Today, Chinese manufacturers have gradually placed themselves in a unique position in eCommerce industry because they have an entrepreneurial mindset from the onset. They are quite aware of what product is being sold, its cost, and they also have full knowledge on where the market is located. The success of Chinese sellers’ dominance on Amazon and other marketplaces comes with so many sacrifices and habits. Most EU and US top performance stores on Amazon such as Anker, Sunvalley, and other marketplaces registered their brand in China.
One of the tips used by the Chinese sellers either as a dropshippers or non-drop shippers is that Chinese sellers spend much time with special attention on product research, more specifically on competitors search, pricing, and keywords relating to listing optimization. Chinese sellers are so responsive to their competitive upgrade or update on marketing to an extent that if their competitor’s product is $1 short, they will beat it by $1 short on their similar products as well.
Chinese sellers have come up with lots of tools which help them carry out more effective research such as Merchant Words, Amazon Shark, Seller Labs and more. Chinese seller management will immediately approve a budget to test once their research reveals a slight chance that it will work and see how things will turn out to be. They will then make plans to purchase inventory, ship and commence selling once they locate a product category with the least competition in the market. Chinese sellers brands have fluid identities, things are cheaper to the manufacturer, and they also have flexibility; all these gives them an edge to test the waters.
Strengths of Chinese Sellers:
1. Easier access to the supply chain
What makes the difference is speed. Chinese sellers start higher because they have easier access to supply chain which comes with lots of resources. They have quick access to huge capitals and fast supply from their government and private funds. Being close to their supplier gives them an edge for a quick quality check to be conducted without having to travel to another continent and that eventually makes them get a better and low price. We have excellent Chinese suppliers who are already happy with big B2B contracts and domestic orders, so they don’t go list in a non-Chinese B2B directory. For a non-Chinese, it’s actually hard to source a good Chinese supplier.
2. Huge Local Community
Chinese sellers have a huge local community with lots of forums and salon, workshops, which increases in dozens every week with huge financial support from their government, friendly bank policy for SMBs. Their brands are also VC-backed brands and this allows them to penetrate more into the society on Amazon. Their level of information exchange is second to known due to the transparency it entails.
3. Spread brand awareness on multi-channel
Chinese sellers used to be all on Aliexpress, then eBay, and then they move to Amazon, join Walmart, and Kickstarter, Shopify. These moves are made possible and very swift due to the fact that their sales channels were boosted because Chinese sellers are exempted from being held accountable for sales tax while other large Amazon sellers are included; they also benefit from a heavy discount on USPS shipping rates. For example, the same shipping rate from China to New Jersey is the same with the shipping rate from Connecticut to New Jersey; and they pay no or less income tax because the money is already in the Hong Kong bank account even before the tax authorities could notice. Chinese sellers also improve more on their brand influence because they believe people buy brands and not products and they remain dynamic in spreading into several markets.
4. Highly Practical
Chinese suppliers are also highly practical in nature for they give room for trial and error with flexible structure and core internal organization.
What we can learn?
As an Amazon seller, you should always be open-minded to new ideas and strategies because that’s the key to the Chinese sellers’ success on Amazon and other marketplaces.
Conclusion
The closer you are as an Amazon seller to supply chain, the quicker your response to market and then you will be able to generate revenue than others.