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Located in Beijing, the first third of the post-90s otakus were brainwashed by the cross-border trend of Douyin during their period of waiting for work with a basic salary because of some problems in their previous company. After a rough calculation of the profits and finding it feasible, they resolutely registered a company and started doing it.
The company registration process was not difficult, because the previous company was in a park, and I went directly to the park's investment promotion office to pay the pit fee and get the address for registration. When I went back to the park again, I talked about this industry with a colleague who I had a good relationship with (he lived very close to the park, so we arranged to meet in the park). He was not optimistic about this industry at the time and asked me what to do if I couldn't sell it? My thoughts at the time were also very simple: there must be a reason why it can't be sold, find the problem and solve it, there is no reason why it can't be sold. Now I know how naive my thoughts were at that time. Because the previous company's problems were not resolved and he was relatively free, he agreed to work together and claimed to be here to help.
Because it would definitely not be appropriate for two people to work together at home, we found a commercial and residential loft as a temporary office, with a one-year lease. It is relatively close to my home. Fortunately, the previous tenant of the house was an office worker, and it had basic tables and chairs. After renting the house, I bought a water dispenser, installed an Internet cable, cleaned up, and started working.
After obtaining the business license in early October 2020, I started contacting Amazon investment managers to open a store. While waiting for the link, I tried Shopee. At that time, there was no trick to doing business with Shopee, because everyone had confirmed that Shopee's way of doing things was to distribute goods, so I just did it, and started selling all kinds of 3C products and small household appliances.
Those who are familiar with Shopee know that this platform is actually the same as Moduoduo. The first one to be opened was the Malaysia site, and the emphasis is on good quality and low price. In a more intuitive point of view, as long as the things are usable and the price is the same as similar products, there is no problem. It has been doing this until the beginning of 2021 when Amazon was linked together. After checking Shopee's ledger, the income and expenditure are balanced, with no loss or profit. However, this is limited to the Shopee platform. If you include rent, water, electricity, gas, food, drink, defecation, urination, and sleep, it is a pure loss.
In this way, I waited for my first store on Amazon North America, and then registered on the Japanese site. Both sites were registered through the investment manager. For product selection, I chose the first supplier I contacted when I was doing Shopee. It was in the security monitoring category. The reason I chose this company was that after Shopee put their products on the shelves, there were no orders (the quotations of domestic suppliers in this category are all based on Amazon, so naturally the prices are not applicable to Southeast Asia). The boss would contact me once a week or so and ask me if I had encountered any problems. I felt that he was different from other suppliers and should be said to be more responsible. At that time, I thought it would be worry-free to cooperate with such a supplier. Facts have proved that I was naive again. Worry-free people does not mean worry-free products.
After that, I simply wrote listings and uploaded pictures. At that time, I didn’t realize that writing listings was the basic skill of operation. Later, when I was browsing the forum, I accidentally discovered the industry of agent operation. My former colleague did not recommend me to use an agent. He felt that I could only learn a lot by groping and doing it bit by bit. I certainly understood this principle, but considering that I have been renting a house for 3 months and I am still in a state of not making ends meet, I seem to be calm, but in fact I am panicking. Before I officially decided which agent to use, I had already placed all my hopes on them, thinking that it would be faster to get started with an agent. In this way, I finally decided to sign a contract with an agent operation company in Guangzhou. Because of the epidemic, I was unable to visit the company in person. At that time, they advertised that it was a listed company on the New Third Board, and the stock code was posted on the homepage of the official website. Later, after the stock market was strictly investigated, the company seemed to be suspended (I later learned what kind of companies listed on the New Third Board are, emmm~ the stock price can be 10 yuan the day before, it can rise to 100 the next day, and it can fall to 3 yuan on the third day)
The official signing time was mid-to-late January, and so my former colleague continued to be in charge of Shopee's Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore stations, and the agent operated the Amazon US station. I was responsible for unconditionally cooperating with the agent. I first sent them 18 samples I purchased and asked them to pick out 2-3 models based on market demand. After the models were determined, they started shipping and optimizing the listings. The agent told me that the service time was calculated from the time the first batch of goods was shipped, not based on the time of entering the warehouse. The tragedy was that my goods drifted on the sea for more than two months before I started to pick them up, and it was early April when they were officially put on the shelves. I just wasted two months in vain.
February 12 was the Spring Festival of that year. Before the holiday, I told my former colleague that I would come back after the holiday to sign his labor contract (because the previous company’s affairs were not settled, both of us were paid basic salary and social security by the previous company, so we both had no salary and no income in my company, and we took turns to treat each other to meals). This was also a lead to his later words, because I could already feel that he didn’t want to continue working for me, maybe because he felt that I didn’t value him, or that he couldn’t see the future. I asked him if he didn’t believe in this industry or me, and he smiled and said that he didn’t believe in this industry or me. Since it came to this point, I didn’t force him, but just told him about the industry trends I analyzed. Seeing that he still insisted on his own ideas, I let him go.
