6 ms·

Not sure about U.S. SMBs but Amazon's influence on China small business is a rounding number. Only a relatively small number of vendors sell items on Amazon. Th

Not sure about U.S. SMBs but Amazon's influence on China small business is a rounding number. Only a relatively small number of vendors sell items on Amazon. They made good money but the good days is almost over given recent quality/piracy crackdowns. Taobao (under Alibaba) has 100 times more influence on how small business in China conduct business. I know small store owners whose business were wiped out by the rise of Taobao. Amazon? They've never heard of it.

nebula8804 4y ago
There is a different 'class' of junk sold on Taobao vs Amazon but both stores still seem chock full of junk. Maybe they were affected in the same way just by different players.
- hezralig 4y ago
  I frequently find the same items on Alibaba and Taobao as I do on Amazon. I find myself ordering items next day on Amazon and returning them as soon as I receive the exact item for 1/10 to 1/100 the price elsewhere. Returning an item because you have found a better price elsewhere is a pre-filled option for a return, so it is expressly allowed.
  - chongli 4y ago
    Keep in mind that Amazon tracks people’s return histories and has been known to ban people who are deemed return abusers.
    - sharkweek 4y ago
      Friend works at Costco and they have the same tracking system. He says anytime anyone who has been abusing the return policy gets angry about being told no, he goes into his script about “Sir/ma’am it’s clear to me you haven’t been happy with the goods and services we sell here at Costco. How about I go ahead and cancel your membership and offer you a FULL refund of the annual fee.” Gets people in-line REAL fast knowing they might end up blacklisted from Costco.
      - recuter 4y ago
        That is quite clever and rational in a dystopian sort of way.
        TeMPOraL 4y ago
        I'm sympathetic, though. There are plenty of consumers happy to abuse any and every loophole or concession they can find. The vendors need some wiggle room to deal with those cases. For example: a clothing store accepts free returns for couple days after purchase in physical store, or doesn't try to obstruct in any way the EU-wide 14-day return policy for goods bought online? That store eventually gets flooded with returns, as some scoundrels figure they can attract their preferred kind of mates by buying expensive clothes before a party and hiding the tags (instead of removing them), and then return those clothes back to the store the very next day, to get full refund. This is a real thing that was happening where I live, and led to clothes being much more annoying to unpack, as well as some silly rules on shoe returns, which occasionally cause pretty absurd situations (those running shoes were quickly labeled as "walking shoes, not suitable for running"; we can't accept the return because you admitted to running in them). That use case, along with hedging your risk by buying 10 different items on-line, fully intending to return at least 8 of them, is common enough that there are businesses targeting people doing this directly (e.g. "clothing as a service" companies). EDIT: FWIW, I do understand the desire and pleasure of figuring out a loophole in a set of rules and milking it for all its worth. But in shopping and e-commerce, following those rules to the letter selfishly almost always involves generating tremendous waste for the vendor, the society and the environment, and because of those externalities I don't think highly of such behavior.
        vel0city 4y ago
        The return rates that some people I know find acceptable are mind numbing to me. Some people I know return about 20% of the non-food things they buy, even after knowing that a significant fraction of the returned merchandise ends up in landfills. So many people buy things without even thinking about it, use it once or twice, decide they don't need it, and then return it. It goes back, often without packaging, probably off to a landfill. All those resources and value just tossed into a pit, hidden in Amazon's bottom line. Its insane to me. Forever easy returns just seem so incredibly damaging to me.
    - ApolloFortyNine 4y ago
      The one example I've seen of this is someone who would order, no joke, 30 different items of clothing and keep 2. Regularly. I haven't seen an example that wasn't obvious abuse.
  - canadianfella 4y ago
    [dead]
  - CHSbeachbum420 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - fooqux 4y ago
    >Returning an item because you have found a better price elsewhere is a pre-filled option for a return, so it is expressly allowed. Well, expressly tracked anyway. Not saying it isn't allowed, but if you do it enough you'll eventually get blacklisted. And rightfully so, since you're costing them money.
thetinguy 4y ago
Taobao is a direct influence whereas Amazon is an indirect influence through the sellers importing things from China to sell on Amazon.
baybal2 4y ago
[dead]
nomay 4y ago
Amazon sellers are actually researching the market and designing new products, which can't be said about domestic Chinese brands and sellers that are mired in cutthroat price dogfights. The profits maybe not be that big, but big enough to drive a skeleton team, make a small fortune. One item with $500 a day in revenue can let you make more money than a typical coder.
- Ztynovovk 4y ago
  [dead]
- rcme 4y ago
  $500 * 365 days is 182,500 / year. With a 50% margin, that's only $91,250.
  - selectodude 4y ago
    Average income in China is about $15,000/yr, so $90,000 is pretty damn good.
    - rcme 4y ago
      The comparison was to a software engineer, which earns more than $15,000 in China. And also with a 50% margin, which is extremely generous. Most margins are closer to 10% - 20% in manufacturing.
- catach 4y ago
  That's a big potential impact for an individual sure, but the context here is the existing impact for entire economies.
- notatoad 4y ago
  >Amazon sellers are actually researching the market and designing new products some of them are, but a lot are just dropshipping stuff from alibaba
Barrin92 4y ago
Yes. There's the concept of a "taobao village" in China where you have entire rural communities of online merchants supplying smaller towns/villages that otherwise wouldn't really use ecommerce. And the funny thing is these even exist in Germany now. In Duisburg I met some Chinese taobao merchants years ago who'd settled as expats in the city because it has particularly strong ties to the country as there's a direct freight train route to Chongqing.
nonethewiser 4y ago
> There were an estimated six million merchants on Amazon’s marketplace in 2021, and around 2,000 opened new accounts each day. On average, Amazon collects 34% of each sale they make, according to research published the same year by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Estimates from 2020 showed that around 54% of Amazon sellers in the U.S. market were based in the country, while 40% were in China.
- hulitu 4y ago
  > were based in the country, while 40% were in China. were based.

