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2023 is coming to an end, but the recent escalating situation in the Red Sea has made the year-end drawn by many cross-border people seem imperfect - affected by the Red Sea crisis, the shipping market has experienced a sharp shock. As a large number of shipping companies have paused their Red Sea routes, more and more companies are bypassing the Cape of Good Hope, and freight rates from the end of the year to the beginning of next year may "soar". As the saying goes, good fortune never comes alone, and misfortune never comes alone. Facing the potential hidden danger of soaring freight costs, sellers' orders have also seen a sharp drop in recent days. Now that 2023 is coming to an end and the Spring Festival is approaching, the boom in orders during Black Friday and Cyber Monday has gone away . Along with the "miserable" Christmas, a large number of sellers have entered the off-season ahead of schedule. It’s Christmas again this year, and foreigners are celebrating the New Year happily, but the sellers’ order volume is as “cold” as a Christmas night. As soon as Christmas came to an end, a seller suffered the first critical blow of the "New Year": he felt a chill down his spine as soon as he opened the store, and while his rankings did not change much, his orders dropped by almost half compared to yesterday. "Have today's orders been sealed? The order volume has dropped by 75% compared to usual. Although it is Christmas period abroad, sales volume in the same period last year was twice that of today, and based on last year, orders have recovered in the days after the 27th. However, according to this trend now, I don't know what the situation will be like in January." The seller said helplessly. This situation occurs to most sellers, and there are many people who share the same suffering: "The drop in orders is so horrible that our sales have dropped to one-fifth ." “It’s much worse than last year. It’s unbearable. People only click on the ads but don’t place orders .” "It was almost Lin Dan. Although I had expectations for Christmas, it was so bad that I couldn't believe it ." "Last year, the orders were not so cold around Christmas, but this year, they have been cut by more than half. " Generally speaking, overseas consumers tend to buy items for the holidays in advance, and the peak sales period for Christmas is usually before the holiday. On the holiday, consumers are immersed in New Year parties, so it is inevitable that the demand for online shopping will decline. However, from the feedback of sellers, the market performance of Christmas this year is obviously worse than that of previous years, and the off-season came earlier than in previous years. Since the end of the Black Friday online promotion, the sales of a large number of sellers have been falling, and some sellers have already started to prepare to go home for the New Year in advance. "The number of orders has been decreasing day by day in the past week, and it has also decreased compared with the same period last year." After the extremely competitive Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and now the disappointing Christmas sales, some sellers have to admit that the triple siege of Temu, TikTok, and SHEIN has eaten into some of Amazon's market share. Now Amazon sellers are facing rising delivery and operating costs, as well as low-price competition from other platforms, and their living space has undoubtedly been squeezed. After a bleak Christmas, many sellers are confused about whether they will have new growth opportunities next year. After Christmas, we will enter 2024 in a blink of an eye. At this stage, regardless of whether the performance is good or bad, Amazon sellers are about to embark on a new journey and meet new challenges. Looking back on the Amazon journey of 2023, what kind of report card did the sellers hand in? Different people have different answers to this question. The survey found that the performance of cross-border sellers in 2023 showed a serious polarization trend. As of December, among the sellers participating in the [Cross-border Year-end Business Status Survey], 32.5% of cross-border sellers had annual revenue of less than 1 million, while sellers with revenue of more than 100 million accounted for 18.2%. In addition, nearly 60% of cross-border sellers' main platform revenue declined compared with last year, and about 70% of sellers saw a decline in profits. Overall, every cross-border seller will have gains and losses in 2023, which can be felt more intuitively from the specific sales data. Some people are content with what they have and seek progress while maintaining stability. A senior seller in the industry said that his Amazon performance this year is similar to that in 2022, close to two small goals, with sales volume down 10%, average order value up 15%, and profit margin up. In addition to Amazon, the seller has expanded to multiple platforms. Temu’s sales have dropped from 600 orders per day to around 300-400 orders, while SHEIN’s third-party platform store currently has monthly sales of around $10,000, a relatively impressive growth. “Next year, we will continue to launch new products, mainly focusing on existing products, and strive to achieve $50,000 per month, with a profit margin of 20%.” The seller frankly stated his plans for next year. Some people have a rough journey and have gone through many tests. "No profit in the first half of the year, no profit in the second half of the year" has become the true portrayal of many sellers. One seller revealed that his store's profits have plummeted this year, and new products have repeatedly hit a wall. Looking forward to 2024, the only vision is to "survive", and success will be achieved if new products are developed to make enough profit. Other sellers are overwhelmed by the heavy inventory. "2023 is a mess. I didn't make any money, but I made a lot of inventory." According to feedback from many parties, many sellers had too high expectations for the peak season, which led to overstocking. They could only spend a lot of money on advertising and consume a large amount of inventory, resulting in a situation where profits were greatly reduced. Some people also seize the opportunity and rise rapidly. 2023 will be a bumper year for some sellers. One seller shared his joy: "I have developed several hit products, and the net profit this year is about 4 million. I bought two houses and two cars. In 2024, I plan to move to an office of more than 200 square meters and hire two operators. The target is 6-8 million." Another independent seller said excitedly: "I made 1.15 million this year from Amazon, and I made about 50,000 to 60,000 from funds and stocks. My expenses were about 70,000 to 80,000. I currently have about 3 million in savings. Next year's goal is to make more than 1.5 million." Combining the sellers' annual summary and looking at the changes in the industry throughout the year, objectively speaking, 2023 is undoubtedly a year of both opportunities and challenges. The four little dragons going overseas have collectively stepped into the river of full trusteeship, which not only provides cross-border merchants with diversified sales channels and more abundant growth opportunities, but also invisibly exacerbates the industry's price involution. Amazon remains the platform with the most development prospects, and its huge scale accumulated over the years is unlikely to be shaken in the short term. ▲ The map is made based on comprehensive online information. It is not a real ranking and has no reference value. But the seeds of crisis have already been silently planted: faced with repeated waves of account bans, rising operating costs and increasingly fierce market competition, the big tree of Amazon is no longer a shelter for all those going overseas. In the platform ecology of the survival of the fittest, sellers who lack competitiveness will inevitably be eliminated. Therefore, during this year, some people seized the opportunity to stand out from the crowd and achieved success in many areas, while others were left far behind in the fierce competition of cross-border business, with both sales and profits falling. Some people resolutely jumped out of their comfort zone and embraced new platforms and new markets, while others abandoned the backward overseas thinking and switched to the intensive brand route... Looking ahead to 2024, some sellers believe that cross-border e-commerce is entering the next more glorious era - the diamond era. But there may be a disruptive change: the biggest winner will no longer be Amazon sellers. |
