Weekly Buzz 9/4/25: Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days Deadline | Walmart AI Agents | Tariff Aftershocks

Weekly Buzz 9/4/25: Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days Deadline | Walmart AI Agents | Tariff Aftershocks Speaker 1: Amazon opens submissions for Prime Big Deals Day, Walmart doubles down on AI with new super agents and digital twins, and the US ends the de minimis exemption reshaping global trade. This and more on this week's episode of The Weekly Buzz. Speaker 2: How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. This is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz. We give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon, TikTok shop, e-commerce world. We let you know what new features that Helium 10 has and give you a training tip of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Today's host is actually going to be Shivali Patel. So, Shivali, take it away and let us know what's buzzing. Speaker 1: Kicking things off with an important update straight from Seller Central News, Amazon has officially opened up submissions for Prime Big Deals Day, and the deadline to participate is September 12th, 2025. Q4 is around the corner, my friends, so it's time to start prepping. Best deals will require at least a 15% discount off of the ASIN reference price, and then it will cost $1,000 per deal. Discounts of 30% or more qualify for additional merchandising with lightning deals requiring a 20% minimum discount off the reference price and then $5,000 per deal is the cost. To ensure your products will be Prime Badge eligible, bear in mind the inventory cutoffs. September 10th is the deadline for minimal shipment splits and then September 19th is going to be your FBA Amazon optimized shipment splits deadline. Every event like this is more profit added to the bottom line of your business because with boosted traffic comes increased prospects of clicks and conversions. Full details and the FBA Peak Season Readiness Playbook, that's literally what it's called, We are available in Seller Central if you need more info. Okay, next, let's talk Walmart. According to TipRanks, the retail giant's recent earnings call conveyed a generally positive sentiment that was underscored by robust sales growth. Check it out. So there's quite a few numbers reported here. You have 5.6% increase in sales in constant currency. International sales experienced a significant rise of 10.5%. Global advertising revenue grew by an impressive 46%. And there's a handful of additional stuff with about a third of store deliveries being completed in under three hours. The only caveat being profit growth came in lower than expected, weighed down by $450 million in claims expenses. And the ongoing impact of tariffs as well, which continue to squeeze both Walmart and other platforms, as well as the middle to lower class households that they serve. Granted, to help combat all of the tariff related concerns, CNBC reports that Walmart is rolling out a suite of new AI-driven super agents. Marty is designed for sellers and suppliers, Sparky for shoppers, the associate agent that helps streamline employee tools, and then the developer agent as well for the technical teams. All these tools really are meant to work together and create more simplified operations, creating that personalized, efficient shopping experience that we all know and love. Walmart's also leaning heavily into digital twin technology, basically creating virtual copies of any physical object or space and in Walmart's case, that's going to be their stores and clubs. The move has already reduced emergency alerts by 30% and then the maintenance spend and refrigeration by 19% across Walmart US has also been cut. TLDR is if you're asking what does this mean for you or what does it mean to you, it feels a bit like competition to me because there's been so much growth in the AI space and Walmart's really choosing to double down on E-com and tech innovation, making their marketplace an attractive option for sellers. And then of course, whatever cuts that they have, I'm looking forward to seeing where they actually divulge that money or reallocate it to. Because that could very well play into perks for us, right, long term. It's really going to come down to whether we can leverage the resources that we are given and deliver on them. Speaking of resources, here at Helium 10, we just created a new Helium 10 Academy channel on YouTube as opposed to everything from our series and Serious Sellers Podcast. To case studies and tool walkthroughs living on our one Helium 10 page, we wanted to section things out for you to make it easier for you to find and implement. So if you want to stay in the know about all the latest and greatest strategies, as well as all the innovations that we roll out, go give us a follow. That's going to be just a A simple click here, I'm just realizing that the page wasn't pulled up behind me, but this is what it looks like. I just clicked subscribe and so you will want to do the same. You can go to this page by going to h10.me forward slash YT Academy. Again, that's h10.me forward slash YT Academy. To share some more innovation happening in the space on the Amazon platform, Amazon has just introduced Lens Live, which is a new feature in the Amazon shopping app that instantly scans products and shows. Real-time matches in a swipable carousel, just like this one right here. Maybe it will refresh for you, but if you can't see it because it's behind my head, then let me just summarize what it does. Customers can now basically point their camera at something as opposed to uploading an image and then be able to quickly see Amazon's closest matches. This