The 365th day of the Amazon store's "resurrection from the dead."

Image source @ Visual China

Wen | Hugo Cross-Border, author | You Minfang Yang Xufeng

In April 2021, the cross-border e-commerce industry set off a huge wave of closures. The top sellers collapsed, the small and medium-sized sellers were silent, and the chain reaction brought about the entire cross-border ecological change.

A year later, cross-border sellers' scrutiny of Amazon is starting over...

1. When you wake up every day, you have to see if the store is still there

In 2020, cross-border e-commerce brought fire not only to the housing prices of Shenzhen Bay, but also to the value of a number of Amazon famous enterprises. At that time, the revenue of Patoson, Zebao and Youkeshu ushered in a substantial increase; Anker Innovation, Jiemet, and VESYNC had just completed their listing performance.

Incredibly, just two months ago, Patoson was sold by the parent company Cross-Border Pass for a list price of 2.02 billion yuan, and the acquirers were both Xiaomi, Shunwei, and ByteDance's Quantum Delight, as well as Shein's Xiyin International. Apparently, capital did not anticipate this accident.

Immediately after that, Aoji, Zebao, Youkeshu, Tongtuo and other big sellers have also fallen, almost every once in a while, there will be new cross-border e-commerce companies to suffer from suspensions, blocked sellers are spread from the head sellers to small and medium-sized sellers, categories from consumer electronics to home, health, clothing and so on.

"Every day when you wake up, you have to see if your shop is still there." One seller recalls.

Zhou Meiling (CEO of Shenzhen Jingmei Technology Co., Ltd. and seller of Amazon kitchen category) who experienced that period of darkness said: "The account is blocked, and the first thing that bears the brunt is Listing. On the fifth day after the account received the suspension notice, all the Listing reviews on the blocked account were affected, and one 800+ rating Listing was directly picked up to 100. ”

"After the account was blocked, I also appealed to the platform for the first time, and after experiencing one, two or even multiple unsuccessful appeals, I realized that the account really can't come back."

After being banned, Zhou Meiling had a large number of goods waiting in overseas warehouses. "In a hurry, I just quickly contacted the overseas warehouse, moved some products with higher value to the warehouse, and intercepted and processed those goods that were not sent away in China, changed the account number, and labeled it." Zhou Meiling said.

"Fortunately, after changing accounts and selling products, Listing's evaluation function is not limited, it can still be rated by customers, and the weight of the product is not affected."

Under the blow of the suspension, Zhou Meiling also saw the current situation of peers, like him, everyone's situation is not optimistic, and the account has no signs of unblocking, and some sellers are even worse.

"In the past, it was rumored that there was a protective umbrella for big sales, but this time I found that doing Amazon, whether it is a big sale or a small sale, is not safe." A number of sellers spoke bluntly to Hugo across borders.

Looking at the situation of those peers who gambled on their wealth and sold cars and houses to continue the life of the store after the ban, Zhou Meiling understood a truth: "Amazon's account has a life after all, and the seller is just racing against time." ”

In the past when cross-border e-commerce grew barbarically, most sellers did not realize the importance of abiding by the rules of the platform, and compliance operations did not become a consensus, and now they know that violations of rules must have a price. In the following September, Amazon official convenience announced the total number of sellers affected by the suspension incident: a total of 600 Chinese brands were banned from sales, and about 3,000 seller accounts were blocked.

To this day, the hidden pain of the title still stirs the fragile nerves of the seller at all times. It is not only sellers who are still buffering, but also online GMV figures, Hugo cross-border survey data shows that 89% of sellers' orders have not improved after the wave of suspensions, of which 29% of sellers said that it is even worse than before.

2, inventory clearance, layoffs, Amazon sellers "life and death robbery"

Superimposing the pre-production cycle and the late shelf sales, this means that Lin Dong has to bear the inventory pressure of at least half a year. In addition, Amazon will charge a long-term storage fee for the goods stored in its warehouse for a long time, and the storage fee alone will make Lin Dong eat after the store is sealed.

"At that time, only the only option left was low-priced clearance. Fortunately, due to the small size of the store, the backlog of goods is not much, and the goods are gradually cleared through some bulk channels, although the loss is certain. ”

Different from Lin Dong, on the other side of the ocean, the huge head sells in all the traffic channels such as Amazon S, third-party platforms, offline, independent stations, etc., to inventory and withdraw funds.

E-commerce earns money from cash turnover. Zhu Qing therefore revealed his concern about high inventory, "a large backlog of overseas inventory, once it is impossible to clear the goods and collect money, then the capital chain is broken, it is a matter of life and death." ”

In order to speed up the cash flow, since entering the second half of 2021, the same industry as Zhu Qing has sold well, and in addition to clearing the goods, a series of difficult decisions have been made such as store closures, layoffs, and organizational structure adjustments.

The size of the team of nearly 2,800 people in a tree fell from its peak to 1,400 in July 2021, with nearly 280 supervisors and deputy supervisors leaving; in August 2021, Patuoson issued a six-month "Notice of Employee Suspension for R&D Technology Positions"; During the same period, a brand seller specializing in smart furniture in Shenzhen laid off a large area, laying off more than 200 people (including sales, operations, and administration), and then disbanding the entire recruitment department.

Under the heavy setback, the decline in revenue and profit loss of cross-border enterprises that rely on Amazon for survival in 2021 have become an indisputable fact.

There are about 400 sites sealed in 2021, about 100 million yuan of frozen funds, expected revenue of 1.6 billion yuan - 1.7 billion yuan, net profit loss of about 1.5 billion yuan; Zebao has been suspended by Amazon a total of 367 sales sites, frozen funds of more than 30 million yuan, expected revenue of 2.551 billion yuan, net profit loss of 745 million yuan ...

