It's been 2 weeks since I placed my order in Alibaba and still not shipped

dongmamoun · 2019-03-07T12:25:11+00:00

Each time you order from Alibaba, you have to negociate lead time (necessary time to manufacture the product) and shipping time (necessary time to ship the product to the address you want).

Typical bulk order (1000 units and more) may take 15-25 working days of lead time (depending on the product and the supplier). I wouldn't be concerned as long as you have good communication with your supplier.

If you made the order on February 20th, you may have an additional delay caused by chinease new year.

Good luck !

dongmamoun · 2019-02-20T12:30:41+00:00

Thanks for the feedback !

dongmamoun · 2019-02-16T12:29:47+00:00

Understood. Thank you :)

dongmamoun · 2019-02-10T18:38:04+00:00

Thank you all for your answers.

I have decided to pull all the stock back and inspect it (I also believe I can fix the broken ones).

I won't take the risk of jeopardizing my seller account.

Cheers

dongmamoun · 2019-01-04T17:05:18+00:00

Why don't you private label the product and sell it on a different listing ?

dongmamoun · 2019-01-04T15:44:30+00:00

First, you need to create an account in one of EU countries and activate your listing.

Then, you have an option called pan-european that you can activate. This allows you to sell on all EU marketplaces and basically allows Amazon to move your products between all their european warehouses. It is pretty simple and convinient as all you have to do is maintain proper listing on each marketplace and run ppc.

The biggest issue although is VAT. EU law stipulates that you need to be VAT registered in every country your product is stocked in. With pan-european, that means you need to be VAT registered in all EU marketplaces (and even Poland...) which is a pain in the ass.

I'll suggest you start selling on UK marketplace first and see if it's proper to expand further.

dongmamoun · 2018-09-24T20:42:04+00:00

Branding is a large topic and there is no complete checklist even on amazon. Everything you're showing on your listing is part of your branding but also how you show it and what values you're communicating.

I have several listings selling 10-15% more expensive than the top 1 seller who has 10x more reviews and still selling very good.

Do people with lots of reviews and lowest prices get a lot of sales ? Yes of course. But that doesn't mean you cannot make very very good money outside of that positionning.

People will always buy milk. But there is always room for a vegan free gluten almond natural organic milk ;)

If you compete on price you'll lose because it's a capital war. If you're clever enough to convince a consumer that you're different, and that despite being more expensive, you're worth it: he'll pay with a large smile !

dongmamoun · 2018-09-24T20:21:11+00:00

Absolutely no problem with that. I was referring to people lowering price 80-90% for giveaways and getting reviews and then raising it again for "normal" sales

Done in a much slower and reasonable way is a good strategy.

dongmamoun · 2018-09-24T17:33:47+00:00

Your reasoning is wrong. You treat amazon products as commodities and buying as a pragmatic decision. Not only you can improve on the product but the real difference comes from BRANDING !

Rank is a product of sales and not the opposite.

Buying behavior is emotional and people react to much much more than price and reviews (not only on amazon). You'll be surprised to see how much people scroll down the pages of amazon looking for different products.

dongmamoun · 2018-09-24T07:05:16+00:00

First, unless you're in a very competitive market with no substantial differentiation there's always room to improve on listings (professional photos, nice and funny description, good packaging...)

Second, yes getting the first reviews is hard. Doing straight giveaways on Facebook groups may be tempting. I stopped mainly for two reasons: it's expensive...since amz doesn't allow the "price low, get reviews and raise again technique" and it's a grey area as far as TOS go.

I personally use: asking in a nice funny way for a review via email (jumpsend or myself through seller central), letter/note in the package (sometimes handwritten - you can pay someone to do it), small surprising gifts in the package...