In the following days, I was left alone in this empty house. During this period, another friend I had grown up with organized two people to borrow my place (they were in the financial loan business, and the commercial and residential loft was a two-story unit. After they came, I moved upstairs and they moved downstairs), so I had a solution for my daily meals.
Two products were shipped in the first batch and were put on the shelves in early April. At that time, the Vine plan on the US site was still free, so both SKUs were registered. Soon, the one with the higher average order value started to receive orders. After it was ranked, combined with some QA and advertising support, sales began to increase. However, no one claimed the Vine with the lower average order value. By the time the orders started to be received, this product with the lower average order value had already received several orders through advertising, and only one Vine had been claimed. This left me puzzled.
In mid-April, the first Vine review of a high-priced product was received. The first review was a one-star one, saying that the machine stopped working within 24 hours. The operation wanted to communicate with the buyer through an external email, but this reviewer was one of the top 500 reviewers. I felt that he could not fail to understand Amazon’s rules. After thinking it over, I decided to give up the communication and sell at a lower price despite the negative review. Two days later, the demotion effect came, and the product was directly listed at zero that day. Fortunately, a four-star review followed, also from one of the top 500 reviewers. After that, a tug-of-war of negative reviews began. The previous review was good, and the next one was bad. Then there was another good review, and then another bad review. The last time I was so speechless was the last time.
Later, when I was chatting with my peers, they said that they almost didn’t dare to use Vine because it was easy to attract bad reviews. This statement was soon confirmed. The first review of the low-priced Vine was still one star. In less than a month, the high-priced SKUs were about to be out of stock, and express delivery and express shipping were immediately arranged. They were out of stock for 2 days, which didn’t have a big impact, but because of the repeated bad reviews, sales have not improved. It can only be said that it is growing slowly, but the growth rate is a bit terrible. So there was repeated communication between the operation and the supplier. After so much communication, the operation began to get annoyed with me. Once, she directly confronted me in the docking group, roughly meaning that I was an outsider and didn’t need to care too much. They were professional operators and naturally had their own operating methods, but how could I tolerate you confronting me? So she was directly asked to exit the system and shut down Zi Niao’s permissions.
Both products failed to achieve profitability until the very end. The one with the low average order price had to be cleared out at a huge discount due to continuous negative reviews, and was finally cleared out before the inventory age exceeded 180 days. The one with the high average order price was out of stock again in August after it was restocked, and this time the out-of-stock time exceeded 20 days, and its weight was almost gone. In addition, the excessively high NCX (NCX had been removed from the shelves before, and was once) was reviewed as a dangerous product. After it was put back online, sales were halved again. It cannot be said to be halved, but it was slashed by a large amount. As of now, half of the inventory is still there, and it certainly cannot be sold after it is cleared out.
I launched an Apple peripheral product. The first batch of 100 was delivered directly by express. I was found to have infringed the copyright after selling just 5. When I appealed, I was asked to provide Apple's authorization letter. I had no choice but to find a service provider to clear the stock. It's November now. Seeing that there are no products that can survive, I picked a product with a score of 4.4*50+ from my peers. Although I'm not sure whether the reviews are fake, I have no choice but to bite the bullet and launch it in the absence of a better way. It has been on the shelves for a week, and the automatic advertising has cost 80 dollars. There are exposures and clicks, but no orders, and there is no ranking. Due to the previous experience, I dare not continue to register for the Vine plan. I browsed the forum these two days and found that someone said that he was also warned after going to QA. I have always insisted on pure white hat operations and I dare not take any action, so the subsequent direction is still a mystery.
In summary, I have been running the store for a year and have made a total of 4 products. So far, none of them are popular. This is also related to my operational ability. Although I still have the basic knowledge, I am confused when it comes to specific details. I have thought about doing Amazon through partnership more than once. After my former colleague withdrew, I had two candidates in mind. One is a professional operator in Shenzhen. After graduation, she joined an Amazon company as an operator for internship and worked on the refined store model. We had a meal together when we came to Beijing before. Later, she also said that she would consider leaving her job and coming to Beijing for development in September or October this year. Later, she was unable to come for various reasons. She resigned some time ago and has now changed her career.
The other one is an old leader of the company a few years ago. I have been working under her since I joined the company at the end of 2014. She is the project manager and we get along well. I have been in touch with her occasionally since I left in 2017. She is still working in the company and has become a project manager. Because I know this company and I know that she has reached the top of this position and someone above will not let her go any further. She said that her wish is to open a coffee shop. Through my introduction to this industry, she has the impression that selling Chinese products across thousands of mountains and rivers to the other side of the earth is very high-end and has a high threshold. It is not something that ordinary small players like us can handle. I hope to bring her in because we have a good relationship and I know her as a person. At the same time, she is also a good management talent. But at the same time, I am entangled in the great uncertainty of the current profit model. I don’t want to harm her, so I just think that the time is not ripe.
After much thought, I think the best option now is to do it all on my own. However, my learning ability is poor and I am located in the north, so I have no advantage in terms of resources or information. My future is bleak and I don’t know how long I can hold on. |
