Amazon has announced that Disposable Green from Ruislip has been shortlisted at the first ever Amazon Small Business Awards. The Amazon Small Business Awards will celebrate inspiring and unique UK small businesses selling on Amazon. The awards recognise small businesses across three categories: Small Business of the Year, Exporting Small Business of the Year, and Innovative Small Business of the Year.
Disposable Green manufacturers plates, bowls, spoons, trays and other products from Areca Leaf. The company’s products are 100% natural, biodegradable, compostable and sustainable. Disposable Green is nominated for the Innovative Small Business of the Year Award.
“2019 has been a fantastic year for our company and to receive a nomination for an Amazon’s Innovative Small Business Award of the Year is the icing on the cake” said Santosh Gandhi, Director at Disposable Green®. “To know that businesses like Amazon admire what we’re doing fills us with great pride and we’re honoured to be in the shortlist for this award alongside some other brilliant small businesses.”
“Small businesses like Disposable Green are the backbone of Amazon’s drive for offering customers great value, selection and convenience,” said Simon Donegan, Head of UK Seller Services, Amazon, who announced the shortlist at the Amazon Academy held in Birmingham today. “These awards give us the opportunity to recognise and showcase some of the most impressive small businesses in the UK, and help others learn from their successes, and we are thrilled to be able to offer the winners a trip to our global head office in Seattle.”
Small Business winners from each category, due to be announced on 4th December, will receive a prize package including six months of dedicated account management, £10,000 of Amazon advertising credit, and a trip to Amazon’s Seattle head office to meet senior business leaders and receive 1-2-1 training on growing their business.
The nominees have been evaluated on a range of criteria in keeping with Amazon’s own customer obsession and dedication to offering the best available product selection and utmost convenience. The awards aim to identify small businesses that demonstrate deep customer centricity; that offer unique products that address customer needs innovatively; and that have a truly inspiring origin and company vision.
Since opening its sites to smaller, independent sellers nearly 20 years ago, Amazon has been a growth engine for millions of small businesses around the world. In 2000, 3 per cent of physical gross merchandise sales on Amazon came from third-party businesses. By 2018 this increased to 58 per cent, following years of investment in technology, infrastructure and selling tools to help them grow their business. Tens of thousands of UK-based small businesses now sell their products on Amazon’s global sites, helping to support more than 80,000 UK jobs and achieving over £2bn of export sales in 2018 alone.
In June, Amazon launched its Clicks and Mortar programme to help small businesses grow on both the high street and online. Over the course of the programme, more than 100 small online brands are being given the opportunity to test physical retail for the first time in pop-up shops around the country. Amazon is also helping create over 150 full-time apprenticeships in small online businesses through a £1 million SME Apprenticeship Fund, while the Amazon Academy training programme, which is running today in Birmingham, provides free digital training to help businesses to grow their sales and boost exports.
The full Amazon Small Business Awards shortlist is:
Small Business of the Year Award
- Free Soul, based in London
- Gamely Games, based in Brighton
- Life’s Little Recipes, based in Devon
- Little Soap Company, based in Worcestershire
- Rock Star Academy, based in Leicestershire
Innovative Small Business of the Year Award
- Bearhug, based in Cardiff
- Disposable Green, based in Middlesex
- Sandy Leaf Farm, based in Oxfordshire
Exporting Small Business of the Year Award
- Dotty Fish, based in Hampshire
- Naissance, based in Neath Port Talbot
- Niré, based in Tyne and Wear
