Over 10,000 Daily Orders, Top 1 in Category in Two Months: Latin America Keeps Minting Wealth for Cross-Border Sellers

By Shi Lei, Wang Yu | Edited by He Yang

[Ebrun Original] In 2026, a growing number of cross-border enterprises are recalibrating their strategic focus on the Latin American market. “After joining Mercado Libre last year, we have gradually shifted our core priority to Latin America,” Hu Hongxing, owner of Quanzhou-based footwear company Haisi Chuanglian, told Ebrun. Luggage and bag seller Aloha has gone even further this year, fully pulling out of Southeast Asia to “pour all resources into Latin America.”

Such cases are far from rare. In the past, most sellers debated whether to enter Latin America; today, many treat the market as a must-win, and are starting to figure out how to penetrate deeply and scale sustainably. Booming market size, steadily improving infrastructure, and heavier platform investment continue to unlock the potential of this e-commerce hotspot, while demonstrating enormous inclusivity. All players—from trade-focused sellers to industrial belt factories and brand owners—are reaping substantial returns here. As Lei Xinyi, general manager of Aloha, put it: “Latin America is the only sizeable, relatively blue-ocean market I can see right now. The positive returns have far exceeded our expectations.”

From an overlooked frontier to a heavily bet-on market, what changed in Latin America? How can cross-border enterprises find the right growth path, and evolve from tentative market entrants to long-term operators?

01

Latin America: A large market with ample remaining upside

“Latin America keeps creating wealth for sellers” is a fact proven by early movers with real capital and results. Senzeran, a seller of utility and tool products, joined Mercado Libre’s Brazil site in 2022. By deeply aligning its supply chain with local demand, the company jumped from zero to over $50 million in annual sales in just three years. Currently, its monthly GMV on Mercado Libre holds steady at 40 million Brazilian reals (approximately $7.753 million), with over 10,000 daily orders on average.

“Our goal this year is to double revenue. Next, we will leverage our Brazil-based supply chain and operational experience to expand into sites including Argentina and Chile,” said Livy, founder of Senzeran. Many consider the Brazilian market complex, but those perceived barriers also act as competitive moats, she noted. “We are extremely confident in the opportunities here, so we committed to heavy investment. We started with a small 300-square-meter warehouse for stock, which was never enough; today we operate five overseas warehouses covering a total area of over 15,000 square meters.”

It is well-founded to call Latin America a treasure trove of untapped incremental demand. Statista data shows that Latin American e-commerce has sustained high growth since 2018, with transaction volume nearing $272 billion in 2025. The market is on track to grow 10.9% year-over-year to $301.7 billion in 2026, maintain a compound annual growth rate of over 8% over the next six years, and count more than 400 million e-commerce shoppers.

Blistering platform performance metrics further confirm Latin America’s rapid growth. In the second quarter of this year, Mercado Libre posted GMV of $21.9 billion, up 44% year-over-year; nearly 800 million items sold, a 45% YoY increase; over 89.3 million active buyers, up 26% YoY; and cross-border merchandise transaction value surged 60% from a year earlier.

Even latecomers, unlike early movers such as Senzeran that entered years ago, face no shortage of new opportunities.

After joining Mercado Libre last November, Haisi Chuanglian saw its monthly sales climb from 3,000–4,000 orders to over 10,000 orders in nine months, with Latin America’s share of its total business quickly rising to 40%. “I have great confidence in the Latin American market, and we aim to hit over $5 million in sales there by year-end,” Hu Hongxing said.

Aloha, for its part, achieved rapid Latin American growth via an asset-light cross-border model. After joining Mercado Libre’s semi-managed program last year, it climbed to Top 3 in the fashion category in three months; this year, it expanded to Mercado Libre’s fully managed service, and rose to Top 1 in its category by order volume in just two months. In Lei Xinyi’s view, Latin America has enormous unmet market gaps, which represent clear opportunities for Chinese sellers.

Beyond scale growth, consumption upgrading in Latin American e-commerce is also delivering new dividends — local consumer demand is rapidly shifting from “access to products” to “product quality,” with surging demand for high-quality goods, distinctive design, and professional performance. A large number of brand merchants have found new growth drivers here. “We were relatively late to enter, only launching on Mercado Libre in the fourth quarter of last year, but our performance has been climbing steadily,” said Huang Maokun, head of cross-border business at esports peripherals brand ATK Gear.

The opportunity here is clear: the market is in the early stages of explosive growth—esports audiences are expanding fast, and players have strong demand for professional peripherals, but the supply side is polarized between overpriced global brands and low-quality unbranded goods. ATK Gear therefore positioned itself around “professional-grade performance at extreme value for money” to quickly fill the mid-market gap. At the start of the year, the team set a target of $5 million in annual sales on Mercado Libre, and had already hit most of that goal by mid-year.

Consumer electronics brand Coolme also broke into Latin America on the strength of its solid products, and will double its Mercado Libre sales this year compared to 2024. “Local users are growing in both purchasing power and quality expectations, and are more inclined to seek out good products and brands, which is very favorable for us,” noted Lizzy, head of the company’s Brazil business.

02

What winning sellers got right: Moving from generic reselling to deep, localized operations

Latin America has abundant market dividends, but sellers that still treat it as a land of wild, unregulated growth where “you can sell anything by just listing random inventory” are unlikely to go far. “Increasingly formalized” and “requiring a long-term approach” are common assessments from sellers of the market’s evolution. To truly break through, players must abandon the “spray-and-pray inventory flooding” mindset and shift to deep operations; localization, compliance, and brand building are the prevailing trends.

Senzeran went through its own transition from broad, multi-category inventory flooding to refined product selection. “After operating for a while, we found that the mass-listing model often led to stockouts of popular items or unsold inventory of poorly chosen products. Later, we focused on a few core categories, improved product quality and certification, and accelerated new product launches—that was when we got it right,” Livy said.

