Dialogue with Amazon Global Selling: How to Balance Low Prices and Branding, Stock and Increment?

[Original Content has been translated and edited to ensure accurate and idiomatic translation while maintaining the original meaning and context.]

Amazon disclosed a set of data at the "2024 Amazon Global Selling Cross-Border Summit," showcasing the steady development of Chinese cross-border seller business. Over the past year, the number of goods sold by Chinese sellers on Amazon's global sites has grown by over 20% year-on-year, and the sales of Chinese branded sellers on Amazon have grown by nearly 30% year-on-year. Over the past two years, the number of Chinese sellers with sales exceeding $1 million on Amazon's global sites has increased by nearly 55%, and the number of Chinese sellers with sales exceeding $10 million has increased by nearly 60%.

"In the past decade, we have been honored to work with Chinese sellers and various industry parties to promote the high-quality overseas development of cross-border e-commerce from extensive growth to today’s digitization, compliance, refinement, branding, and globalization," said Cindy Tai, Vice President of Amazon Global and Executive President of Amazon Global Selling Asia Pacific. Amid the rapid development of global e-commerce, while China's cross-border e-commerce export industry is thriving, it also holds enormous potential. Facing the industry are three major era opportunities: supply chain innovation, redefining categories, and the second rise of industry belts.

How to seize these opportunities? This is not only a topic that sellers need to practice but also the direction in which Amazon empowers sellers for high-quality overseas development. "We will strongly support Chinese sellers in continuous development in the areas of business process innovation, new customer group expansion, brand building, etc., and establish an agile, autonomous, sustainable growth model to embark on the path of high-quality overseas development," expressed Tai.

To this end, centered around the three major 2025 business strategic focuses of "Innovation Support, Opportunity Expansion, Local Empowerment," Amazon announced over 30 new measures at the summit, covering global innovations such as generative AI technology applications, end-to-end cross-border supply chain services, market increment development such as customer group expansion, global site layout, and local services such as seller growth services, seller education, and more.

Among them, Amazon's smart supply chain hosting service will be open to Chinese sellers, Amazon's seller assistant Amelia will be open to select Chinese sellers, the "Amazon Haul" low-price commodity sales project will be open to invited sellers, and the Amazon Ireland site plan will be open to Chinese sellers, these heavy releases have also sparked industry attention.

Addressing the questions that everyone is concerned about, Cindy Tai, Vice President of Amazon Global and Executive President of Amazon Global Selling Asia Pacific, Amazon China Vice President and Product and Seller Education Responsible for Amazon Global Selling Asia Pacific Jennifer Peng, Amazon China Vice President and Responsible for New Seller Expansion, Emerging Markets, and Enterprise Purchasing Business in Amazon Global Selling China, Xiao Jun Song, Amazon China Vice President and Responsible for Seller Management in Amazon Global Selling China Yanzhen Jin, Amazon China Vice President and Responsible for Business Expansion, and Regional Management in Amazon Global Selling Asia Pacific Jun Yang, Amazon China Vice President and Responsible for Market and Partnership Expansion in Amazon Global Selling Asia Pacific Sheng Qiu, answered questions together at the media exchange meeting.

01

Low-price projects and emphasis on branding are not conflicting

Q: The new business "Amazon Haul," launched by Amazon in November, was also mentioned in the strategic release. What was the background for its launch? What are the differences between it and SHEIN and Temu, which also sell low-price goods?

Cindy Tai: Cross-border e-commerce is a much-discussed topic, and it is very normal for more and more e-commerce companies to enter this race, which also indicates more development opportunities in this domain. At the same time, we hope that Chinese companies can build global brands, so it is also a normal development process for them to have multiple channels to choose from.

Regarding the idea behind "Amazon Haul," we looked at it from the perspective of consumer demand. Under the influence of the global economy, customers from any channel want better prices, so Amazon has also made a lot of low-price initiatives, including reducing commissions in the clothing category. At the same time, although Amazon FBA has been committed to making the delivery of daily necessities faster to meet customer needs, some customers have also told us that they may not necessarily need to get it so quickly, they are willing to wait longer for a lower price. So, we also hope to expand the service categories and customer groups, which is the reason for launching "Amazon Haul".

