The Ultimate Guide To Amazon Home & Garden
Amazon Home and Garden products range from furniture and holiday decorations to lawn care and craft supplies.
As of 2017, 60% of the top sellers on Amazon focused primarily on this category, making it a competitive one — especially when you factor in Amazon’s own private label brands, several of which focus exclusively on home goods.
Here’s what you need to know about the Home & Garden category on Amazon.
What is the Home & Garden category?
Amazon’s Home & Garden category includes the following subcategories:
- Furniture & Decor
- Kitchen & Dining
- Bedding & Bath
- Patio, Lawn & Garden
- Vacuums
- Cleaning & Storage
- Kids’ Furniture & Decor
- Heating, Cooling & Air Quality
- Irons & Steamers
- Artwork
- Seasonal Decor
Whatever you need to outfit your home — from basic necessities to decor that matches your personality — you can find it in Amazon’s Home & Garden category. Some categories have subcategories of their own, and Amazon also allows you to shop by style or by room.
Home & Garden & AR — oh my!
Amazon’s Home & Kitchen category uses augmented reality and machine learning to provide a more interactive shopping experience.
The “view in your room” feature uses AR to show shoppers how a product will fit and look in their own space before buying. It comes included in the iOS app and is available on Android for users with both the Amazon and Core AR apps.
Shoppers can also use the “Discover your Style” feature to receive tailored product recommendations based on likes and dislikes. As they like or dislike each product shown, the tool uses machine learning to analyze shopper input, then automatically shows new products based on their choices.
This lets Amazon show a more curated feed of products — meaning shoppers are more likely to see something they love (and buy) than through regular search on the site.
You can learn more about the machine learning behind this feature in this post.
Amazon Home & Garden Bestsellers
Amazon updates its bestseller lists regularly. At the time of writing, the current bestsellers include:
- Garbage bags (Simplehuman)
- Mattress protector (SafeRest)
- Microfiber sheet set (Mellanni)
- Water filter replacements (Brita)
- Electric egg cooker (Dash)
- Microfiber sheet set (AmazonBasics)
- Sheet set (CGK)
- Shower curtain liner (LiBa)
- Liquid ant bait (TERRO)
- Toilet spray (Poo-Pourri)
While most of the above are from brands, Amazon does manage to sneak one private label in there with the AmazonBasics sheet set.
Amazon has four private label brands dedicated exclusively to the Home & Kitchen category:
- Stone & Beam: Furniture, lighting, decor, and bedding
- Rivet: Mid-century and industrial modern furniture, lighting, decor, and bedding. This brand places special emphasis on small spaces.
- Pinzon: Sheets, pillows, comforters, and towels
- Now House by Jonathan Adler: Decor, furniture, rugs, and bedding
And, as always, there’s AmazonBasics, Amazon’s omni-category private label. The AmazonBasics products in the Home & Kitchen category include kitchen supplies, small appliances, bedding, furniture, storage, and much more.
For shoppers, Amazon’s private label offerings offer affordable alternatives to pricier brand name products. For sellers, this makes it harder to get your product in front of customers and earn “Best Seller” or “Amazon’s Choice” badges.
Amazon Home & Garden: The Competitive Landscape
As an industry, home and garden sales on the rise — especially in the ecommerce space.
Here’s a snapshot of how the industry is performing:
- Ecommerce revenue from furniture and home furnishing sales amounted to $65.1 billion in 2018 — and are projected to increase to almost $100 billion by 2022.
- Furniture and home furnishing sales accounted for 12.9% of total ecommerce sales in the US for 2018.
- The 18-39 age group is more likely to purchase home and garden items online than in-store.
- The overall US market for home and garden is expected to increase to $299 billion by 2020.
- In the last five years, the online furniture industry has grown by 7.6% — and it’s predicted to reach $12 billion in revenue this year.
- Ecommerce sales are growing faster than in-store sales: Between 2013 and 2018, the brick-and-mortar home goods market grew by 20.9%. The ecommerce market? 88.7%.
If you’re in the home goods industry — and want to turn a profit and reach a larger audience — online is the place to be.
While the industry is growing, so is the competition, both on Amazon and elsewhere.
You can’t discuss furniture and ecommerce without mentioning Wayfair. Founded in 2002, Wayfair sells over ten million home furnishing and decor products from over 10,000 suppliers. With $6.8 billion in revenue in 2018, Wayfair is the clear leader in the space.
Target and Walmart consistently introduce new private label collections for furniture and decor both in-store and online, making them notable competitors in the space as well. And don’t forget the established furniture stores expanding their ecommerce presence: Pottery Barn, West Elm, and Ikea.
That said, Amazon’s growing private label brands, extensive product range, and AR-powered shopping experience make it a competitive force in the category. Shoppers who already rely on Amazon for all things online shopping will likely check there first when looking for furniture and home decor.
For sellers, this means a saturated market; however, such a broad category also gives you the opportunity to find your niche. Like any Amazon category, you need to find a balance between quality, price, and profitability.
Successful Brands Selling on Amazon Home & Garden: Starfire Direct
Here’s a closer look at Starfire Direct who is successfully scaling their business on Amazon today.
In 2007, Jonathan Burlingham, the now CEO of Starfire Direct set out to build a successful fireplace and furniture business.
At the time, he admits “I knew very little about pay-per click advertising”.
“I created our first website with $50 and made some YouTube videos to help promote the company. But back then, I couldn’t afford PPC advertising so I decided I would stop buying Starbucks. Instead, I took the $5 a day that I would normally spend on coffee and invested it into ads for my company on Google.”
Of course, a $5 dollar advertising budget doesn’t get you much exposure – if any. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was a starting point and that was all Burlingham needed to get his business venture off the ground.
Fast forward to 2018, Starfire Direct is now surpassing 10 million in sales, with sights set at hitting 30 million annually within 5 years. This would certainly make them one of the top-selling fireplace and patio ecommerce retailers on the market.
When it comes to selling their products on Amazon, Burlingham said he understands the struggle so many brands face today.
“As a customer – Amazon is so convenient, but as a seller – the Marketplace can get frustrating because of the risk of slim margins and increasing competition. Regardless, I absolutely think businesses should have a presence on Amazon. For us, the challenge was: How can we make this process more efficient? Businesses can try and resist selling on Amazon but you might as well use Amazon to your advantage. It’s joining the winning team and at the end of the day – you are going to make money selling on the Marketplace. It’s not going away.”
In the following interview, Starfire Direct candidly share their experience from choosing the right PPC agency to advertising on Amazon.
To learn more about Amazon Home & Garden, email [email protected]
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