[Continued] My destiny is in my own hands -- I relied on Amazon to achieve a comeback

At the end of the previous article, I mentioned that I gave up the offers from LightInTheBox and Talang and chose a smaller local company in Suzhou. The boss of this company is very courageous. He started from scratch at a young age (born in 1991) and built up to the current scale. I really admire him. At the same time, he is also very fond of talents. On average, he came to me three times a week to ask me to join. It can be called the "three visits to the thatched cottage" of the new era . In the end, I was moved by his enthusiasm and chose to work with him to expand this company.

1.

> > > Restarting and building a team from scratch < < <

There was a small incident after I joined the company. Vivian, who had gone her own way because of the store closure, also interviewed with this company. We started the cooperation of the golden duo again. In a short period of time after joining the company, I completed the store planning, from PS main pictures to writing listings and uploading them. Every thing was taken care of in detail. Several products were uploaded before the National Day, and no promotion has been done yet.

As a result, during the National Day holiday, the boss came to me excitedly and said that we had received an order and the unit price was very high, so we had made the right choice for this new product. After the National Day, Vivian also joined the company, and from then on we started to divide the work and cooperate to set up the advertising and evaluation work.

At that time, the order brushing was very crude. There was no search term at all. They just brushed the orders with hyperlinks. They used 1-2-5-2-1 to brush the orders. When the order came out in a spiral, they would make up the order after the natural order came out to maintain the ranking.

It took less than 15 orders to get a hot product. Combined with my own research on advertising, I could get thousands of euros in sales with a budget of tens of euros a day after FBA delivery. It was also at that time that I developed my advertising skills. Acos could achieve 2% . In addition, I found some buyers who were good at taking photos to send clothes to and asked them to leave photos, which greatly improved the conversion rate of the product.

Now I think back to the reasons why I was able to develop the product so quickly: first, my experience studying in Germany helped me understand Germans’ preferences for clothes; second, when no one knew how to advertise, it was easy to create a small hit by finding the right keywords, adding advertising and fake orders. When a store has more than a dozen small hits, it is easy to achieve monthly sales of over 100,000 Euros .

As mentioned above, the boss of this company is not very old, but he values ​​talent very much. So when he saw that my store had excellent sales, he immediately hired two German-speaking operators and two English-speaking operators for me, and then prepared a bunch of information for me to register an account. During that time, I spent time in the cycle of operating accounts - training new people - registering accounts.

Several new accounts grew to more than 100,000 euros in sales per month in just a few months. The boss even moved the office area next door, which was mainly used for eBay operations, to my team. I gave each of them an Amazon account, and then I copied and pasted the operation model of the successful store to these new stores, making them different small categories of accounts. For example, account A mainly sells simple dresses, and account B mainly sells flower girl dresses. Then we use different price positioning to monopolize the mid-to-high-end market.

▲After the number of people increased sharply, the largest office was used

After a year of copying and pasting, the monthly sales reached 3 million yuan, and my monthly salary reached about 60,000 yuan. It seemed that everything was going well, but unfortunately, God played a joke on me again.

2.

>>> Money is piled up in goods, and everyone is transforming for the sake of profit<<<

I still vaguely remember that day was very gloomy, and it felt like the dark clouds were about to overwhelm the office building, but no raindrops fell. That day, the boss was out of character and told me a big problem in a very serious manner. There was a problem with the actual funds received. Less than half of the sales of about 3 million yuan had been received.

I was very surprised and started to investigate the problem store by store. Eventually I found that it was the high number of returns that led to the situation where the amount of money received was seriously lower than expected. The most exaggerated case was a German store that sold more than one million per month but only received 400,000.

After that, I was really worried. I tried many ways to improve the return rate. For example, I learned that many returns were due to size issues, but at that time, the seller did not have the authority to modify the size chart. My stubbornness made me unwilling to let go of this method easily. I searched for various contact information and met Eric, the global vice president of Amazon, and Cindy, the general manager of the Asia-Pacific region. With the help of these two people, our store got the authority to modify the size chart.

▲A photo of me and Eric, Amazon's global vice president, at the Amazon Summit

But even though I updated a very accurate size chart, the return rate still did not improve significantly. Later, I tried to increase the profit margin to make it high enough to cover the cost of returns. During this period, I implemented the 80/20 rule, keeping only 20% of the lead products for low or fair price sales, and gradually increasing the price of 80% of the products.