Q: What are the advantages and disadvantages of "Amazon Haul," this low-price goods business in Amazon's business strategy?

Cindy Tai: Firstly, Amazon Haul is just getting started, and there is still a long internal learning and optimization process, so there isn't much that can be announced at the moment.

From the customer's point of view, their demand for items at a low unit price is not entirely the same. For some items, such as shampoo, they want it the same day and not only at a low unit price but also fast delivery. But for some products, such as the second set of kitchen utensils, they can wait longer and would prefer a cheaper price. Therefore, customers have various choices.

Amazon's customers are often thought to be Prime members with high timeliness requirements. However, we observed not only price classification but also timeliness classification, as well as different customer scenario classifications. When we need a more detailed understanding of customer specific needs, we found that many customers are not concerned about brands or delivery time but are more focused on lower prices.

We have been cultivating in China for ten years, and we have contacted many excellent sellers, who can build brands and innovate. We have also met many small and medium-sized factories newly joining the cross-border e-commerce, with very good price advantages and cost advantages, but have not yet taken the step of product innovation. So, not only are customer demands varied, but seller demands are also varied. This is why many sellers find it difficult to build a brand from the first day.

We hope that some sellers through "Amazon Haul" can enter cross-border e-commerce, see some customer reviews and feedback, and then gradually produce some differentiated products, and eventually move towards creating a global brand.

Q: In which sites is Haul mainly launched? What is the current investment promotion policy? Do you have any future market expansion plans?

Cindy Tai: Haul is still very new, just launched, and currently only in the US site. We will listen to customer feedback and then consider future expansion.

The first batch of invited sellers have strong supply chain and price advantages. Besides branding, they are also doing more daily categories. Also, there is mutual trust between us, and we know that they are focusing on customer experience and product quality.

How do we choose the first batch of invitees? Firstly, they are existing Amazon sellers and have cooperated with us. Secondly, they have cost advantages, price advantages, and are doing the category we want to have. Thirdly, they can ship goods to our operations center in Dongguan and can accept the need for continuous improvement and optimization in the early testing period.

Q: In Amazon's business strategy, it emphasizes both the trend of "low price" and the emphasis on branding. Is there a conflict between the two? Or, what specific measures does Amazon take to resolve this conflict?

Cindy Tai: No, they are not conflicting. Branding includes high-priced brands and low-priced brands. Chinese sellers have also developed very well in many high-priced categories, such as furniture, lawn and garden, and sports, all of which have expansion opportunities. This depends on the seller's brand or their own positioning for development.

At the same time, for some small and medium-sized factories, it may not be possible to directly build a brand on the first day. Some sellers focused on low unit prices can enter this track through their price advantages, then gradually grow into a brand.

Ultimately, we hope everyone can build a global brand, but different types of sellers and businesses have their own development processes.

02

Must defend stock, and also open up increment, relying on grassroots innovation

Q: Although the pie of cross-border e-commerce is still expanding, there are more people sharing the pie. More and more merchants and platforms are entering, to some extent, it is more about competing for the stock market, and the larger incremental market may not have been developed. Which does Amazon prioritize more, defending stock or opening increment?

Jennifer Peng: We need to grasp both the stock and incremental markets.

In terms of grasping the incremental market, one of the three strategic key focuses, "Opportunity Expansion," we introduced many new policies and products, aiming to explore opportunities in new categories, new markets, and new customer groups.

In terms of grasping the stock market, through various measures, we fully support the business development of sellers, hoping to provide a better customer experience together with sellers.For this reason, Amazon has always encouraged sellers to increase new product lines and expand into new categories. On the one hand, not all customer needs have been met; on the other hand, we have been expanding and reaching more diverse types of customers. Just as Jiaqi said, we need to persist on both sides. So, sellers don't need to worry too much, because our business and product categories have been continuously growing, and e-commerce still accounts for a very low proportion of the entire retail market. This means that there is still a lot of room for growth.

Yang Jun: There are opportunities in both stock market and incremental market. One is to use faster product innovation to meet the needs of consumers that have already arisen but have not been completely satisfied, and the other is for needs that have not yet emerged, or consumers have not yet realized this pain point, which is the direction for fundamental innovation, a truly incremental market, and a new blue ocean.

