The number of orders has plummeted, and cross-border sellers bid farewell to the peak season

Christmas is coming, and overseas consumers' holiday online shopping has ended. The holiday sales season that lasted for about two months has finally come to an end.

Since yesterday, sellers have clearly felt a sharp drop in orders. On the one hand, products with holiday attributes are out of season, and on the other hand, people are preparing for the Christmas holiday and shopping less. However, many sellers said that there is still a lot of inventory that has not been cleared in time and needs to be disposed of as soon as possible. If it is too late, the disposal fee may double.

Orders continue to slash, the peak season is over

Since the beginning of this week, more and more sellers have reported that orders have declined significantly. This situation has reached a small peak today. "Decline in orders" has become a key word in sellers' chats in the past two days:

——Americans are starting their Christmas holidays, and Amazon’s orders are even worse.
——Sales started to halve today
——Today's order volume is plummeting.
—Completely cut down
——Ankle cut passing by

Sellers concluded that starting today, the 2022 peak season is almost over. Not only third-party platforms such as Amazon, but also independent website sellers have seen a noticeable decrease in sales. "Today's orders were so few that I thought the website was down. The orders that were placed were from American customers, and there were no orders from other countries."

In Europe and the United States, the Christmas holiday or preheating has already begun, and people will not have much time to shop. From Christmas to early January, sales are relatively low. At the beginning of this week, a seller said that due to the strong Christmas atmosphere on Instagram, sales of many categories are going to cool down, such as the gradual decline in the number of jewelry orders. Other categories can still be popular for a week, such as shoes, clothing, gifts and other low-priced consumer goods categories are still hot, but their categories are no longer popular.

Previously, a seller analyzed that sales would start to drop on the 20th. There would still be some shadow of the peak season on the 21st and 22nd, but sales would definitely be much lower than before. It is estimated to be around 30%-50% of the previous two days. On the 23rd, we can officially say goodbye to this year's peak season.

According to the Christmas holiday notice released by a company, the UK Christmas holiday will be from December 24, 2022 to January 2, 2023. European and American countries will leave enough time for Christmas holiday rest. Sellers can also take this opportunity to sort out the operation of the year, including taking stock of profits and losses after the peak season, adjusting advertising strategies, etc.

A small seller said that she did some calculations and had a great harvest this peak season. "The total sales volume is three times that of last year. The best sales volume was in November. The shortage in December led to average sales, but overall it was still much better than last year." Another seller also said that the sales volume and sales revenue in December this year were twice that of last year.

For 2023, the seller hopes that sales can continue to double. Small sellers have smaller sales volumes, so it is relatively easy to double sales. For larger sellers, a growth of about 1/3 is already considerable. As the epidemic policy is relaxed, some sellers have set sales and profit growth targets for next year at 30%-50%.

After the peak season, sales have dropped significantly, and remaining inventory has become the biggest headache for sellers. "Have you cleared your inventory?" has also become the most heartbreaking question.

A large number of sellers began to clear their inventory, and some cleared out their Best Sellers.

According to feedback, most sellers still have inventory to be cleared. Some sellers said they still have 20% of inventory, while some peers are in a slightly better situation, with 5% of inventory remaining.

For most sellers, the inventory capacity left after the peak season this year is not very large, and the surplus seems to be better than last year.

However, the situation of some sellers does not seem optimistic, and their remaining inventory is four times that of last year. According to the seller's feedback, most of the redundant inventory comes from new products. Although there are only 100-200 units of each model, there are too many SKUs. Even if this part of the redundant inventory survives until the summer peak season, it is destined to be unsaleable. Currently, they are considering whether to let Amazon recycle it, or to clear the stock at a low price + on-site advertising.

According to an industry insider, the overall sales of many Amazon sellers this year are not ideal. Everyone is conservatively stocking up, or making multiple deliveries in small batches. The overall operating philosophy is conservative, and they will not carry out large-scale retaliatory stocking as before, so the inventory situation of most people will not be too bad.

Seller Ace said that although he did not dare to stock up in large quantities, as the peak season is over, there is still some inventory left this year, but compared with last year's inventory, this year's situation is already good.

Regardless of how much inventory is left, now that the peak season is over, most sellers who still have inventory have already put clearance on the agenda.

Many sellers have chosen to abandon their remaining inventory . One seller said that the inventory was not selling well and had already been abandoned. Another seller also said that the results of reporting outside the site were not good, and after the peak season, the inventory was ready to be abandoned.

Some veteran sellers have already created removal orders to dispose of their unsaleable inventory, and they reminded their peers that the disposal fee will double starting January 17 next year, and it will be too late if everyone disposes of the inventory later.

In fact, some sellers started clearing out their inventory a few days ago, and one of their peers cleared out their inventory and became a Best Seller, which is somewhat enviable!

An old seller said that most of the big stocks this year have been sold out, but there is still a small amount of inventory left, about 10,000 stocks are being cleared at the floor price. They will sell as much as they can. If they can't, they will be discarded after Christmas. They don't plan to keep them for next Christmas season. It's meaningless! The situation of another peer is similar. They started to clean up all the stocks that are more than 365 days old around the 20th.

In addition to clearing inventory, another major issue for sellers after the peak season is to calculate profits. An experienced seller in the industry reminds everyone not to rush to calculate profits. The economic situation in Europe and the United States is not good this year. Some European and American consumers will definitely use Amazon's exclusive return service to return products directly after use, and the return rate this year will definitely be much higher than in previous years.

According to the National Retail Federation, last year U.S. consumer returns grew 6%, valued at more than $761 billion, or 16.6% of total U.S. retail sales.

Appriss Retail data shows that about 91% of sellers have a return rate that is growing faster than revenue. The return rate for online purchases is 3 to 4 times that of physical stores. The average return cost of online purchases is 21% of the order value.

Moreover, this year, many retailers have also optimized their return services. Walmart has launched new store returns and door-to-door pickup services, and extended its return policy to January 31, 2023; Target consumers can also choose to return goods directly to the store.

On the other hand, some logistics operators have also begun to provide services to other companies. UPS plans to provide logistics service solutions to retailers, aiming to improve the delivery and return processes. Gap Inc. has also launched the GPS platform service to provide fulfillment and return logistics services.

As a cross-border seller, are you ready to clear out your stock and prepare for returns after the peak season?

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