U.S. sellers on Amazon.com Inc.’s marketplace have taken note of the growing number of Chinese companies offering their wares on Amazon.com, often at low prices. It’s no accident: Amazon is actively encouraging Chinese merchants to sell on its sites, and recently unveiled new services designed to increase the selection of Chinese goods available on Amazon sites around the world.
Amazon introduced its Global Store initiative three years ago to Chinese merchants, initially facilitating their sales on Amazon.com in the U.S. Amazon subsequently expanded the program to include 10 of its 14 global sites: the United States, Canada, France, United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan, Mexico and China. Not yet participating are Amazon sites in Brazil, Australia, the Netherlands and India.
Chinese retailers have taken advantage of the program to increase sales, Amazon executives reported last week at the company’s annual meeting with Chinese sellers in Guangzhou, China. They said Chinese companies’ sales on Amazon’s marketplaces around the world doubled in 2015 compared with 2014. And they said Chinese merchants’ sales increased more than tenfold on Amazon.com. Amazon did not provide dollar figures for those sales. The top-selling products for Chinese sellers are in wireless products, apparel, computers, home decor and outdoor products, Amazon says.
Amazon plans to do more to help Chinese companies sell on its global sites, Eric Broussard, Amazon’s vice president of international seller services, told the meeting in Guangzhou.
“China is one of the important markets for our Global Store business and we are very glad to see the fast growth for Chinese merchants in global markets,” Broussard said. “Amazon will keep increasing our investments in China to help more Chinese companies expand all over the world.”
Amazon already has introduced several services designed to make it easier for Chinese merchants to sell on Amazon sites. For instance, Amazon rolled out a Chinese-language version of its merchant management system for its U.S. site and U.K. sites in 2015, and Amazon says it will soon be introduced for Amazon’s sites in Germany and Japan.
In addition, Amazon has created a “global product listing” service that allows Chinese merchants to upload a product listing once and sell the item on multiple sites. And Amazon executives told the Chinese sellers they can now ship to one warehouse in Europe for fulfillment by Amazon to 26 European countries.
Although Amazon has not said how many Chinese merchants sell through this Global Store service, a source familiar with Amazon Global Store tells Internet Retailer that it’s in the tens of thousands.
Selling on Amazon’s global sites gives merchants in China and elsewhere access to millions of loyal Amazon shoppers. Amazon is not only the leading e-retailer in North America and No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2015 Top 500 Guide, which ranks North American retailers by their online sales, it’s also No. 1 in Internet Retailer’s Europe 500, No. 4 in the Asia 500 and No. 5 in the China 500.