A brief history of Prime Day, according to Amazon

While many Amazon Prime members are busy snatching deals during the e-commerce giant’s 2019 Amazon Prime Day, here are some fun facts surrounding the increasingly popular sale.

According to Amazon’s ‘History of Prime Day,’ the company’s online Black Friday originated during its 20th anniversary in 2015.

Even though the first Prime Day only lasted 24 hours on July 15th, 2015, its premiere performance was astounding. Amazon saw people purchasing 34.4 million items, which is more than Black Friday in the year prior.

Among those items were a record-breaking number of Amazon devices and 24,000 pressure cookers. It seems that people loved pressure cookers, and for some reason, Amazon decided to emphasize this.

During the 2016 Prime Day, that affection intensified. In fact, Amazon sold 215,000 pressure cookers, which is almost nine times the sales figures of 2015’s record.

Besides this, Prime members on average snatched an Alexa-exclusive deal per second using their voice.

For 2017 Prime Day, Amazon decided to extend the event to 30 hours, and tens of millions of Prime members took advantage of this by grabbing 3.5 million toys off the virtual shelves.

Many of them also showed great interest in the Amazon Echo Dot, a Google Home Mini competitor that features an LED ring around its fabric-laden body. The smart home device later became the most popular Prime member purchase.

Meanwhile, a pressure cooker ascended to top seller status in the U.S. and Canada, continuing its legacy as one of the most sought-after kitchen appliances on Amazon.

For 2018, the Seattle-based online retail giant redefined how many hours a Prime Day should have by adding another six. From July 15th to early morning on the 16th (in PT), Amazon and its partners cleared a total of 100 million products worldwide.

An official breakdown showed that people bought more than five million items in each of the following categories: toys, beauty products, PCs and computer accessories, apparel and kitchen products.

Speaking of kitchen products, Amazon sold more than 300,000 pressure cookers in the span of 36 hours. That was around 2.3 units sold per second, slightly behind 2016’s record of 2.5 units per second.

For 2019, Amazon expanded people’s window of opportunity even further. Unlike previous events, the latest Prime Day is, for the first time in history, a two-day long deal-hunting season that starts from July 15th to July 16th.

If you are an Amazon Prime member, it’s probably a golden opportunity to spend a bit of time to seek out the deals you want.

Here’s a quick look at some of 2019’s best Prime deals. Happy hunting.

Source: Amazon, Amazon Canada