Happy Nice Mall

A key ingredient to Amazon’s success is the explosion of China-based businesses selling products through its vast digital mall.

But more than a year ago, Chinese businesses are selling a steadily smaller share of what Americans buy on Amazon. US-based traders are gaining ground.

Experts said that Amazon merchants in the US and China do not have a satisfactory explanation for this shifting balance. Nor could they say whether the long-standing trend of increasing market share for Chinese traders was a blow or a permanent reversal.

Currently, most customers won’t realize that Chinese merchants are selling relatively few items on Amazon. And change could be another example unpredictable changes in shopping caused by the pandemic.

But Amazon’s aggressive efforts to woo Chinese merchants over the past half-year have led to a radical and trend-setting change in online retail and the global economy. If this phenomenon wears off, it’s worth watching what it could mean for shoppers, international trade, and the millions of businesses that make a living selling online on Amazon and elsewhere.

I’ll take a step back to explain how Amazon works: The company operates like a traditional store, partly selling products purchased from manufacturers, and partly like eBay. More than half of the products sold on Amazon come from this eBay-like approach. independent businesses that list their products alongside what Amazon sells. When we bought a kids game or phone charger from Amazon, it probably came from somewhere. Texas toy company or big Chinese electronics conglomerate.

Starting in 2015, Amazon has made it much easier for merchants based in China to list items for sale. This has been copied by other retailers including: Walmart and Chinese clothing company sheinand it has transformed the online shopping experience in both good and bad ways.

Chinese merchants have been the source of Amazon’s strength and among the company’s biggest headaches. It’s a big reason you can find almost any product on Amazon, and it’s probably helped keep prices down for shoppers. But critics of Amazon also say the company isn’t doing enough to protect customers. dangerous or substandard products and manipulated customer reviews From Chinese vendors who may be outside the reach of US consumer protection laws.

Over the past few years, Chinese merchants have sold an increasing percentage of what Americans buy on Amazon, until there is a roughly 50-50 split between sellers in the US and China. However, the percentage sold by Chinese traders is denied According to e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, that’s down from about 48 percent in late 2020 to about 42 percent in May.

US-based traders get a bigger sell stack instead. Domestic Amazon merchants also sell more than Chinese merchants in the UK and Germany. (An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the changing mix of Chinese and domestic traders.)

I asked the founder of Marketplace Pulse, Juozas Kaziukėnas, if this was the reason for the move away from Chinese traders. Temporary closure of factories in China about the pandemic and increased costs and complexity of shipping products from Asia. He probably said no. Most US-based merchants also buy and ship from manufacturers in China or elsewhere in Asia.

It’s difficult to know exactly what caused the change, Kaziukėnas said, but some traders were frustrated by the rising costs and Byzantine rule in the Amazon. has been news from china product vendors Hoping to find websites other than Amazon with sell their goods to the world. But these complaints about the downsides of selling on Amazon are certainly not new and are often voiced by merchants outside of China.

Yaniv Sarig, CEO of Aterian, a US-based merchant that sells products on Amazon, is among e-commerce experts who believe some Chinese businesses may have moved away from Amazon. pressure on some China-based traders last yearapparently to manipulate customer reviews.

The shake-up of the Amazon market could be an opportunity for US-based merchants like Molson Hart. The Texas toy salesman I wrote about last yearbelieves in US laws and policies Giving an unfair advantage to online product sellers from China.

Learning that the sales mix of Chinese and domestic merchants has changed over the past year left burning questions in my mind: If the development of product sellers from China is a big change in online shopping, why didn’t it affect shoppers when the trend reversed? ?

I wondered if we were exaggerating the benefits of opening Amazon to millions of product sellers. Maybe having 20,000 option mixers on one site really doesn’t help anyone.

Before you go …

• “War broke many of these bonds.” For several years, Russian-speaking technologists from countries that were once part of the Soviet Union shared a mansion in San Francisco. My colleague Cade Metz reports on how Russia’s war in Ukraine turned out. tested the dreams of the housemates community From countries like Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and Russia.

• Social media has no answer to the baby food shortage: Facebook, YouTube and other social media sites overflowing with homemade baby food recipes Bloomberg News writes that what experts warn is unsafe. (Subscription may be required.)

• What was the problem with the BUTTONS on the control panel? Jay Caspian Kang, who wrote a newsletter for The New York Times Opinion episode, writes: about all the wrong with the touchscreen in his car and longing for the knobs and knobs used to adjust the temperature and control the sound system.

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rescuers helped Drop a 400-pound (!!!) stingray He was caught by a fisherman’s hook in the Mekong River in Cambodia. As Jason Bittel wrote for The Times, people managed to avoid the stingray’s venomous thorn with bone-piercing ability (!!!).

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