Why Do Merchants Sigh "Trading With The Devil"?

　　 Pay high commission

　　 Amazon The total number of third party businesses on the platform has exceeded 2 million, more than doubled from 1 million in 2006. Amazon spokesman said that most sellers would take 8% to 15% of their sales as a commission to pay to Amazon, but the actual rate is between 6% (PC) to 50% (3D print design).

Third party businesses accounted for more than 40% of the total Amazon commodity last year. On the whole, the total sales volume of these third party sellers through Amazon is about 2 billion, double that of 2013.

"Amazon is a technology driven company, and we streamline Amazon's commodity sales process through constant innovation." Amazon spokesman Eric Filrev (Erik Fairleigh) said, "Amazon order fulfillment is a quality service that allows all businesses to store goods in our storage center."

Grace Yum, a dentist in Chicago, developed a series of baby tooth cleaning products last year. She spent 6 months on the Amazon platform, and the commission paid at present is about 20%. "The cost is too high, but the advantage is that my product can reach many buyers. When you work hard to expand the scale, this is more important than the additional cost. "

Although it has been sold through local pharmacies and children's products stores, Amazon has contributed about 80% of its sales in the past 6 months. "We have no illusions that we can attract customers like Amazon." She said she has integrated Amazon's sales costs into her business plan.

But in the end, even those who are Amazon Small businesses with wholesale commodities will also feel the pressure of competition. "How to control brands when working with Amazon is sometimes a big challenge." Energy bar manufacturer Chapul co founder Patrick Krori (Patrick Crowley) said.

Loss of brand control

Through a period of operation, he understood the truth: small businesses can't compete with Amazon in search engine marketing. Of the 200 thousand sales of Chapul last year, only 2% came directly from Amazon. However, when people search for "Chapul energy bar" in Google, Amazon's purchase links are usually located in second of search results, or even in front of Chapul's official home page of Facebook, Twitter and Kickstarter.

Worried about losing his brand, he began to shift sales focus to Overstock.com and other e-commerce sites, which gave the seller more room for brand development so that they could "tell their stories".

"It's easy to get lost in Amazon because there's a lot of products there." Wireless speaker manufacturer Fugoo CEO Gary Asasa (Gary Elsasser) said the company had 11 employees and sales reached $5 million 500 thousand last year. About 20% of Fugoo's sales come from Amazon's wholesale business, and 15% comes from its own website. He uses Amazon as a targeted advertising channel. In his view, Amazon's extensive antenna outside its own platform is the key factor that they value.

Norse, a Terapeak businessman who has just entered the platform, says the competition for Amazon's third party seller ecosystem is far more competitive than before. "Big businesses and retailers have gained higher exposure on the Internet. They are competing in the field of low price distribution and distribution in the day." He said. In fact, the biggest challenge today is how to find customers. With international companies joining the Amazon platform, the price pressures of small third party businesses will also increase. Amazon has sellers from 101 countries or regions, even small and remote countries like Togo and Liechtenstein.

Because of this, coupled with Amazon's High Commission, many small businesses are developing diversified product distribution platforms, including self built online stores.

"The seller regards Amazon and eBay as marketing channels, but their real profit source is their own website." Added Norse. He pointed out that Shopify and other companies have achieved remarkable growth, and this company can help entrepreneurs build their own e-commerce websites. "Obviously, direct selling is more popular than ever. The starting point and end point of many online searches are Amazon, so you must enter their platform. But that's a deal with the devil. " Stephen Bauer, President of e-commerce platform Bigcommerce, said that the company has 55 thousand businesses, Steven Power. He said that regardless of whether the small seller can get sales through Amazon, their brand exposure rate is very low.

prohibit flow export

In Lindberg's company, the contradiction began to appear last autumn. Amazon's sales team sent a notice to his company at the time: "attention: Policy warning. We notice that you may try to redirect Amazon's buyers to other websites.

On the day before receiving the notice, someone contacted the Lindeberg company through Amazon's seller account and asked if they could carve the customized content through the Amazon's urn. Lindberg's staff responded by Amazon's message system that they must be purchased through the company's own website, Stardust-Memorials.com, before they can be customized.

Amazon said in a notice that if they continue to provide links, e-mail or other information that may lead buyers to other online stores, including their own online stores, Amazon will revoke its sales license.

Amazon has a very clear meaning: if you sell goods on their platforms, customers are their own, not yours. Lindberg said.

Amazon spokesman Phil Leif said the rules were designed to protect users and payment processes. If users leave Amazon to complete shopping problems, Amazon will be hard to help.

According to Amazon's overall guidelines, the company prohibits any attempt to guide users away from Amazon's website.