
40% of the top sellers on Amazon are based in China, according to research - juokaz
https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/40-of-merchants-on-amazon-based-in-china
======
zwaps
I have to say the variance has become very high. In the past, I have, for
example

\- Ordered a brand product and gotten an obvious fake from China. Not good.

\- Ordered a brand product, got something that had obviously been opened and
used before.

\- Searched for something, found only hundreds of mostly identical Chinese
generic products. Ordered one, was complete and utter garbage.

\- Searched for something, found hundreds of mostly identical Chinese
generics. Ordered one, and it was actually pretty decent! Sadly, this happens
less often.

Overall, I only buy electronic stuff on Amazon if it is cheap and/or no
product with domestic (EU) assembly and QA exists. If it is a large purchase,
or one which may put me, my family or the house in any sort of danger, I would
never, ever trust Amazon anymore. I buy it directly or from a store that
sources directly from the producer.

Additionally, you pretty much have to buy stuff which you wouldn't bother to
send back, because these things usually go nowhere.

Edit: Oh and don't get me started on the reviews. I just to look at them. Now,
they are mostly fake, especially for these Chinese generic brands.

I am convinced that some of these generic brands just receive the products
that got sorted out of some real brand QA process and sell them anyway.

~~~
sanderjd
Yep, I've lost a lot of trust in Amazon over the past year. I used to go and
buy things there by default, now I think twice and often go to a brick and
mortar on my way home from work instead. There is a huge opening here for
someone (probably either Wal-Mart or Target in the US) to take back the market
with a "you know it won't be total junk" sales pitch.

~~~
mrkstu
I think Best Buy has already done this in the electronics segment- I now will
often look at Amazon first then switch over to Best Buy to find the
equivalent, buy it, and pick it up on the way home. Their willingness to match
prices with Amazon has been key.

~~~
froindt
>Their willingness to match prices with Amazon has been key.

Heck, I've had Best Buy associates whip their phone out and price check
something without me even asking. I was super surprised because "don't price
match unless the customer asks" would be the easiest thing for management to
push for.

I increased my loyalty a bit after seeing that.

~~~
RobertRoberts
I would consider price matching something before or during the same time with
your own phone. As you have no idea of what algorithm is being used to show
the price he is getting on his phone for the same item. Your's may be higher
or lower than theirs.

~~~
froindt
If I remember right, Best Buy did get some heat years ago for setting their
online prices higher if accessed through their intranet compared to their
public website.

Shady to say the least.

------
pault
This is the single worst thing about Amazon (aside from the knockoffs); Every
time I want to buy something, I do a search and all I get is 200 pages of the
same shitty product with some generic brand name like "teksolv". Somewhere in
that 200 pages is a product I want. So I go to another online retailer and buy
it there.

Edit: the Brand filter would work, except if there are more than five or six
brands it dumps you in a huge directory of brands that you can't search, and
you can only select one at a time. It's been that way for like ten fucking
years! The only thing that would explain such incompetence is some kind of
dark pattern.

~~~
thefounder
Chances are the branded retailer just rebranded the shitty product from China
and sells it at premium/luxury price.

~~~
pault
This is undoubtedly the case with most of the clothing, but not for consumer
electronics. Edit: No, it's the same with the clothing; buy one of those
generically branded jackets some time and see how long it lasts.

~~~
AJ007
I don’t recall any clothes I have that say made in China? I think the Chinese
labor cost is too high for garments. Yes, there is a huge mark up, but if the
clothing brand is ok they are doing quality control and providing some
consistency besides the whole style/fashion part.

------
anilshanbhag
“Why buy a $40 bikini made in America when you can buy a $4 bikini directly
from China? For that matter, why buy a $20 bikini made in China but imported
by a U.S. company like the Gap when you can buy a $4 bikini directly from
China?”

– Alana Semuels, The Atlantic

^ 40% of merchants are in China but the percentage of goods made in China is
likely much higher maybe like 75%.

~~~
code_duck
I can answer that. It’s because when you order a four dollar bikini from
China, it’s generally not the same product as one would order for $40 in the
US. Merchants and wholesalers in the US have done diligence and quality
assessments on their suppliers. You have no such luxury ordering from a seller
on Amazon. Your only way of assessing quality is reviews and photographs, and
then, the seller has essentially no liability or accountability. There are
many tiers of quality for products in China, and almost always when you order
a cheap one online, it is lower quality than the product you can buy for 5 to
10 times as much at a US retail store.

I’ve done small-scale importing from China for a retail business. The quality
of the product you receive is generally related to whether the seller is
concerned with repeat business in the future.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
Chinese brands do the same QA just fine. There's nothing wrong with brands
like Anker for example.