nebula8804 4y ago

There is a different 'class' of junk sold on Taobao vs Amazon but both stores still seem chock full of junk. Maybe they were affected in the same way just by different players.

hezralig 4y ago
I frequently find the same items on Alibaba and Taobao as I do on Amazon. I find myself ordering items next day on Amazon and returning them as soon as I receive the exact item for 1/10 to 1/100 the price elsewhere. Returning an item because you have found a better price elsewhere is a pre-filled option for a return, so it is expressly allowed.
- chongli 4y ago
  Keep in mind that Amazon tracks people’s return histories and has been known to ban people who are deemed return abusers.
  - sharkweek 4y ago
    Friend works at Costco and they have the same tracking system. He says anytime anyone who has been abusing the return policy gets angry about being told no, he goes into his script about “Sir/ma’am it’s clear to me you haven’t been happy with the goods and services we sell here at Costco. How about I go ahead and cancel your membership and offer you a FULL refund of the annual fee.” Gets people in-line REAL fast knowing they might end up blacklisted from Costco.
    - recuter 4y ago
      That is quite clever and rational in a dystopian sort of way.
      - TeMPOraL 4y ago
        I'm sympathetic, though. There are plenty of consumers happy to abuse any and every loophole or concession they can find. The vendors need some wiggle room to deal with those cases. For example: a clothing store accepts free returns for couple days after purchase in physical store, or doesn't try to obstruct in any way the EU-wide 14-day return policy for goods bought online? That store eventually gets flooded with returns, as some scoundrels figure they can attract their preferred kind of mates by buying expensive clothes before a party and hiding the tags (instead of removing them), and then return those clothes back to the store the very next day, to get full refund. This is a real thing that was happening where I live, and led to clothes being much more annoying to unpack, as well as some silly rules on shoe returns, which occasionally cause pretty absurd situations (those running shoes were quickly labeled as "walking shoes, not suitable for running"; we can't accept the return because you admitted to running in them). That use case, along with hedging your risk by buying 10 different items on-line, fully intending to return at least 8 of them, is common enough that there are businesses targeting people doing this directly (e.g. "clothing as a service" companies). EDIT: FWIW, I do understand the desire and pleasure of figuring out a loophole in a set of rules and milking it for all its worth. But in shopping and e-commerce, following those rules to the letter selfishly almost always involves generating tremendous waste for the vendor, the society and the environment, and because of those externalities I don't think highly of such behavior.
        vel0city 4y ago
        The return rates that some people I know find acceptable are mind numbing to me. Some people I know return about 20% of the non-food things they buy, even after knowing that a significant fraction of the returned merchandise ends up in landfills. So many people buy things without even thinking about it, use it once or twice, decide they don't need it, and then return it. It goes back, often without packaging, probably off to a landfill. All those resources and value just tossed into a pit, hidden in Amazon's bottom line. Its insane to me. Forever easy returns just seem so incredibly damaging to me.
  - ApolloFortyNine 4y ago
    The one example I've seen of this is someone who would order, no joke, 30 different items of clothing and keep 2. Regularly. I haven't seen an example that wasn't obvious abuse.
- canadianfella 4y ago
  [dead]
- CHSbeachbum420 4y ago
  [flagged]
- fooqux 4y ago
  >Returning an item because you have found a better price elsewhere is a pre-filled option for a return, so it is expressly allowed. Well, expressly tracked anyway. Not saying it isn't allowed, but if you do it enough you'll eventually get blacklisted. And rightfully so, since you're costing them money.

thetinguy 4y ago

Taobao is a direct influence whereas Amazon is an indirect influence through the sellers importing things from China to sell on Amazon.

baybal2 4y ago

[dead]

nomay 4y ago

Amazon sellers are actually researching the market and designing new products, which can't be said about domestic Chinese brands and sellers that are mired in cutthroat price dogfights. The profits maybe not be that big, but big enough to drive a skeleton team, make a small fortune. One item with $500 a day in revenue can let you make more money than a typical coder.

Ztynovovk 4y ago
[dead]
rcme 4y ago
$500 * 365 days is 182,500 / year. With a 50% margin, that's only $91,250.
- selectodude 4y ago
  Average income in China is about $15,000/yr, so $90,000 is pretty damn good.
  - rcme 4y ago
    The comparison was to a software engineer, which earns more than $15,000 in China. And also with a 50% margin, which is extremely generous. Most margins are closer to 10% - 20% in manufacturing.
catach 4y ago
That's a big potential impact for an individual sure, but the context here is the existing impact for entire economies.
notatoad 4y ago
>Amazon sellers are actually researching the market and designing new products some of them are, but a lot are just dropshipping stuff from alibaba

Barrin92 4y ago

Yes. There's the concept of a "taobao village" in China where you have entire rural communities of online merchants supplying smaller towns/villages that otherwise wouldn't really use ecommerce. And the funny thing is these even exist in Germany now. In Duisburg I met some Chinese taobao merchants years ago who'd settled as expats in the city because it has particularly strong ties to the country as there's a direct freight train route to Chongqing.

nonethewiser 4y ago

> There were an estimated six million merchants on Amazon’s marketplace in 2021, and around 2,000 opened new accounts each day. On average, Amazon collects 34% of each sale they make, according to research published the same year by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Estimates from 2020 showed that around 54% of Amazon sellers in the U.S. market were based in the country, while 40% were in China.

hulitu 4y ago
> were based in the country, while 40% were in China. were based.