Three people jointly started a business on Amazon, with expected annual sales of 5 million!

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After retreating from the "cross-border capital" Shenzhen to his hometown Harbin, in 2020, Mr. Zhao and his wife came up with the idea of ​​starting a business together to create Amazon. After some thought, they brought in a friend, and a small team of three was born. Each person determined their own skills and divided the work and cooperated.

Ordinary people started a business together to create Amazon. They did not have the capital to rely on their fathers. The three of them had to work with each other. Naturally, they encountered many bumps and bruises along the way and fell into countless big and small traps. In the first year of their business, the three of them only earned a total of 100,000 yuan.

After enduring the most difficult times and finally reaping the rewards, the three people calculated that in 2022, the third year of their business, the annual sales should be able to reach 5 million.

In the cross-border circle where there are many strong players, although this number seems ordinary, it is the result of the hard work of ordinary people along the way; in the process of venturing into the cross-border circle, the three people did not have any thrilling stories. It just so happens that this ordinary and ordinary experience is also a true epitome of countless people relying on Amazon for a better future.

Watch other people's stories and understand your own life! Let's walk into their entrepreneurial journey together.

The three-member team was born after meeting on the Amazon platform

Mr. Zhao had previously been engaged in marketing, and his connection with Amazon was made possible by his wife’s matchmaking.

"As early as around 2015, my wife came into contact with Amazon. She was working in a foreign trade B2B company in Shenzhen at the time. She heard from others that Amazon was very profitable, so she registered an Amazon account and made some extra money on the side." Mr. Zhao said that after working in Shenzhen for a while, his wife returned to her hometown Harbin to work, and finally, after careful consideration, she decided to start working for Amazon full-time.

Before 2019, Mr. Zhao's wife had been working alone. She had not learned any knowledge about Amazon in a systematic way, and she didn't even know how to advertise. She just uploaded products, made pictures, shipped products, and then waited for Amazon to pay her back. Since she studied English and it happened to be the period of cross-border e-commerce dividends, she basically shipped products every day in this "confused and ignorant" state. During the peak sales period, the store could sell nearly 100 orders of a niche product every day, and the overall profit could reach more than 100,000 yuan per year. Relying on the income from Amazon in the past few years, she successfully bought a house in Harbin, her hometown.

Around 2019, Mr. Zhao’s wife clearly felt that sales had dropped and it was no longer easy to make money. At this time, she began to realize that Amazon’s traffic dividend period had passed, so she came up with the idea of ​​systematically learning about Amazon and began to think about the possibility of partnering with others to do Amazon.

Under the influence of his wife , Mr. Zhao also decided to change his career to Amazon at this time. After careful consideration, the couple brought in a friend, and in 2020, a small team of three people to venture into Amazon was officially established.

In terms of division of labor, Mr. Zhao is an all-round assistant, basically responsible for the business direction of the entire company; his wife is responsible for the operation of the Amazon store; the funds are mainly handled by friends, and Mr. Zhao and his wife also regard the tens of thousands of goods that were previously stored in the store as common property.

There are natural advantages to starting Amazon together. Many people believe that if you want to do Amazon well, especially to make a lot of money in the later stage, it is difficult to do it by one person alone, so you need a team to operate and manage it. For ordinary people, starting Amazon together with two or three people is a very good choice, which can share a lot of pressure.

However, the matter of partnership also needs careful consideration.

People with experience believe that when choosing partners, there must be complementarity. The first is complementary skills, and everyone must have an area of ​​expertise; the second is complementary personalities, and communication must be coordinated. Only under this premise can partnership be considered; it is also necessary to consider the character of the partner. The most important thing in a partnership is character, so you must know your partner inside and out.

In Mr. Zhao’s opinion, the three of them are now very “in tune” with each other, but at the beginning of their business, like other sellers who partnered with Amazon, this small team of three also faced various problems such as personality adjustments.

"The most annoying thing is that at the beginning, we couldn't tell what was business and what was personal." Mr. Zhao said that none of them had much systematic learning experience at Amazon, and his wife, who had a basic understanding of operations, had never received any training at Amazon. In terms of knowledge reserves, two of the three people were almost "novices". When starting a business, the psychological pressure was definitely very high. In addition, everyone had different views on business operations, so they often quarreled and argued, which was so serious that they even considered giving up the partnership.

Fortunately, after one or two years of running-in, the three people finally got through the "chaotic" period. The team can discuss business development together calmly. If a product promotion fails and loses money, they can also discuss the follow-up together in a friendly manner instead of blaming each other.

"It is normal for teams to have conflicts. How to resolve conflicts is the key issue. We need to draw a clear line between public and private affairs. Everyone must know what is public and what is private." Now when there are disagreements between teams, Mr. Zhao will play the role of a middleman and calm everyone's emotions.