~~~
seppin
I believe you pointed out the exception, not the rule

~~~
jdietrich
I think it's part of a broader trend of Chinese brands competing on equal
terms.

Xiaomi and Huawei make phones that are quite comparable in quality to any of
the established western and Korean brands; Xiaomi also apply their brand to a
lot of very good electronic stuff that's very good value - electric scooters,
air purifiers, smart home equipment etc. Rigol and Aneng make consistently
good test equipment at a fraction of the price of western equivalents.
Japanese brands used to dominate the radio control hobby industry, but they
have been almost completely displaced by Chinese brands.

~~~
wingworks
Yep, there are a few great brands based in China who sell on
AliExpress/Amazon, another is ugreen. Everything I've bought from them so far
is high-quality gear at a great price. Just wish there was an easier way to
find other brands like them, other than randomly buying stuff from diff brands
and testing the products your self.

------
FiatLuxDave
I see a lot of talk in this thread about how Amazon's UI makes it hard to
filter the good stuff from the bad stuff. But I haven't seen anyone suggest
making a redirection website which does this filtering for a customer. Is
there any reason one of you web slingers (not my gig) couldn't build a better
site where all the links are Amazon affiliate links, thus using the entirety
of Amazon as your backend?

Then, you would have a better website for Amazon than Amazon does. People
would use it. Sure, Amazon would totally absorb you once you got big enough,
but that doesn't sound like the worst problem for a millionaire to have. And
it would fix the problem.

~~~
rkuykendall-com
Amazon has very specific rules about affiliate links. You have to be providing
what they consider a significant amount of content unrelated to the link. The
site you just pitched sadly wouldn't qualify.

Two real examples:

If you have a site where you show a graph of all the IMDB ratings for a TV
series, that isn't enough added value and they will ask you to remove the
links.

If you have a site where you post the reading-orders for various short series
with short introductions, that is enough value.

------
w8rbt
Poison toothpaste and pet treats from China have been ongoing problems for the
last decade:

[https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_207.html](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_207.html)

[https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/news-events/fda-
invest...](https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/news-events/fda-investigates-
animal-illnesses-linked-jerky-pet-treats)

I'm not sure getting a cheap price/good deal is worth the risk (even for
clothing) as the materials may be dangerous to your health.

~~~
ryandrake
A good rule of thumb I use is: if it uses electricity or goes in someone’s
body, don’t buy it from Amazon.

------
plink
Rife Chinese product forgery is the greatest cause of my reticence to trust
most any Amazon product. Second to that is wariness over resold return items
which are not disclosed as such. I'm not much liking my shopping experience
there lately.

------
radcon
And a significant portion of those 40% are spamming all of their competitors
with fake negative reviews and/or false infringement claims to get their
listings buried or removed. Both of those tactics are surprisingly effective
and you can find many stories of people's businesses being ruined (or held
ransom) by them.

Fulfillment by Amazon was a decent idea, but it's time for it to go the same
way as the Dash button and Amazon pop-up stores.

------
sct202
I'm not surprised that this has happened. As soon as I started seeing ads for
people selling courses on how to list cheaply imported things from China in
your spare time to make 'passive' income, it probably was easy enough for
factories/businesses in China to do it directly.

------
lighthazard
Amazon is a lazy man's AliExpress in 2019.

~~~
laurentdc
Amazon used to be my go to for the occasional hardware purchase, but now even
searching for something simple such as "wireless keyboard" brings up a
boatload of sponsored garbage with shady reviews (iClever, VicTsing, Qpao,
Mpow, Topelek what the hell are these brands?)

~~~
maxxxxx
Same here. I get really stressed when I see the same thing under 29 different
names with different prices.

~~~
lighthazard
It used to be that I would pop open Amazon any time I want to buy _anything_.
Now I have to actively search for my options since Amazon is no longer my go-
to option. It's unfortunate but Amazon has made it clear they care about their
merchant dropshippers over keeping a measly customer like me.

------
lqet
So, in the first week of April, I was browsing Amazon for a small bike part. I
bought one for 1.99 EUR, no shipping costs. 1 day later I get an email that my
article is now in transit via China Post, and I will receive it in 5-6 weeks.

How can they possibly make money selling bike parts for 1.99 EUR from China?

