Amazon's store closing tide swept through, and thousands of China sellers lingered on the line of life and death.
Recently, Amazon officially responded for the first time, this time only prohibiting the sale of 600 China brands, involving about 3,000 seller accounts.
According to the statistics released by Shenzhen cross-border electronic commerce Association in August, in more than two months, Amazon shut down more than 50,000 sellers in China, and the estimated loss has exceeded 1000 billion yuan.
Arel, president of Shenzhen Cross-border Association, pointed out to 2 1CBR that the above data did not include a large number of enterprises below the waist. "Many companies are reluctant to register. For example, a company in eastern Guangdong may have nearly 100 accounts blocked, and 10 accounts lost 900 million, but did not contact us actively. "
The industry structure has been reshuffled, sellers have begun to save themselves, and more cross-border e-commerce platforms and service providers have also ushered in opportunities.
Block 500 numbers every week.
When the war started in May, Amazon banned big sellers on the grounds of "brushing the bill" and "false comments", with a performance scale of10 billion. Subsequently, small and medium-sized sellers with billions of achievements were also named.
At present, there are more and more small and medium-sized sellers being cleaned, and the categories have also expanded from consumer electronics to home, health and beauty.
A seller of household products received an email from Amazon and was blocked for "leaking user information". The industry pointed out that this is related to the fact that several US senators jointly accused Amazon of having user data security problems.
"Some Amazon people revealed to us that 65,438+million will be blocked before the end of the year." According to informed sources, I don't know if the rumor is true or not. It is now clear that 500 accounts of big sellers are blocked every week.
For a long time, the sales channels of cross-border e-commerce have been highly dependent on the Amazon platform. The Amazon account was blocked, which brought huge inventory pressure to the merchants.
Allen, a cross-border seller, described Amazon's operation in the past six months as a roller coaster ride. "I used to earn more than $ 1 10,000 a day, but now it has been reduced to $ 1 10,000 a day. There are more than 70 million stocks in the seller's account, not including overseas warehouses and goods in transit. "
The sellers of titles are clearing sales on major e-commerce platforms and social platforms. At present, the wholesale price of electric toothbrushes, which cost several hundred yuan, is only sold in 28 yuan, but only in 38 yuan.
Dominoes have fallen one after another, and problems such as declining revenue, pressure on capital chain, shutdown and salary reduction have followed.
At the beginning of August, Amazon's big seller, Tongtuo Technology, announced that since the middle and late July, Amazon has closed 54 stores and frozen related funds up to 414300 yuan.
A week ago, Yiwu Huading (parent company of Tongtuo Technology) announced that Tongtuo Technology failed to fulfill its performance promise of net profit of 390 million yuan attributable to shareholders of the parent company in 20 19, and its shareholders should pay Yiwu Huading the promised compensation amount of 340 million yuan.
Patuoxun, another big seller, has experienced a miraculous process of Q 1 performance soaring, sales falling off a cliff and technology research and development jobs stagnating within half a year.
In August, Patoson issued a six-month suspension arrangement: the first month paid 80% of the normal wage, and the second month paid 80% of the minimum wage in Shenzhen until the suspension period ended. 202 1 year, the minimum wage in Shenzhen is only 2200 yuan/month.
"(blocked) companies are looking for money, including finding loans from private friends or transferring equity." Arel told 2 1CBR.
Platform migration
For cross-border enterprises in the title crisis, the solution is always more difficult than it is.
Several people from cross-border industries told 2 1CBR that after being blocked, some China sellers began to use overseas ID cards to buy Amazon accounts for sale. On the other hand, Amazon has introduced stricter policies. For example, when selling in each country, the platform seller must have a local return address.
In any case, evading supervision is not the best way to save yourself. The deterioration of Amazon's ecological environment is accelerating to convince China sellers.
After cracking down on merchants and brushing comments, Amazon began to increase the advertising expenses in the station. According to some sellers, since the tide of titles spread at the end of April, the prices of various advertisements on Amazon platform have been rising continuously, and the advertising bidding has risen from 0.3 US dollars to 2 US dollars or even 3 US dollars, an increase of 85%.
Lin Zhiyong, a special researcher at the E-commerce Research Center of the Network Economy Society, believes that the strategic shift of cross-border sellers in China has become the general trend. "First of all, give up the market strategy of putting all business on Amazon platform, and enter Southeast Asia, South Korea, Europe and other markets by entering local and overseas mainstream platforms."
The main sales platforms for cross-border export e-commerce include Amazon, Yi Bei, AliExpress, wish and shopee. "Platforms such as AliExpress and even companies such as Huawei are open to enterprises (named by Amazon)." Arel revealed to "2 1CBR".
Compared with other platforms, Amazon's core advantage lies in its self-built global logistics distribution system. After the seller sends the goods to Amazon warehouse, Amazon will provide subsequent picking, packaging and terminal delivery services.
On AliExpress, sellers need to package their own goods and then find a logistics channel to deliver them. However, in recent years, domestic supply chain logistics enterprises have become increasingly mature, which can provide a smooth transition for sellers fleeing from Amazon.
In addition, arel pointed out: "In the past, Amazon had thousands of investment fairs in China a year, while other platforms only held dozens of investment fairs a year."
She is thinking about promoting China's cross-border brands to the sea through more cross-border e-commerce platform investment fairs and other activities.
Self-built independent station
Another solution is to set up independent TV stations.
SHEIN, a domestic cross-border e-commerce self-built platform, is a typical successful case. In 2020, its revenue doubled to nearly $654.38+000 billion, an increase of over 654.38+000% for the eighth consecutive year. In America, it is as popular as Amazon.
Independent website service providers are wooing big sellers abandoned by Amazon and constantly introducing preferential policies such as "zero-cost website construction" and "one-year free use fee".
Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Commerce also encourages powerful cross-border e-commerce enterprises to explore overseas markets through self-built independent stations, with a single project funded by 2 million yuan.
The financial threshold for entry has been lowered, but Zhang, an analyst at the Network Economy and Social E-commerce Research Center, said that self-built independent stations will test the operational ability of enterprises.
"A series of processes such as drainage, transformation, retention and after-sales service of independent stations are different from the operation mode on third-party platforms. The capital and labor costs invested in the later period will be higher. "
According to Hugo. Com, a China auto parts retailer with overseas platforms such as Amazon and Yi Bei, established its own independent station in 20 19, and the number of stations increased. The original platform could not meet the business needs, so it decided to switch to Shopify.
Drainage is one of the difficult problems in operation. Independent station sellers can't hold the thigh of the platform's ready-made traffic and need to drain it themselves, but don't worry about the pressure from third-party platforms. The data is in their own hands and the upper limit is higher.
In the third year of its establishment (20 1 1), SHEIN began to use online celebrities to promote on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. At that time, the cooperation was relatively cheap, and the traffic of the website was almost all drained from KOL.
According to a survey conducted by Hugo. Com, 48% of the enterprises surveyed began to consider Tik Tok, a social product that China went out to sea. When choosing to use new channels, 6 1% preferred "use free drainage first, then try paid drainage".
On Tik Tok, the seller can't directly hang the link of the third-party platform on the homepage of the account, but can hang the link of the independent station. Independent power stations can freely drain water through Tik Tok.
According to the analysis, in order to cope with Amazon's title, the cross-border circle has formed the knowledge of multi-site layout, and China's social traffic platform will also trigger new ways of playing in the cross-border circle.
The ban is fierce, but the cross-border e-commerce industry is still a blue ocean. If sellers want to get rid of platform dependence, it is the only way to improve the control ability and operation ability of supply chain. In a crisis, it will lead to a more efficient model.