When talking about how the three partners maintain "friendly relations", Mr. Zhao said in more detail that there will be a strong manager among them who can lead the company in a professional direction in terms of platform operation; secondly, they will give each other enough confidence and trust, and leave professional matters to professionals; at the same time, the three people also formulated detailed business philosophies, such as: how can the company develop better? How to activate the funds on the books? How to better cultivate the team...

"For the three of us, the most pressing issue is not resource sharing or how to make more money, but various cognitive issues. The key is to mobilize everyone's emotions to a certain state and reach a unified consensus. At this time, whether the account can make money and how the company can have better development will also be solved." Mr. Zhao said that on the road to Amazon's entrepreneurship, each partner team faced different situations. Based on reality, they also worked out a set of "ways of getting along" suitable for the three of them.

From 0 to an estimated annual sales of 5 million, the small team working on Amazon has grown in ordinary times!

It is understood that the three people now have a total of three stores, mainly targeting the US and European markets.

In 2020, the first year of their business, the three of them only earned a total of 100,000 yuan, which means each person only earned more than 30,000 yuan.

This number also reflects the difficulties they faced in their first year of entrepreneurship, and the product selection process alone was a "tear of bitterness".

"When my wife was working alone, the product life cycle of the main product category was very short. In addition, the funds and resources were limited, so the business did not form a large scale. After comprehensive consideration, the three of us decided to change the category track." It happened to be the time of the epidemic. Americans worked from home, and the sales of the new product category we chose were very hot. In this context, we did reap some market dividends, but we lacked experience in the new track. We learned while doing and stepped on many pitfalls. Therefore, we did not seize the opportunity when the related products were particularly popular and did not make a lot of money .

On the contrary, about 200,000 yuan of funds were spent due to failed product selection .

At that time, a manufacturer said that there was a customized product that was selling very well (customization means underwriting, and this product can only be sold to a few sellers who have quotas), so Mr. Zhao and his team got a quota. The minimum order quantity required for this product is at least 1,000. Thinking that there would be a way out, the three of them decided to order more than 2,000, which cost nearly 200,000 yuan. As a result, this product only looked popular, and the response after it was put on the shelves was mediocre. It took them more than two years to digest all the inventory.

"This product took up too much of our funds. Fortunately, another product we launched at the time had good sales. The profits generated by this product finally made up for part of the financial crisis caused by the failure of product selection."

After moving forward through difficulties, the situation improved slightly in the second year of entrepreneurship.

In 2021, the three calculated the book profits, which were about 300,000, which was much better than 2020.

Mr. Zhao said that due to some changes in his family last year, he was unable to devote himself to his work. Even so, the two goals set at the beginning of the year, the first to expand product categories and the second to vigorously develop the European market, have been basically achieved. In this way, there is no need to worry too much about putting all eggs in one basket and the company's inability to resist risks.

In 2022, Mr. Zhao and his team will continue to show an overall development trend on the Amazon platform. Although they are much more cautious in stocking up during this year's peak season, they still feel hopeful. Roughly speaking, the annual sales should reach 5 million!

"At the beginning of the year, we re-selected products and have launched more than 10 new products so far. Luckily, two of them have been promoted," which is just in time to take over the next hit product. It is understood that last year's hit product had a maximum sales volume of 200 orders per day in the peak season and nearly 30 orders in the off-season. However, this year, the response was mediocre, with the number of orders per day not exceeding double digits. The sudden "sluggish sales" of the company's main source of profit is a worrying thing.

This situation where "a hot-selling product suddenly stops being a hot-selling product" is a common problem for almost all trading companies.

Be prepared for danger in times of peace: the "exploration and conservatism" of trading companies

On the road of operating on Amazon, everyone will suffer losses to some extent, and even if you are careful and cautious, many unexpected situations will occur.

With three years of entrepreneurial experience on Amazon, Mr. Zhao deeply realized that having a single product is a very dangerous thing. Once a hot-selling product suddenly fails, the company is likely to lose its profit source and face a huge operational crisis. Therefore, they will predict the risk value in the business in advance and be prepared for danger in times of peace. When a hot-selling product has not yet started to decline, they will immediately look for the next hot-selling product to ensure the normal operation of the business.

In addition to launching new products in existing business categories to test sales, the three are also trying to explore new categories, new markets, and new platforms, and it is inevitable that there will be bumps in the road.

In terms of developing new product categories, Mr. Zhao’s wife had always been obsessed with the product categories she operated when she was working alone. Coincidentally, last year, during the company’s recruitment process, they hired an operator who had worked in this category. Finally, Mr. Zhao and his colleagues made up their minds to pick up this track and treat it as an expansion of the existing business categories. They thought they would definitely make money, but the fact turned out to be a "miscalculation"!

"It could be that they had left this category for a while and were out of touch with the market, or that their Shenzhen-based operating methods were not suitable for their company. In short, this attempt to expand the category ended in failure, and in the end the company lost nearly 100,000 yuan."

