Are women popular? 85% of Amazon sellers prefer female operators

Gender issues in Amazon's operations positions have always been a hot topic of discussion among cross-border practitioners, and the ratio of male and female operators in the company also depends on the situation.

As some companies become more mature, many small and medium-sized Amazon sellers believe that women may be more suitable for operations positions, mainly because they are careful and have stable jobs. Compared with female operators, most male operators are self-employed, and the talent loss rate is relatively high.

Industry insiders have found that many companies in the industry have a high proportion of female operators. At present, some companies with more male operators have begun to recruit "female operators" as a special case in order to balance the ratio of male and female employees .

However, with the development of the industry, like men, the number of cases of female operators/female entrepreneurs working on Amazon or venturing into the cross-border circle is also increasing, and some have achieved good results.

These new entrepreneurs are expanding the size of Chinese sellers. The market share of Chinese sellers on Amazon has returned to its peak. Most people believe that they should not rely too much on Amazon and strive to achieve diversified development starting from Amazon. However, judging from the current performance, Chinese sellers have not given up on Amazon and their share on the platform is relatively high.

Seeking stability, Amazon sellers prefer female operators?

Recently, the seller blogger "Amazon Meidao" said that for a small Amazon team, all eight operations staff in his company are women. The reason is that female operations are more stable, male operations are more likely to work alone, and it is easy to bring female operations with good performance to open a husband-and-wife store.

The seller also launched an interesting survey: For small teams, which is more suitable for Amazon male or female operations? As a result, most voters chose female operations. As of the time the author looked at the data, the proportion of those who chose female operations was as high as over 85%.

In this regard, more sellers have their own opinions. One seller said frankly that Amazon operations require carefulness, patience, and strong execution, and girls have an advantage under the same education level.

Mr. Tian, ​​an Amazon seller, said that most of the company's operations are done by females, and relatively speaking, he prefers to recruit female operators because it is really easy for male operators to run away and work on their own in Shenzhen.

The seller's boss A said that there is no gender discrimination. I will not recruit men or local people when I lead the team, because the candidates I have interviewed are either unstable or not down-to-earth. Relatively speaking, there are many women who do well, and they are content to continue working hard with a commission of more than 100,000 yuan a month.

Cross-border practitioner B introduced that all the foreign trade salespersons in his former employer were women. They said that men were too ambitious and would go out to work on their own once their performance was good. The best female salesperson made 40 million a year and worked steadily.

Cross-border practitioner C also mentioned that when he visited a client a few days ago, there was only one man in the office of 20 to 30 people. Cross-border practitioner D from an inland city also confirmed that his company has run multiple e-commerce platforms, and the operators of each platform are mostly women, accounting for more than half.

In the opinion of seller E, it is more realistic that a male operator takes the single female operator with the best performance to open a husband-and-wife store . In his previous company, basically any male operator who had a little bit of skills would go out to work on his own. Later, the operations were basically all women, and the female operators were more stable.

vote:

1. Are there more male or female operators in your company?

1. Most operators are male

2. Most of the operators are female

2. When recruiting, does the company prefer male or female operators?

1. Male operator, keen and decisive in product selection

2. Female operators, stable and meticulous, less likely to work alone

According to feedback from many sellers, some small and medium-sized Amazon businesses have a higher proportion of female operators, and operations within the industry have also confirmed this situation.

Operation A said, "I am the girl with good performance. There are 30 people in our company , 25 of whom are girls ." Operation B said, "My boss prefers girls when recruiting, and basically doesn't want boys." In terms of recruitment, some companies even make special exceptions to recruit female operators.

A Shenzhen company specially recruited " female operations "

A company in Shenzhen has posted a job posting for a female operator of Amazon's US site. The requirements are two years or more of experience in US site operations, preferably experience in electronics, or no experience required if the candidate is strong. The benefits include two days off a week, no salary deduction for leave, no need to punch in at work, a higher base salary than in other companies, and commissions based on performance. The company's internal staff believes that the benefits offered are good, but they have been unable to recruit a female operator.

