Billion-dollar sellers teach you how to choose an Amazon site

At the beginning of this article, let me make a brief introduction. I have been working for Amazon for seven years. Amazon has been a self-entry platform in the beginning, where individuals can open stores at will, and now it has opened stores in China. The investment managers are responsible for KPIs, just like the sales staff in the sales office, who call and attract new sellers to open stores. Even now, you can see that many Amazon calls are marked as nuisance calls.

At that time, sellers were the boss and Amazon was not so famous. In order to complete the quarterly task, the investment manager could only start with sellers who already had stores, harassing them by phone or even visiting them in person, and persuading them to open more stores for various reasons.

But now the situation has reversed. Amazon CEO Bezos has become the world's richest man, which has directly led to a large number of sellers flocking to Amazon to make money. Before the fourth quarter of this year, all the recruitment quotas for September have been used up. New store registrations since August have been frequently reviewed again. Even after providing various water and electricity bills and address proofs, Amazon still has ten thousand reasons to reject the review.

From the perspective of the difficulty of entering Amazon, it is obvious that this year is the most severe year. In the context of the global economic downturn, more and more factories and unrelated industries want to enter Amazon to share a piece of the pie. Amazon's global footprint is also getting bigger and bigger, from only being in Europe and the United States to expanding to Australia and Asia. Amazon's operating environment has also officially transitioned from a distribution model to a refined brand operation model.

Such a transformation means that high returns must be accompanied by high investment , so in such an environment it is particularly important to choose the right site to settle in. Today I will analyze the pros and cons of each site with you.

Amazon's US site can be said to be the first piece of the global map, and it is an old-fashioned site that is undoubtedly the best. It ranks first in the shopping website ranking list of Alexa, ahead of the search engine Google and the video website YouTube. A shopping website can compete with search and video playback, and even the social networking site Facebook ranks behind Amazon. You can imagine how big the entire Amazon traffic pool is.

As the market where Amazon started, American users have an unconditional trust in amazon.com, which is reflected in the fact that even if a product has little traffic and no reviews, it can still generate orders. All new policies of Amazon will be implemented in the US first, and then applied to other sites such as Europe and Japan, which shows how much Amazon attaches importance to the US site.

If you have a mature operation idea, then the US site is definitely a site you cannot miss. However, huge traffic also brings more sellers and competition. With fewer and fewer blue ocean categories, established sellers have already occupied good positions, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for new sellers to compete for a seat. If you are a complete novice and have no one to guide you, then entering the US site is undoubtedly a life-or-death struggle.

The advantage of the UK site is that it is the only English-speaking site among several European sites, and there is no language barrier. Sellers can easily translate the products to be listed into the local language, and there is not much difference in SEO and promotion paths from the United States.

The disadvantage is that it is too small compared to the US site. Because there is no language barrier, there are many sellers, the competition problem is still serious, and the overall price is not higher than that of the US. In addition, there are tax issues, and the profit is greatly reduced. The future situation is extremely unstable. If Brexit is successful, the tax system will also be independent of the EU, and sellers will have to deal with it again.

Under such circumstances, I do not recommend that sellers who have never done business in the European market blindly enter the UK market. Of course, if you are very familiar with the UK market and have corresponding solutions to the problems I mentioned, then it is not a bad idea to enter the UK market.

Because German is a minority language, the German site has set up a natural barrier for everyone. Most people think that customer service issues are difficult to solve and that they cannot list products in German. This inherent thinking has led to the fact that the number of sellers on the German site has not yet reached saturation . In addition, Germany itself has a developed economy and strong consumption power, so the selling price is higher than that of the UK and the US, which is more profitable for sellers.

The disadvantage is that Germany also has VAT, and the tax bureau is very strict. You can't make any mistakes in taxation, otherwise it will lead to store closure and other problems. Secondly, the return rate is very high. Germans themselves pay attention to efficiency. In order to buy the right products as soon as possible, they will even return 9 out of 10. Therefore, you should avoid choosing products with high return rates on the German site, such as clothing.