In addition, Mr. Zhao and his team have also tried to explore new markets, Australia being one of them. After a brief trial, they found that this market was relatively small and sales were unstable. If they had the time and energy to manage it, they could barely survive. However, talent became a "bottleneck" and it was difficult to recruit operators with relevant experience in Harbin. As a second best option, they let operators with no basic knowledge learn while doing, but the result was still not ideal, so they had to give up.

The talent problem also brings troubles to the platform's expansion. "We have worked on the Shopee platform before. It is difficult to achieve results with just the strength of the three of us. After all, there is no extra time to figure it out. If we recruit and train new people, the whole process will be very long and we may face unknown troubles."

The process of exploring new directions many times is also a process of constantly refreshing the understanding of cross-border e-commerce. All the failed experiences are actually tuition fees, which make them realize that one must not be in a hurry to make money, and one must not force oneself to do things that one is not good at. If one is lucky enough to earn money beyond one's cognition now, one will eventually lose all the money earned due to insufficient cognition.

In Mr. Zhao’s opinion, stability is the focus of all work. Relatively speaking, Amazon is still a very friendly platform, so they plan to make the basic foundation of Amazon more solid first, and then when they have time and energy, step out of their comfort zone to expand into new areas!

Stay away from Shenzhen and work hard in a small city. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

The Amazon platform has now become an ecosystem. There is no shortage of people who make money in every stage , every site , and every model. Some focus on one site, some cast a wide net across the entire market, some have superb operational skills, and some rely entirely on technology to win, capturing "hot items" with hundreds or even thousands of SKUs a day... Brand sellers and grassroots sellers compete on the same stage, and there is no distinction between high and low, good and bad!

Mr. Zhao believes that the company's choice to go the trade route is the most suitable choice for them at the moment. "For a pure trade company like ours, to put it bluntly, we buy goods and sell them, earning the difference in the middle. This method is not complicated and does not require too many people to operate, but it may be difficult to survive in Shenzhen. The rent and labor costs alone are a huge expense." Therefore, this "small and beautiful" trade business model is actually very suitable for Harbin.

Working in a small city away from Shenzhen can naturally save a lot of costs, but it also leads to frequent problems in recruiting people.

First, there are too few people with relevant experience. "When recruiting, I can almost be described as being very humble. When I see someone saying that they are interested in Amazon, I will definitely chat with them for a few more words. Suddenly, I will be very surprised to see that someone has experience in cross-border e-commerce operations."

It is even more difficult to recruit qualified talents. Mr. Zhao found that many employees who returned from Shenzhen were more focused on fast operations. This model is not bad, but it does not fit the actual situation of his company and the goal of seeking stability. Even if he recruited people, it would be difficult for them to stay.

Apart from recruiting people, the cross-border e-commerce atmosphere is not strong, which is also a difference between inland areas and Shenzhen.

As the capital of cross-border e-commerce, Shenzhen has gathered a large number of resources and sellers, making communication more convenient and faster. However, in Harbin, there are very few people engaged in cross-border e-commerce. It is roughly estimated that there are less than 10 companies working on Amazon, and a few sellers are engaged in some niche platforms such as Rakuten. Their understanding of cross-border e-commerce is still stuck in Shenzhen 5 years ago or even earlier... All these gaps mean that there are fewer opportunities to communicate with peers in Harbin, and the time to obtain industry information will also lag behind.

The difficulty of cross-border e-commerce is increasing, but there is still hope for the future

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Overall, Harbin is still a very attractive place to do cross-border e-commerce! The cross-border e-commerce track itself also has great development potential.

As the world's largest market, the United States has a high market space and is widely accepted by Amazon. Although competition has increased and profit margins have become thinner, they are still very attractive. "Once a product is successful, you can sell more products at a lower profit margin, and the overall profit is still very considerable."

However, the situation on the European site is not optimistic. In 2022, the cross-border e-commerce environment took a sharp turn for the worse, and many small and medium-sized sellers relying on the Amazon platform felt the chill, especially sellers who mainly operated on the European site, who expressed heartbreak, and Mr. Zhao and his friends were no exception.

Europe originally includes many countries, with different markets and languages, which has increased the threshold for product promotion. The exchange rate has been falling this year, which has made the already meager profits even worse. "This year, we sold more than 100 orders for a product in a month, but when we calculated the profit, we found that we only made 500 yuan in total," said Mr. Zhao. Although the profit of the European site was not as high as that of the US site, the order speed was faster. Now it is obvious that the purchasing power of the entire European market is declining, and the advantage of fast ordering is gradually disappearing.

Cross-border e-commerce, which still has unlimited potential, will certainly become less and less friendly to latecomers. In fact, this is true for any business. Relatively speaking, sellers who enter the industry first are more likely to make money, while sellers who enter the industry later are more likely to sink!

Mr. Zhao believes that Amazon will only become more and more professional in the future, which means that it will become more and more difficult, but there is still hope for the future.

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