Amazon's Chinese sellers are overtaken? The US site is quietly making a fortune

Recently I have talked to you a lot about Amazon’s traffic bottleneck problem this year. In the process of collecting various data, I found an interesting phenomenon. On Amazon’s US site, the proportion of American sellers is increasing and has surpassed the proportion of Chinese sellers!

You should know that the number of Chinese sellers on Amazon, especially on the US site, is extremely terrifying. At one time, they accounted for more than 60% of the total number of Amazon sellers. We can also see from the chart that the proportion of American sellers fell to a low point around 20 years ago, but after 21 years, the number of American sellers gradually increased and approached 50% again this year. The number of Chinese sellers has dropped simultaneously, and the proportion of Chinese and American sellers has almost reversed. Now there are the most American sellers, and the proportion of Chinese sellers has dropped from the highest level of nearly 60% to only about 42% now.

Not only has the proportion of the number of sellers changed, but the sales of US Amazon merchants have also begun to widen the gap with Chinese merchants.

This phenomenon is very interesting. Let's first look at the changes in the number of Chinese sellers. 2020 was a year of explosive growth in the number of Chinese sellers. The epidemic in the first half of the year made Amazon sellers make a lot of money. As long as there were goods in stock, there was no worry about selling. This grand occasion also led to many people outside the industry entering the market, and Chinese sellers on Amazon quickly became saturated. So at this point, the proportion of American sellers dropped sharply, falling by 18 percentage points in just half a year.

However, the number of American sellers began to pick up gradually in 2021. This was also when the epidemic caused serious congestion in shipping logistics. Shipping companies made a lot of money, and Chinese sellers sighed. At the same time, local American sellers were quietly making a fortune, using the local logistics and environmental advantages to make a comeback.

Especially the abrupt peak below.

Looking at the horizontal axis, the time node is June and July 21. What caused the sudden decrease in Chinese sellers during this period? Many people should have guessed that it was a wave of fake orders and store closures in the middle of last year. According to the media's subsequent statistics, at least tens of thousands of Chinese Amazon stores were closed in the middle of last year, and the losses were incalculable. The sudden increase in the number of American sellers during this period is directly related to this time. It seems that the rumor at the time that "strict investigation of fake orders is specifically for Chinese companies, and stores registered by American companies are very safe" is not groundless.

There must be many complex reasons for the reversal in the number of sellers in China and the United States, but we can still speculate on the main reasons. One reason is that the new sellers who poured in in 2020 began to find that Amazon is not a platform that can make money easily. The platform has its own rules and tonality. New sellers who can't figure out the rules and rules can only gradually withdraw. The second reason is that Amazon has had some unfair policies towards third-party sellers, even Chinese sellers, for a long time, and the closure of stores in July last year made all Chinese sellers afraid of Amazon's red line that fluctuates. A large number of sellers began to leave after July last year. Even though Amazon opened new stores for investment, the number of new sellers from China did not increase significantly.