The reason why the theme of this convention is called "Innovation Chain Future" is also because we hope to upgrade sellers' supply chains into a true innovation chain, and incremental growth comes from this. Everything Amazon does is to help sellers innovate faster and at the same time convey this innovation to consumers faster.

Song Xiaojun: Amazon has many new measures for tapping into new customers (that is, expanding and increasing increments). For example, we will open the 20th site to Chinese sellers next year—the Ireland site, which is also a very large market with millions of high-net-worth customers. Through similar continuous global expansion, we will continue to increase our customer base.

Furthermore, in addition to the newly launched "Amazon Haul" (expanding the customer base that wants lower prices but not necessarily faster delivery), there is also a significant new opportunity in B2B e-commerce, namely Amazon Business. A very obvious trend in B2B cross-border e-commerce is that in the past three years, the number of Chinese sellers simultaneously operating in both 2C and 2B businesses on Amazon has nearly doubled. This indicates that Chinese sellers are paying more attention to B-end business, because it can help everyone reach more customers beyond their original reach. Today, we also mentioned the launch of our Mexico site, which is the 10th site launched in 9 years for Amazon Business. These are all new increments.

03

Continuous Expansion into Emerging Markets on the Consumer Side, Deep Exploration of Industrial Belt Potential on the Supply Side

Q: What measures does Amazon have for exploring emerging markets? Does Amazon have any initiatives to support emerging sellers in these markets that differ from those in developed countries such as Europe and America?

Song Xiaojun: First, we will continue to expand the market and add more sites to reach more new customers. When sellers expand into emerging markets, they will encounter challenges in various aspects such as cultural language, consumer demand, consumer habits, cross-border logistics, as well as differences in local compliance and regulation. To address these challenges, we are doing several things:

First, we are launching global operation tools. For example, the Amazon Pan-European Logistics Integration Service (Pan-EU) has made new progress over the past year, expanding the coverage from the original four European countries to include Poland and Sweden. Sellers can stock inventory in any European country and achieve coverage in six countries and sales in eight countries. In North America, our Remote Fulfillment Program allows inventory in the United States to cover countries such as Canada, Brazil, and Mexico; while in Australia and the Middle East, we have carrier partner programs that provide faster logistics solutions and more competitive prices.

Secondly, our global tools will cover more markets and be more streamlined. For example, the Single Listing Tool for global synchronization, which, after being launched in one country, can synchronize selected products to global sites through automatic translation. There is also the Marketplaces Growth and Profitability (MPG) tool, which helps sellers select products that meet the consumption demands of destination countries.

Apart from this, we will provide targeted support to sellers in terms of profit and cost. For example, this year, the New Seller Entry Welcome Pack will also be expanded to the emerging markets, and the FBA new product reward program will also cover new markets. We will also develop specific plans to encourage targeted product lines and specific sellers to enter the emerging markets. These are all efforts to help sellers open up sales in emerging markets.

Q: In recent years, attention to industrial belts has been a hot topic in the cross-border e-commerce industry. What new initiatives will Amazon have in the industrial belt?

Yang Jun: The strength of China's industrial belts lies not only in manufacturing capacity, but also in product development and research and development capabilities. Just now, Jiaqi also mentioned "unsatisfied needs." In fact, the core driving force of China's cross-border e-commerce is to use rapid product innovation to meet consumer needs that have already appeared but have not been completely satisfied. Under this premise, the development of these more than 400 industrial belts distributed across the country is of great significance for further improving the quality of the entire cross-border supply chain and promoting faster and more product innovation.

Secondly, because the maturity of China's industrial belts is very high, they have completed vertical integration of production, manufacturing, and product development, so the product competitiveness of these industrial belts is also very strong.

How to help manufacturers in these industrial belts continue to develop? One is through the release of industrial belt white papers, based on the incubation camp for manufacturing enterprises, to mass incubate manufacturing enterprises in the industrial belt. On the other hand, we have also launched the "Manufacturer Direct Service" (Manufacturer Direct Service), which helps enterprises with strong manufacturing and product development capabilities but lacking cross-border e-commerce operational capabilities to get through the first two to three years. After the "graduation" period of two to three years, they will be able to form their own cross-border e-commerce operational capabilities.

