Cross-border events of the week: Amazon banned accounts again & Japan site participated in Black Friday for the first time

Amazon Japan recently announced that it will hold a Black Friday promotion from 9:00 on November 22 to 23:59 on November 24. This is also its first time to participate in the Black Friday promotion. It is understood that the promotion includes tens of thousands of products such as daily necessities, clothing, electrical appliances and kitchenware, and has launched three categories of featured products: "black in the name", "black in color" and "black in price".

Recently, some Amazon sellers reported that they were unable to log in to Amazon with their accounts and passwords, and some old accounts were directly deleted. It is understood that this incident started on November 9th, and the accounts locked by the platform could not search for any products on the store front. Industry insiders said: "Amazon has recently strictly investigated forged documents and accounts that may have suspected forged documents, and has banned a large number of them."

It is understood that some sellers on the US and European sites were misclassified as insecticides, pesticides and other categories because their listings contained sensitive words, and multiple product links were removed.

On the 12th, Amazon launched a new feature called "Request a Review", which may have a significant impact on sellers' request for reviews. It is understood that a Request a Review button appears in the upper right corner of the order details in the seller's backend. Sellers can click this button to send a request for review to buyers. They can request reviews for orders within 4-30 days, without having to write letters manually. However, many sellers found that the feature was launched and then offline. On the 15th, many sellers found that the feature was back online.

Nike said it would stop selling products including sneakers and clothing directly on Amazon, ending a two-year pilot partnership. Previously, Nike agreed to act as a wholesaler for Amazon instead of letting third-party merchants sell its products on the platform, but in exchange, Amazon must strengthen its supervision of counterfeit products and restrict the sale of unapproved products, including Nike sneakers, clothing and accessories.

Amazon has announced that it will bring its sales-focused Amazon Brand Accelerator program to India and take a more hands-on approach to expanding its own brands. As part of the program, the company will provide sellers with detailed information on product trends, best-selling products, and other digital marketing strategies.

The brand accelerator will provide sellers with data about products, as well as information on the colors, sizes and other aspects of best-selling products so that sellers can adjust their products accordingly. Amazon will allegedly charge a commission of nearly 7% of the seller's total monthly product sales.

Recently, the State Administration of Taxation issued the "Notice on Issues Concerning the Assessment and Collection of Enterprise Income Tax for Retail Exports in the Cross-border E-commerce Comprehensive Pilot Zone", which stipulates that cross-border e-commerce enterprises subject to assessment and collection in the comprehensive pilot zone should accurately calculate the total income and assess and collect corporate income tax using the taxable income rate. The taxable income rate is uniformly determined at 4%.

On November 14, 2019, Shopee's Double 11 promotion came to a successful conclusion. Southeast Asia's leading platform Shopee announced that the platform set a new record with unprecedented performance during the Double 11 promotion. Data showed that during the Double 11 promotion, Shopee sold 70 million items on the day; the number of orders in the first hour exceeded 3 times that of the same period last year; the number of Shopee game interactions exceeded 150 million times; and the number of Shopee Live views reached 65 million.

Recently, Sea Ltd, the parent company of Southeast Asian e-commerce platform Shopee, released its third quarter financial report for 2019. It is understood that in the third quarter of 2019, Shopee completed more than 138 million orders, with an average of more than 1.5 million orders per day, a year-on-year increase of 117.8%. As a result, the platform's GMV also achieved healthy growth, with a year-on-year increase of nearly 70% in the third quarter to US$4.6 billion.

On November 13, Alibaba Group submitted a preliminary prospectus on the website of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, planning to issue 500 million new ordinary shares through a global offering and list on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The prospectus shows that as of the last practical feasible date, Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai beneficially owned approximately 6.1% and approximately 2.0% of the outstanding shares of Alibaba Group, respectively.