Another disadvantage is that some categories are very small in size. If you enter the market without researching the market, you will find that you have reached the BSR before you have placed many orders, thus hitting the sales ceiling.

Amazon has five major sites in Europe. After the English and German sites, there are also French, Italian and Spanish sites. These three sites are not large in size and have similarities, so I will talk about them together. Like the German site, they are also small language sites, so the number of sellers is not saturated, and there are still plenty of opportunities.

The disadvantage is that Amazon only has a certain volume in common categories such as clothing and electronic products. Most consumers have not formed the habit of buying furniture, pet supplies, maternal and child household products on Amazon. Therefore, it is important not to be subjective when preparing stocks.

In addition, France will soon enforce VAT, and Italy and Spain will follow suit, so you need to be very careful in profit accounting. For the size of European sites, my ranking here is: Germany>UK>France>Italy>Spain , so everyone should choose according to the actual situation.

When talking about the most successful sites in Asia, we have to mention the Japanese site. Before Amazon entered Japan, Japan's online shopping was divided between Yahoo and Rakuten. With the strong entry of Amazon, it has now taken the No. 1 position.

The Japanese site has the advantages of fast delivery and a developed economy . Since the distance from China is only about 700 kilometers (Shanghai to Kagoshima), sea freight replenishment is much faster than that in Europe and the United States , which directly increases the capital turnover rate of sellers on the Japanese site, and there is more liquidity to prepare stocks and withstand pressure.

The disadvantage is that the electronic products category is about to be saturated, and various malicious attacks are common, so it is not easier to defend the BSR than the US site. In addition, the sales tax increase on the Japanese site in October has swallowed up part of the seller's profits . In addition, the Japanese have high requirements for quality and are as picky as the Germans. If you want to enter the Japanese site, you must pay special attention to quality.

The opening of the Australian site has attracted a lot of attention, but it ended up with a dismal result. Since the opening of the Australian site in 2017, only large sellers were invited to join, and one invitation letter corresponded to one seller. Now that the Australian site is fully open to investment, few people are interested. It really ruined a good hand.

Before the Australian site opened, Amazon conducted a large-scale offline promotion, so the first batch of sellers placed hundreds of orders through self-delivery, but by the next day the number dropped to a dozen or so orders, and after that the traffic almost hit rock bottom.

Looking back, I personally think it was a problem with the matching of FBA warehouses. Amazon is a platform famous for its buyer experience, but without FBA, the delivery speed of goods was greatly delayed. It is conceivable that if the FBA warehouse was established before the promotion and high-cost-effective products were prepared, the outcome might be very different.

Although a small number of FBA warehouses have been put into use, they have not yet been able to save the Australian site from its decline. Sellers who are watching the Australian site should pay more attention to Amazon's work in improving local logistics. It is not ruled out that the maturity of the logistics system in the future may allow the Australian site to revive. However, judging from the current situation of the Australian site, it is not recommended for small and medium-sized sellers to enter the market.

The most important news after the National Day is the opening of the Singapore site. As a developed country, Singapore has strong consumption power, and Amazon's model in developed countries is also relatively mature . For a new site, everyone starts from scratch, with the same starting point and less competition.

Unfortunately, Singapore is now a battleground for major e-commerce giants. In addition to local Q10, there is also Alibaba's Lazada. Alibaba's success in Asian e-commerce is obvious to all, and it is still unknown whether Amazon will not adapt to the local environment. The entire Singapore has a population of only 5 million (equivalent to a city in China), and this small piece of cake is being fought over by several major e-commerce companies. As sellers, how much can we get if we enter now?

If it is a large company planning a global site layout, it can grab the spot first. But if it is a small or medium-sized company that wants to survive by relying on the Singapore site, I would like to pour cold water on it. This kind of behavior is just accompanying the big sellers.

As the world's largest e-commerce platform, Amazon will naturally continue to open new sites on the global map. Just like the investment banking industry is already rich if it makes a profit from one out of 10 investments, the new sites opened by Amazon will fuel the market value as long as one out of 10 is successful.

However, as sellers, we are betting real money or even our entire fortune , so site selection and operation strategy are very important. One wrong move can lead to a complete loss.