After working alone for three months, Amazon operations became a worker again

It is said that the end of Amazon is to work alone. Many small and medium-sized seller entrepreneurs start out as operations people, but who knows how many of them will return to the company after working alone and become honest employees again.

In the cross-border circle, "going it alone" is an eternal topic, especially for workers who have heard too many myths about Amazon making money and are deeply troubled by the fact that 996 is a blessing and giving up their jobs at the age of 35, and they are more interested in getting a piece of the pie.

Sellers have different views on the issue of operators going out to work on their own. Some people think that this is human nature and cannot be stopped. It is also unrealistic to guard against it all day long. As long as they do their job well during the period of the labor relationship, it will be fine. Some people cannot accept it and feel that the people they have invested time, energy and money to train cannot be used by them in the end. They are very unwilling to accept this and are also afraid that they will copy the company's products and sell them after they go out to work on their own.

Amazon operators all have a "solo dream", but looking back, not everyone who has gone out to work on their own has succeeded. Starting a business is not something that can be accomplished simply by passion. In addition to having strong comprehensive strength, it also involves some luck. Especially in the current economic environment, starting a business is even more difficult.

So this kind of situation arises: many people who come out to work on their own with the idea of ​​giving it a try, originally thought that if they succeeded they could buy a car and a house and become financially free, but they are quickly defeated by reality, their entrepreneurial dreams are shattered, and finally they have no choice but to find a new company to join and continue to be workers.

Are the operators around you who started out as solo operators now successful? Are they under a lot of pressure during this period? Will those who failed be treated differently when they return to the workplace? When they come back to look for a job, will they hide their experience of working alone?

With 2,000 new sellers entering Amazon every day, how many of them are left to operate on their own?

According to Marketplace Pulse research, more than 2,000 new sellers have joined Amazon’s 21 global markets every day since 2016, including some who have left Amazon to work independently.

In 2016, Amazon was still in its bonus period. Riding on the dividend of the times, big sellers such as Aok Technology and Youkeshu achieved breakthrough growth in revenue. But today, Amazon is no longer what it used to be. Not only is the price war endless, but there is also serious internal competition.

Some people say that the wild growth of cross-border e-commerce has come to an end in 2022. In such a context, the pressure to work alone is not small, but many people still resign without hesitation and devote themselves to this battlefield.

Zhang An (pseudonym) is an Amazon operator with four years of experience. He has been wanting to escape from the office for more than a year. In June of this year, this feeling of not wanting to work reached its peak. Therefore, after much consideration, he decided to open his own store, having never thought of working on his own before.

Unlike Zhang An who wanted to embrace flexible working hours, what drove Jiang Jia (pseudonym) to go out on his own was entirely because of money. As a person with five years of Amazon operation experience, he knew very well how high the risks of working for Amazon were. But in the end, he could no longer bear the internal consumption in order to achieve performance targets, and finally worked so hard that he could only get a small commission.

There are several reasons why Amazon's operations are run independently: on the one hand, it's for money, on the other hand, it's for freedom, and the other is the career crisis at the age of 35.

Among them, the temptation of money accounts for the largest proportion. Cross-border e-commerce is a business with a relatively low threshold, but once it succeeds, the return rate is very high. It is difficult to achieve by working for others. Even if you reach the management level, there is still a salary ceiling. Someone has calculated this account. If you work for a boss, assuming a monthly sales of 200,000 US dollars and a gross profit margin of 15%, the commission is calculated at 5% of the gross profit, which is 1,500 US dollars (about 1,100 yuan). In order to achieve this performance, you must have put in a lot of effort, and overtime is the norm.

If you work for yourself, you don't need to consider commission points, and all gross profits will be yours. Therefore, even if the monthly sales are only $20,000, with the same gross profit margin, you can still make $3,000 (about 2,200 yuan). And working alone has such a mentality, that no matter how hard or tiring it is, no matter how much overtime you work, you are making money for yourself, which is completely different from the mentality of working for a company.