process is obviously integrated with Rufus, Amazon's AI assistant. And it's just going to help ease things up for consumers because Rufus does provide quick product summaries, highlights key features, even answers questions on the spot. And so just with a tap, customers can add items directly to their cart or save them to a wishlist. Maybe you can see that going on behind my head. LensLive is already available to tens of millions of users, you guys, with rollouts to all of US customer base coming soon in the coming months and, of course, faster AI powered discovery means your product listings need to be ready to go, shine the moment they resurface and think of this kind of the way that I've always preaching about this in all the other episodes we do here, which is Have stellar high-quality images, clear bullet points, optimized content that plays well with AI-generated summaries, and you really want to prepare for the long game. Not just features that are available now, but what is coming and how can you make sure that you are ready to go when it happens. Every element of your listing becomes a deciding factor, so really make use of it. For the first time ever, Amazon is also launching Second Chance Deals Day, which is exactly what it sounds like. This is in Europe, running from September 3rd to the 9th, aka now. This event is all about giving high-quality returned and refurbished products a second life at discounts of up to 50% off. This is available across categories like personal tech, home, computing, gaming, home and fitness, fitness and toys, with over 60 million secondhand products available in Europe. The event caters to the growing number of European customers who are choosing pre-owned. In fact, two-thirds of their population are now buying secondhand driven by cost of living, 34%, environmental concerns, who are 30%, and then convenience, 29%. Last year alone, Amazon customers in Europe saved over $350 million by shopping secondhand. And Amazon, I think, is really emphasizing the quality and trust that goes here, because every returned product is going through testing, cleaning, repair when necessary, before it's being resold under either Amazon Resale or Amazon Renewed. Each item is backed by Amazon's customer service and return policies, helping customers feel confident that they're getting value without sacrificing peace of mind. And I think often, when we talk about changes in the space, We focus on all the shiny new objects, right? AI, prime example, because that's all I've been chatting about. I feel like this whole episode, but a lot of people are going green. They're thinking about their health. They're thinking about the sustainability. That's what shows up on my TikTok feed all the time. And so those things play a role in shaping buyer behavior and the more that you can tap into it. The greater, why not, right? So are your products tapped in to this deals day thing that's happening right now in Europe and how's it going for you? Let me know in the comments. That brings me to today's training tip of the week. So while you comment away, I'm going to pass it over to Bradley who will show you how you can see competitor sales on Amazon without search query performance. Speaker 2: How to see Amazon data that tells you what sales were generated by your competitors without having search query performance. Now, as we all know, search query performance is great for your own products, but search query performance is not telling you how many sales per keyword or if your competitors are getting sales on certain keywords because search query performance is about your products, right? So, how can you find historically keywords that generated sales? Well, of course, we've always been able to use Cerebro inside of Helium 10, but that's like an estimation, more like a process of elimination, right? Like, hey, I understand that if a keyword has over 500 searches and me or my competitors ranking between 1 and 10, it must have generated sales, but is that really data from the horse's mouth, data directly from Amazon like search group performance? No, it's not really. So how can you find Amazon data that confirms, hey, This product, even though it's not my product, is guaranteed to have generated sales. Well, you would want to look at Brand Analytics, and we have a completely unique way to look at that that no other tool has. Let me show you. Inside of Blackbox, you go to the tab that says ABA Top Search Terms. That stands for Amazon Brand Analytics. Go ahead and throw in like all of your top competitors. Like here, I just put in a whole bunch of bat-shaped bath mats. Including my own product. And then what I did is I have the week selected and I just started selecting a whole bunch of weeks like recently, this year. And then I skipped it. I'm like, hey, let me choose like 10 weeks starting at Halloween because I think it was a popular Halloween and also a Christmas product. And I'm looking across 16 different weeks. And then I set the filters like say, hey, show me any product where one of the inputted ASINs, you know, one of these competitors that I put, has more than 1% conversion share. So this is like a poor man's search query performance because if somebody has 1% or more conversion share, what does that mean? That means they have generated sales and that's from Amazon. That's not coming from Helium 10. That's Amazon telling you that they are guaranteeing that this product in this exact week or multiple weeks generated sales from this keyword. For example, right here, I could see this list of keywords that maybe I might have missed some of these. Some of these are kind of like no-brainers, like bat rug. I could have used just