We are vigorously promoting the "Industrial Belt Accelerator" project, which is expected to cover over 150 high-quality industrial belts in China by 2027 and support tens of thousands of factories or brand merchants to go online on Amazon.

Q: It was announced at the summit that the Amazon Global Store Nanjing office has been comprehensively upgraded. What considerations prompted this upgrade? What functions do the offices established by Amazon across the country have?

Yang Jun: Simply put, sellers in Nanjing and Jiangsu and neighboring provinces can receive the same support without having to go to the headquarters in Shanghai or the mature area of Shenzhen.

Our team in Nanjing is now a full-featured team. Any seller in the Jiangsu region can have face-to-face communication with the Amazon team at the Nanjing office. We provide support services from new seller or new product incubation to operational support, and further expansion into multiple markets, allowing sellers to find professional teams right at their doorstep.

The main benefit of the upgrade of the Nanjing office is to accelerate the allocation of cross-border e-commerce elements within the region. To some extent, it will improve the production efficiency of the entire Nanjing and Jiangsu cross-border e-commerce. After the upgrade, it will operate more closely with local governments, high-quality industrial belts, high-quality supply chain enterprises, and third-party service providers, which will accelerate the innovation speed of the entire industrial belt. Accelerated manufacturing, accelerated research and development, and accelerated sales will further accelerate the innovation speed in response to consumer demand, which will not only drive exports but also drive local manufacturing and comprehensive ecological services.

Jin Yanzhen: Last year, when we announced the establishment of the Asia-Pacific Innovation Center in Shenzhen, the center was officially put into operation last month. We hope that the innovation center, based in Shenzhen, can radiate out to the entire Asia-Pacific region. Shenzhen itself is one of the birthplaces of innovative and experienced cross-border sellers, so when we land in this place, on the one hand, we consider how to enable experienced sellers in Shenzhen to pass on this experience through the innovation center, so that more sellers nationwide can understand, and to provide innovative inspiration to sellers from various industrial belts nationwide； on the other hand, we hope that the innovation center can radiate to sellers throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

Many so-called "local settlement" actions, whether they are industrial parks, offices, training centers in Hangzhou, or innovation centers in Shenzhen, all aim to empower sellers nationwide. Many times, it is not necessary for local offices to empower local sellers—by building a network, we also hope to comprehensively support sellers across the country.

04

Helping Businesses Reduce Costs and Improve Efficiency in the Cross-Border Supply Chain

Q: What is Amazon's assessment of Chinese sellers' understanding and awareness of supply chain factors? How can they overcome various supply chain risks in the process of going global? What actions will Amazon take to assist them?

Peng Jiaqi: For sellers, the operation and management of cross-border supply chains is crucial. This is because, the operation and management of cross-border supply chains will affect multiple aspects of seller businesses:

First, in terms of cost, if supply chain management efficiency is not high or not perfect, operational costs will be relatively high;

Second, in terms of efficiency, if sellers want to achieve refinement in supply chain management without tool support, it will require a lot of manpower;

Third, if the supply chain inventory is not healthy, it will directly affect sales.

In the overall scope of the supply chain, Amazon has already covered some major processes. For example, in the area of cross-border logistics, we have the Amazon Cross-Border Logistics Solution, and this year, we have made many new initiatives, including AI-based innovation in functionality: customs clearance can be automated, and frequent manual intervention is no longer required; and, in the process of cross-border transportation, if sellers encounter problems, they can use the AI-driven instant messaging tool ConnectPro to get immediate answers and assistance, etc.When it comes to cross-border supply chain management, it is important to ensure sufficient inventory and bring the inventory closer to the consumers, as some consumers have high expectations for speed. Now, through Amazon's logistics solutions, we are also simplifying these processes for sellers. For example, we have a service called AMP (Amazon Preferred Warehousing), where sellers can stock up in one place, and we help them distribute inventory to various major regions in the United States based on consumer demand. This enables a faster response with local inventory when there are consumer orders in different major regions.

