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This looks fantastic. I am curious about reselling Chinese products - why do Alibaba sellers value FBA businesses? Why don't they just set them up themselves?

by nibnib 10y ago

arbingsam 10y ago
Hello. I'm the guy who wrote the article. Just created an account as I saw I was getting some traffic from Hacker News. In answer to you question: They do sell on Amazon FBA themselves. More and more so in the last year. In fact, in the seller center there are two choices for language, English and Chinese. That is why I suggest focusing on creating your own products or improving on existing ones rather than just reselling stuff from Alibaba. Even then you need to do your own marketing. As a consumer in your own market place you should have an advantage over a Chinese seller who can only speak broken English. It's also worth pointing out that these factories aren't in the business of creating brands. They're in the business of mass producing other people's brands. As such the more people who work with them the better, regardless of where they plan on selling the final product.
- petecooper 10y ago
  Constructive suggestion: make a note of which URLs are affiliate links, or have a referral/affiliate disclaimer on the article.
- awesomerobot 10y ago
  I'm surprised that Chinese sellers aren't paying attention to language disparities and hiring translation services. Are they simply trying to streamline price so aggressively that it's just not worth it?
cylinder 10y ago
I have not found opportunity in doing this. Basically every product that is eligible for FBA on Alibaba is already on Amzn five times over. The opportunity is in creating your own products and brands and selling on Amazon. In that sense, you already have a valuable business model that would exist without Amazon, but FBA is just a great sales channel and platform for doing that selling directly rather than traditional means of selling to distributors, retail stores, etc.
- vpayette 10y ago
  That's my experience as well and creating+marketing a brand new product is a ton of work.

This looks fantastic. I am curious about reselling Chinese products - why do Alibaba sellers value FBA businesses? Why don't they just set them up themselves?

by nibnib 10y ago

This looks fantastic. I am curious about reselling Chinese products - why do Alibaba sellers value FBA businesses? Why don't they just set them up themselves?

arbingsam 10y ago

Hello. I'm the guy who wrote the article. Just created an account as I saw I was getting some traffic from Hacker News. In answer to you question: They do sell on Amazon FBA themselves. More and more so in the last year. In fact, in the seller center there are two choices for language, English and Chinese. That is why I suggest focusing on creating your own products or improving on existing ones rather than just reselling stuff from Alibaba. Even then you need to do your own marketing. As a consumer in your own market place you should have an advantage over a Chinese seller who can only speak broken English. It's also worth pointing out that these factories aren't in the business of creating brands. They're in the business of mass producing other people's brands. As such the more people who work with them the better, regardless of where they plan on selling the final product.

petecooper 10y ago
Constructive suggestion: make a note of which URLs are affiliate links, or have a referral/affiliate disclaimer on the article.
awesomerobot 10y ago
I'm surprised that Chinese sellers aren't paying attention to language disparities and hiring translation services. Are they simply trying to streamline price so aggressively that it's just not worth it?

cylinder 10y ago

I have not found opportunity in doing this. Basically every product that is eligible for FBA on Alibaba is already on Amzn five times over. The opportunity is in creating your own products and brands and selling on Amazon. In that sense, you already have a valuable business model that would exist without Amazon, but FBA is just a great sales channel and platform for doing that selling directly rather than traditional means of selling to distributors, retail stores, etc.

vpayette 10y ago
That's my experience as well and creating+marketing a brand new product is a ton of work.