Amazon starts own consumer electronics brand
PHYSICAL: 'Basics' to sell items blank DVDs, audio-video cables
By Danny King -- Video Business, 9/22/2009
SEPT. 22 | PHYSICAL: Amazon.com has started selling consumer-electronics-related products such as blank DVDs and audio-video cables under a private-label brand.
The new brand, called AmazonBasics, has been launched in the U.S. and will expand overseas during the next few months, Amazon said in a statement late last week.
By launching the private label, Amazon might be looking to lure customers who previously shopped at bricks-and-mortar retailers Circuit City and RadioShack. Circuit City had been the No. 2 U.S. electronics retailer to Best Buy before shutting its doors in March. RadioShack's same-store sales fell 4% in the second quarter, and the company closed about 5% of its stores and dealer outlets during the past year.
Amazon said in July that its second-quarter sales of media items such as books, CDs, DVDs and videogames were flat in North America, though much of that stemmed from the videogame slump. Amazon's second-quarter sales of electronics and general merchandise rose 29%.