*Here is a reminder for everyone, if you are going to increase the price do not increase it too much at once, for example, a small increase of 1 Euro over a few days and use discounts to offset the impact on conversion rate.

After this wave of price increases, our products that were purchased at 180 yuan are now sold at more than 150 euros, with a profit margin of more than 50% . At the same time, I was also developing new products with a low return rate. During this period, I, as the head of the operations department, was exposed to product development and procurement for the first time.

Because of product development, I also went to Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other places where goods are sourced. I still remember the experience of going to a factory that sells dresses. I followed a salesperson from the factory and went directly to their warehouse. I picked one and he recorded the model number. It was like shopping and picking whatever I liked. I picked about a hundred styles of clothes that time, and after sending them to Suzhou, I started to arrange for external models to shoot.

Fortunately, I had experience in making clothes, and I quickly launched a dress store. After 100,000 Euros, I calculated the return rate again and found that it was much lower than that of wedding dresses . At the same time, I also found that this category could not be promoted to other stores because its return rate was also very high. After this attempt, I realized that the high return rate might be a common problem of clothing products. If we can't make a drastic change in category, we may never get rid of the shadow of high return rate .

▲Christmas is in transition, the table is filled with the peace apples I prepared for everyone

Frank happened to be working with a friend on Amazon, and their Home category was booming. So I invited our company's boss and Frank to have dinner at Xibei, and asked them to share their experience in this category. In order to avoid overlap, the price I chose for the company was just around $50-60. But as the saying goes, a small boat is easy to turn around. At that time, I was driving a big boat, so it was not easy to turn around.

3.

>>> The difficult road to transformation<<<

So I chose to conduct a small-scale trial first, and then promote it to the whole company if it succeeded . So I led two operations to start the transformation from clothing to home products in two stores. And in order to avoid the anxiety of other people in the company, the boss rented a small apartment opposite the company to carry out the new project. I still remember making a bet with the boss at that time that if we could make more than 150,000 US dollars a month after the transformation, he would treat us to a kaiseki meal.

Thanks to Frank's experience and my understanding of operations, we created a hit product in about 3 months. In the third month, this hit product achieved sales of more than 80,000 US dollars. It was the peak season at that time, and after participating in an event, this listing increased to nearly 200,000 US dollars per month. This kaiseki meal is not only the fruit of our victory, but also the first step to the successful transformation of the company in the future.

The target categories have been determined, and the next step is to implement the big action of transforming everyone to home. However, transformation is not an easy task. It means that everyone's salary will be reduced for at least a few months before the sales volume of the clothing category is restored. It also means that if I fail to mobilize the company well, the company will face a large number of resignations, which may be seriously damaged.

I still remember that meeting. Dozens of operations people from the entire company sat in front of me. Facing pairs of anxious eyes, I told them:

I am always optimistic and good at making people happy, so I rarely say such things to everyone in such a formal way. However, my habit of getting along with everyone on weekdays helped me a lot at this time. Many people expressed their trust in my judgment and were willing to continue to follow me. Some people even shed tears silently on the spot. This was a very successful mobilization meeting. Even though we knew that the transformation would reduce everyone's salary by about half, no one left.

In response to such trust, I tried my best to successfully build nearly 20 Home brand stores within three months after the transformation, leading everyone's salary level to recover or even exceed that of the previous clothing category . And because a lot of customer service work was reduced compared to the clothing category, everyone was very glad that they followed me in the transformation.

In the second year after the transformation, the annual sales reached 110 million, and my monthly salary reached about 100,000. I also bought my own house and my first silver Mercedes-Benz C-Class in Suzhou as I wished.

The first house and the first car in life

At the same time, this transformation crisis also inspired me to strive for further progress. I had a detailed discussion with my boss and developed a plan to completely get rid of the small company model. After implementing the plan, the business began to compete in groups, and the quality inspection department, development department, and finance department established reward and punishment systems to get on track. We even began to straighten out the financial system and prepare for financing and listing, and my boss pushed me to the position of vice president.

When the company's turnover grew steadily, I had more free time because the division of labor among the various departments was clear and there were clear regulations for reward and punishment management. At this time, I couldn't help but feel confused. Is this the life I want? Is this how I will spend the rest of my life? I want a place where I can continue to use my abilities and face new challenges instead of a life that I can see the end of at a glance. My stubbornness made me resolutely leave the vice president position with a monthly salary of 100,000 yuan despite the opposition of others and start my own entrepreneurial career.