At the same time, we have observed that many sellers have encountered a number of issues in inventory management. The Amazon Warehousing and Distribution (AWD) is a solution. AWD warehouses can help sellers store more goods at a lower cost and can also automatically and promptly replenish inventory to Amazon FBA warehouses in various locations.

In terms of results, Amazon's investments in these key areas have already assisted many sellers. For example, sellers using AWD have been able to reduce inventory in FBA warehouses, thereby reducing costs. Furthermore, through automated replenishment, the stockout rate for seller products has also decreased by 15%.

05

The direction and strategy have not changed, but every year we go deeper

Q: Every year the strategic focus of Amazon Global Selling changes. This year, the focus is on "Innovation, Expansion Opportunities, and Local Empowerment." How was the strategic focus determined this year? Why were these three aspects chosen?

Dai Janfei: Every year, we consider what strategic goals we want to achieve with sellers. Over the years, we have had many consistent strategic goals. For example, local service is something we stick to every year. However, with respect to local service, we deepen the content of the service every year and expand the coverage area.

The industry has been talking about high-quality cross-border exports for a while, and we proposed high-quality cross-border exports early on. We have been telling sellers to develop in the direction of compliance, high quality, and improved customer experience for a long time, so this focus has continued. In addition, there is global layout and brand building. Every year, we encourage sellers to have a longer-term perspective.

What's different this year is that we hope sellers will delve deeper into product innovation. Today, we see that different customers have different demands for different price ranges and delivery times. Therefore, sellers can make greater investments in product and brand innovation in these areas.

Q: There have been quite a few changes in the Chinese market in the past two years. Have there been any corresponding changes in Amazon's approach in these two years?

Jin Yanzhen: Amazon Global Selling has been deeply involved in the field of Chinese cross-border e-commerce for a long time. We have seen new sellers entering constantly, including both top sellers and mature sellers, as well as small and medium-sized sellers that are experiencing rapid growth. Because sellers of different types are at different stages of development and have different directions, we provide different support and customized support in our approach to local services.

For example, today's top sellers, especially category leaders, are more eager for us to provide a more centralized management approach. Why? Because they span different categories, and the cross-border team is no longer a single team; it may have already expanded to overseas markets, with marketing departments and plans to expand offline overseas markets, etc. Today, if we continue to operate as before, it is not enough to support business development.

So, one of the things we need to do, for example, in terms of seller growth services, is to provide comprehensive diagnostics from a centralized perspective for category leaders. We need to help them understand what to do first and next in global expansion, how to build a successful global brand, and how to achieve cross-regional collaboration in operations.

For mature sellers, they have been performing well across various sites, but during the high-quality cross-border export phase, we need to help them maintain innovation while enhancing brand strength, so they can reduce costs and improve efficiency.

For small and medium-sized sellers in a period of rapid growth, they may be more interested in learning how to operate in a more refined manner because they are not as mature and still have a lot to learn. Therefore, we provide them with specific operational guidance.

Janfei Dai: Amazon Global Selling has been helping Chinese sellers with global layout for many years, while our own team focuses on providing localized services. Now, we are becoming more refined in both of these aspects.

In the global expansion process, we hope sellers will understand what each customer group needs and what opportunities there are in each site, so they can have a more refined global layout. What we expect from our own team is to delve more deeply into each industry cluster, each region, and truly understand the different needs, potentials, products, and categories of sellers. These are things we have been doing consistently; the direction and strategy have not changed, but we are doing it more deeply, more finely, and better every year.

Q: The theme of this year's conference is "High-quality Cross-border Exports, Innovating the Future Supply Chain." Could you introduce what this theme aims to express and convey?

Qiu Sheng: In the past few years, China's cross-border e-commerce has grown significantly. This growth is not only in scale and diversity of categories and sellers, but also in the increasing quality. We can see many globally renowned brands and excellent products, which have created new consumer tracks.

It is clear that high-quality development has become a consensus. Under this consensus, many sellers need to consider how they can become part of high-quality development. This conference set this theme primarily to make everyone aware of the need for high-quality development. Furthermore, this is a systematic project that requires comprehensive innovation to accomplish.