Stepping on the accelerator, a group of sellers put up the "return package"

Late at night in a cross-border e-commerce industrial park in Bantian, Shenzhen, seller VIVI stared at the financial statements on the computer screen and smiled bitterly : last year's net profit margin shrank again compared to 2023 .

At the end of 2024, a group of cross-border practitioners said that the company no longer had year-end bonuses and the annual meeting was very shabby. Enterprises mentioned that they were under greater pressure in the past year, and their performance slowed down or even declined. In the year-end interview, a group of sellers told Ennet that they might leave, but from the latest situation, they stayed again...

After all, cross-border business is delicious.

“I’m OK again”

"I have been working at Amazon for five or six years. Before the New Year, I wanted to leave. It was more because I was dissatisfied with the performance of the whole year. After all, it had been declining every year. But after taking a break for the Spring Festival, I feel like 'I can do it again' ," said seller Jerry.

Starting from 2023, the revenue of several Amazon stores owned by Jerry continued to decline, competition in the category continued to intensify, and the price war became fierce. In order to occupy more market share, Jerry had to be pushed to become a low-price soldier.

In 2024, in order to control costs, he could only take action on product quality and other aspects. "For at least half a year, I was driven by low prices and had no idea what was going on."

During that six months, Jerry's product development became very difficult. He had to find cheaper material alternatives, do more cost calculations on product specifications, and invest more energy. At the end of the six months, the sales of his European and North American stores were barely maintained, but his profits were terrible.

"I suddenly woke up when several stores were frozen due to high refund rates and many complaints," so Jerry began to make adjustments and withdrew from the price war. After that, sales volume and sales revenue continued to decline, but profits were much higher than those in the first half of the year when prices were low, and almost returned to the original level.

Exhausted by the price war and the market background , the year-end inventory found that the full-year profit had dropped by 24 percentage points compared with 2023 , which became the last fuse for Jerry to withdraw from the cross-border circle at that time.

At that time, Jerry said to En.com: "Next year, I plan to close all the stores one by one, take a break for a while, and then look for other ways to start a business."

However, after the Spring Festival, when interviewed by En.com again, Jerry smiled and said that he was already looking at some new products and was going to put them on Amazon after March. "Although there are many new challenges in the new year, such as tariffs, continuous price wars, and various new policies of Amazon, there are always countermeasures for every policy, and cross-border business still has more hope than other industries."

There are many sellers who think the same way as Jerry.

The performance was hurt after the inventory before the New Year, but after the Spring Festival, we were ready to go again. Even now, there are still many people who are making money quietly by doing cross-border business.

Cross-border 100 Scenes: Still Fragrance

In Shenzhen, the capital of cross-border e-commerce, myths about cross-border e-commerce almost never stop.

Nearly half of the country's top Amazon sellers are here , and data shows that the cross-border sellers in Bantian Street alone have an average of " 500,000 packages shipped per day . " In the cross-border e-commerce office buildings in Longhua District, the lights are often on until late at night.

More than 1,000 kilometers away in Yiwu, batches of domestic e-commerce entrepreneurs are trying their hand at cross-border business, and thousands of foreign trade enterprises are returning to the city . The profession of " Amazon product selector " has even emerged in the International Trade City . Smile, a post-00s entrepreneur, has gone from a "roadside dollar store" to selling full cabinets overseas. Its Christmas decorations alone sold hundreds of thousands of orders during the year-end peak season .

The proprietresses of clothing wholesale markets in Guangzhou, Hangzhou and other places ship goods during the day and turn into "bilingual anchors" at night , introducing products to consumers in fluent languages ​​of various countries, and backend orders are growing rapidly.

Dongguan factories have transformed from traditional OEMs to FBA sellers, and some have even erected " Amazon real-time sales data screens " in their workshops. Some people even say that the " Dongguan model " is awesome ( referring to the extreme operation of " taking orders in the morning, shipping in the afternoon, and arriving at the port at midnight " ).

Last year, a seller excitedly shared with Ennet that his newly developed product was a big hit on Amazon Europe, pushing the company’s overall profit margin to 20 % ; another Amazon couple teamed up to sell hot pot base to the European and American e-commerce markets.

Every day, hundreds of tons of Bluetooth headsets, clothing, mobile phone cases, LED light strips and other products are shipped across oceans and around the world through sales by Chinese sellers.

Still more and more people are crowding into cross-border e-commerce.

A search on Qichacha using the keyword "cross-border e-commerce" revealed that nearly 6,000 related companies were newly registered in the past three months, more than 11,400 in half a year, and more than 20,000 in the past year .

It can be seen that although some people left in tears, the huge possibilities of cross-border e-commerce are still tempting new entrants. "The pattern should be bigger, the business should be global, and more people's wallets should be seen."

Amazon is the final

To expand overseas, most sellers still rely on Amazon, after all, it has the largest overseas traffic and user pool. Even if they are branding and have independent brand websites, these brand sellers will not abandon Amazon, a huge incremental platform.

Amazon's financial report shows that third-party seller services generated $156.1 billion in revenue for Amazon in 2024, accounting for 24.48% of Amazon's total revenue. In the fourth quarter of 2024 alone , Amazon's third-party sellers accounted for 62% of total sales, a record high .

Amazon launched its third-party marketplace 25 years ago, and 10 years later, third-party sales account for less than a third of all units sold.

But for 11 consecutive quarters from 2013 to 2016, the share of third-party sellers increased by one percentage point each quarter.

Marketplace Pulse data shows that in 2024 , Amazon added more than 900,000 new sellers in its 22 markets, and more than 4 million new sellers in the past five years. Among them, new sellers from China accounted for the largest proportion.

And in 2024, the market share of Chinese sellers on Amazon has increased to more than 50%. In the information submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission , Amazon mentioned that the market share of Chinese sellers on its platform is "huge".

Although many sellers have complained to En.com about Amazon's increasingly stringent audits and other issues, and some sellers have been repeatedly misjudged by Amazon as " abusing variants " , resulting in multiple popular links being removed and millions of dollars in funds being frozen in their accounts , the sales growth curve brought by Amazon still makes them reluctant to leave .

Some people are struggling to survive in hell mode, while others are making a fortune in heaven . In this magical reality, the more typical and common survival picture is that most Chinese sellers are looking for money-making opportunities between the two.

Although reports have pointed out that the frequency of online shopping among consumers in the United States and other places has declined, and that they have become more cautious and price sensitive when shopping online, Amazon is still the preferred online shopping platform for consumers .

Perhaps in the new year, sellers will still have to face a roller coaster of problems such as rising logistics costs, platform "bloodsucking", strict compliance, constant returns, black technology attacks, tariffs, etc., but they can still have fun in the midst of hardship.

The battle drums of 2025 have been sounded. Whether it will be the abyss or the stars may depend on whether we can adapt to the changes.

Seller

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