4.

>>> Continue to pursue your dreams and dive into the entrepreneurial journey<<<

You would never guess that the first step I took in starting my own business was not to rent a house, buy a computer, or hire people. Instead, it was to make an appointment with Frank to go to the Maldives to experience the most beautiful island in the world and experience this isolated paradise.

Friends often say that I am lucky, and my good luck was confirmed again in the Maldives: the water room I booked was upgraded to a super water room. The moment I got the key, I almost jumped for joy (the room number of the super water room starts with 6, and the area of ​​the water room is about 200 square meters).

The moment we were taken to the water villa in an open-air sightseeing bus, the blue sea in front of us was reflecting the sparkling sunlight, and the water villas were scattered in the sea like pearl necklaces. Everything in front of me was a beauty I had never seen before. At that time, I thought that this was probably the kind of beauty that a paradise on earth is talking about. I couldn't hold back the tears that welled up in my eyes.

Now I think that I have been to more than a dozen countries, and I was so shocked by the Maldives, which shows that the scenery of the Maldives is absolutely world-class. Every day I lay on the water bed by the swimming pool, watching the stars and the sunset, thinking about how to start my entrepreneurial journey after returning home. It was under such beautiful scenery that I conceived the prototype of my business.

After returning to China, I did something unexpected. As mentioned above, I bought a house and a Mercedes-Benz C because of my position as vice president of my previous company . In order to feel the pressure at the beginning of my business and stimulate my stubbornness, I decided to go to a 4S store and buy the Mercedes-Benz E300L that I had liked for a long time. When I saw that I had to pay nearly 8k for the car loan a month, my fighting spirit was ignited.

▲The second car in life

I thought about it carefully. With my big money in Amazon, my family's capital was definitely not enough for the start-up capital. Is there any way to make money without violating my conscience? It happened that several company bosses knew that I had resigned and started to invite me for coffee. During the conversation, they knew that I wanted to start a business, but they were still thinking about the entrepreneurial route in the early stage, so they invited me to be their consultant and go to their company several times a week to diagnose and control the store.

Because of limited time, several companies bid, and finally the price of 50,000 yuan/month was sold. Although it was much cheaper than the price of 10,000 yuan/month later, it also relieved the pressure of the early entrepreneurial route of the uncertain car loan and mortgage. In addition, it takes time to build up my own account, and the consultant work gave me a good transition. I would also like to thank the boss of this company. He has been a good friend of mine so far and often discusses company management with me. At the same time, in this consulting job, I saw that I could use my existing experience to bring sales to other companies . This is the opportunity for me to decide to do Amazon operation training.

5.

>>> The entrepreneurial direction has been determined, but the road ahead is bumpy<<<

When I decided to start training, I had a simple idea. I thought that I had experience in Amazon operations and had managed all aspects of an e-commerce company. I could use my knowledge to help sellers and relieve the pressure of starting a business. But when I started, I found that it was not the case at all. Having strong Amazon operations skills and being an Amazon teacher are two completely different things.

What impressed me most was that when I first started teaching, other sellers sneered and immediately became wary when they heard that I was doing training. I still remember it vividly. Later I learned that it was not the sellers who were wary of me. At that time, there were already many organizations in the Amazon training market, and they were doing it in a way that they could take advantage of others: many teachers had only worked on Amazon for a few months, but they downloaded some materials online, packaged them, and became big sellers with annual sales of over hundreds of millions, and then started training others. The sellers who participated in these trainings thought they had found a treasure at first, but the classes were of no use to them, and no one responded to them when they asked for the teachers, so everyone was afraid of training.

After running the training program for a few months, I felt this stereotype deeply, so I began to calm down and decided to focus on the high-end market, that is, to conduct training courses only for sellers with a certain scale, and not to train junior sellers . At least in front of these sellers, they can know the difference between what I say and other institutions after listening to the class, and when they go back to practice and encounter problems, they will get answers one by one. When they find that their performance is also growing, my strength will naturally be recognized by them. Facts have also proved that my route is correct. When a student finds that the effect is good, he will recommend it to seller friends who have a good relationship with him. At the beginning of my business, my reputation was accumulated little by little.

