There has been a shift over the past several years for Chinese cross-border e-commerce distributors to move from eBay towards Amazon—and for good reason! Amazon sales have grown exponentially year over year, based on the little-known fact that third-party sellers (like SainStore) account for a large portion of Amazon’s annual sales.
In Q2 2007, third-party sellers counted for a mere 26% in Amazon’s total yearly sales. This figure has grown over the past decade to a point where from 2016-present, third-party sellers have accounted for at least half of all sales on Amazon. This exposure has not only been great for Amazon’s bottom line, but it has also helped a countless number of third-party vendors from China expand their presence to the US and other international markets with ease and finesse.
But there’s a catch.
The growth of third-party sellers on Amazon has led to fierce competition amongst different brands who are selling similar products. Sometimes, we find that the same product is sold by several different sellers with only the packaging and the product description changed!
How can you differentiate your products from other sellers on Amazon, especially when some consumers assume that everything sold on Amazon.com is sold by Amazon directly?
Enter: Shopify.
On March 8, 2018, SainStore hosted the first SXSC (Shopify by South China) event at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in SongShan Lake, Dongguan, China. We invited 300+ regional business leaders, e-commerce association members, and manufacturers from Dongguan and the surrounding areas to learn how SainStore and Shopify can help to differentiate their brand from the growing number of Chinese vendors and distributors on Amazon.
To kick things off, we had Hou Weijia (Deputy Section Chief of the Dongguan Business Bureau) give a short presentation about the current situation of cross-border e-commerce companies located in Dongguan. Mr. Hou emphasized the local government’s support for the continued development of cross-border e-commerce industry in Dongguan, pointing out SainStore’s accomplishments in this field over the past decade and speculating on the continued development of SainStore as a leader in this market for years to come.
After Mr. Hou’s warm introduction, we welcomed our own Burt Hu, Executive VP at SainStore, to give a brief overview of SainStore’s partnership with Shopify to become the first Shopify Plus Partner agency in China. To give a quick overview, Shopify allows an easy way for companies to set up their own unique branded website to sell their products. This gives a level of interaction and customization that is just not available on platforms like Amazon, eBay, or others.
Sainstore and Shopify cannot do all of this work on their own, so we also had invited some other guests to the party who can help Chinese sellers reach consumers across the globe: DHL and PayPal, pictured below.
To bring the event to a close was a group panel of the speakers where members of the crowd could ask questions about establishing independent branded websites, operational improvements, and suggestions, as well as brand optimization for international e-commerce companies moving forward. Follow this was an open social hour filled with refreshments and deep conversations of how to move forward with all of this newfound information.
SainStore looks forward to seeing you at the next SXSC event and helping you reach international markets you could only dream of before.
