Because of COVID, almost no foreigners have been allowed in China for two years. While exceptions have been made for business and health professionals (plus of course Winter Olympians), the government still requires a lengthy quarantine period of 14 to 21 days upon landing. Most people have understandably chosen to conduct their business on Zoom […]
The goal of every online seller, just like the goal of every brick-and-mortar seller, is to drive sales. This is why loads of marketing dollars are spent each day perfecting emails, copyediting social media posts, and optimizing listings. Sellers on Amazon and Walmart.com take an “omni-channel” approach to make sure their products look attractive anywhere […]
In our last blog, I addressed the issue of how Amazon came to be dominated by black-hat Chinese sellers. I think I did an adequate job of tracing the steps that turned Amazon into China’s bazaar, but perhaps I concluded before really diving into the initial question: Why are so many Chinese sellers bad actors? […]
With recent developments in the standing of prominent Chinese companies on Amazon, it is only natural to ask: How did we get here? How did it come to be that some of the biggest sellers on Amazon, such as Aukey and Mpow, thought they could game the system with impunity? When did fake reviews become […]
When we talk to prospective clients, we always hear the same thing: After finding a market gap and building up a consumer base, Amazon sellers are finally ready to turn to branding. Though costs need to be kept to a minimum when a seller first starts out, the story goes, investing in branding is a […]
Amazon Prime Day 2019 was an unqualified success. During the two-day stretch, Amazon sold over 175 million total items and signed up more Prime users than ever before. In a sign of the Everything Store’s continued rise to dominance, Amazon had its best Prime Day ever despite hundreds of other retailers offering their own competing sales events […]
If you have been to China in the last couple of years, you have surely noticed that everyone pays for everything with their cell phones. China has effectively jumped from an all cash economy, past credit cards, directly to what is effectively an all electronic payments system using Tencent’s WeChat Pay, and Alibaba’s Alipay. If […]
“Is Amazon dying?” “Do you think Amazon will be around in 5 years?” These questions, if posed by anyone living in the United States today, would be considered absurd. You would not even have to know that Amazon posted record profit in their most recent earnings reports. Or that Amazon is already three-quarters of the […]
Do I Need To Apply For A Visa In Advance To Go To China? Getting a visa to visit China is supposedly difficult, especially if you don’t have a particularly good reason to go there (at least from the government’s perspective). If you are trying to conduct business, you need an invitation letter from a […]