E-tail giant Amazon has opened up all of its categories for delivery to Europe as it seeks to benefit from sterling’s weakness.
Amazon UK managing director Brian McBride said: “We used to just deliver books and CDs but now it is our full range. Our export business from the UK is going up because of the weakness of the pound.”
He said that to date Amazon UK has shipped to about 200 countries.
This week its US parent reported a strong first quarter. Profits soared 24 per cent to Story text77m (£121.5m) and total sales jumped 18 per cent.
Amazon’s international sales, including the UK, were up 15 per cent to .31bn (£1.59bn). Excluding the impact of exchange rates, international sales rocketed 28 per cent.
McBride said that in the UK Amazon had achieved “good revenue growth, and not at the expense of margin”.
He added that Amazon’s customers may be cutting back in other areas but they are still coming to the e-tailer to treat themselves to CDs and DVDs. “We are not seeing smaller basket sizes,” he said.
There has been recent concern in the entertainment sector over the rising popularity of sites such as Spotify, which allows free streaming of a large collection of music. However, McBride said it was no threat to Amazon’s entertainment division. “We have built up 7 million customers and know much more about them than others out there.”
He also said he was aware that there was a growing “pent-up demand” for Amazon’s digital book reader Kindle in the UK, but did not want to launch it here until any issues had been “ironed out” in the US. “When it does come it will be a great launch,” said McBride.
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