Can't bear it anymore! Amazon's order volume plummeted, and a group of sellers went home early for the New Year!

Can you handle the recent order volume?

After entering January, there was a cry of grief among sellers: sales volume plummeted like riding on a big slide in the Ice and Snow World, and the drop even exceeded 50%, which was simply suffocating.

According to feedback from other sellers and operations, sales performance after mid-January is even more pessimistic than in early January. It feels like sales have been bleak since January, and it has become worse and worse as time goes by!

Some sellers attribute the continued sharp drop in orders to the current extreme weather in the United States.

Order shipment is delayed, delivery time cannot be guaranteed, the quality of goods will also be affected, and consumers' shopping experience will be greatly reduced, which will definitely affect the product return rate.

In addition, during this period, all emergency products related to the order is booming , such as tents, emergency power supplies, lamps , etc. During the post-disaster reconstruction phase, consumer demand in the Los Angeles area may change, and the demand for some commodities will surge, such as home outerwear, daily necessities, emergency supplies, etc.

According to Google Trends, the search trend for the word fireproof reached its peak on January 11:

Of course, don’t get too excited. This does not mean that all sellers can benefit from this wave of dividends. By the time you prepare the goods and send them out, the popularity may have dropped, and there may only be a pile of unsold inventory left . The only ones who can benefit from this wave of dividends are probably the sellers who have already laid out these categories.

They can’t sell at high prices, and they lose money if they sell at low prices. A large number of them are stuck in the dilemma of “not being able to operate”. Recently, a group of cross-border migrant workers have started their journey back home early.

An Amazon operator shared the company's holiday notice on the forum: 20 days in total from January 18, 2025 to February 6, 2025, and normal work will resume on February 7 .

This statement also aroused the envy of many cross-border workers, who all said they wanted to join the company. However, judging from the annual leave information shared by the sellers, some were happy while others were sad, and the joys and sorrows of people were not the same:

"We have holidays according to the calendar throughout the year, from January 28th to February 4th."

"I didn't get a holiday until the 27th, and I went back to work on the 5th, so I only got nine days off, and I made up for it with four days of work."

"The company has been working long and short weeks since December. From January 25 to February 4, there are 11 days in total. I have to make up for it after I come back. This holiday is really tiring."

It can be seen that some cross-border companies strictly implement annual leave in accordance with national statutory holidays, while a small number of companies "secretly" withhold employees' annual leave by making up work, etc.

Many cross-border companies have also started their Chinese New Year celebrations in advance, with the holiday lasting around 20 to 30 days .

In 2024, a large number of cross-border companies will experience a downward trend in both revenue and profits. With annual performance failing to meet targets, a number of costs, such as platform operating expenses and logistics and distribution fees, will continue to rise. For this reason, some cross-border companies have begun to reduce costs and increase efficiency in order to find profit points, and have cut expenses by taking early holidays .

In such an environment, although the Spring Festival is getting closer, for sellers whose overseas sales in 2024 were not satisfactory, they have also fallen into a series of troubles such as shrinking or even wasting year-end bonuses, and withholding of year-end benefits.

Although the beginning of 2025 does not seem to be friendly to sellers, I hope that sellers can "start low and end high" in the future, overcome all the difficulties, and sell well every day.