Let’s talk about the age anxiety issue. In the cross-border e-commerce circle, the age crisis has always existed. In some industry forums, you can often see such information: “I have been working in operations for 5 years, but I am 30 years old and have not been promoted to a management position. What should I do next?” “I am 29 years old this year. When I was interviewing for an operations position recently, I clearly felt that my age was my disadvantage.” Not only that, some companies have also set age thresholds in their recruitment requirements for Amazon operations positions, such as limiting the age of applicants to 20-30 years old or under 26 years old, or directly stating that they will only recruit those born after 1995 or 2000.

From the perspective of the profession itself, the threshold for Amazon operations positions is not high, and unlike many technical positions, the older you are, the more popular you are. Therefore, there is not much difference between operations with 10 years of experience and operations with 2-5 years of experience, and it is indeed easy to be replaced by young people. And if a person over 30 goes out to apply for a basic operations position, there is basically no big advantage.

So many people say that there are only two ways to succeed in Amazon operations: either work your way up to management level in the company, or work alone. However, there are too many managers and too few positions, so in the end most operations still have to work alone.

Finally, there is the question of freedom. The company has its own rules and regulations, which employees must abide by, but if you start your own business, you don’t need to be bound by these constraints.

Not long ago, an operator stated when explaining the reason for working alone that in addition to professional fatigue, high work pressure, and boring work content, another important driving factor was the low salary ceiling, the high replaceability of operations positions, and limited career development.

However, when it comes to entrepreneurship, success is only a minority after all. Although working alone has high returns, the risks are also high. Therefore, many operators, after failing to work alone, go back to the starting point and find a company to continue working.

After working alone for a while, I finally came back to work.

There was a popular post on the forum before. The content was about a person who had 4 years of Amazon operation experience and had reached the company management level. At the end of 2019, he raised more than 3 million yuan and quit his job to start his own business. Unexpectedly, after nearly a year, he lost more than 1 million yuan. His reaction was that "even if I lose money, I am inexplicably happy to see the orders coming in one by one."

But not everyone who fails in working alone has the same good attitude as him. In fact, many people fail early in the early stages of their business because they cannot bear the pressure.

Like the above operator, Liu Ming (pseudonym) also resigned from his job not long ago with the idea of ​​making a big splash. He actively selected products every day, but after three months of such days, his business had not made a good breakthrough. In addition, he had poor self-control and began to become lazy. So he decided to go back to work because he felt that such a life was hopeless. In just three months, he completed the switch from an employee to an entrepreneur and then back to an employee.

In May this year , a solo seller said that he was also on the way to an interview. Compared with Liu Ming, he had been working alone for a longer time (more than a year), but after suffering a series of setbacks such as losing tens of thousands of yuan in a month and having all the main products removed from the shelves due to safety and compliance issues, he chose to return to the workplace.

In the industry, there are many people like them who were originally full of ambition but finally had to bow to reality. After the failure of their business, they either changed their careers or went back to work.

Many people say that starting a business is a matter of life and death, especially in the current market environment, choosing to go it alone is a big challenge, requiring strong comprehensive operational capabilities. Amazon knowledge reserves are the most basic condition, and there must also be a lot of external resources to assist.

In a company, it is easy to promote a product, which is the result of the support of the platform, resources and team. When working alone, you need to complete all the work yourself, including getting goods, packaging, selecting products, operating, and making pictures. At this time, many people find that working alone is not that simple.

Li An (pseudonym), who started working on his own in the second half of last year, felt deeply about this. He said that when he was in the company before, products were quickly promoted, but when he started working on his own, although the products were carefully selected and he invested a lot of energy in making pictures and writing copy, it was still difficult to promote them. Looking at the calm order volume, he suddenly became unconfident and began to doubt whether his original choice was correct.

