Amazon seller smashed the copycat company and beat up the seller...

If there is no copycat selling on Amazon, is there harmony among sellers?

There are two evergreen topics in the Amazon circle : one is fake orders, and the other is follow-selling. Someone once commented on them like this:

There is no risk of being beaten if you are caught for fake orders , but there will be financial losses .
Not only will following others’ sales result in financial losses, but you may also be in danger of being beaten .

Recently, a bloody incident occurred in the Shenzhen Amazon circle, and follow-selling was the fuse!

The seller angrily smashed the copycat company and beat the person until his head was broken and bleeding

At the end of January 2022, a major news story broke in the cross-border circle: an Amazon seller maliciously copied others’ products and was found by someone. His company was smashed to pieces and he was beaten and bled...

According to details revealed by insiders, there is a company in a building in Sakata that specializes in malicious follow-selling. It comes out to follow the sales late at night every day and disappears during the day. The sellers who follow the sales have warned it many times but it is useless.

So the seller found the address of the follower through the company address, blocked the door and beat the follower until his head was bleeding.

Not only did the seller give the follower a beating, he also destroyed the company of the malicious follower.

Because the matter got so serious, the police came to mediate.

When it comes to the topic of follow-selling, I believe many Amazon sellers have a lot of complaints. When you have worked hard to promote a product and want to enjoy the joy of booming sales, the follow-sellers come quietly at night, wanting to enjoy the fruits of other people's labor without any effort. Many sellers see the follow-sellers stealing their sales, and generally choose to write a warning letter directly. However, now the warning letter can only scare the timid follow-sellers, who have to watch the follow-sellers that cannot be torn off like a dog-skin plaster unscrupulously "sucking blood".

Many sellers who are copied by others are often angry and annoyed. Many sellers said that they had wanted to go to the copycat company to have a good "reasoning". Some gave up because the copycat company was too far away from them. Some did not have much time and energy to deal with the copycat issue. Some sellers wanted to confront the copycat company head-on, but they were afraid that they would be retaliated more severely by the copycat company, which would cause them to suffer even greater losses ...

As the news of Sakata being beaten up for following sellers came out, a large number of sellers who suffered from following sellers began to talk about it. The editor summarized the sellers' voices and found that the comments were basically divided into three factions.

Many people said that the seller played a good game and used this opportunity to strongly denounce the shameless behavior of the copycat sellers.

Of course, there are also many sellers who think that although the copycats are hateful, the trend of beating people should not be encouraged . Otherwise, although the sellers are victims, they will become the ones who are in the wrong because of this behavior, which is not worth the loss.

There are also many Amazon sellers who believe that follow-selling is part of the Amazon platform. Since follow-selling is inevitable, Amazon sellers must work hard to improve their overall strength and ability to resist follow-selling, register trademarks as soon as possible, and conduct brand registration, so as to minimize the probability of being followed.

In fact, similar news about "being beaten up after following others' sales" has been exposed more than once.

Two years ago, an Amazon seller said that in a cross-border group, a big boss suddenly posted more than a dozen pictures of "smashed offices". The company that was smashed was the follow-selling company. It is reported that the boss of this follow- selling company was originally a friend of the big boss. The big boss taught him how to get started on Amazon . As a result , this so-called friend started following the big boss's sales at the beginning of the new year , and then subsequent events happened.

Coincidentally, sellers have previously revealed that Company A in Shenzhen, the capital of cross-border e-commerce, specializes in "follow-selling" Company B's products, copying and pasting them all. After Company B was followed, it also communicated with Company A first. Not only did Company A not stop, but it intensified its efforts and "follow-sold" all of the other party's products.

It is reported that Company B suffered a loss of millions due to being copied by Company A. Then, tragedy happened. Company B found the address of Company A through various means and smashed it.

The editor learned that in the love-hate relationship between the followers and the ones being followed, the follower's office being smashed and the follower being beaten and bleeding were not considered to be very serious. As early as 2020, it was rumored that a follower from Hunan had his hand chopped off.

According to a screenshot posted by the seller in the group at the time , one seller hired someone to chop off the hand of a Hunan-born follow-seller.

This kind of thing reminds me of a joke that was previously circulated in the cross-border circle:

I have a friend who works on Amazon. He made more than 100,000 yuan in one month shortly after he started .

You wonder how he did it?

It turned out that he was copying someone else's products on Amazon, and someone came to his house and broke his leg, and then the insurance company paid the compensation.

Copy-selling continues despite repeated bans. Is Amazon the culprit?

When the joke comes true ... the follow-selling system is criticized again by Amazon sellers : human hearts cannot stand the test, money cannot stand the temptation , and the follow-selling policy of the Amazon platform is the culprit. Without the follow-selling system with many loopholes, there won’t be so many troubles!

In fact, in Amazon's terms of service, follow-selling is allowed. Follow-selling is actually Amazon letting dealers under the same brand compete with each other in profit sharing . Whoever offers the lowest price wins the shopping cart, so as to lower the price of products on Amazon, benefit consumers and increase the shopping stickiness of the website. Another important point is that the follow-selling function can merge similar product pages, so that buyers have more choices when searching for products. Amazon's follow-selling products all share the same listing, which saves customers' selection time and improves the shopping experience .

In essence, Amazon is implementing the principle of customer first in doing this, so that buyers can get better quality and more affordable products. What is good for buyers is good for the platform.

