Another well-known brand was banned, and the best-selling goods that had been registered for more than three months have not returned

It has been more than three months since the Amazon account suspension incident began. Sellers whose accounts were suspended in the early stage have not been able to get their account balances and goods back. The food shortage crisis is an important reason for the frequent staff adjustments of big sellers. A dismissed operator said that some of the company's accounts were suspended in June, and nearly 100 people left the company within a week.

The account blocking trend has not stopped. This week, a seller discovered that a well-known LED lighting brand on Amazon was blocked, and similar incidents are still happening.

The account has been blocked for more than 3 months, and there is no news about the big sellers

This round of widespread Amazon account suspension began at the end of April and affected many top sellers in May and June. At the beginning of the suspension, many sellers still had some confidence in getting their money, goods, and even accounts back. Some sellers believed that after three months, Amazon would at least return the account balance and FBA goods, and the company still had room for maneuver.

In mid- June , Xinghui Co., Ltd. admitted that some stores involving three brands under Zebao had their sales suspended by Amazon. At the same time, it also stated that "the expected recovery period is likely to be around 1-2 months", which shows that it is not very pessimistic about the follow-up situation.

The number of sellers who were affected by the scam continued to accumulate, and there were several rumors that the sellers’ accounts had been restored, but they were all proven to be rumors. At the same time, domestic e-commerce channels and clearance channels continued to receive news of sellers selling goods at low prices, and operations to reduce expenses such as reducing staff, cutting employee benefits, and even canceling leases occurred one by one.

The development of the incident was far from what was expected. Three months later, Amazon did not return the account balance and goods of the banned sellers, which directly led to some sellers having no money in their accounts. According to people familiar with the matter, the sellers communicated with Amazon about this matter, but the latter's attitude was very tough. The store and brand became a bubble. If the life-saving straw of money and goods cannot be recovered in the end, larger-scale layoffs may be unavoidable. The fate of companies with annual sales of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions will be rewritten overnight.

Some sellers complained about this. "Violators can lose points, be demoted, have their accounts removed, or have their sales suspended, but they cannot have their funds seized. This is unreasonable. Years of investment will go to waste. Isn't this punishment strong enough?" But some sellers believe that if the punishment is not strong enough, it will not attract enough attention and make people feel in awe of the platform.

The current situation is that sellers whose accounts have been blocked are stuck in the mud, and this group is still increasing.

Well-known LED lighting brands were banned

This week, some sellers discovered that a popular Amazon brand of LED lamps, AM***, had just been blocked.

The editor searched on Amazon and found 10 other popular search terms related to "AM***", including "am*** led pods" and "am*** led lights", but there are no product pages related to this brand. There are one or two product names in the search results that differ from this brand by only one letter. When I opened one of the neon light strip products, the brand store it linked to yesterday showed "AM***", but now clicking on the brand link no longer jumps to the store, but returns to the search page.

Searching for “AM***” on Google, you can see two sales links for this brand on Amazon, but currently clicking on the links shows that the page is lost and has become a mess.

An informed seller said that this LED lighting brand belongs to a big seller in Guangzhou.

Last weekend, a seller said that a store around him with sales of over one million US dollars in the past few months was closed, "Has the wave of store closures started again?" Also on Saturday, a seller said that my friend’s store was closed today, and a home furnishing seller also said that his account had been blocked.

From buying a house at One Shenzhen Bay to picking up bottles, the situation of Amazon sellers has taken a sharp turn.

"Some people did make a lot of money last year. The most successful one I've seen on Amazon could earn 100 million yuan a month in sales. Some companies were founded last year and have now entered the B round of financing. There are many small bosses in the industry who have bought Shenzhen Bay No. 1 luxury houses and drive luxury cars. But this year, a lot of people in the industry are half-dead due to account suspension incidents. Some sellers have been trying to save themselves, speed up shipments, or switch to other platforms. Some sellers have been tortured to the point of completely giving up struggling." said an Amazon seller in an interview with the media.

After seller accounts were blocked by Amazon, many companies were hit hard. From April to now, some companies have started to lay off employees after experiencing several months of negative revenue.

A Shenzhen company laid off nearly 100 people in one month

The former company of Xiao X, a cross-border practitioner, is one of the companies whose account was blocked. The company is located in Shenzhen and has more than 200 employees. It has multiple job positions including operation, development, and art design. It also operates platforms such as Amazon, Wish, AliExpress, and the International Station, and each platform has different departments.

In mid- June , several of the company’s Amazon accounts suddenly crashed. Subsequently, in order to recover payments, the company cleared out inventory of multiple products at ultra-low prices, and continued to lose money while doing so.

"The company is out of money and the employees' salaries have not been paid. There is no point in staying here. A sister with good performance is preparing to leave in the next two days. And my colleagues understand that the leader means that they have to slowly lay off people recently, starting with 100 people, and then slowly see the situation. About 100 people have been laid off in the past month, and the company is still persuading employees to leave." Xiao X revealed.

It is understood that the company's operating model had been questioned by employees before. How could it make a profit by selling goods at a low price after sending them at a high price? Under the impact of the account closure wave, it was not known what to do with the goods worth tens of millions of dollars that had been prepared before. The company's leadership estimated that the company had lost about 100 million this year.

As losses mount, employee layoffs are inevitable. Xiao X said: "Now, the team leaders of the departments have begun to resign one after another. Today, the head of Amazon's operations department did not come to work. Because wages cannot be paid, except for those who have been fired or persuaded to leave, other employees are ready to resign."

This wave of platform rectification actions affected tens of thousands of cross-border practitioners. After problems with their company accounts, many people were forced to resign and could not find new jobs for a long time. Because many companies of the same type were affected, and those that were not affected chose to survive the cold winter first, most of them were unwilling to expand their scale during the sensitive period.

Transformation of Chinese sellers is imminent

Wang Xin, president of the Shenzhen Cross-border E-commerce Association, said: "The way Amazon blocks Chinese sellers is unfair. Not only does it block the account for violations, but it also blocks other related accounts, which may paralyze the upstream supply chain and cause the death of the company. Is this a penalty decision based on platform rules or a strategic decision? In fact, we see that Amazon itself is selling products similar to those whose accounts have been closed."

Amazon’s ban dealt a heavy blow to sellers, but the platform’s action also educated cross-border e-commerce buyers and sellers on how to optimize operations and build relationships with global sellers.

"The Internet has undoubtedly put us on the fast track, but we need to run faster on the track. This depends on the cultivation of sellers' quality, the improvement of their learning ability and the support at the national level," Wang Xin further said.

After the Amazon account suspension incident, many sellers are reducing their dependence on Amazon and instead adopting a multi-platform development strategy and developing their own websites.

Closing accounts is a big blow to the entire cross-border industry. Many sellers now say that they will not put all their products on Amazon. In the past, many sellers may have sold 90% of their products on Amazon, but now many sellers have reduced this proportion to less than 30%.

At present, the affected Chinese sellers are seeking a way out, and a major test of transformation for domestic sellers is about to come.