Those who regard the barriers provided by the company as their own strength often end up in failure when they go out on their own. In addition, after analysis, it is found that those operations that fail to go it alone usually have several characteristics:

First, they still use the company's thinking, but in fact, after going it alone, there is a big gap between them and the company in terms of financial strength and resource allocation. In this case, product selection and operation methods should be adjusted accordingly;

Second, the product development capability is not strong. The core of Amazon is still the product. The error tolerance rate of ordinary people in starting a business is very low. Once the product direction is wrong, the funds will be directly under pressure and the confidence will also be frustrated. This is very fatal in the early stage of working alone. In this regard, a solo operator once said that as a single seller, he has always been very cautious in selecting products and requires himself to try not to make mistakes;

Third, they are not prepared to bear the pressure alone. When working alone, you are often alone with only one computer, and you need to handle everything by yourself. It is lonely and stressful, and the pressure is completely different from that in a company. In a company, the boss takes the risk, but when working alone, you can only bear the consequences yourself if you make a mistake.

Fourth, you are limited in what you do. When you start a business, you spend your own money, and the funds are limited, so when you do some operations, you are often not decisive and bold enough, and you have many concerns. For example, when you place an advertisement, you are stingy and the effect is naturally poor;

The fifth is to set expectations too high. Equating working alone with making a lot of money, once there is no profit in the early stage, or the profit is irrational, it is easy to retreat.

Going it alone is the result of the accumulation of resources, one's own character, knowledge reserves, and financial strength. It is not an easy thing to accomplish, and it is even more impossible to accomplish it with just enthusiasm. Especially in the current environment, the probability of success is greatly reduced.

After the bonus is gone, how much opportunity is there for going it alone?

Wang Ning (pseudonym), who has been working alone for half a year but still has a negative balance on Amazon's books, said he was under a lot of pressure. The order volume was as flat as water, the advertising did not make a splash, and there were many returns. Now he has a lot of inventory. After evaluating various options, he found that abandonment would cause the least loss. Seeing this result, he suddenly doubted his efforts over the past six months.

Overall, Amazon now faces three challenges when it goes it alone: ​​first, competition on the Amazon platform is becoming increasingly fierce; second, there are more and more platforms competing for traffic; and third, overseas consumers are cutting back on spending.

In recent years, when it comes to Amazon, "involution" and "price war" are the two most talked about topics. As one of the world's largest cross-border e-commerce platforms, Amazon is obviously much more stable than other platforms, and it also controls more traffic, so it has attracted many sellers to settle in. Of course, it is also the preferred settlement platform for many Chinese sellers when they go overseas.

As we can see from the previous article, there are more than 2,000 new sellers entering Amazon every day . The result of more and more people is increasingly fierce competition, which can be clearly felt from the rising speed of Amazon’s advertising fees and the growth of new brands.

Amazon's advertising costs have increased dramatically over the past five years. According to overseas media surveys, between 2016 and 2021, Amazon's advertising costs as a percentage of sellers' overall costs have risen from 1.1% to 4.6%. In other words, Amazon's advertising costs have quadrupled in just five years. This has further driven Amazon's revenue growth. Marketplace Pulse data shows that Amazon now pockets more than 50% of sellers' revenue, compared to 40% five years ago.

The intensity of competition can also be felt from the influx of new brands. Marketplace Pulse reported that in 2021, there were more than 700,000 brands registered on Amazon’s brand registry, a 40% increase from 500,000 in 2020. Now, even seemingly randomly generated names such as LORELEI, RORSOU, MAJCF, or VBIGER may be trademarked brands.

It is also for this reason that in 2021, when Amazon brand aggregators are aggressively acquiring Amazon stores/brands, many sellers will not hesitate to act.

In addition to internal competition, there are also wolves outside. The most popular channels at present are Temu and TikTok. Not long ago, SHEIN, a fashion giant focusing on independent station business, announced that it would open up to sellers, and another piece of the pie was taken away.

Since Temu was born, the threat theory of Amazon has always existed. In the early days, many people were skeptical about this assertion, but later facts proved that this concern was not unreasonable.

Since its launch, Temu has rapidly opened up overseas markets with its low-price strategy. Currently, it has opened 27 overseas markets around the world, covering many regions such as Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America and Oceania.

Temu's rapid expansion shows that overseas consumers are very fond of "low prices". It is precisely because of this that low-value products on Amazon were the first to be affected. Now with its further expansion, the scope of influence is gradually expanding.

