Online shopping giant Amazon has today moved into the Italian market with its first dedicated website for the country.
The company says that while it has served Italian customers since 1995, the launch of www.amazon.it marks the first time it has sold directly to the market.
“On August 3, 1995, we shipped our first order to Italy from the US,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “A customer in Genova ordered a book called ‘Ranks of Bronze’. Since then, we’ve shipped millions of items across a broad range of categories to customers in Italy, from our websites around the world. We are now excited to open our virtual doors directly to Italian customers.”
Amazon says that the site launches with more categories than any of its others has at launch, including more than two million Italian and foreign language books, more than 450,000 CDs and more than 120,000 DVDs as well as video games, music, consumer electronics, software and toys.
Customers are being offered an initial 30% discount on most of its books. It also offers those shopping by mobile a mobile-optimised version with free two to three-day delivery for members of the Amazon Prime subscription programme.
This is the eighth Amazon country site. The others cover the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Japan and China.