While Amazon provides convenience to consumers, it has deeply harmed the rights and interests of many sellers.

For sellers, follow-selling means that other sellers can also sell things on the product page they have worked hard to create . For example: A creates a product page, which is shared, and B, C, and D can all sell things on this page. Even B, C, and D can grab the shopping cart through low-price strategies.

But a popular page is usually created by A with a lot of effort, and the actions of B, C, and D are just getting something for nothing, and A has also made things easier for them.

To be honest, quite a number of Amazon sellers, whether they are medium or large sellers, started out by following other sellers in their early years. In that era of wild growth and gold everywhere, they followed other brands and counterfeit brands, and some even directly sent empty packages after following other sellers , making a quick buck and leaving immediately. It can be said that these people have already achieved the primitive accumulation of capital by relying on following other sellers .

This behavior has caused great harm to Amazon sellers who are doing business honestly. Therefore , many sellers often hate the system of copy-selling :

I really want to organize a group of 10,000 people to ask Amazon to change its bad policy of unauthorized copy-selling .

Why can the cabbages I worked so hard to grow be eaten by others? I don't understand .

I understand that you want to give customers more choices by establishing a follow-up selling system , but I really don’t understand the fact that it can steal shopping carts .

The owner spends money on pictures, advertising and operations. As long as the follow-up price is low, the shopping cart can be snatched away. I really accept it.

…

In the view of many Amazon sellers, Amazon's follow-selling system is a very unreasonable rule, which encourages sellers to steal the fruits of others' labor and makes a large number of Chinese sellers engage in price wars and threaten each other. In the end, no one can make orders properly. Especially in the current situation where it is very difficult to promote new products, follow-selling comes after just a few orders for new products , and changes the price at 2 or 3 in the morning . Even if you want to catch the follow-selling, you can't bear it day and night .

So, there is no harm if there is no copycat sales.

In the view of another group of Amazon sellers, there is nothing wrong with the copy-selling system itself, but the problem lies in human nature.

Seller A said that the system of follow-selling is understandable and convenient for buyers to choose. Amazon considers follow-selling to be that all sellers who follow-sell are selling the same ASIN and have the same UPC products. Moreover, the products with the same UPC are completely from the same source company and have no difference in quality.

But it has been ruined by the sellers . In fact, the sellers will copycat products as long as they look similar and have no brand protection. After they sell them, they will go to Alibaba to purchase similar- looking ones . They don’t care which company owns the UPC . As long as the shopping cart is mine and I look at the product through a telescope and it looks quite similar, I will send it to them in a small package.

This is what makes the follow-selling degenerate .

Many Amazon sellers agree with this view. "If there is no follow-selling, there will be no harm? Even if there is no follow-selling, Amazon sellers can still exploit loopholes in other systems," said an industry insider. People are evil, and where there are interests, there will be disputes. On the Amazon platform, it is not the follow-selling system that causes harm, but people with ulterior motives use the follow-selling system to harm sellers. Moreover, sellers lowering prices to compete with each other is actually an act of benefiting consumers. To a certain extent, Amazon is also happy to see this scene.

The follow-up sales that cannot be driven away

It is reported that although Amazon is protecting the rights and interests of brand sellers and has formulated a series of systems to assist sellers in fighting copycat sales, in reality, a large number of sellers still report that copycat sales are difficult to catch up with!

One seller reported that the follower he encountered had prepared N accounts. After he drove away one, the next one would come up . He had to get up for several nights in a row to compete with the follower for the shopping cart, which was exhausting. It is reported that some sellers still cannot win the shopping cart even if they reduce the price of their products to a level lower than that of the follower.

A seller on Amazon had a brand record for his product, but was still targeted by follow-up sellers. According to the seller’s feedback, the follow-up sellers he encountered also followed the principle of “working at night and disappearing during the day”. He sent a warning letter but received no reply or attention. So he tried to file a complaint in the backend , but the complaint was rejected , probably because he did not provide the order number . The seller, who had run out of patience , did not want to testbuy or report to the front desk . He had found the seller’s address and planned to go to the seller’s house alone to make an appointment. It was simple and direct …

There are also many cases where the number of follow-selling increases. Once a seller said that he was tortured by follow-selling, so he found a service provider to get rid of follow-selling. As a result, after hiring the service provider, not only did the follow-selling not get rid of, but the number of follow-selling increased, and other sub-products of his own products also gradually began to follow ...

Not only is it difficult to catch the copycat sellers, but in the process, the sellers will also hurt themselves.

"I failed to drive away the copycats, but I ended up suffering." It is reported that an Amazon seller had his own listing deleted while driving away the copycats . There was not even an undo button. He wanted to open a case, but several Amazon teams were passing the buck back and forth .

There are many similar feedbacks. There is also an Amazon seller who was originally a victim, but was reported by the follower, and the report was successful. He watched the follower continue to do evil, and he had to write a POA himself . Another seller reported that after he filed a complaint against the follower, not only did his complaint fail, but he was warned by Amazon for variant abuse .

"Follow-selling is like a dog-skin plaster, once it sticks, it can't be torn off," Amazon sellers feel deeply about this.

100 Ways to Get Rid of Copycats

Many Amazon sellers who copycat sellers will not be able to get rid of them even if they try their best.

Amazon Sellers

Amazon Seller Central