A platform suddenly closed to Chinese sellers. The seller said: We used to have 10,000 to 20,000 orders a day

In the past year, channel diversification has become a consensus among cross-border sellers. Companies with decent strength will more or less add some sales channels to reduce business risks. However, as the industry situation changes, choosing a platform has become a mystery. Last year, VOVA's bankruptcy plunged many people into a quagmire.

Recently, the US e-commerce platform Tophatter also issued a notice that it will officially close to Chinese sellers. At a time when many cross-border platforms are offering discounts to compete for Chinese sellers, this news seems very abrupt. In fact, not only did the platform abandon Chinese sellers, the latter also seemed to be actively withdrawing. According to a head seller on the platform, at most it could place 10,000 to 20,000 orders a day, but now the company is trying to withdraw. Why is this?

Tophatter closes to Chinese sellers

Yesterday, Tophatter platform sellers received an important notice:

“…I regret to inform you that, in view of the changes in the US consumer market and the overall transformation of the platform model, starting from 12:00 tonight, the Tophatter platform will be officially closed to Chinese sellers. Products in the accounts of Chinese sellers who have already settled in will no longer be displayed, and products that have been or will be listed in the future will no longer receive orders.”

For seller accounts that operate normally before closure, the platform will gradually disburse the remaining order amounts based on normal loan cycles and policies. The seller's account will also be retained for at least 90 days. During this period, the seller can still log in to the backend as usual to manage order shipments, check account loan information, etc.

If sellers have any problems other than shipping, they can contact the account manager and support team for feedback. However, after June 20, 2022, the platform's Chinese team will stop responding. If sellers have any questions, they will need to send a help email and contact the US seller team for help.

Industry insiders said that the news has been confirmed. Yien.com contacted the platform staff, but the other party has not responded as of press time.

Judging from the content of the email, Tophatter could have exited the domestic market with dignity, but its withdrawal is puzzling.

With outstanding supply chain advantages, high-quality Chinese sellers have always been the darlings of cross-border e-commerce platforms. This year, many platforms are scrambling to attract domestic merchants and have spared no effort to come up with preferential policies to attract merchants to settle in. However, Tophatter went against the trend at this time and abandoned the domestic seller group in one fell swoop. Why is this?

Industry veteran Wu Jiayang believes that Tophatter’s exit may have three reasons:

1. The traffic war is becoming increasingly fierce. As a latecomer, Tophatter does not have a traffic advantage compared to leading platforms such as Amazon and Walmart. Its unique business model is not conducive to greater traffic expansion.

2. The U.S. economy is under great inflationary pressure, with the inflation rate exceeding 8% for many consecutive months . The consumption structure of local people has changed significantly. In addition to rigid expenditures, the sales of non-essential products such as decoration and hobbies have dropped significantly;

3. In the long-term cross-border e-commerce practice, Chinese sellers have been educated on the principles of search e-commerce on platforms such as Amazon. They are not familiar with the bidding business model and are not good at operating it.

"It is regrettable that Tophatter has withdrawn from China. A diversified platform structure is more beneficial to Chinese sellers."

Compared with the past, the American platform Tophatter also once high-profiled investment promotion in China and presented many excellent seller cases.

Tophatter once recruited sellers in a high-profile manner, but now it is adjusting its strategy

Founded in 2012, Tophatter is an auction website originating from Silicon Valley, USA. The core keyword in its shopping model is "excitement".

On Tophatter, the 90-second auction model caters to the desire of many buyers to "win". The platform combines gaming and social gameplay to create a new e-commerce model. During the auction process, buyers can display their avatars and names, and send emoticons to each other for interaction.

With its interesting and precise gameplay, Tophatter has accumulated a large number of users and has created the "myth" of a growth rate of more than 100% for four consecutive years. It has been praised by many overseas media as the fastest-selling e-commerce platform in the world.

Tophatter began to open up to Chinese sellers in 2016, and the transaction volume reached 160 million US dollars that year. Subsequently, the platform has publicized many outstanding seller cases, such as: a Guangzhou seller with annual sales of up to 6 million US dollars; a Shenzhen seller who sold on the platform for less than 3 months and received more than 1,000 orders per day.

In 2018 and 2019, with the support of some similar cases, Tophatter began to recruit Chinese sellers on a large scale.

In 2021, a seller who has been on Tophatter for five years shared his experience: "When I first joined, the platform provided a lot of support policies. A Bluetooth headset with a purchase price of 20 yuan could be auctioned for 22 US dollars on the platform, and the net profit could reach more than 100%."

But this year, some negative feedback has emerged in the industry. Seller "Running Pharaoh" said: We joined Tophatter at the end of 2018. This was the first platform we started cross-border business. At that time, we had 10,000 to 20,000 orders a day, and we were considered the top seller on the platform. But since last year, the platform traffic has dropped sharply, and we are slowly withdrawing from the market.

From the previous high-profile investment promotion to the negative feedback now, and then to the few sellers mentioning it, Tophatter's situation has changed a lot. Yesterday, it announced that it would close to Chinese sellers, which may be related to the strategic adjustment of the platform.

On May 26, Tophatter officially announced the suspension of the combined order project. The announcement mentioned that due to changes in the platform's strategic level, the combined order project will stop marking combined orders on Friday, May 27. The project will be officially suspended on Wednesday, June 1, 2022.

The strategic adjustment mentioned here may be a project launched for independent website sellers. It is understood that the Loss Leader traffic diversion project, which Tophatter cooperates with Shopify, can help sellers push independent website products to the Tophatter platform for free display, and guide buyers to place orders directly on the independent website during checkout.

Tophatter mentioned that the Loss Leader project hopes to help Shopify independent site sellers quickly harvest traffic and convert on-site orders by using this strategy in combination with the platform's fast auction model. This project is also a key project that the platform will focus on promoting in 2022.

When the platform makes strategic adjustments, it will close down declining projects to a certain extent. Perhaps the foreshadowing of the current closure was laid when Tophatter stopped attracting Chinese sellers to settle in. For cross-border sellers, it is regrettable that they may lose a channel to make money in North America in the future! At a time when everyone is busy diversifying business risks, this is really not good news.

However, some experienced sellers have also confessed that they had always wanted to try diversified sales and share risks on multiple platforms, and had paid tuition fees on many e-commerce platforms for this. Later, they gradually discovered that returning to a few mainstream platforms and driving company development with products was the right direction.

It can be seen that both e-commerce platforms and industry sellers need to find a suitable development strategy through trial and error.

E-commerce platform

Tophatter