Amazon. Gone: The Incentive Industry Regroups Following The Retail Giant’s Abrupt Withdrawal From The Incentive Merchandise Fulfillment Market

This is the title of the cover story of the recently released May issue of Incentive Magazine. When I first saw it, it made me laugh, then after reading the article and some further reflection, I laughed again, but this time with a little derision.

The author does a fine job of pointing out the fact that Amazon, in a very abrupt fashion, decided to stop fulfilling merchandise awards to the incentive industry and what that means for the happy traditional merchandise fulfillers who remain to pick up the pieces. Amazon has not revealed the reasons for leaving the business “we do comment on internal business decisions.” In only a couple short years, they were able to gain several millions of dollars of incremental business (some have it as high as more than $50 million, I guess it wasn’t enough to motivate them to keep and attempt to grow that share of the incentive industry.

The questioned not raised in the article and one that needs to be addressed is why did so many companies in such a short time switch to fulfilling there awards program through Amazon.com in the first place? As I was involved in several sales of the Amazon.com product I can tell you first hand those clients were frankly sick and tired of the pathetic choice offered in traditional award catalogs and the ridiculous prices the traditional merchandise award companies were charging for the awards...often 100% more than retail! Amazon solved both those problems, millions of items to choose from at the best prices anywhere!

So what happens now? Well with glee in their eyes, the traditional merchandise boys will gladly fulfill your points based programs; shake your right hand for the business while they’re picking your pocket with their left. There’ll be a lot of hoo hoo about how they are going to add terrific new things to the tired traditional merchandise catalog, more this, more that etc. But in the end it will still be that same old pig that we’ve seen in the industry since the beginning of time.

Unless of course, you realize that the Amazon.com gift card, as shown on this merchant list at Award of Choice is still very much alive and well. You can still have the fabulous choice and terrific pricing, actually lower than before because the incentive houses won’t be adding their markup to Amazon’s cost.