Amazon continues to grow in Sweden
Arhi Kivilahti, Ada Insights' retail analyst, is writing for Inderes about the Nordic Retail Industry. His views do not represent the view of Inderes, and should not be interpreted as an investment recommendation.
The discussion around whether Amazon will disrupt the Swedish retail market has diminished significantly. Despite the lack of discussion around the company, Amazon continues to thrive. The company is rapidly approaching the top 10 list of most significant online retailers in the country.
According to ehandel.se, Amazon managed to grow by about 30% to nearly two billion SEK (around 200 million €) last year. In 2021 Amazon was the 15th biggest online retailer in Sweden with revenues of 1,5 billion SEK.
The robust growth of 30% puts Amazon close to the top 10 groups of online retailers, as many of the biggest competitors have not been able to grow as fast as Amazon. Of the companies that have already reported 2022 revenues, Amazon has outpaced the others.
Some of the big players have even seen revenues decline. For example, Ellos's revenue (whole Nordic) declined by -2%, and Mathem's revenues declined by -8,5% in Q3/2022.
Amazon is already the biggest in web traffic
Regarding web traffic, Amazon has already grown to have the most significant online retail traffic in Sweden. Amazon’s traffic numbers are double the size of Apotea, one of Sweden's most prominent online pure players. Even ICA, with recipes and groceries, is smaller. The numbers for Boozt represent boozt.com and thus include traffic from the Finnish and Norwegian operations.
So far, Amazon has yet to be able to convert the traffic as efficiently as one could imagine. One reason for that might be the relatively slow delivery times.
Amazon has not yet started to build fulfilment centres
For the Swedish business, Amazon offers regular deliveries with 3-5 days shipping times and priority shipping in 1-2 days. This is likely because the orders are shipped from fulfilment centres in other countries, namely Germany and Poland.
Amazon will likely work to shorten the delivery times. The most important part of making the deliveries faster is having fulfilment centres close to the customers, i.e. in Sweden. A natural comparison to the launch in Sweden is the Australian launch in 2017.
In Australia, Amazon had to build fulfilment centres from the start as there was no nearby market to serve the country. According to MWPVL, a supply chain consultancy firm, since 2017, Amazon has built eight fulfilment centres in Australia.
During that time, the company has grown revenues in Australia to 2,6 billion Australian dollars (1,6 bn€). This makes the company one of the biggest non-food retailers and the biggest online retailer in the country.
Will Amazon become the biggest non-food retailer in the Nordics?
If Amazon were to grow to surpass one billion euros in the Nordics, it would become one of the biggest non-food retailers and the area's biggest online retailer. It is also highly likely that Amazon's growth will continue further.
Besides Australia, Amazon has become the biggest non-food retailer in many big markets, such as Germany and the UK.
Therefore, now is the perfect time for Nordic retailers to start preparing for the coming challenge posed by Amazon.
Arhi Kivilahti is Ada Insights’ retail analyst. He has studied the industry from many perspectives starting as a researcher in Aalto University and spent a year as a visiting researcher in Saïd Business School in the University of Oxford. After academia Kivilahti has worked for example in Kesko corporation where he was responsible for building the ecommerce website and fulfilment operations. More insights about the retail industry at https://www.adainsights.fi/.