Today, not only are consumers flocking to Temu, but many Amazon sellers are also betting on this rapidly expanding new platform.

Data shows that from the first quarter to the second quarter of 2023, Temu's quarterly downloads more than doubled, jumping from 31 million to 74 million. And its popularity is still increasing, and it is becoming an important application that affects the global market.

While Temu is accelerating its expansion, TikTok is also increasing its e-commerce business layout. Previously, TikTok's e-commerce business has always focused on Southeast Asia. Earlier news showed that TikTok plans to expand the scale of its global e-commerce business fourfold this year to $20 billion in GMV, of which the GMV in Southeast Asia may reach $15 billion. But now with the opening of two sites in the UK and the US, its ambition for global expansion has been exposed.

In addition to doing a good job in external skills, TikTok also attaches great importance to the "cultivation" of internal skills. For example, in order to ensure the traffic of merchants on the platform, it has recently closed the semi-closed loop and started internal testing of the TikTok Shop mall in Southeast Asia. According to media reports, according to the official plan, by the end of the year, its mall GMV will account for 50%, which is equivalent to more than US$7.5 billion.

According to data just released by Sensor Tower, TikTok has topped the global download list for 12 consecutive quarters, so there is still a lot of room for imagination in the e-commerce field in the future.

In addition to these challenges, the current consumer environment is also an issue that independent operators need to consider. As we all know, under the influence of economic downturn and inflation, consumers' consumption habits have changed greatly.

A "Holiday Shopper Report" recently released by Nfinite shows that American consumers are facing a consumption tightening situation, so during this year's holiday shopping season, they will pay more attention to saving money and actively seek discounts.

The main findings are as follows:

30% of respondents said their holiday shopping budgets have decreased this year compared to last year.

33% of consumers said they intend to purchase fewer holiday-themed or seasonal products compared to last year.

66% of consumers said they would actively seek product discounts.

The main reasons for reducing spending include saving money (46%), economic uncertainty (39%) and changes in personal financial circumstances (38%).

It is said that the end of Amazon is to work alone. Many small and medium-sized seller entrepreneurs start out as operations people, but who knows how many of them will return to the company after working alone and become honest employees again.

In the cross-border circle, "going it alone" is an eternal topic, especially for workers who have heard too many myths about Amazon making money and are deeply troubled by the idea that 996 is a blessing and giving up their jobs at the age of 35, and they are more inclined to want to get a piece of the pie.

Sellers have different views on the issue of operators going out to work on their own. Some people think that this is human nature and cannot be stopped. It is also unrealistic to guard against it all day long. As long as they do their job well during the period of the labor relationship, it will be fine. Some people cannot accept it and feel that the people they have invested time, energy and money to train cannot be used by them in the end. They are very unwilling to accept this and are also afraid that they will copy the company's products and sell them after they go out to work on their own.

Amazon operators all have a "solo dream", but looking back, not everyone who has gone out to work on their own has succeeded. Starting a business is not something that can be accomplished simply by passion. In addition to having strong comprehensive strength, it also involves some luck. Especially in the current economic environment, starting a business is even more difficult.

So this kind of situation arises: many people who come out to work on their own with the idea of ​​giving it a try, originally thought that if they succeeded they could buy a car and a house and become financially free, but they are quickly defeated by reality, their entrepreneurial dreams are shattered, and finally they have no choice but to find a new company to join and continue to be workers.

Are the operators around you who started out as solo operators now successful? Are they under a lot of pressure during this period? Will those who failed be treated differently when they return to the workplace? When they come back to look for a job, will they hide their experience of working alone?

With 2,000 new sellers entering Amazon every day, how many of them are left to operate on their own?

According to Marketplace Pulse research, more than 2,000 new sellers have joined Amazon’s 21 global markets every day since 2016, including some who have left Amazon to work independently.

In 2016, Amazon was still in its bonus period. Riding on the dividend of the times, big sellers such as Aok Technology and Youkeshu achieved breakthrough growth in revenue. But today, Amazon is no longer what it used to be. Not only is the price war endless, but there is also serious internal competition.

