Single-day sales exceeded $1 million! Sellers on these platforms are going crazy

Compared with previous years, the Black Friday battle line this year has been extended, but most Amazon sellers still said that Black Friday was a surprise and sales were lower than expected. Even the big sellers who once had annual sales of over 10 million US dollars saw their sales cut in half.

From the preheating to the end of Black Friday, the extreme price cuts did not win back too many orders. Some sellers felt more deeply the chill and bleakness. Orders and sales did not explode, but ACOS and advertising fees exploded. A number of Amazon operators are likely to resign.

In sharp contrast to Amazon's dismal performance, cross-border e-commerce platforms including Temu, TikTok Shop, SHEIN, and Meikeduo are gaining momentum. Not only did they enter Black Friday in a high-profile manner, they also extended the battle line and started early, competing with Amazon and ultimately achieving fruitful results.

Behind the fierce competition and fierce battle of Black Friday, there are naturally some who are happy and some who are sad. This year-end peak season is destined to be not peaceful.

On one hand, Amazon encountered many problems during Black Friday, the order volume was weak, and the sellers suffered heavy losses, which was a miserable situation. On the other hand, the competing platforms frequently reported good news and cheered. Under the extreme contrast, some sellers chose to leave, while some big sellers such as Anker have already stepped into the new platform with explosive orders.

Title 1: Amazon’s Black Friday sales were cut off, Temu and other platforms saw a huge surge in orders

Unlike previous years, this year's Black Friday promotion saw the participation of platforms including Temu, TikTok Shop, SHEIN, and Meikeduo. Even TikTok Shop joined the Black Friday promotion in a high-profile manner, and they started a fierce competition overseas to grab market share.

With the participation of multiple platforms, the duration of this Black Friday has been extended to about one month, so much so that some sellers jokingly call it "the longest promotion in history", which is quite similar to the Double Eleven in China.

But in the fiercely competitive battlefield, who will be the victorious general?

Amazon: Order volume is low, operations staff jokes they want to resign

On November 17, Amazon’s big sale in the US and Europe started, and the 10-day sale officially came to an end on November 27.

However, Black Friday, the longest event cycle in history, did not bring a surge in orders for Amazon sellers. On the contrary, many sellers said that the ever-increasing expenditures could not save the dismal order volume on Black Friday . Even sellers with annual sales of over 10 million US dollars saw their order volume cut in half.

"Orders didn't explode, only ACOS and huge advertising fees exploded, ACOS was over 80, and orders were the same as usual," said an operator. Prices were 20% off, profits were squeezed again and again, and even on Black Friday, overseas consumers seemed to remain rational with Amazon, and the bullet didn't fly out of the gun barrel.

From the sporadic orders during the preheating period, to the expectation of a surge in orders during the big promotion, to the disappointment of the idea near the end, in just ten days, it seemed like a century had passed. There was no expected explosion of sales, and even the order volume was not as good as usual. What awaited her was a large amount of stockpiling, excessive advertising, and being criticized by the boss. "I have submitted my resignation application."

Some sellers were not well received, while others performed well during Black Friday. Zhiou Technology, a home furnishing giant that just went public this year, saw its total sales increase by 78% year-on-year during the Black Friday Cyber ​​Monday event on Amazon platforms in Europe and North America, adding a touch of color to the big sale.

In addition, some categories performed well, including the popular pet urns in the pet subcategory, helmets for automotive and motorcycle products with high sustainability, and niche categories such as seasonal warm products . The order volume of some sellers either doubled, ushering in a small harvest, or remained the same as in previous years.

During Black Friday, some sellers had low order volume. It is undeniable that the prolonged activity cycle caused consumer fatigue, but on the other hand, it may be that multiple platforms entered the Black Friday, dividing the market traffic and taking away more orders.

Temu: Some sellers received thousands of orders per day, and Black Friday performance was the most impressive

On October 20, Temu fired the first shot and was the first to enter the Black Friday warm-up period. On November 2, it officially entered the Black Friday promotion. On November 26, the Black Friday promotion ended. The total Black Friday promotion time was as long as 38 days. The Black Friday front line exceeded Amazon several times, and multiple rounds of promotions such as Black Friday pre-sales, home furnishings, and digital products were launched in turn.

