Amazon has done it again with Prime Day. The juggernaut sees no sign of slowing down.

In a recent meeting with some industry familiars, the envy in the room was palpable from all corners.

“Well if I could afford to make losses forever, then I could achieve those sales too”, one said. “At some point they will need to actually make money and then let’s see how well they do”, another said.

Jealousy aside, the reality is the innovations the ecommerce giant has produced over the past year are nothing short of astounding.  Word count limiting me, I can’t mention them all, but it’s a very long and impressive list, and the very profitable Amazon Web Services helps prop up the rest of its customer-focused plans.

Follow the trend

The question is – if you can’t beat them, do you join them? Black Friday was a Walmart initiative, but most other retailers followed quickly.

There were naysayers, who said it would never catch on and that retailers and brands would consider it too tacky to participate.

But resistance is futile if something’s popular with customers; if you don’t give them what they want, they will abandon you.

It may not be fair, but was it ever so, given that consumer demand requires retailers to deliver speed, quality and low prices without regard for business sustainability or your profitability?

If you can’t fulfil their needs, they can turn back to Amazon.

What Amazon has done with Prime Day is give itself another chance to shift stock, just like Black Friday. And it did just that – concluding its greatest ever day of sales, recording thousands of Echo Dot purchases every single minute.

With this in mind, perhaps it’s time for brands with loyal fan bases to hold their own customer days.

Why wait until October when the likes of M&S, House of Fraser and Arcadia all likely have a huge amount of unsold summer products? Why not try to build that same obsessive shopping habit from your customers who are focused on you, and only you, for one day?

Pulling power

You might not have the pulling power of Amazon, no one does, but you have loyal customers who love rewards.

It’s a funny thing, semantics, because of course all retailers and brands have sales, but the specific day and time limit elevate the impact on consumers’ minds.

There is nothing standing in the way of other UK top brands to try to do the same and, maybe just like Amazon they’ll record their most successful days ever, through the simplest of ideas. Surely it’s worth a go.