Amazon launches a dedicated shop for items featured on Product Hunt

Amazon has teamed up with Product Hunt — the San Francisco-based startup that helps curate and surface the hottest new apps, websites, gadgets, tech creations and more — by offering a collection of products for purchase that have previously trended on Product Hunt’s website. This new collection, called “Featured on Product Hunt,” is available as a part of Amazon Launchpad online store.

Launchpad is Amazon’s newer home to products from startups, including things like smart home devices, wearable technology, children’s toys, health and beauty products and other items. The platform debuted last year as a means of tapping into consumers’ interests in buying new hardware and physical goods from younger companies.

To curate this online collection, Amazon works with VC firms, accelerators and incubators to source the products for the site.

Product Hunt had ties to Amazon already, by way of the relationships the retailer had with the wider tech community with regard to Launchpad. Amazon had been working with Andreessen Horowitz, an investor in Product Hunt, as well as  Y Combinator, where Product Hunt had been in residency.

Amazon also recently partnered with Kickstarter for a similar collection of selected merchandise — in that case, successful, crowdfunded products across categories like electronics, books, home and kitchen, movies and TV and more.

 

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In the new Product Hunt collection, products displayed a “Featured” badge that indicates how many upvotes it had on the Product Hunt website.

For example, the Star Wars BB-8 Sphero shows it was upvoted by 114 people, while the Bellabeat LEAF wearable received 302 votes. But as these numbers indicate, the number of votes is not necessarily a direct correlation to the product’s overall popularity — a wearable gadget for women is probably not more than twice as popular as a toy from the latest “Star Wars” movies.

Rather, these badges are more of an indication that a certain crowd of tech tastemakers have given the item their seal of approval.

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The partnership between Amazon and Product Hunt goes two ways — Product Hunt will also now offer a way for its site’s users to buy products from Amazon through a drop-down option on the product’s page, when it’s a part of the Launchpad section. Plus, Product Hunt users can follow a new collection called The Launchpad list, where you can buy the products directly from Amazon.