Seizing the opportunity first means grabbing more opportunities for sellers to make big sales.

During the Black Friday preheating period, Temu attracted a lot of traffic and allowed sellers to accumulate a lot of orders. During the official Black Friday promotion period, Temu's discounts were even more generous, not only offering a 90% discount, but also launching "US$200 coupons per person, three free products of your choice" and free shipping for orders over US$0.1, making it the welfare king in the Black Friday war.

Overseas consumers exclaimed, "With Temu, why should I look at other platforms?" This shows the generosity of Temu and the number of orders in this promotion season.

This is indeed the case. With the extremely attractive activities, the traffic of Temu platform sellers' stores hit a new high. Most sellers also successfully achieved explosive orders. A kitchen category seller said that his products have reached the peak since the opening of the store, and the products on the shelves are almost sold out . For the first time, he reaped the bonus of the platform's Black Friday.

Some sellers performed even better, with more than a thousand orders per day. Some sellers whose order volume quadrupled joked that "I can finally have a good New Year."

Temu's recent data is not only impressive during Black Friday . According to data from October this year, Temu's monthly unique visitors reached 42 million, four times that of last year. In terms of the proportion of American users in the world, Temu's is 41%, exceeding Amazon's 15%. The number of new downloads in the United States is currently five times that of Amazon.

With the ever-increasing number of users and the unique price advantage, it is easy to imagine how much traffic and orders a strong competitor like Temu will take away.

TikTok Shop : Anker Innovations dominates the category rankings, with one seller’s single-day sales exceeding one million US dollars

On October 27, TikTok Shop started a three-day Black Friday pre-sale. From October 30 to November 30, the Black Friday promotion officially started, which lasted for 35 days. The attributes of the social platform automatically supported the Black Friday promotion, and the number of views on #blackfriday reached 9.5 billion.

In September of this year , the long-dormant TikTok Shop was officially launched in the United States. It chose to highlight the United States at this critical juncture before the big promotion, making it clear that it wanted to compete with Amazon and others.

As we all know, TikTok Shop has a huge number of users around the world. It promotes products through short videos and stimulates users to place orders through live streaming. It is currently in a stage of rapid development. Although it debuted as a social e-commerce, its ability to generate explosive orders should not be underestimated.

During the pre-order period, many sellers had already caught the first wave of promotional traffic and successfully achieved explosive sales. During this period, beauty and personal care, women's clothing & underwear, mobile phones & digital products were the best-selling categories, and one small store led the promotion with daily sales of over $1.1 million. A charger under Anker Innovations even topped the list of mobile phones and digital products, with sales of 23,100 units.

According to sellers, during Black Friday, TikTok Shop offered discounts of up to 50%, and also provided 20%-50% discount subsidies to participating merchants, which seemed to indicate that they were going to have a big fight in the United States . "For a single item with a unit price of $70, the customer only paid $18 in the end. You can imagine how big the subsidy is," said a seller.

The crazy high subsidies also helped TikTok Shop achieve a breakthrough on Black Friday.

From November 14 to November 20 alone , its orders in the US market increased by 205% compared with October 20 to October 26. Home and outdoor and fast-moving consumer goods products are the best-selling products, and products such as portable steppers, rechargeable LED headlamps, multi-purpose vegetable cutters , visual ear picks, and neck lifts and wrinkle removers have become dark horses in sales, standing out among a large number of products.

According to EchoTik statistics, during the week of Black Friday, TikTok's total GMV reached US$61.2 million (about RMB 450 million), setting a record in the United States and increasing by 131% month-on-month. On November 24, the GMV exceeded US$33 million.

SHEIN: Fruitful results, one seller's orders increased sevenfold

As early as October 23rd to October 29th, SHEIN started the Black Friday pre-promotion, promising "more than 300K popular products with price cuts and limited free shipping". From November 13th to 19th, the Black Friday event entered the official warm-up stage, and the number of SHEIN promotional products increased to 400K+. From November 20th to 25th is the Black Friday promotion period, and subsequent activities will continue until early December, and the entire promotion will last about a month.

