Amazon Prime Day controversy sellers claim supply crisis chain limits the stocks of their products - Amazon's Prime Day is already here, but nevertheless, some small businesses say they might have trouble meeting consumer demand this year due to the supply chain crisis.

Bernie Thompson, founder of the electronics company Plugable Technologies, told CNBC that he had had to "severely limit" his participation in this year's Prime Day due to the shortage of shipping containers that cause delays in imports.

The breakdown of the goods supply chain, caused by the exhaustion of demand in the first half of 2020 and its strong recovery at the end of the year, has led to bottlenecks and blockages in ports. The lack of containers and port workers has only worsened the situation.

Thompson also said that around $ 60,000 (50,000 euros) in his products were stuck on the Ever Given, a gigantic container ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal in March and has been seized by Egyptian authorities. Among these items are its USB docking stations, which in the past were listed by Amazon as one of the best Prime Day deals in the UK.

Amazon Prime Day controversy sellers claim supply crisis

"We are about to run out of stocks of that product in some countries. For example, there is no way that we have a Prime Day offer in the UK, our products are in the Ever Given", lamented Thomson for the North American channel CNBC.

While some sellers had stocked up in advance, experts say smaller businesses might not have had the cash to buy wholesale, putting them at a disadvantage on Prime Day.

Others may not have had enough time to get orders after Amazon moved up this year's Prime Day to June instead of July. In this way, sellers had only three weeks in advance to prepare as Bloomberg points out.

Amazon Prime Day controversy sellers claim supply crisis

Small businesses could also lose out to larger ones when it comes to ad placement, experts say.

"If you're going to get some publicity, they want to know what inventory is behind it," Rick Watson, CEO of RMW Commerce Consulting, a company that advises small businesses that sell on Amazon, told CNBC. "This Prime Day could favor larger salespeople because they are more likely to have the financial flexibility to make those commitments this year."

Amazon Prime Day controversy sellers claim supply crisis: Watson says that all of its customers, who sell everything from furniture and household items to clothing and food, face supply chain problems, but still participate in Prime Day.

Amazon has chosen not to answer the questions.

Amazon Prime Day controversy sellers claim supply crisis

More news:

The Zamorana that leads the entrepreneurs of coliving rural in Spain: "There is still little supply for the demand that we will have in the coming months"

The emptied Spain presented last month in the Congress of Deputies a battery of 101 measures to reduce depopulation in the rural world. The plan proposes to create services in villages, promote circular economy, digitize these areas and develop a housing plan.

In recent years the concept of emptied Spain has gained strength in public debate, while proposals of various kinds have begun to emerge to try to attract more people to the countryside, such as offering housing at derisory prices.

In the heat of this trend were born portals like Yomevuelvoalcampo, where you can find ads ranging from buying a tractor to renting for 40 euros a month a house with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Of course, it is necessary that you have children of school age.

Another niche market that is gaining momentum, although by now so shy, it is the coliving, a modality residential, which offers both a shared housing as a coworking where telework and that until now had been lavished more in cities such as Madrid and Barcelona, from the hand of companies like Urban Campus.

An example of this business model applied to the rural world is the one that Patricia García has in the town of Villarrín de Campos, who also chairs the Coliving&Coworking Association, which began in Castilla y León, but is already implemented nationally, with 22 spaces attached. This figure is expected to increase in the coming months.

"There are colivings that are in the process of construction or adaptation, which will enter when they meet the requirements. We are looking forward to it and as soon as possible, because we are aware that there is still little supply for the demand that we will have in the coming months", Aventura García.

This businesswoman got tired of living in the city and returned to her village, of 390 inhabitants and located next to the Lagoons of Villafáfila, a privileged natural environment. There he started his project in 2019, reforming and readapting an old farm of the nineteenth century owned by his family.

"I saw that it was a tourism business model that was not only an accommodation, but that could be the key to attract qualified young people to the rural world, "he details about an establishment whose tenant profile responds to that of the" digital nomad", that person who thanks to new technologies and telework launches to live temporarily in other places.

The arrival of the coronavirus pandemic and the spread of teleworking seemed to accelerate that process back to the village, but is it really happening like this? The province of Soria, for example, had been losing population in recent times, but last year it gained inhabitants (248 more), something that did not happen since 2012, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

In any case, it does not seem that there is any massive trend, for now. Moreover, businesses such as Garcia's have been harmed by restrictive measures imposed to combat the spread of the coronavirus, especially border closures. A problem that adds to some of the main handicaps of Spanish rural areas: poor connectivity, absence of tax benefits and a decent housing plan. In 2019 García's business billed 8,930 euros, with a result of 1,347 euros, while in 2020 only in the first quarter, when it was able to operate normally, it entered 9,849, with a profit of 1,599 euros.

Questioned about this" urban exodus", the coliving businesswoman points out that" there are already data on this": "Large cities have recorded during the coronavirus crisis the greatest loss of residents to rural municipalities and the least arrival of residents from other localities since 2011.And if with the rural colivings we can offer the first jump to the rural world so that urbanites can try the benefits of living in the countryside, rest assured that there will be many people who thanks to new technologies, can do it and will do it", trench.