Thank you very much for your attention to this issue of Huiwang's cross-border intelligence room. In today's article, we will give you an in-depth interpretation of the two recent hot spots in the industry:

1. Shopee suddenly lays off staff

2. Amazon began to integrate independent sites into the Amazon platform

Part 1: Shopee shrinks sharply, Southeast Asia is in a hurry

We can see that ASEAN is now China's largest trading partner in financial news every day. Since Amazon's large-scale suspension of accounts for swiping orders and reviewing reviews in June last year, many sellers, especially new sellers, are paying attention. I invested in the Southeast Asian market, thinking that the Southeast Asian market has less investment and easier operation than Amazon. The platform that everyone has settled in is the first to be Shopee, which has a friendly interface and considerate service (relative to other platforms).

Huiwang and Shopee have always had close cooperation, and at the same time, we can deeply feel the enthusiasm and efficiency of every investment manager of Shopee. But what makes such a big platform suddenly shrink? Does this mean that the dividends of the Southeast Asian e-commerce market have been exhausted? We use the following data to hope that everyone can see a complete Shopee and Southeast Asian e-commerce market:

1. Market volume comparison between Shopee and Amazon

As we all know, Shopee's main markets are Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan (China), and other Southeast Asian countries. In the first half of 2022, the number of goods purchased by these countries from China are:

#Vietnam457.81 billion RMB

#Malaysia 283.43 billion RMB

#Taiwan (China) 274.66 billion RMB

#Thailand 247.42 billion RMB

#Indonesia 220.51 billion RMB

#Singapore193.12 billion RMB

#Philippines 192.09 billion RMB

All the above countries purchased goods from China with a total value of RMB 1,869.04 billion, but most of them are Chinese infrastructure and investment in the Belt and Road Initiative, not ordinary private trade, and the investment in the Belt and Road Initiative and cross-border e-commerce Several households of ordinary trade are not relevant.

At the same time, as you can see in the figure, the United States is still China's #1 largest trade importer. During the same period, the total amount of goods purchased by the United States from China was RMB 1,881.9 billion, which is greater than that of all Southeast Asian countries combined. At the same time, since there is no Belt and Road investment involved in trade with the United States, even Chinese state-owned enterprises have invested very little in the United States. Therefore, for private companies and cross-border e-commerce, the US market share is far ahead of any other country.

In terms of platform, if we add up the trade volume of the three North American countries, five European countries, Japan, India, and Australia where Amazon is located from China, we will find that the volume of the market where Amazon is located is nearly 4 times that of Shopee!

2. Behind Shopee's layoffs and shrinkage

According to information provided by Sina.com, Shopee has laid off 90% of its fresh graduates and 50% of its old employees. After analyzing the reasons behind Shopee's layoffs in detail, Huiwang can make a quick summary for you:

(1) High investment in purchase traffic: Invite superstars such as Ronaldo and Jackie Chan to endorse their advertisements on billboards, store banners, motorcycles, taxis, buses and movie theaters

(2) Blind expansion: Tencent's investment and star effect have driven the stock price of Shopee to soar in the past two years, and Shopee has also taken advantage of the opportunity to enter sites in India, France, Spain, Argentina, as well as Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. The Spanish Android market has been ranked #1 by downloads (Shopee is still closed for all of the above platforms)

(3) Heavy operating costs: At the beginning of its establishment, Shopee benchmarked itself with Tencent’s mobile games and Taobao, and quickly copied the opponent’s operating model. In Southeast Asia, Shopee has invested a lot of money into warehouses and local personnel scale construction. It is true that Shopee has grown rapidly in the past few years. After the outbreak of the new crown, Shopee believes that it can focus on opportunities to further defeat Lazada, which is invested by Ali in Southeast Asia, so it offers high salaries to poach people from Ali on a large scale, and recruits a large number of graduates.

It is reported that after Tencent’s investment, Shopee has put all related work from research and development to investment promotion, and even customer service in China, and the number of personnel in China has exceeded 6,000. And all of this ultimately triggered Shopee's abrupt layoffs last week.

