Amazon has held an annual ‘Prime Day’ sale for the past few years, which essentially served as a Black Friday/Cyber Monday in the middle of the year. The event has also had ripple effects in the retail industry, with most other stores offering similar sales during the same period to attract customers, but now Amazon is reportedly delaying this year’s celebration of capitalism.
Citing internal meeting notes seen by Reuters, this year’s Prime Day event will be delayed to at least August. Amazon was planning to press forward with the usual July schedule as recently as last week, according to Business Insider, and vendors were asked to place purchase orders as early as March 31st.
It’s not immediately clear what finally led Amazon to postpone Prime Day, though a combination of disrupted manufacturing from vendors and the current worldwide recession are likely the main factors. The memo also said that Amazon stockpiled around five million devices for the event (believed to be Echo speakers), which will soon be sold at a loss of around $100-300 million. So, if you see some Echo Dots on discount soon, you’ll know why.