Haisi Chuanglian’s Hu Hongxing put it bluntly: “Flooding the market with inventory eventually devolves into copycat selling and price wars, with no profit to be made.” The company has therefore stuck firmly to a premium, curated product strategy. Its first hit product on Mercado Libre was a tangerine-and-white colored sneaker; the eye-catching color and fashionable design aligned with local aesthetic preferences, and paired with strong performance, the style quickly sold 700–800 units per day shortly after launch, and spurred spontaneous promotion from local influencers to become a breakout hit.

Coolme, meanwhile, exemplifies the importance of cultivating “local hit products.” The brand first found success in North America with a karaoke microphone, but found during expansion that “one product cannot win every market.” It therefore developed customized products tailored to Brazilian user preferences, ultimately cracking the local market with a bass-focused wireless headphone that carries an appearance patent. “At the same price point, we delivered better sound quality, battery life, and design. We specifically developed bass-forward products to match Brazilians’ preference for strong low-end sound, and made targeted optimizations for fitness users,” Lizzy explained.

Beyond strong products as a foundation, localized marketing, logistics, and after-sales service are also critical to scaling a Latin American business. Coolme built dedicated Portuguese-language social media accounts in Brazil, collaborating with local KOLs and real users to run localized content marketing and build user trust. Senzeran stressed the importance of enabling local shipping and hiring local staff to manage after-sales service: faster, higher-quality fulfillment and customer service strengthen user purchase confidence.

In addition, less visible factors also determine whether sellers can operate more stably and sustainably in Latin America. For example, compliant operations are a point sellers frequently cite as an area of ongoing investment. “We hit some pitfalls early on. To run a solid, long-term Latin American business, you have to operate in compliance, across logistics customs clearance, product certification, and all other areas. Getting those right creates a strong moat, and delivers higher margins,” Livy noted.

And brand building is the shared choice of more sellers pursuing high-quality growth. That is because the Latin American market is not a place for short-term traffic grabs and quick profits; long-term compound returns ultimately come from brand equity.

Take ATK Gear as an example: the brand sponsors events and signs championship esports teams and players to gain frequent exposure for its products in professional tournaments, aiming to cement brand perception as a professional esports peripherals maker to truly put down local roots. Coolme builds its brand via a three-pronged approach of platforms, social media, and independent sites, first establishing credibility with users before building brand affinity.

03

The unavoidable Mercado Libre: How the platform supports sellers betting big on Latin America

“As the largest e-commerce platform in the region, Mercado Libre is impossible to bypass,” recalled Lei Xinyi of his channel selection when expanding to Latin America.

When Mercado Libre launched its managed service model last year, it offered the company a faster path to growth. “Self-operated product testing takes at least three to four months, which is high cost and long cycle time for us. With the managed model, we only need to send small batches of stock to the Dongguan warehouse, which drastically shortens product testing cycles, while delivering strong traffic and solid returns,” he said.

Today, Aloha operates not just semi-managed and fully managed storefronts, but has also expanded to a local store model, leveraging the data feedback and supply chain refinement from its managed business. “Mercado Libre provides us with powerful data support. For example, we take the product selection insights the platform provides, conduct secondary screening, list those products, and run refined operations—and those items have become evergreen bestsellers.”

Aloha represents a cohort of sellers benefiting from Mercado Libre’s multi-model operation framework. Currently, Mercado Libre offers five core operation models: local stores, overseas warehouse fulfillment, managed services (including fully managed and semi-managed), self-shipping, and U.S. transit warehouse fulfillment. Sellers of all types can select the path that fits their capabilities and strengths to efficiently expand in Latin America.

Broadening market access is the first layer of the platform’s foundational enablement. After bringing more sellers into the ecosystem, how the platform supports them to build profitable models and scale sustainably is another key consideration for merchants. On this front, Mercado Libre’s ecosystem advantages built through deep local operations stand out.

Take logistics as an example: last year, Mercado Libre built 32 new large-scale local logistics facilities, advanced 65 last-mile delivery network projects, and officially launched its China fulfillment center. The results were immediate: in the second quarter of this year, same-day and next-day order volume rose 38% year-over-year, and transaction volume processed through the China fulfillment center surged 170% quarter-over-quarter.

Mercado Libre is now Senzeran’s core revenue driver. “It has a massive traffic pool, and its localized infrastructure paves a smooth path for sellers. For example, the Mercado Pago credit payment system is a critical service in Brazil, covering consumers who do not have access to international credit cards,” Livy noted.

ATK Gear also treats Mercado Libre as a priority platform. Huang Maokun summed up four core advantages of the platform: first, entry barriers are friendly to brand sellers; second, the logistics network design is well-developed; third, payment infrastructure is robust; fourth, its core user base is young, which aligns closely with ATK Gear’s target audience.

“Mercado Libre also takes brand protection very seriously. We hold patents and own our brand, and the platform’s mechanisms effectively build a 'firewall' for us to prevent copycat listings,” added Haisi Chuanglian. That is a key reason the company has been able to escape the cutthroat price competition among peers in Latin America and earn strong margins.

Additionally, perks including priority capacity expansion support and various subsidies for high-quality sellers, responsive support from investment and operations teams, and a full suite of marketing tools are cited by sellers as key examples of Mercado Libre’s effective enablement for merchants.

For many enterprises, the Latin American opportunity window has moved beyond short-term dividends to become deep, structural incremental growth. As more players shift from “testing the waters” to “long-term operation,” the market has become a non-negligible new growth pole in the global trade landscape—sellers’ ongoing deep cultivation, paired with strong platform support, is together driving a self-reinforcing growth flywheel.

This article was first published on the official website of Ebrun.