For years, Amazon was “coming” to the Nordics. Everyone waited, some in fear, some excited.
In October 2020 they finally launched in Sweden.
Big speeches were made about domination.
“Bigger, faster, better, stronger”
“Customer obsession.”
“World-class experience.”
To scale fast they machine-translated all product names and descriptions on the platform.
And oh boy, did it bite back.
Trays for excrement and goose water.
Fishing lure was described to be “rape-shaped.”
Well-known games got funny names:
Model soldiers 👉 Russian infants
Watch Dogs 2 👉 Look at dogs 2
Fifa 19 Soccer 👉 Circuit Breakers
Adding to the challenging start, Nordic e-commerce wasn’t even an easy market. It was advanced.
Prices were fair.
Delivery was fast enough.
So Amazon didn’t feel next-level better.
The lesson:
Scale and speed do not guarantee a win when entering a new market.
Amazon is still live and kicking in Nordics. But the journey took way longer than expected.
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