Amazon's Buy It Now Goes Swimming With Shark Tank

Amazon Prime customers are accustomed to smashing that “Buy Now” button when they want to make an order pronto. Now, Prime Video—the retail giant’s streaming division—is betting that those same customers will smash the “Watch Now” button on its new competition series, Buy It Now. Premiering Oct. 30, the show allows Prime Video to cast a line into the entrepreneurial waters populated by reality series like Undercover Boss, Start Up, and the genre’s big fish, Shark Tank, which is still swimming strong after 15 years on the air. But the minds behind Buy It Now are quick to note that its would-be business tycoons are immersing themselves in a different kettle of fish. “Buy It Now is asking a really different question than other business shows,” notes Jack Burgess, executive vice president, development and current at Studio Lambert, the U.K. production company behind such unscripted hits as Squid Game: The Challenge and both the British and U.S. versions of Undercover Boss. (Buy It Now similarly originated in the U.K. before crossing the pond.) “If most shows are about investing in that business, this one is about: ‘Do the numbers of this business stack up?’" Burgess said. The number that Amazon is particularly interested in is the discoverability rate for the products featured on the show. “For me, this show was about, ‘How do you take what people are already doing and surface it?’” says Lauren Anderson, head of brand and content innovation at Amazon MGM Studios. “That’s really what this show is about for us.” From l to r: Tanner Elton, Jamie Siminoff, and Anthony Anderson on a Buy It Now panel Rules of the pond That said, the basic premise of Buy It Now will be familiar to experienced Shark Tank viewers. Each episode features a series of novice entrepreneurs pitching their self-made product while host J.B. Smoove and a three-person panel of experienced business minds look on as judge, jury, and non-lethal executioner. But they aren’t the only ones who get a say in the proceedings. Before advancing to the panel, the contestants first have to win over The 100—an assembled audience of ordinary Amazon customers who listen to each 90-second pitch and signal their interest in buying that product now with a green light for yes and a red light for no. Securing more than ten green lights earns players a conference with the trio of experts, whose ranks include Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow, Ring creator Jamie Siminoff, and a rotating cast of Amazon executives. That group decides whether or not the product on the proverbial table ends up in the Buy It Now store—a special digital storefront on the main Amazon site. And here’s the kicker: Admission to the Buy It Now store only requires two out of three yes’s, which means the Amazon rep doesn’t necessarily get the final say if they’re outvoted by their fellow panelists. “That’s one of the things we’re really proud of,” Anderson emphasizes. “We are notoriously customer-obsessed, so if the customers are saying they really like something and the other panelists think it belongs in the store, it makes sense to move forward.” All three panelists determine the final award, though: a $20,000 prize to the entrepreneur with the most promising product. Despite how it might appear onscreen, choosing the recipient is never easy. Just ask Amazon’s vice president of U.S. advertising sales, Tanner Elton, who served on the panel for two out of the first season’s 13 episodes alongside Siminoff and Black-ish star Anthony Anderson. “It was a very intense debate,” Elton recalls of how they picked who received the $20K prize. “Jamie, Anthony, and I discussed [the decision] for a while backstage. It was about deciding who was ready for the next level.” Before you get to the Buy It Now panel, first you have to impress The 100 Secrets of the store According to Elton, that debate capped off what had already been a marathon day of production. “It took a lot longer than I would have thought in terms of all the set-up,” he recalls. “But it was also unbelievably authentic; everyone was invested in the success of the entrepreneurs on the show.” When the cameras weren’t rolling, he remembers asking Smoove for stories from the Curb Your Enthusiasm set, talking business with Anderson and Siminoff, and trying to balance his own taste in products with the knowledge that he was also representing Amazon’s interests. “It was hard to remove all personal bias,” Elton admits as he contemplated the different items that were paraded in front of his eyes, including a line of spice rubs, an eco-friendly reusable coffee pod-maker, and an adapter that turns a regular bike into an electric bike. Watching the reactions of The 100 helped him as he weighed whether or not to admit a product to the Buy It Now store. “That’s one of the most interesting parts of the show because you get a realistic representation of the demand you could generate," he added. from l to r: Smoove, Michelle Rothman, Siminoff, and Tabitha Brown Buy it when? Though the Buy It Now storefront is currently empty, that’ll change on Oct. 30 when the first three episodes go live on Prime Video. A QR code within each episode will send viewers directly to the store, and additional navigation will be present on the main Amazon site. Subsequent episodes will be released on a weekly basis, and those products will be added post-premiere. “We want people to buy the products and continue to buy them,” Burgess explains, adding that there’s no expiration date on their availability. “Even if you miss the first three episodes, when you watch episode four, you’re going to catch up and buy some of that stuff as well.” Not for nothing, but Anderson points out that even the products that don’t make it into the Buy It Now store will still be purchasable on Amazon. “This show is still exposure for them,” she says, reiterating how that plays into Amazon’s customer-focused approach to stocking its wares. “A product may be for a smaller subset of customers, but we’d still want it available and we’re happy that could potentially happen for anyone who appears on the show.” And while Buy It Now’s focus is first and foremost on entrepreneur-created products, Anderson teases the possibility of larger partnerships down the road, especially since many of the panelists are overseeing prosperous brands. “It’s fun to see the products they respond to,” Burgess adds. “There’s a really good range of panelists, and we’d love to expand that in a second season.”

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Amazon's Buy It Now Goes Swimming With Shark Tank

Prime Video hopes that viewers will hit the 'Watch Now' button on the competition series

Ethan Alter

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Ethan Alter