As for why they wanted to recruit female operators, the company said that 90 percent of its employees were male, which was an imbalance in the ratio of men to women.

When seeing the issue of the gender ratio, some colleagues said that different companies have different situations. When they were in the clothing business before, the company's operations were almost entirely run by girls, with very few boys. Later, when they went to another company, there were still more girls than boys.

This company recruited female operators to balance the gender ratio, and the treatment offered by them also made some operators excited. A cross-border practitioner said bluntly: " It's outrageous that we can't recruit people with such conditions ! " A male operator joked: "Can gender not be so rigid? If it doesn't work, I can wear women's clothes to work."

Although some people are attracted by the salary, they have to meet the relevant recruitment requirements, so some people will be discouraged. Some practitioners analyzed the reasons why this company has difficulty recruiting: 1. The company has good salary, but the requirements are also very high, and the degree of discouragement is much higher than the attraction; 2. Maybe during the epidemic, many people want stability and do not consider changing jobs.

Some colleagues also mentioned that the working environment of Amazon's operations has deteriorated this year, job demand has dropped sharply, and wages and benefits have also decreased compared to last year. This year, recruiters have an absolute advantage. As some companies withdraw from the cross-border e-commerce track, the unemployment rate of operations has begun to increase. Currently, there are many operations people looking for jobs, and there should be more female operations people than male operations people, because some male operations people may start to work alone or change careers. Some of them became truck drivers, some switched to become freight forwarders, and some became riders.

When demand decreases, employers either do not hire or hire people to suit their own development needs.

This year, small and medium-sized sellers on Amazon are not having an easy time. As the market cools, more cross-border sellers are no longer expanding blindly or recruiting. Many companies are also laying off employees and downsizing, or fleeing Shenzhen and returning to the stable business model of mom-and-pop stores.

Obviously, the recruitment of operation positions is directly related to the business development of Amazon sellers. When sellers' advertising costs and logistics costs rise, profits will fall sharply. In addition, this year, price competition among Amazon sellers has intensified. Many sellers compete for market share at low prices, even at the expense of profits. Many sellers' performance has declined and their profits have shrunk, while the profits of sellers with growing performance have also been affected to varying degrees.

Under such market conditions, many sellers this year have set "survival" as their goal. Everyone's desire for stability has also made the advantages of female operators more prominent, so in the current market, female operators may become more popular.

However, some people in the industry believe that female operators have both advantages and disadvantages. Operations work is very tedious, and women are easily bothered by tedious things, leaving important work aside and spending time and energy on solving some minor problems.

For example, a male operator dares to spend $2,000 on advertising for a link, but most female operators don’t have this kind of courage. It is also because of this that many female operators (not all) find it difficult to become the company’s leading entrepreneurs, so they have stable jobs.

This statement was also recognized by some female operators. One female operator said that male operators spend $300 a day and can persist even after losing money for three consecutive months; I will start to back off if I spend $100 a day and lose money for two consecutive months. Another female operator mentioned that the cost of a link for female operators is basically $3,000-5,000.

According to a senior industry insider, in the cross-border e-commerce industry, male and female operators actually have their own advantages and specialties. Male operators are better at rational data analysis, more accurate in making operational decisions, and more sensitive in product selection; while female operators are better at basic operations and detailed processes such as image design.

Based on the opinions of many people in the industry, it is generally believed that male operators are more courageous and female operators are more stable. In fact, male and female operators have their own advantages. It just depends on the specific needs of each company. Recruitment at a specific time is in line with the company's development situation.

Perhaps in certain market industries, the proportion of female operators at Amazon has increased, but female operators are not necessarily stable and unambitious. Another situation is that the number of examples of women trying to start a business is increasing.