But as sellers, in addition to being able to feel the chills brought by the new crown epidemic and geopolitics over the past two years, what we should see at a deeper level is: spending money to buy traffic (advertising), investing heavily in manpower (operations) ), and blindly entering new markets (Southeast Asia) brings a heavy burden to companies and everyone instead of rapid development .

Part 2: Amazon Advertising Broken Arm, the Age of Content

In fact, rather than saying that e-commerce platforms sell products, it is better to say that distribution is traffic. If you understand the profit rules and business model of the platform, you should know that e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Shopee, and Taobao often spend a lot of money in sponsorship, advertising and other fields in exchange for customers' attention to the platform, and then use on-site advertising. Traffic is sold to sellers on the platform. Therefore, the platform is more like a wholesaler of traffic, and a seller is more like a retail customer of traffic.

However, we will see that the business models above whether it is Amazon, Shopee, Shopify, or domestic e-commerce platforms are also failing. The price of traffic is so high that the platform cannot afford it, and it is also unaffordable for every seller. That's why so many sellers are feeling difficult right now.

And let's look at the world's 3 largest advertising operators, #1 Google; #2 Facebook; #3 Amazon. Among them, Google has its own search engine and YouTube platform, so it has almost formed a threshold that other platforms cannot cross. Customers actively go to Google all the time, and Google's traffic cost is almost zero. Since Facebook has its own Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, almost every customer is using these tools to communicate in real time, so Facebook's traffic cost is also very low. Only Amazon does not have the ecology of Google and Facebook, so it is especially included in the Prime membership benefits, Prime Music music, Prime Video movies, and in order to gain customer recognition, almost all movies and TV series filmed by Amazon are for Prime. It's free for members.

We can summarize the above in one sentence, that is: whether it is a platform or an ordinary seller, if you don’t spend money to buy traffic, you have to rely on more attractive content to acquire customers.

For this reason, Amazon has recently increasingly encouraged sellers to create more content, including:

Amazon asks sellers to keep putting out more video content

Seller's listing page:

1. Brand main image video

2. Brand Platinum A+

3. Video section

4. Q&A video

5. Review video

6. Amazon Live

Brand flagship store:

1. Store video

2. Store Post Post (image)

3. Tailored Audience: Seller Center-Brand-Buyer Interaction, support sellers to actively send marketing emails to all customers who pay attention to the flagship store, and customers who have repurchased, or purchased a high amount of money (for the time being only for the United States Sellers are open, and will be open to Chinese sellers soon)

Reds side:

1. Red man shop recommendation

2. Red people stickers (videos, pictures)

3. Influencer Videos

4. Reds live

Simply put, Amazon is asking and helping sellers increase product exposure and conversions through more content instead of relying on Amazon’s on-site advertising.

Part 3: Big Changes, Amazon Begins to Consolidate Indie Stations

Perhaps it is precisely because Amazon sees that the high advertising costs are unsustainable for both sellers and themselves, so while launching a series of free seller marketing and repurchase tools on the site, it has begun to fully promote the independent development of independent sellers through Buy with Prime. Station combined with Amazon. Let's take a look at the effect of the integration of independent stations into Amazon:

Case: Buy with Prime in action

1. The SuperHandy stand-alone station is fully integrated with Amazon, and it is displayed that placing an order on the stand-alone site can have the same Prime privileges as those purchased on the Amazon site. Amazon's logo and top slide can be designed on the Amazon platform and displayed on the stand-alone site (FBA shipping). ,free shipping)

2. The price of the independent station is fairly displayed on the product page of the website. Customers can decide to buy on the website through Add to Cart, or buy on Amazon through Buy with Prime

3. Customers can log in directly through the Amazon account, and independent sellers can obtain the customer's Email address

4. Customers can choose their own delivery address and contact information just like buying on Amazon, and pay through Amazon.Independent sellers can obtain and retain all information, and all payments are automatically completed by Amazon FBA, without sellers worrying

5. SuperHandy looks no different from other sellers on Amazon

6. But after entering the flagship store, you can see that Buy with Prime products are displayed at the same time as the products on the Amazon site, and even the website of the independent site is displayed.

