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Amidst the blessings of “Merry Christmas” , the last peak season promotion of 2024 has come to an end. In sharp contrast to the joyful festive atmosphere among foreign consumers, cross-border sellers have seen a sharp drop in product sales in the past two days. The annual Christmas, while opening the curtain for the New Year holidays in Europe and the United States, also seems to put an invisible end to the cross-border peak season. It is learned that recently, many cross-border sellers have reported a decline in order volume. Especially on Christmas Eve (December 24) and Christmas Day (December 25), the sales of many sellers' products even fell sharply. "Christmas Eve was terrible, the number of orders dropped by 50%." "I felt so sad when I saw the sales volume before going to bed on Christmas Eve. It felt like the store was gone." "It's Christmas today, and when I woke up this morning I thought there might be something wrong with my account." "The sales of Amazon and Temu stores reached a freezing point during Christmas." Some sellers even pointed out that the number of Christmas product orders has fallen to the bottom, which actually means that this year's peak season has officially ended . The reasons for the large-scale decline in orders in the past two days are nothing more than the "old three" of holidays, logistics and consumer shopping willingness: 1. Christmas holiday arrangements According to the US holiday schedule for 2024, the Christmas holiday will be mainly concentrated on the afternoon of December 24 and the whole day of December 25. But it is worth mentioning that many Americans will choose to take leave or adjust their leave in advance to extend the Christmas holiday . During this period, most American consumers are immersed in the joy of holiday reunion and have no intention of shopping online. Strikes, warehouse explosions, and product launch delays have become the annual keywords for the cross-border e-commerce industry in 2024. According to foreign media reports, on December 19, thousands of Amazon employees once again launched a strike. Some sellers have found that perhaps due to the poor logistics situation, the label "Arrives after Christmas" appeared on the detail pages of some products on Amazon before Christmas this year. According to feedback from multiple sellers, this label has affected the conversion rate of products to a certain extent, and the order volume of some sellers has declined, while ACOS has skyrocketed. 3. Changes in consumer shopping intentions According to the latest survey by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Proper Insights & Analytics, 71% of American consumers are expected to choose to shop in the week after Christmas to take advantage of post-holiday promotions or use gift cards. Among them, 26% of consumers said they will shop after the holiday, while 16% plan to return unwanted gifts. In the past week, "Christmas" and "gifts" continued to rank at the top of the hot search terms list on multiple Amazon sites. Although according to past sales conditions, the peak traffic period for Christmas products is usually from November to mid-December each year, but judging from this data, the peak period of orders during this year's Christmas shopping season may be "delayed", and cross-border sellers still have hope of achieving a "comeback." It is worth mentioning that in addition to the United States, the main export country, my country's Christmas product exports to Russia this year also performed particularly well. It is understood that in 2024, November will still be the peak export period of my country's Christmas product "shipping boom". According to the data from the General Administration of Customs, in the first 11 months of 2024, the United States was the largest exporter of Christmas toys to China. At the same time, Russia is also one of the top ten major regions for China's New Year and Christmas product exports. In November 2024, Chinese companies exported New Year and Christmas holiday products worth 4 million US dollars to Russia, doubling the same period in 2023. If we delve deeper into the reasons behind this impressive data, we will find that on the one hand, it is mainly due to the Christmas e-commerce consumption boom in the Russian market. According to Check Index, Christmas sales in Russia have increased significantly in 2024. Since the beginning of November, the total sales of the two major Russian e-commerce platforms, Wildberries and Ozon, have exceeded 6 billion rubles. And Ozon's report shows that from the end of November to the beginning of December, the average amount of Christmas product orders on the platform exceeded 2,000 rubles, an increase of 70% over the same period last year. In terms of product categories, Christmas decorations and Christmas toys are the most popular categories among Russian e-commerce platform consumers. According to data from Wildberries and Ozon, Russian e-commerce consumers spend 33% of their spending on artificial Christmas trees, 44% on decorative items such as garlands, lights and balls, and 23% on personalized Christmas toys. On the other hand, the number and importance of Chinese sellers on Russian e-commerce platforms are increasing year by year. It is understood that in 2024, the number of Chinese sellers on Ozon has exceeded 100,000 , accounting for about 20% of the total number of registered sellers. In 2022, the number of Chinese sellers was only about 10,000. Wildberries started direct purchase cooperation with Chinese suppliers and distributors at the end of 2023. By November 2024, the platform has registered about 300 Chinese distributors . It is also worth mentioning that, unlike Europe and the United States, Christmas in Russia is not on December 25, but on January 7. Therefore, to this day, some cross-border sellers have revealed that the overall product sales of Russian local e-commerce platforms are still on the rise. From this point of view, the peak season for cross-border sellers exporting to the Russian market has not yet ended. I wonder how the sales performance of sellers during this Christmas shopping season is? Welcome to discuss in the comments section~
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