After the official opening, SHEIN's entire site's order volume and consumption amount increased significantly.

As one of the platforms targeting Black Friday in the United States, SHEIN has always been low-key and mysterious. Although there is not much public data displayed, SHEIN, which seized the time opportunity, is sure to have achieved fruitful results.

A large-size women's clothing seller said that although he had been at SHEIN for a short time, his business was stable. He joined SHEIN in September, operated stably in October, and caught up with the Black Friday peak season with explosive traffic in November. The store's purchasing amount has increased from more than 100,000 US dollars to one million US dollars, which is "simply unimaginable."

Another seller selling home fabric accessories also reaped great rewards during the Black Friday promotion. By innovating the colors and patterns of some products, this year's Black Friday sales reached six or seven times that of last year. Products featuring Christmas elements were also widely praised by sellers.

SHEIN's insights into overseas consumer trends show that this year's consumers are more inclined to place orders in advance. Search terms related to "Black Friday" appeared as early as July, and search terms related to "gifts" also emerged in large numbers in October. Consumers' early consumption may have allowed their sellers to accumulate a large number of orders before Black Friday.

With the accumulation before Black Friday and the explosion during the period, SHEIN and its sellers are also ushering in a harvest season.

There are many data to prove how impressive SHEIN's growth rate has been. The latest data released by Data.ai on global shopping app downloads in the first three quarters of 2023 shows that SHEIN has surpassed Amazon to rank first in the world. SHEIN has topped the list of China's cross-border e-commerce brand influence and China's top 50 cross-border e-commerce companies many times, and can be said to be one of the companies with the best overall performance among the four little dragons going overseas.

Meikeduo: 1.8 million pieces sold per day, becoming the focus of the big promotion

Compared with Temu and other platforms that started early, Meikeduo's promotion schedule is not long. The earliest site is Brazil, which started the Black Friday carnival on November 1, followed by Colombia and Chile, with the entire period lasting throughout November.

The triumphant return of the Black Friday sale also made it the focus of the sale: Meikeduo once again broke the historical record.

During the Black Friday promotion, the total transaction volume of goods on the Meikeduo platform increased by 80% year-on-year compared with 2022, and the sales of electronic products represented by mobile phones and laptops soared by 140%, with an average daily sales volume of 1.8 million items. On November 23 alone , the sales volume of goods reached a peak of 2.8 million items.

Compared with the leading platforms in the US market, Meikeduo, which focuses on the Latin American market, has an absolute geographical advantage. Conversion data shows that in the Brazilian market in September this year, Meikeduo's visits exceeded 320 million times, far ahead of Amazon, which ranked second with 180 million visits.

During last year's Black Friday, Meikeduo left other e-commerce platforms such as Shopee, B2W, Magalu, and Amazon far behind, winning 62% of Brazil's total Black Friday orders and occupying most of the market share in several major e-commerce markets in Latin America, undoubtedly demonstrating its strength as a strong seller.

Looking at all the platforms competing in the same arena, there are the top ones mentioned above that are in their heyday, and there are also the tail ones that have not been mentioned, such as Wish, which are gradually declining. Some platforms have seen a huge surge in orders, while others have seen a gradual decline in orders. But in the final analysis, this competition has only gone halfway.

Title 2: Leaving Amazon, sellers step into new platforms

During Black Friday, competing platforms frequently reported good news of booming orders, but Amazon continued to encounter various unexpected situations.

First, the official website system crashed. The seller was so anxious that he sat in front of the computer and scratched his head, saying self-deprecatingly, "If you don't know, you would think that Amazon has a bug in the system due to the large number of orders." Although similar situations have occurred in previous years, the fierce competition between cross-border platforms this year has really made cross-border sellers feel a deep chill.

Later, during Black Friday, Amazon conducted a large-scale number scanning, and the problem of sellers’ credit card expiration broke out on a large scale. After many attempts, the sellers still failed. They had to give up resistance and wait for a miracle to happen. As a result, some sellers missed Black Friday.

