A group of Amazon sellers refused to participate in Prime Day

Amazon has been taking frequent actions to clean up its platform environment recently, with various ways of killing accounts emerging one after another, including refurbishing dead accounts, variant illegal dead accounts, second-instance sweeps, account suspension due to false orders, store closures due to infringement, and related registrations. All of this is obviously in preparation for the upcoming annual Prime Day.

When will Prime Day start in July? Industry insiders are speculating.

Faced with this great opportunity for explosive sales, a large number of sellers are obviously ready to do a big job. As a result, the overstocking situation in Amazon warehouses has not been alleviated for a long time. LGB8, GYR2, GYR3, VGT2, SMF3, LAS1, LGB6 and other areas are the hardest hit areas; however, there are also a number of sellers who have explicitly stated that they will not participate. Between sales volume and profit, they choose the latter without hesitation.

Prime Day is set? Amazon warehouse outages intensify

Amazon announced earlier that the tenth Amazon Prime Day event will be held in July this year around the world. The countries covered by Amazon Prime Day include: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, UAE, the United States and the United Kingdom.

As July is getting closer, there are many speculations in the cross-border circle about the specific time of Prime Day.

Many sellers speculate that the summer Prime Day is likely to be between July 15 and July 21, because the backend cannot report flash sales during this period, which means that Amazon has other important activities.

People in the game agreed with this. As for the specific time, the editor observed that the most guessed answer is July 16-17.

"On the one hand, the backend cannot report any activities during this time period, and on the other hand, it was revealed by a manager." said a seller.

As to whether the Prime Day time is really as the seller said, it still needs time to test. It is estimated that Amazon will publicly announce the specific time in a few days.

Although there is a lot of speculation about Prime Day now , one fact is that sellers have different views on this mid-year promotion every year.

Many sellers want to take this opportunity to sell big. As we all know, participating in the Member Day promotion can not only increase site traffic and increase brand and product exposure, thereby increasing overall store sales, but also help promote new products and clear unsalable inventory, which can be said to kill two birds with one stone.

"Every year's Member's Day is a time to accelerate inventory clearance. Slow-moving products themselves take up storage space, and storage fees and long-term storage fees are a considerable expense, so this is a good opportunity to clear them out. Potential products can also have the opportunity to obtain higher rankings, laying a good foundation for subsequent hot sales, thereby increasing the profit margin of the entire store." The seller Xiao Li has made sufficient preparations for Member's Day and has prepared a lot of goods to be sent to the FBA warehouse.

Seller Xiao Zhang also actively participated in the promotion. Xiao Zhang 's order volume in May and June was very bleak, and he hoped that there would be good news in July. He was optimistic about the 2024 promotion because during the 2023 Member Day, the sales volume reached about two months in a few days.

During Prime Day every year , sellers always have many questions, and the setting of flash sale prices is definitely one of them. According to the platform, this year's Prime Day flash sale prices in the US site must meet two conditions: the base price (i.e. the strike-through price displayed on the product details page when it is discounted) is at least 20% off; lower than or matching the lowest price in the past 30 days. It is worth noting that the lowest price in the past 30 days includes prices of various promotional activities, and the past 30 days refers to the 30 days before the start of the reported activity.

The platform recommends that sellers complete the arrival of goods before the deadline for warehousing recommended by Amazon. Amazon Prime Day products that are warehoused after this date can still be warehoused, but they cannot be guaranteed to participate in the event in time. However, Amazon's warehouse explosion phenomenon has been very serious recently. The latest news shows that the postponement of appointments in LGB8, GYR2, GYR3, VGT2, SMF3, LAS1, and LGB6 in the West Coast of the United States is relatively serious, and the timeliness fluctuates by about 4 to 6 days. Among them, SBD2 has an increased rejection rate due to insufficient manpower, and the warehouse explosion appointment is 3 weeks later. FTW1, IND9, MDW2, and FWA4 in the United States and China are also affected by the warehouse explosion, and the timeliness will fluctuate by about 5 to 8 days. CLT2/RFD2/RUD2/RMN3 in the East Coast of the United States will fluctuate by about 7 to 10 days due to the impact of the warehouse explosion. Except for the above warehouses, other warehouses need to be booked about 2 weeks in advance , and the timeliness will fluctuate by about 1-3 days .

A group of sellers refused to participate: they did not want to be philanthropists

Judging from the situation of Amazon’s warehouse explosion, sellers are enthusiastic about Prime Day. However, apart from a group of people who actively participate, there are also a group of sellers who feel that they are "forced to participate".

Xiao Wang said that he did not look forward to Member Day at all. The sales on Member Day were just to make up for the sales that dropped before and after Member Day. In the end, the total number of orders remained the same but the profit decreased. If he did not participate, but his peers in the same category participated, the declining sales would be even worse. It was like someone jumping the gun in a race, but he would not be punished. If you did not run, you would definitely lose because the number of consumers was limited.

A group of sellers have made it clear: they will not participate!

"Last year's Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday were terrible. Influenced by this, the boss said that we will not participate in the membership promotion this year." Xiao Liu, an operations manager, said that not only his own company, but also many peers have said that they will not participate in promotional activities on any platform this year .

In the eyes of these sellers, the purpose of the platform holding various promotions is to get everyone to lower prices. Without price cuts, there will be no traffic. However, in many cases, even if the prices are reduced, there is not much traffic. The most important thing is that the profit during the event is not as good as usual. After a lot of hard work, the profit is only 25 cents. It is obvious that they have put in more effort than usual, but the money they get is less, and they earn nothing .

Xiao Liu said in detail that the company's operating costs have been rising year by year, and most of them have been handed over to the platform, of which commissions, delivery fees and advertising fees account for the majority , and there are also various trivial charges, such as monthly long-term storage fees, warehousing configuration fees, return processing fees, and low-volume inventory fees; European sellers are even more miserable, and they can't avoid high VAT fees, European agency fees and packaging laws. Normally, the profit is meager, and the membership day is a day to lose money to gain publicity. For the time being, the company just wants to survive and protect its capital.

This year, Amazon's competitors have rushed to launch the "Mid-Year Sale". Temu's "Three Promotions Carnival" started as early as June 13 and will not stop until July 14. Walmart's Prime Week will be from June 17 to June 23, 2024, and Prime Day is expected to be in early July, earlier than Amazon. TikTok   E-commerce platforms such as Shop have also launched a variety of promotional activities.

There are many kinds of promotions, and consumers are running around between various e-commerce platforms, which will to a certain extent divert traffic from a single platform and thus affect sales. In recent times, there have been many cases of Amazon sellers experiencing a decline in order volume.

Many Amazon sellers have found that they can already sign up for the autumn and Black Friday events even though the summer Prime Day has not started yet. Many sellers interpret this as "Amazon is panicking due to the impact of other e-commerce platforms."

As the promotion timelines of many e-commerce platforms are extended, sellers are constantly complaining: the best business model is a long-term one. The extended promotion timeline is beneficial to the platform in the short term. The platform can make a lot of money by charging merchants fees, but for merchants, it will only force growth and drain the pond to catch fish.

"If you really want to organize an event and give customers more benefits, you may set up an independent website within your capabilities to have more autonomy." A seller said that he has withdrawn from big promotions for several years and there has been an impact but it is not significant.

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