Citing ‘Popular Demand,’ Amazon Expands Handmade Categories

New Handmade At Amazon Categories

Like many of Amazon’s brand extensions or autonomous delivery projects, the company’s Handmade at Amazon endeavor was roundly met with derision. Why, the thinking went, would anyone look for authentic, handcrafted goods from one of the largest sellers in the new global economy?

Well, it turns out that plenty did — so much so that Amazon announced several new categories for Handmade to keep up with the demand.

Citing “popular demand,” Amazon is adding fashion accessories, baby products and toys and games to its Handmade sub-marketplace as of Thursday (May 12). The new categories join the extant ones of jewelry, home decor, artwork, stationery and paper supplies, kitchen and dining and furniture. Steve Johnson, director of Handmade at Amazon, explained that the move came as a direct result of positive feedback to the platform and calls from customers for an even wider selection.

“The most frequent piece of feedback we receive from customers and artisans is they want even more categories of handcrafted items,” Johnson said in a statement. “We are excited to better serve our growing number of artisans by unveiling the Accessories, Baby and Toys & Games categories, while providing our customers that love handmade items a quick and simple way to purchase fun and unique items with the familiar Amazon experience they know and trust. Handmade at Amazon has been performing beyond our expectations. In fact, leading up to Mother’s Day, we saw sales jump more than 50 percent.”

Amazon also said that its sellers with Handmade have fit perfectly into the company’s shipping solutions, namely Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which has seen a 100 percent increase in users since the start of the new year. No wonder, either — among sellers who opted into the FBA program to capture Prime customers, 95 percent have successfully completed a sale.