Helium 10 Cerebro for that. But look at some of these keywords that were just random, like one week all of a sudden sales came but not other weeks like bats shower curtain. There was only one week that it generated sales for one of these bat shaped bath mat competitors, but it did. Here's another one, spooky bathroom decor. So again, this is definitely about making you money. That's why it's important. You can discover keywords that no other tool is going to have, Helium 10 included, if you don't use this exact feature because we are showing you from brand analytics where your competitors have done it. If I wanted to search 17 different weeks of brand analytics in Seller Central without using Helium 10, could I do it? Absolutely. But what would that involve? That would involve downloading 17 files, one by one, that have like 4 million lines on them. And then running a pivot table based on these ASINs and combining them all and trying to find which keywords had more than 1% sales. That would probably take 30 minutes, if not an hour. I can do it in seconds here using Helium 10 Black Box Brand Analytics. So make sure you're doing that in order to find keywords that Amazon is guaranteeing That brought sales to your competitors. Speaker 1: Thanks, Bradley. Alright, back to the news to a major shift in the global trade reported by CNBC. The long-standing de minimis exemption, I know we've chatted about it so much on this show, which allowed shipments under 800 bucks to enter the U.S. duty-free, officially came to an end on August 29th by executive order. Okay, so this for a decade fueled the rise of ultra low cost e-tailers like Shein and Timu ballooning from 134 million shipments in 2015 to over 1.36 billion in 2024. The change comes after a short truce earlier this year when the U.S. agreed to cut extra duties to 30% for 90 days and then reduce the rate on small parcels from China to 54%. That deal's obviously expired, as I said, and now every small parcel entering the U.S. will face tariffs and the same customs processing as larger shipments. The impact on consumers could be significant. But again, I think this also goes to say that there might be a reallocation of where that money is being driven and lower competition. So I would really just pay attention because while smaller international merchants may be hitting hardest, the platforms Amazon and Walmart are really well positioned. So long as all your fulfillment is in place and your quality listings are in place, I think there's real potential for your sales to grow. My fingers are crossed. I also want to encourage you to go subscribe to our Helium 10 Serious Sellers Podcast channel. As I mentioned earlier, we're trying to section things out so they're easier for you to find. If you enjoy the stories you hear on our podcast, like hearing and learning from others, or you just want to stay updated on all the things that are e-com, maybe you even listen to the podcast while you're driving and you're curious about visualizing the strategies, The YouTube channel is a great option, so make sure you go to youtube.com forward slash Helium 10 as in the number spelled out, Serious Sellers Podcast. You should also know CNBC reported Amazon is tightening up how Prime benefits are shared. Starting October 1st, the company will officially end the Prime invitee program, which allowed members to share free shipping perks with people outside of their household. Amazon began notifying users this week with invited guests set to receive notices by September 5th. Going forward, Prime benefits can only be shared through Amazon Family which lets a member include one other adult, four children and up to four teens so long as they all share the same household address. Think of it like Netflix cracking down on password sharing. At first, it's a bit limiting. But actually, what happens is more people sign up for their own accounts. So for Amazon, that means more Prime memberships and more reasons for each member to buy, and ultimately more value built into the Prime program itself. For sellers, that's what matters. The stronger and stickier the Prime membership is, the more buyers will flow in hopefully for your brand and lead to higher conversions for your listing. Last but not least, to wrap things up, a quick reminder, Amazon Accelerate 2025 is just around the corner. I'm going, Bradley and Carrie are going, your best friends are going. JK, I don't know about that. But if your bestie is in the e-com space or if you're interested or is interested, then make sure you've got a couple tickets locked down from September 16th to the 18th in Seattle. Thousands of sellers, agencies, Amazon leaders are coming in for three days full of networking, learning, growth. There will be over 50 breakout sessions, you guys. Again, that date is September 16th to 18th in Seattle. Over 50 sessions for you to choose from, to learn from. And naturally, they also have the ability for you to connect one-on-one with Amazon specialists in Seller Cafe where you can really get tailored advice for your business. It's basically like having a direct hotline into Amazon focused entirely on helping you succeed, all focused on helping you succeed. You get exclusive previews as well for the latest innovations from the Amazon store that you can tap into way earlier, right? As soon as you find out about it. Best of all, if you come a day early, you can join us for our Q3 elite workshop. You should. You should. We have a few spots left. Grab a seat. That link is h10.me forward slash Q3 workshop. And if you're an elite member, then the code is also in your email. That's it for this week's Weekly Buzz. We'll catch you next week to see what's buzzing.