More than a thousand orders a day, Amazon sellers' order volume surges!

After many periods of poor sales, Amazon sellers finally welcomed a moment of joy. Sales began to increase, and some sellers even sold more than 1,000 orders per day. At that time, sellers no longer competed to be overseas philanthropists and began to raise prices for some products.

Amazon sellers' order volume picks up

When talking about the order volume this year, many sellers directly said that they were "unbearable to watch". This year's peak season was not very busy. Throughout the year, except for Member Day, Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday, which should have been the peak seasons with explosive orders, they did not deliver satisfactory results. However, in recent days, sellers have expressed different opinions.

Many sellers reported that as Christmas is approaching and this year's peak season is coming to an end, the number of orders has begun to pick up. "The traffic of three accounts has increased significantly, and a single account has sold more than 1,000 orders a day." said a seller.

Coincidentally, many sellers also reported that the number of orders has started to increase recently. Although the increase is not large, they are satisfied compared with the number of orders during Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday. Some sellers compared the number of orders during Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday and found that the number of orders increased by about 20%.

However, not all sellers will experience an increase in sales volume, and it depends on the categories they sell. According to the feedback from the above sellers, the sellers with an increase in sales volume mostly sell Christmas products such as Christmas trees, Santa hats, greeting cards, etc. The sales volume of sellers in other categories has not changed significantly.

Many sellers on the European site reported the opposite of the above-mentioned sellers’ explosive orders. They said that the recent order volume has not increased, but has dropped sharply. Some sellers even asked, why are other people’s order volumes increasing, but only my order volume is declining?

"I have thousands of dollars of inventory, but I can't sell it at the floor price, so I'm ready to throw it away," said a seller. It is reported that due to the poor order volume in the first three quarters of this year, many sellers have high expectations for the "money prospects" in the fourth quarter and have prepared inventory as in previous years, but the failure of the Black Friday online shopping season has dealt a heavy blow to many sellers.

The large amount of prepared inventory can only stay safely in the warehouse, but Amazon recently announced that it will increase storage fees , including increases in overage inventory surcharges, storage utilization surcharges, and monthly inventory storage fees. This means that once sellers use FBA to ship goods, they will have to start working for Amazon.

Not only that, many sellers are also reporting that there are more and more places where Amazon ads can be placed, and the costs involved in the products are becoming more and more detailed. If sellers want to get better orders and rankings, they need to spend more money, which is in line with the saying that Amazon makes money and Amazon spends it.

Will sellers be willing to work for Amazon? Obviously, not. In response to the increase in Amazon's fees, Chinese sellers have already taken measures. They no longer compete to be philanthropists and have begun to raise prices for some products.

Some sellers said frankly that they suddenly found that on Amazon, the product was not selling well at a low price, but after raising the price, the order volume increased. Some sellers tried to increase the price of the product by $9 at one time, but found that it had no effect on sales, and it was still the same as usual. In the seller's view, if the keywords have rankings, the price increase will not have much impact on the sales of the product; if there is no ranking, the price spirals to the floor and the sales will not change at all.

Coupled with the impact of inflation in the United States, price increases have become a consensus among many sellers. When a consumer bought a product on the Amazon platform, he found that the same product was priced at $17 earlier this year, while the price in December was $53, an increase of more than 3 times.

In addition, for many sellers who had a huge sales volume during the previous peak season, they are also facing a most troublesome problem, that is, the return rate soared after Black Friday. Think about how happy the sellers were when they had a huge sales volume, and how heavy the sellers' mood was when they returned the goods later.

After Black Friday, the amount of online shopping returns in the United States reached $279 billion

As soon as the annual e-commerce platform promotions end, sellers will inevitably experience the most troublesome problem, which is the large-scale returns from local consumers. This situation seems to be more serious this year.

According to eMarketer data, the amount of returns from online shopping in the United States this year will reach 279.03 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 8.4% compared with the same period last year, and this figure is more than double that of 2019. Among them, the amount of returns from third-party markets reached 43.5 billion U.S. dollars.

Looking at the categories, women's clothing seems to be one of the categories with the highest return rate. Amazon sellers who sell skirts said that the return rate has reached about 40%, and some subcategories below skirts have a return rate of more than 60%. In the sellers' view, rising commodity prices and some consumers following the trend are the main reasons for the increase in returns.

After consumers return products, the unsale rate of these products is even higher. After many products are returned, there will be worn labels and damaged packaging, and sellers can only mark these products as unsaleable. But for sellers, if the returned products are unsaleable, it means that these returns will become sellers' costs, and the sellers' profits will also be eaten up.

Some organizations predict that after the Christmas season this year, the return rate will surge by more than 70% compared to the same period last year. An Amazon seller has calculated that the return rate of his store in the past six months was 17%, but recently the return rate in a single day has sometimes reached 60%. Considering the need to bear the return costs, sellers can only choose to refund, and of course they cannot get the goods back.

The reasons given by consumers for returns are even more bizarre to the sellers, such as: the wig effect is not vivid enough, the tempered film was attached crookedly and they want a refund, the USB lamp ran out of battery and they said the lamp was broken and they want a return, etc., which have left many sellers powerless to complain.

In fact, this large-scale return situation is not only seen on the Amazon platform, but many independent site sellers are also facing the same situation. Take the well-known SHEIN as an example. According to relevant data from Guangzhou Customs, the value of its products returned to the Guangzhou Nansha bonded warehouse in 2020 was as high as 5 billion yuan, and this value increased to 7 billion yuan in 2021. However, given SHEIN's huge revenue, these return rates obviously do not account for a large proportion.

Unlike many small and medium-sized sellers, SHEIN has a more direct way to deal with these returns, which is to donate them to local charities or sell them directly to local factories. However, for many small sellers, this solution may not be feasible.

For sellers, they can use some professional second-hand goods clearance platforms to handle returned products. Of course, in order to reduce the return rate, sellers also need to solve the problem fundamentally. First, they should provide products that meet consumers' psychological expectations, so that pictures, listings and products are consistent; second, when the product is sold, they should provide zipper bags, place spare labels, etc., to achieve the purpose of reducing the return rate.

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