The number of female entrepreneurs operating resellers is increasing

"Stability" is one of the main reasons why female operators are preferred, but under the continuous impact of the cross-border wave, more and more women are also turning to entrepreneurship and going it alone on Amazon.

Blogger "Amazon Chen Dasheng" shared his entrepreneurial experience.

The blogger was born in 1993 and previously worked in the advertising industry. She traveled frequently and worked overtime. She decided to change her career for the long term. In 2021, she joined a small Amazon company that mainly operates the US site. She personally handled almost all aspects such as product selection, ordering, taking pictures, packaging, and operation. After working for more than a year, she became familiar with Amazon's basic operating procedures.

In September this year , he decided to quit his job and start his own business. His goal was not big, just to earn a salary and save a small amount every month. It is understood that the seller currently has more than ten products, and the monthly sales of the first product are over 600. However, because he was too anxious to develop new models, he launched five new models in a row and suffered losses in October.

Most of the time, the start-up capital for a solo business is limited, so entrepreneurs are often very cautious and try step by step. After achieving a certain income, they are prone to reach a growth bottleneck. "I started with 30,000 yuan on the Japanese site, and now I am using the money earned from the Japanese site to open a US site. Although the steps are a bit small, they are very stable." said a seller. Another seller said that he has been doing self-delivery for almost a year, without advertising, and there are still a few orders every day. It's okay to do small things, but it's impossible to get rich overnight.

Seller Li Juan has previously operated on multiple e-commerce platforms including AliExpress. This year, she officially started operating on Amazon. Because of her previously accumulated knowledge of the consumption and aesthetic habits of European and American users, her Amazon store has begun to make a profit about half a year after her products were put on the shelves.

Li Juan feels that she has met Amazon too late, and frankly said that she missed tens of millions of dollars before. She thinks it is relatively easy to do business on Amazon. The art design and pictures are outsourced, and the goods are shipped to FBA. She selects a few products and runs the business slowly. The overall situation is good.

Of course, entrepreneurial attempts are not always fruitful. A full-time mother worked on Amazon for a year and lost nearly 100,000 yuan. The problem was in product selection. Next, she planned to reorganize and start again. Another seller had 3 years of experience on Amazon. After one year of entrepreneurship, he had a monthly turnover of 100,000 yuan, but he was still in debt and felt confused.

Obviously, even for veteran sellers, it is not an easy job to start an Amazon business this year. Therefore, when faced with the voices of most people who want to start a business, people will intuitively respond that this year is not a good time. However, it is undeniable that the more difficult the times, the more opportunities there are to overtake others. As one seller said, the epidemic scared away 80% of entrepreneurs, and the remaining 20% ​​got 80% of the resources. This is the best time for them to occupy this part of the market share.

Recently, a big V in the industry mentioned that a female operator quit her job in March this year to work for Amazon. After half a year, the performance of a single store has reached an average of more than 10,000 US dollars, and the amount exceeded 20,000 when sales were good. However, she did not sell low-priced entry-level products, and the average customer price was more than 20 US dollars. Another seller worked alone for 9 months, and the profit in half a year was enough to buy a Model 3. Such high-quality entrepreneurship is admirable.

The success of entrepreneurs will attract many imitators. What do they think about other people wanting to start a business like Amazon after hearing about it?

The blogger mentioned above said that women have many considerations such as marriage anxiety, especially after getting married and having children, it is difficult to balance family and small business. She admitted that it is not easy to work at Amazon this year, and those who are interested in entering the industry are advised to consider carefully and not quit their jobs and fall into the trap.

If the parties have made up their minds, what issues should they pay attention to during the start-up phase?

In the early stages of starting a business, new sellers go from being employees to freelancers, and they are not used to the change in work and rest schedule. In addition, the store has not yet improved and their income has dropped sharply, so they inevitably fall into anxiety.