During the promotion period, the number of orders did not explode, but there were constant problems. Users who were tortured by Amazon said that they might as well abandon Amazon directly. With the frequent good news from competing platforms, it is not surprising that Amazon sellers have the idea of ​​leaving and moving to new platforms, which coincides with the relevant data.

Where did Amazon's lost millions of customers go?

Amazon has been losing users since the beginning of this year. This year alone, the mobile client of Amazon UK has lost more than 1 million users. At the same time, the number of users of the US site has also been decreasing, from 54 million daily active users in early April to 46 million daily active users. In just a few months, Amazon has lost nearly 8 million users.

In contrast, the number of users of competing platforms Temu and SHEIN has been growing. As of October this year, the total number of users of Temu and SHEIN reached 110 million, nearly 90% of Amazon's.

Internally, Amazon is facing a decline in traffic, rampant low prices, and constant problems; externally, emerging platforms such as Temu and TikTok Shop are competing for users and market share . Amazon is now under attack from all sides. As the competition trend intensifies, Amazon's users are gradually being absorbed by emerging platforms.

At the same time, Tik Tok has also begun to vigorously develop its e-commerce business to capture more markets including the United States.

In early September, after TikTok Shop was launched in the United States, it began to spend money madly and offer various discounts to grab traffic and users. It was like a mine that quickly exploded in the US e-commerce track. "Many of my Amazon seller friends want to do TikTok Shop, and everyone is actively preparing for the new platform," said a cross-border seller.

Amazon sellers take a step into TikTok Shop

Of course, many big sellers have already taken action and stepped into the door of TikTok Shop, such as the familiar Anker Innovations. During Black Friday, Anker Innovations dominated the list, and one of its chargers became a best-seller in the mobile phone and digital category, with sales of 23,100 units and sales of up to US$460,000.

Wyze, a mobile phone and digital store, is one of the most successful representatives to expand from Amazon to TikTok Shop , with sales of about $4.3225 million during Black Friday . On November 24 , Black Friday alone , its sales reached $219,900, which is enviable.

Another sports and outdoor yoga apparel brand on Amazon, NcmRyu, has also set up a TikTok Shop. The monthly sales of just one product reached 96.9K pieces, with an estimated sales of US$839.24K. In October, NcmRyu topped the sports and outdoor category.

Taking advantage of the Black Friday opportunity when big companies are fighting each other, TikTok Shop went online in the US market, attracted big sellers to settle in, and grabbed market share. This move was a brilliant one.

Since TikTok Shop was launched in the United States, it has been on a rapid rise. Soon after it was launched in the U.S. market, some sellers complained that "eBay's performance targets were not met, and all the orders went to TikTok." Some sellers sold more than 1,000 orders on the fifth day of listing their products on TikTok , and the inventory was sold out in less than a week.

Relevant data shows that in October this year , the number of TikTok Shop stores in the United States with sales records reached 30,000, an increase of 70% from July; the number of stores that have submitted applications for entry has reached 250,000.

The entry of a large number of sellers has led to a rapid increase in TikTok Shop's US GMV in a short period of time, with an increase of more than 40% in October compared to September, reaching US$200 million. Many sellers in TikTok Shop have achieved monthly sales of millions of dollars.

Some sellers may want to use multiple channels to diversify the risks of focusing on Amazon, while some sellers enter TikTok Shop to clear their inventory.

"Regardless of whether it makes money or not, it is good to clear the inventory through multiple channels," said an Amazon seller. Since the beginning of this year, the sales of Amazon stores have declined significantly. Every time there is a big promotion, we have high expectations and sufficient inventory, but every time we return disappointed. Sales have not improved, and a large amount of inventory has accumulated.

In their view, TikTok Shop has a greater time advantage. As long as the video content is good, it is not a problem to get 100 orders a day . However, on other platforms such as Amazon, it may take at least half a year from the time the product is put on the shelves to the time when 100 orders a day are received. In contrast, TikTok Shop has more significant advantages in all aspects.

However, with the addition of TikTok Shop, the competition between cross-border platforms will become more intense. It is obviously not feasible to rely solely on low prices to support long-term development. Being caught in the torrent of the market, sellers need to master the product as a solid paddle.

Amazon

Temu

SHEIN