The new Irish store promises more products, faster delivery and fewer geographical charges
The company today invited companies to register for Amazon.ie ahead of its New Year announcement, which promises more details on how the localised Amazon.ie store will work for customers and sellers.
The move should mean more one-day delivery service around Ireland as well as a wider range of products free from customs charges or trade restrictions.
The launch of an Irish Amazon store has been in development since the tech and retail giant established its first Irish ‘fulfilment centre’ in Dublin in 2022, with hundreds of thousands of products stocked.
Amazon says that the launch of Amazon.ie will allow for quicker delivery and returns, helped by a five-year agreement struck between An Post and Amazon last year aimed at more efficient deliveries and returns.
The new store should also lessen custom charges sometimes imposed on products currently bought from the UK.
The company is expected to clarify whether Irish Amazon Prime members, estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands, will move over to Amazon.ie as their primary account or remain with Amazon.co.uk. It has also to confirm what the price of an Amazon Prime account in Ireland might be.
“There will be more Irish products,” said Amazon’s country manager for UK and Ireland, John Boumphrey, in a previous interview with the Irish Independent.
“We expect to see [sales] volume growing. And that will result in more deliveries and more growth in the country.”
Amazon says that Irish customers can currently shop among 100 million products on its website.
“Over 1,000 small and medium-sized Irish businesses already sell more than 5.5 million products on Amazon, with home, beauty, grocery, and health and personal care the most popular categories,” the company said in a statement.
“More than 60pc of sales on Amazon stores globally are from independent sellers, most of which are small and medium-sized businesses.”
The company claims that in 2023, Irish SMEs selling on Amazon recorded over €170m in export sales, with over half of those in export sales outside the EU.
“Those SMEs have also gone on to create more than 2,500 Irish jobs to support their businesses on Amazon,” it claimed.
Amazon says that it employs around 6,500 people in Cork, Dublin and Drogheda including data engineers, operations management and finance. A major data centre operator here, the giant says that it has invested more than €22bn in Ireland since 2004, with €17bn of that occurring since 2020.
The company has also announced that Alison Dunn has been appointed as the new country manager for Amazon in Ireland, and will oversee Amazon.ie when it launches in 2025. The Dubliner has been at Amazon for almost a decade, where she has worked in marketing, product management, and customer experience, as well as in Amazon Web Services.
“The [Amazon.ie] store is great news for Irish customers and businesses alike and we’re taking another big step towards launching Amazon.ie by opening our doors for businesses to join us as selling partners ahead of launch,” she said.