▲My office after starting my own business

In addition, I also operate my own Amazon account. While I am operating my own account, gaining experience and developing new operating methods, I also organize the methods into replicable routines to teach students. Both sides can enter a virtuous circle of mutual promotion.

Actually, I was a little conflicted when writing about my experience in training, because I knew that after writing it, some people would say, "Look, this is an advertisement," or other organizations would come out to smear it, but if I didn't write about my experience, it would be partially missing, so I wrote this paragraph with the attitude of "the clear will be clear, the turbid will be turbid." Of course, it is really difficult to do training and operations at the same time. I have said that running a business school and a pure Amazon company are two different things. The former requires promotion and enrollment, while the latter only needs to do its own thing. I chose to do both steps together, which is undoubtedly another big challenge for me.

I remember that I was a bit overwhelmed in the first half of the year. I thought about giving up more than half of the time every month. I wrote in my notebook that if I didn't achieve a certain scale, I would give up and live a peaceful life while traveling and making money. Facts have proved that giving up is harder than persisting. Even though I suffered a lot of misunderstandings at the time and didn't know what to do, my stubborn personality didn't allow me to give up halfway.

▲The handmade nougat received by the students

And when I received words of gratitude from the students, and received the candies, notebooks and blue crabs they made by themselves; when they happily told me how much progress I had made and were the first to share their joy with me, the touching and happiness I gained made me feel that it was all worth it. Your encouragement and support kept me moving forward.

In the past two years, both the business school and our Amazon account have received satisfactory results. The business school has trained more than 1,000 talents, and Amazon has also created multiple BSR products. We have finally made it possible to make money, take the entire team to watch the premiere of Avengers in the early morning, and travel together.

6.

>>> Now<<<

The business school is getting better and better with everyone's support. As of the time of writing, I already own two companies, one Amazon operating company and one new media company. The sellers in our group treat group members as friends, and checking the group every day to see if there are any problems has become a way for me to relax.

Of course, as a group leader, I also have the mission to spread positive energy to everyone. For example, on August 15, when a group member found that Amazon was selling Hong Kong independence T-shirts, I was angry at first. Without saying anything, I directly complained with my account. After the complaint, I sent the path and sample text to the group members to call on everyone to take action together. Suddenly, I found that this news had been spread very hotly, and there were already a lot of QA on the listing I complained about.

I suddenly realized that many sellers were as angry as I was when they encountered such things, but if they couldn't suppress their emotions, they would be caught by foreign media with ulterior motives and deliberately exaggerated to say that my country has low quality. I quickly called on everyone in the group to "not fight uncivilized behavior with uncivilized behavior, and everyone should stay in formation and reply Hongkong is a part of China"

At the same time, our entire company stepped up its efforts to publish articles and cooperate with each other. Some people called on everyone in the group, some prepared articles and materials, and some posted on WeChat Moments to call on the sellers around them to treat the issue correctly.

With the joint efforts of group members and colleagues in the company, and the fermentation of the topic itself, it immediately became the third most searched topic on Weibo. After reading the hot search content, I began to worry again that Chinese people who are not Amazon sellers will think that this is Amazon's fault. If this continues, it will lead to misunderstandings about us sellers. For example, if they know that we are Amazon sellers, they will sneer at us. What's more terrible is that if such misunderstandings are exposed to the higher-ups and Amazon's backend is blocked, it will be the end.

So I quickly called on everyone to dispel the rumor, telling everyone that this was a designer account and that we Amazon sellers should not be implicated, and let the initiator be punished. Until this point, things were proceeding in a reasonable way. I suddenly realized that what I was doing now had more missions. We are not just a pure operating company, but also a new media company. We have the mission to make everyone treat it rationally and see the truth clearly. We will also persist in moving forward on the road of pursuing the truth.

Of course, our future is not limited to this. I have worked my way up from an ordinary Amazon customer service to where I am today. I have relied on a kind of stubbornness that "my destiny is in my own hands, not in the hands of God" . Facing the difficulties along the way, I have never given up fighting and resisting. The fate of each of us is in our own hands. Don't give up pursuing your dreams because of regrets about the past and fears about the future. Just like the words I posted in the office: May we not miss the past and fear the future.

My Amazon story is still going on. After the last article was published, many friends tried their best to find my private WeChat. This time, I have attached it specifically for you who share the same interests.