According to the analysis of those who have experienced it, there are not many things to do in the early stage of working alone, so you can consider working and starting a business at the same time, which can not only do the preliminary preparations and trial operation of the store, but also maintain a stable monthly income. In addition, the overall market is not optimistic, so you should be extra cautious in product selection; in terms of business model, too many SKUs will distract your attention, so it is recommended to control it within 5 and optimize the single SKU to the extreme.

Chinese sellers regain top market share on Amazon

The continuous influx of entrepreneurs is expanding the scale of China's cross-border sellers.

Due to the previous account suspension, Chinese sellers began to pay attention to channel diversification and intended to reduce their dependence on Amazon. However, Marketplace Pulse's research shows that Chinese sellers have now regained the market share they lost on Amazon in the past two years and set a record for the highest sales share in the US Amazon market. The idea of ​​"abandoning Amazon" is also untrue.

Currently, the total number of feedbacks from Chinese sellers and the percentage of top sellers have returned to the levels of November 2020. Although these two analysis methods are relatively rudimentary in themselves, they both confirm the same directionality of sales.

( Review share of Chinese sellers among Amazon sellers )

Chinese sellers are still doing well on Amazon, and almost all of them use the FBA service to stock and sell goods. In this regard, some American sellers ship from their own warehouses or through other third-party logistics companies.

Since November 2020, the market share of American sellers has been increasing, reversing the trend of Chinese sellers dominating the platform for many years, but this situation stopped in March this year and then reversed, and Chinese sellers quickly regained the lost market share. Although the market share of American sellers is still above 50%, this proportion may soon drop below 50%.

After the account suspension incident, more and more Chinese sellers believe that they should reduce their dependence on Amazon. This is also the mainstream view in the industry. Avoiding dependence on Amazon can prevent companies from being hit hard by a single platform. Although Amazon is still the main channel for Chinese brands and sellers to reach consumers in Western markets, the sentiment of "de-Amazonization" in China's cross-border e-commerce is growing.

After that, most sellers worked hard to diversify, hoping to no longer rely on Amazon for the majority of their revenue. The platform's high and increasing fees, inability to access customer data, and frozen funds in multiple seller accounts were all motivations for diversification.

Walmart has seized the opportunity. Since opening its marketplace to international sellers last year, the platform has added more than 10,000 new sellers from China. Many of the items that were suspended on Amazon are now sold on Walmart.

But the reality is that few sellers have successfully diversified their channels , partly because Amazon remains the largest platform in the United States and many other major sales markets, while other available platform alternatives are smaller, such as Walmart and eBay. Amazon's market is larger than the rest of the platforms combined.

Second, their business model is completely different from that of third-party platforms such as Amazon. For example, the independent website boom that swept the industry last year, DTC or Shopify requires sellers to have strong financial and operational capabilities, which blocks most small and medium-sized sellers from entering the market. Although some big sellers have built independent websites, they only try them out briefly, and the gap between their business volume and that of third-party platforms is huge.

Therefore, in general, almost all sellers are inevitably dependent on Amazon to some extent. After trying new markets and new platforms, many sellers feel that the new channels have a small customer base and a low input-output ratio, and gradually lose interest. Especially in this year's declining consumer market, some sellers have reduced their expansion in other channels and put their focus back on Amazon to reduce expenses and ensure profits.

But it has to be said that Amazon's ban on hundreds of top Chinese sellers last year shocked the market, and new marketplaces like SHEIN and Temu seem to provide a way out for Chinese sellers to go overseas. Tik Tok's attempts have also attracted much attention, and people are always looking forward to new channels that are expected to emerge.

Judging from the current performance on Amazon, Chinese sellers have not withdrawn from Amazon. Even if sellers have more and more negative sentiment towards Amazon, the situation that the industry is heavily invested in Amazon will not change significantly in the short term, and "Made in China sold on Amazon" will still be the norm.

As Amazon sellers return to business, the demand for operations will increase accordingly. Both male and female operators will demonstrate their respective advantages and drive more Chinese brands to go overseas.

Amazon

Female Operations

Cross-border e-commerce