflation driven. That was just more units,” he said.

Power said, generally speaking, core “supplies” perform better than ancillary categories like furniture, and his clients witnessed an increase in software sales, which he attributed to the back to school season as well.

Same laptop, different school year: Meanwhile, Profitero estimates showed consumers were less likely to splurge on new tech for back to school this year. Unit sales of laptops on Amazon were down 24% YoY from June to August. By contrast, unit sales for stationery supplies were up 10%. 

“Either the deals haven’t been as strong in tech this summer compared to last year, or consumers are prioritizing essentials over discretionary items,” Black said.

Going into the holidays, Ibrahim said, the big thing is that consumers, especially at the mass market level, are increasingly looking for value: “I think we’ve moved into a new world where you will have, to one degree or another, customers who are going to be a lot more price sensitive, because inflation may come down a little bit, but I don’t think it’s going back to where it was.”

Retail news that keeps industry pros in the know

Retail Brew delivers the latest retail industry news and insights surrounding marketing, DTC, and e-commerce to keep leaders and decision-makers up to date.