7. Customers who click on the Listing page on Amazon will also display two prices fairly, and allow customers to freely choose to buy on Amazon or an independent site, and the price of an independent site can be lower than Amazon

By integrating the independent website with the Amazon platform through Buy with Prime, Amazon's rules on the site have changed dramatically:

Buy with Prime causes major changes to Amazon's platform

1. For the first time, the independent website is placed in the same position as the listing on the Amazon website

2. Customers can choose to place an order on an independent station or Amazon

3. No longer ask for higher prices outside the site than inside Amazon

4. The independent website link can be displayed directly in the Amazon website and can be clicked to enter

5. Can allow independent sites to use Amazon's official brand logo

6. Can allow independent website sellers to obtain and retain all contact information of Prime customers on Amazon, including: name, address, phone number, etc.

7. Through the above methods, Amazon's traffic can be directly introduced into independent stations

8. What’s more meaningful is that the entire off-site traffic can be brought into Amazon through functions like Shopify and Google Shopping (Google Shopping), /Instagram Catalog (Facebook product catalog), and TikTok store lights.

As we mentioned in the first part of today's article, simply investing in buying traffic has made it difficult for everyone, including major platforms around the world. Each platform is creating more of its own content and ecology to reduce customer acquisition costs and form stickiness with customers. Amazon's Buy with Prime not only changes Amazon's platform rules, but even changes the entire e-commerce rules. Because the conversion rate of Buy with Prime is bound to be more attractive than payment platforms such as Paypal and Stripe, customers can also clearly know that all goods are sent by Amazon and are more guaranteed. In the end, other platforms may be more of a storefront, and their collection and delivery, as well as customer information, will be firmly held by Amazon.

Huiwanghui members open Buy with Prime for free

Buy with Prime is now an invitation system Huiwang will first help Huiwang Zhiying Hui members to register for free and build a website according to Amazon's requirements , and will help all Hui members to complete the registration for free

The specific notice will be notified through the "Huiwang Smart Camp Group" and "Huiwang Hui Member Group".

From now on, we will help Huiwang Hui members, especially the products promoted in the Huiwang Smart Camp project, to create more high-quality video content, attract more attention and traffic, and increase the conversion rate for everyone. Relevant plans include:

Hui Net Red Hot Video Program

1. Free video of Smart Camp members

Just two weeks from the beginning of September, we will record product videos for free for Hui members who participate in Huiwang Smart Camp, and will publish them through Huiwang Amazon Red Person Program, Huiwang TikTok, Huiwang Instagram Reel, Huiwang YouTube channel .

2. Video recording of all Hui members and overseas shooting of products

At the same time, we will provide overseas video shooting, model shooting, and drama shooting related services for all members from September

3. Live broadcast of all members of Hui.com

In order to help members get more traffic and attention, and make related videos appear more on your Amazon Listing page and Amazon homepage. We've now partnered with Best Buy's Official Live Hosts and will be streaming live via Amazon Live, TikTok, Reel and YouTube for our members.The live broadcast is only for Huiwang Hui members, and the products of Zhiying Hui members will be recommended for free in the live broadcast

Please note:

1. Shipping of the product

The above recording and filming work requires everyone to send the products to Canada immediately. The main reason is that with the increasingly fierce market competition, we need to help you develop more free and private domain traffic, and this requires us to provide products for everyone. Continue to create more materials for overseas life scenes.

2. Privacy Protection

Out of consideration for the privacy of Huiwang's products, we will not release the link to the Huiwang celebrity account to Chinese sellers for the time being. The live broadcast and product videos released through the Huiwang Amazon Red Person Program will be sent to the sellers in a one-to-one manner. Relevant members.

Huiwang is honored to hire BestBuy's product propaganda host Rylie as the host of "Huiwang Amazon Live", and will recommend Hui member products through Amazon Live, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram live broadcast, you can see Rylie's video style and persuasive.