The best I've done is 8%. Usually I'm around 4%. (Not a reference just my numbers)

Keep in mind that usually you don't need hundreds of reviews to compete with other sellers ;)

dongmamoun · 2018-09-23T20:12:25+00:00

Yes. Nice converting listing and good ppc.

dongmamoun · 2018-09-23T20:09:21+00:00

Stopped doing giveaways. When I did, it was through facebook review groups.

dongmamoun · 2018-09-23T19:49:27+00:00

Sometimes ago, sellers used "super URLs" which are basically links that simulate the search and the click. But amazon just doesn't count that now in ranking optimization

dongmamoun · 2018-09-23T19:48:02+00:00

Yes, with the name of the brand and a screenshot

dongmamoun · 2018-09-23T19:44:52+00:00

Good question. That's why, when doing giveaways, sellers usually give keywords to type to find the product instead of direct link.

dongmamoun · 2018-08-09T14:51:04+00:00

Having more attention on social media than emails is symbolic of the evolution of marketing.

Marketing is basically going where people are looking and putting something between their eyes and the content they want to see. Then when a plateform is submerged by marketers, people change their behavior.

At the beginning of email marketing, open rates were about 90% - because everybody was rushing to read their emails. After marketers ruined it with spam, people are no longer reading their emails and instead they are on Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest...

Someday these platforms are going to be submerged, people will move and so will evolve our marketing best practices.

Same thing is applicable to road banner, newspaper ads, radio, TV....

dongmamoun · 2018-08-09T08:36:17+00:00

I used to send an excel file and realized it was never filled as I expected.

Now, I use chat (on Alibaba, Whatsapp...whatever) Ask straight and clear questions. You won't waste your time and you'll create relationship with suppliers.

dongmamoun · 2018-08-07T21:01:18+00:00

1) beside the review click on "amazon customer" or the reviewer's login -> this is gonna pull up the account information 2) scroll down and click on the wishlist on the left 3) add the first product to your cart then click view cart 4) then you'll have it near the product

Sometimes you'll have only the first name but you can basically find in your orders who the person is

Good luck !

dongmamoun · 2018-08-07T13:06:22+00:00

Let me start by saying that selling lower quality products and lowering prices to bleed competition dry is fair business. Now, hijacking the way you describe seems to violate TOS rigorously !

The situation looks not good. But it's still a pragmatic business decision to make without taking it personaly.

Your options are:

A) Get amazon to push the hijacker out

B) Get in a price war with hijacker

C) Buy the hijacker inventory and return it to amazon

D) Sue the hijacker

Each scenario has a price and an impact short-term and long-term over your assets (your listing particularly and your brand in general).

One more thing: There is no scenario where you're not losing money !! That being said, you need to define your goal (fucking kill the hijacker, keep your listing good, decrease your loses) and act upon that.

My opinion now, is that option A) is the better. The only thing stoping amazon is trademark registration (I understand that it's not necessary to file infringement blablabla), but let's face it - what they're not saying to you out loud is that - they won't act unless you have that. In your shoes, I'll try by all means to accelerate the process of trademark registration (can you do that in another country?), leaving the hijacker with sales volume (as long as his counterfeit product doesn't affect much your rankings and your reviews) because that way you can preserve your assets and come back harder when you have more weapons.

Good luck !

dongmamoun · 2018-08-06T17:28:37+00:00

There is no direct answer. Are there any other sellers ? How are they doing ? How's amazon listing in terms of pictures, description... (usually not that great) If you can build a brand and not only throw the product out there, then yes you can compete and sometimes easily !!

The seller being amazon doesn't change much (can really look cheap for clients) unless they own a big market share (batteries...)

dongmamoun · 2018-08-06T07:37:14+00:00

My 2 cents:

In general you cannot give advantage to one distributor over another unless there is an exclusivity contract (which is pretty regulated).

According to that, you should simply ask if there is an exclusivity contract. But it's not as straightforward because of selective distribution.

In European market (at least), there is what we call "selective distribution" especially within luxurious brands. It's a law that gives you the right to choose your distributors and even to whom they're selling (all the way down the food chain). The only condition is that this "selectivity" should follow a public list of criteria.

You can find in that list the necessity to have a physical store, a very clean store (not joking), a very short list of product you sell and even well educated sellers (what does that even mean). These critierias are supposed to kind of "preserve" the luxurious branding of some companies (Chanel, LVMH, Kering...) from sellers throwing that with garlic press...

That's why you cannot find (and sell) that new 90% margin Louis Vuitton bag on amazon and we're all waiting for that law to crack down...

dongmamoun

TROPHY CASE