Some people say that the wild growth of cross-border e-commerce has come to an end in 2022. In such a context, the pressure to work alone is not small, but many people still resign without hesitation and devote themselves to this battlefield.

Zhang An (pseudonym) is an Amazon operator with four years of experience. He has been wanting to escape from the office for more than a year. In June of this year, this feeling of not wanting to work reached its peak. Therefore, after much consideration, he decided to open his own store, having never thought of working on his own before.

Unlike Zhang An who wanted to embrace flexible working hours, what drove Jiang Jia (pseudonym) to go out on his own was entirely because of money. As a person with five years of Amazon operation experience, he knew very well how high the risks of working for Amazon were. But in the end, he could no longer bear the internal consumption in order to achieve performance targets, and finally worked so hard that he could only get a small commission.

There are several reasons why Amazon's operations are run independently: on the one hand, it's for money, on the other hand, it's for freedom, and the other is the career crisis at the age of 35.

Among them, the temptation of money accounts for the largest proportion. Cross-border e-commerce is a business with a relatively low threshold, but once it succeeds, the return rate is very high. It is difficult to achieve by working for others. Even if you reach the management level, there is still a salary ceiling. Someone has calculated this account. If you work for a boss, assuming a monthly sales of 200,000 US dollars and a gross profit margin of 15%, the commission is calculated at 5% of the gross profit, which is 1,500 US dollars (about 11,000 yuan). In order to achieve this performance, you must have put in a lot of effort, and overtime is the norm.

If you work for yourself, you don't need to consider commission points, and all gross profits will be yours. Therefore, even if the monthly sales are only $20,000, with the same gross profit margin, you can still make $3,000 (about 22,000 yuan). And working alone has such a mentality, that no matter how hard or tiring it is, no matter how much overtime you work, you are making money for yourself, which is completely different from the mentality of working for a company.

Let’s talk about the age anxiety issue. In the cross-border e-commerce circle, the age crisis has always existed. In some industry forums, you can often see such information: "I have been working in operations for 5 years, but I am 30 years old and have not been promoted to a management position. What should I do?" "I am 29 years old this year. When I was interviewing for an operations position recently, I clearly felt that my age was my disadvantage." Not only that, some companies have also set age thresholds in their recruitment requirements for Amazon operations positions, such as limiting the age of applicants to 20-30 years old or under 26 years old, or directly stating that they will only recruit those born after 1995 or 2000.

From the perspective of the profession itself, the threshold for Amazon operations positions is not high, and unlike many technical positions, the older you are, the more popular you are. Therefore, there is not much difference between operations with 10 years of experience and operations with 2-5 years of experience, and it is indeed easy to be replaced by young people. And if a person over 30 goes out to apply for a basic operations position, there is basically no big advantage.

So many people say that there are only two ways to succeed in Amazon operations: either work your way up to management level in the company, or work alone. However, there are too many managers and too few positions, so in the end most operations still have to work alone.

Finally, there is the question of freedom. The company has its own rules and regulations, which employees must abide by, but if you start your own business, you don’t need to be bound by these constraints.

Not long ago, an operator stated when explaining the reason for working alone that in addition to professional fatigue, high work pressure, and boring work content, another important driving factor was the low salary ceiling, the high replaceability of operations positions, and limited career development.

However, when it comes to entrepreneurship, success is only a minority after all. Although working alone has high returns, the risks are also high. Therefore, many operators, after failing to work alone, go back to the starting point and find a company to continue working.

After working alone for a while, I finally came back to work.

There was a popular post on the forum before. The content was about a person who had 4 years of Amazon operation experience and had reached the company management level. At the end of 2019, he raised more than 3 million yuan and quit his job to start his own business. Unexpectedly, after nearly a year, he lost more than 1 million yuan. His reaction was "Even if I lose money, I am inexplicably happy to see the orders coming in one by one."

But not everyone who fails in working alone has the same good attitude as him. In fact, many people fail early in the early stages of their business because they cannot bear the pressure.

