Amazon has doubled the total selection of branded Dash buttons available to UK members of its Prime subscription service, to more than 100, just over a year after launching the push-button wi-fi gizmos, which let people reorder a specific product via its ecommerce marketplace just by pushing the button.
The first Dash buttons launched in the UK in August last year. Amazon now says Dash Button orders have delivered more than 160,000 cups of coffee and almost 300,000 rolls of toilet tissue paper in the market.
Although it's not -- in typical Amazon fashion -- breaking out any hard metrics for the buttons, which cost £4.99 a piece (though users then get a £4.99 discount on their first Dash push order -- so sticking these things all over your white goods comes with essentially zero additional cost, assuming you're already locked into Amazon's Prime membership program).
Reordering toilet roll is the most popular Dash push for UK users, according to the ecommerce giant. Followed by dishwasher tablets, cat litter, cat food, beer, mouthwash and baby wipes. So most definitely this gadget is one to file under 'utility & convenience' (not 'shiny & sexy').
Among the new brands willingly sticking themselves on Dash buttons are Bold, Cillit Bang, English Tea Shop, evian, Febreze, Flash, Gaviscon, Harringtons, Head & Shoulders, Pampers, Purina Gourmet, SMA, Tampax, Vet’s Best and Waterwipes.
The full list of new (and existing) UK Dash buttons can be found here.
For fast moving consumer goods brands, which inevitably have stacks of similarly priced rival products vying to catch consumers' eyes on shop shelves, the chance to peel away and monopolize consumers' attention in their own homes is clearly the equivalent of catnip.
Add in the fact Dash also reduces friction for repeat orders of their product and, well, there's really no down side as far as the brands are concerned. Dash buttons for every kind of staple seems inevitable -- at least until some kind of instant reordering gets integrated into products themselves.
Until then an unknown number of Brits are apparently comfortable pebble-dashing their homes with stick-on buttons. Or at least happy to put a Dash button for reordering bog roll somewhere near the toilet (hopefully in close proximity to soap and hot water).
- This article originally appeared on TechCrunch.