So far, the closed accounts of Tongtuo, Aoji and Youkeshu have not been restored, and ten sales contract lawsuits have been involved, most of the plaintiffs are factory suppliers, and the wave of banning has left them with more chicken feathers.

When the long-reliance on credit leverage is disrupted, factories hidden behind the back end are also skeptical about the future of cross-border sellers.

Wang Yi, who has been engaged in the outdoor glove business for many years, confided in Hugo cross-border: "Several brand sellers cooperated by the factory have been blocked, which may affect this year's orders. Mainly to see if they can survive, now only those orders that have been opened are not affected. ”

Wang Yi's concerns are not unreasonable, according to Marketplace Pulse data, the proportion of Chinese sellers in Amazon's head sellers in September 2021 has dropped from 40% at the beginning of the year to 38%.

The tearful departure of 2% of the big sellers directly led to the sharp reduction of the office area of cross-border sellers in Shenzhen. A second-hand office supplies recycling company in Shenzhen revealed that in August last year, cross-border e-commerce, as the hardest hit area of Shenzhen's failed enterprises, within a month, 10 enterprises that surrendered their leases and moved out, 8 of which were cross-border e-commerce companies, the source was still the chain reaction of the Amazon suspension incident.

All kinds of indications show that every wave of the suspension is a terrifying wave for sellers and factories.

3, know that the brushing violation, but can not stop

Ten years ago, Amazon's business opportunities surged like a tidal wave, relying on the flow wheel, the first "crab eaters" were able to soar. As one of the leaders, Shenzhen sellers often master the most core "technology".

Driven by profits, the group of Amazon sellers, the most studied is the platform policy and vulnerabilities, well versed in the "way of business", the brush single evaluation to the extreme.

In the view of Guo Yachao (CEO of Weizhi), cross-border workers in Shenzhen are more focused on making money. "There is no concept of working days and holidays in Shenzhen, as long as there is a suitable time to find the right friends, basically you can talk about work or cooperation, other cities may not be like this."

However, it is precisely because Shenzhen sellers are too pursuit of extreme efficiency, and the shortcomings are also very obvious, since the beginning of Amazon's ban, Shenzhen has naturally become a hard-hit area.

"From the moment I decided to swipe my orders, I was ready to risk losing my account." Zhou Jiekai confessed after the store was closed. "I have been in the industry for so long, I have hardly seen any seller who does not brush a single, the industry competition is so fierce, especially the 3C category, it is a red sea, how can it be a single without brushing praise."

As a member of the Shenzhen 3C consumer electronics sellers, the products on the shelves of Zhou Jiekai's store are mostly cheap, lightweight data cables, headphones and other products, compared with the sellers of furniture, home, bicycles and other large commodities in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Zhou Jiekai brushes a single empty package The cost is relatively low, and it is not easy to be detected.

From this point of view, the operational differences between sellers in different regions are more determined by the supply chain.

Shenzhen, located in South China, as the most important industrial base of 3C electronics in the country, has gathered a number of electronic accessories and component factories, and countless goods are sent overseas from Shenzhen port every year.

At present, the stock of Zhou Jiekai's new store is being collected by the cooperative logistics company and sent to the United States. At that time, the cargo ship will cross the North Pacific along the U.S.-West Route, arrive at the port of Los Angeles or Long Beach, and then transfer to Amazon's warehouses everywhere.

Just like never giving up on Amazon, Zhou Jiekai will not give up the "operational ability" that was once regarded as an important chip. He said that after the ban, in terms of brushing orders and evaluation, although it will not be as "barbaric" as before, it will still insist on reducing the number very low and the amount of the card is written very high, so as to increase the proportion of retention reviews, and not leave a handle.

Of course, it is not only Zhou Jiekai who has ventured, but also many small sellers who have newly entered the market, and also hope that the small cards in the package are not necessarily for the purpose of brushing orders, but more for the accumulation of overseas customers' private mailbox resources for secondary expansion and utilization.

"Doing Amazon mostly tests courage, and in this regard, novice sellers have the courage to break the boat."

Well-versed sellers believe that a novice seller with insufficient resources to do Amazon, if you use a pure white hat to play the ending mostly scaly, but if you take some "shortcuts", there is a chance to die in a lifetime.

"Especially in the unpredictable situation of cross-border logistics, from the time of market research, promotion and shipping, the time to push a new product takes about 4 months to 6 months." If the pace is slower, the novice seller will not be able to win the time, and the products that may be pushed may have become the Red Sea. ”

The price war of the Red Sea category, how fierce, needless to say, "0.99 US dollars free shipping" has never been an empty phrase.

If it is said that the risky move of brushing a single determines whether the new seller can get ahead, then the "low-price spiral" playing method directly sentences the new seller who is shy in the pocket to a "death penalty".

In Guo Yachao's view, at the moment when raw materials and logistics are flying at high prices, the pain caused by costs even far exceeds the changes at the operation end of the platform.

"If the exchange rate affects the change of about 20% of profits, then the rise in logistics costs may poach about 15% of profits; the cost of raw materials will rise by another 10%-20%, and almost half of the profits will be hollowed out." In this case, no matter how much optimization and operation efforts are made in advertising, the decline in profits is insoluble in the case of changes in the general environment. ”

Guo Yachao regards 2021 as an unprecedented turning point, whether it is platform suppression, rising logistics costs, or the influx of new sellers, all the unfavorable factors are superimposed, and the internal volume will only become more and more serious.

There is no doubt that amazon's operating environment is becoming complex.

4, with Amazon, sellers need more patience