Like the above operator, Liu Ming (pseudonym) also resigned from his job not long ago with the idea of ​​making a big splash. He actively selected products every day, but after three months of such days, his business had not made a good breakthrough. In addition, he had poor self-control and began to become lazy. So he decided to go back to work because he felt that such a life was hopeless. In just three months, he completed the switch from an employee to an entrepreneur and then back to an employee.

In May this year, a solo seller said that he was also on the way to an interview. Compared with Liu Ming, he had been working alone for a longer time (more than a year), but he also chose to return to the workplace after suffering a series of setbacks, such as a loss of tens of thousands of yuan in one month and the removal of all major products due to safety and compliance issues.

In the industry, there are many people like them who were originally full of ambition but finally had to bow to reality. After the failure of their business, they either changed their careers or went back to work.

Many people say that starting a business is a matter of life and death, especially in the current market environment, choosing to go it alone is a big challenge, requiring strong comprehensive operational capabilities. Amazon knowledge reserves are the most basic condition, and there must also be a lot of external resources to assist.

In a company, it is easy to promote a product, which is the result of the support of the platform, resources and team. When working alone, you need to complete all the work yourself, including getting goods, packaging, selecting products, operating, and making pictures. At this time, many people find that working alone is not that simple.

Li An (pseudonym), who started working on his own in the second half of last year, felt deeply about this. He said that when he was in the company before, products were quickly promoted, but when he started working on his own, although the products were carefully selected and he invested a lot of energy in making pictures and writing copy, it was still difficult to promote them. Looking at the calm order volume, he suddenly became unconfident and began to doubt whether his original choice was correct.

Those who regard the barriers provided by the company as their own strength often end up in failure when they go out on their own. In addition, after analysis, it is found that those operations that fail to go it alone usually have several characteristics:

First, they still use the company's thinking, but in fact, after going it alone, there is a big gap between them and the company in terms of financial strength and resource allocation. In this case, product selection and operation methods should be adjusted accordingly;

Second, the product development capability is not strong. The core of Amazon is still the product. The error tolerance rate of ordinary people in starting a business is very low. Once the product direction is wrong, the funds will be directly under pressure and the confidence will also be frustrated. This is very fatal in the early stage of working alone. In this regard, a solo operator once said that as a single seller, he has always been very cautious in selecting products and requires himself to try not to make mistakes;

Third, they are not prepared to bear the pressure alone. When working alone, you are often alone with only one computer, and you need to handle everything by yourself. It is lonely and stressful, and the pressure is completely different from that in a company. In a company, the boss takes the risk, but when working alone, you can only bear the consequences yourself if you make a mistake.

Fourth, you are limited in what you do. When you start a business, you spend your own money, and the funds are limited, so when you do some operations, you are often not decisive and bold enough, and you have many concerns. For example, when you place an advertisement, you are stingy and the effect is naturally poor;

The fifth is to set expectations too high. Equating working alone with making a lot of money, once there is no profit in the early stage, or the profit is not ideal, it is easy to retreat.

Going it alone is the result of the accumulation of resources, one's own character, knowledge reserves, and financial strength. It is not an easy thing to accomplish, and it is even more impossible to accomplish it with just enthusiasm. Especially in the current environment, the probability of success is greatly reduced.

After the bonus is gone, how much opportunity is there for going it alone?

Wang Ning (pseudonym), who has been working alone for half a year but still has a negative balance on Amazon's books, said he was under a lot of pressure. The order volume was as flat as water, the advertising did not make a splash, and there were many returns. Now he has a lot of inventory. After evaluating various options, he found that abandonment would cause the least loss. Seeing this result, he suddenly doubted his efforts over the past six months.

Overall, Amazon now faces three challenges when it goes it alone: ​​first, competition on the Amazon platform is becoming increasingly fierce; second, there are more and more platforms competing for traffic; and third, overseas consumers are cutting back on spending.

