An upcoming Amazon Prime show will award entrepreneurs prime placement on Amazon, if their products pass muster with a panel of three celebrity entrepreneurs and a studio audience of 100 ordinary people.
The show, “Buy It Now,” is a promotional vehicle for a new Amazon innovation, also called Buy It Now, that is set to launch on the same day as the premiere of the TV show on Amazon Prime Video, October 30.
Amazon describes Buy It Now (not the show) as a new “storefront” that “will be accessible to customers through a scannable QR code featured in each episode, by searching ‘Buy It Now’ on Amazon.com, or clicking on easy-to-discover links from the Buy It Now page in the Prime Video app.”
The one-hour TV show is hosted by JB Smoove and “inspired” by “Shark Tank.” In “Buy It Now,” aspiring businessmen and businesswomen get 90 seconds to pitch their passion products.
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They then listen to feedback from a 100-member studio audience who press either red or green lights to signal whether they like the product or do not.
After the product pitcher replies to the naysayers’ concerns, it is then on to the three-member panel.
In the episode that the TV Blog previewed on Tuesday, the panelists were Jamie Siminoff, founder and inventor of Ring, the doorbell company; Carmen Nestares, vice president of U.S. Prime and Marketing Tech for Amazon; and Gwyneth Paltrow, founder and CEO of Goop.
One of the entrepreneurial hopefuls was a woman named Felicia (no last name), 52, from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
She presented a product she invented that helps laypeople who are unschooled in CPR to respond quickly to emergencies and hopefully save the lives of loved ones who might be suffocating or choking. She priced the product at $9.99.
Felicia did a great job presenting the product, which was called “CPRWRAP.” The audience loved it, and so did the panel of judges. Her appearance on the show was evidently a success.
The first season of “Buy It Now” consists of 13 episodes. The first three drop on October 30.
The judges will rotate each week to make room for other celebrity panelists/entrepreneurs such as actor Anthony Anderson, skateboarder Tony Hawk and fashion designer Christian Siriano, one-time winner of “Project Runway.”