In recent years, when it comes to Amazon, "involution" and "price war" are the two most talked about topics. As one of the world's largest cross-border e-commerce platforms, Amazon is obviously much more stable than other platforms, and it also controls more traffic, so it has attracted many sellers to settle in. Of course, it is also the preferred settlement platform for many Chinese sellers when they go overseas.

As we can see from the previous article, there are more than 2,000 new sellers entering Amazon every day. The result of more and more people is increasingly fierce competition, which can be clearly felt from the rising speed of Amazon’s advertising fees and the growth of new brands.

Amazon's advertising costs have increased dramatically over the past five years. According to overseas media surveys, between 2016 and 2021, Amazon's advertising costs as a percentage of sellers' overall costs have risen from 1.1% to 4.6%. In other words, Amazon's advertising costs have quadrupled in just five years. This has further driven Amazon's revenue growth. Marketplace Pulse data shows that Amazon now pockets more than 50% of sellers' revenue, compared to 40% five years ago.

The intensity of competition can also be felt from the influx of new brands. Marketplace Pulse reported that in 2021, there were more than 700,000 brands registered on Amazon’s brand registry, a 40% increase from 500,000 in 2020. Now, even seemingly randomly generated names such as LORELEI, RORSOU, MAJCF, or VBIGER may be trademarked brands.

It is also for this reason that in 2021, when Amazon brand aggregators began to acquire Amazon stores/brands on a large scale, many sellers did not hesitate to act.

In addition to internal competition, there are also wolves outside. The most popular channels at present are Temu and TikTok. Not long ago, SHEIN, a fashion giant focusing on independent station business, announced that it would open up to sellers, and another piece of the pie was taken away.

Since Temu was born, the threat theory of Amazon has always existed. In the early days, many people were skeptical about this assertion, but later facts proved that this concern was not unreasonable.

Since its launch, Temu has rapidly opened up overseas markets with its low-price strategy. Currently, it has opened 27 overseas markets around the world, covering many regions such as Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America and Oceania.

Temu's rapid expansion shows that overseas consumers are very fond of "low prices". It is precisely because of this that low-value products on Amazon were the first to be affected. Now with its further expansion, the scope of influence is gradually expanding.

Today, not only are consumers flocking to Temu, but many Amazon sellers are also betting on this rapidly expanding new platform.

Data shows that from the first quarter to the second quarter of 2023, Temu's quarterly downloads more than doubled, jumping from 31 million to 74 million. And its popularity is still increasing, and it is becoming an important application that affects the global market.

While Temu is accelerating its expansion, TikTok is also increasing its e-commerce business layout. Previously, TikTok's e-commerce business has always focused on Southeast Asia. According to reports, TikTok plans to expand the scale of its global e-commerce business fourfold this year to $20 billion in GMV, of which the GMV in Southeast Asia may reach $15 billion. But now with the opening of two sites in the UK and the US, its ambition for global expansion has been exposed.

In addition to doing a good job in external skills, TikTok also attaches great importance to the "cultivation" of internal skills. For example, in order to ensure the traffic of merchants on the platform, it has recently closed the semi-closed loop and started internal testing of the TikTok Shop mall in Southeast Asia. According to media reports, according to the official plan, by the end of the year, its mall GMV will account for 50%, which is equivalent to more than US$7.5 billion.

According to data just released by Sensor Tower, TikTok has topped the global download list for 12 consecutive quarters, so there is still a lot of room for imagination in the e-commerce field in the future.

In addition to these challenges, the current consumer environment is also an issue that independent operators need to consider. As we all know, under the influence of economic downturn and inflation, consumers' consumption habits have changed greatly.

A "Holiday Shopper Report" recently released by Nfinite shows that American consumers are facing a consumption tightening situation, so during this year's holiday shopping season, they will pay more attention to saving money and actively seek discounts.

The main findings are as follows:

30% of respondents said their holiday shopping budgets have decreased this year compared to last year.

33% of consumers said they intend to purchase fewer holiday-themed or seasonal products compared to last year.

66% of consumers said they would actively seek product discounts.

The main reasons for reducing spending include saving money (46%), economic uncertainty (39%) and changes in personal financial circumstances (38%).

Amazon Operations