~~~
dmortin
There is some postal agreement between countries which makes it possible to
deliver packages at a very low cost from China.

But the US wants to end this:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/trump...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/trump-
changes-terminal-dues-and-epacket-rates/573337/)

------
baybal2
I find a great irony that Amazon decided to wrap up in China's domestic
market.

I believe Jeff Bezos simply failed to comprehend the market.

Amazon in China was actually beginning to do quite well in the last year when
they found their niche in second tier cities.

Second tier city may not sound appetising, but you have to keep in mind that
even second tier cities in China have more buyers than entire USA.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> Amazon in China was actually beginning to do quite well in the last year
> when they found their niche in second tier cities.

Maybe they got caught up in the stupid VC mindset that unless you're the
dominant player with exponential growth, you've failed.

~~~
toasterlovin
FWIW, I wouldn't really question Amazon's judgement here just because of a
comment on HN. Amazon has vastly more information about how their business was
performing than anybody outside of the company. And they have management that
has a track record of being able to run a business very competently. They
probably had very good reasons for exiting China.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> Amazon has vastly more information about how their business was performing
> than anybody outside of the company.

You can literally say the exact same thing about VCs that treat anything short
of market dominance with exponential growth as failure.

It's not a question or more/less information. People with the same extensive
information can make vastly different decisions based on having different
values and priorities. The person with the most information doesn't
necessarily make the best decisions.

~~~
toasterlovin
While I generally agree that incompetence explains a lot of decisions and,
more specifically, the need for exponential returns explains a lot of VC
decision making, we’re talking about Amazon here. They’re one of the most long
term oriented companies in the world. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this,
but Jeff Bezos spent tons of his own money to build a clock that is designed
to work continuously for 10,000 years. And Amazon’s trajectory has been an
abject lesson in long term thinking.

~~~
CharlesColeman
> While I generally agree that incompetence explains a lot of decisions

I'm not talking about incompetence at all.

> They’re one of the most long term oriented companies in the world.

That still doesn't change anything. More information or a very long term focus
isn't going to make someone see that being a successful #2 or #3 player in a
market isn't a failure.

~~~
toasterlovin
What I'm saying is that an extremely competent company decided that an
opportunity wasn't worth pursuing. Are you seriously arguing that you have
better insight into how Amazon should run their business than they do? Despite
the fact that you have no information about what their prospects were other
than whatever tiny morsels were publicly known? Has it occurred to you that
there is non-public information that is informing their decision?

------
danimal88
I don't understand why the US puts up with this while largely being denied
market access to China. In my mind, it would be more symetrical to have
applied tariffs to brands that aren't incorporated and substantially operating
in the US and are imported into the US from China. This would help American
businesses by having American consumers buy quality items from US companies,
even if a substantial portion of the product was built in China.

~~~
swebs
So exactly what happened yesterday?

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-to-move-forward-with-
china-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-to-move-forward-with-china-
tariffs-trump-says-11557424081)

~~~
danimal88
Paywalled so can't read the whole thing.

In general, my understanding is that it is NOT exactly what happened. We are
putting tariffs on ALL IMPORTS from China, whether designed, maintained,
operated by a US corp or a Chinese corp.

A better policy would have recognized that there is a distinct difference
between Chinese and US corps looking to sell into the US market.

The simplest example would be anything internet connected product with
software. If the design, software, marketing etc. is all largely in the US and
just the physical product is manufactured in China, it seems like a reasonable
economic policy to say that China can keep the manufacturing business and the
US corps can continue to do this - largely because it acknowledges the reality
that US manufacturing for high volume/low mix is simply not going to be
competitive and if it is, it will only be due to automation.

Leaving the manufacturing in place but blocking Chinese market access would
impart substantial hardship to Chinese companies who are able to ignore US
Trademark, IP, deceitful advertising/low quality (read other threads on this
HN post), all the while largely not interrupting US businesses.

It would have provided needed leverage while avoiding doing damage to US
business and consumers.

------
noja
"Give us a 5 star review, email us, then get a free battery pack" \- a note in
the parcel from one particular top seller from China. How is this allowed?

------
cbhl
I recommend Episode #857 of Planet Money, which talks about how postal rates
are set by the UPU, and the impact on e-commerce.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/01/634737852/episode-857-the-
postal-illuminati)

Transcript:
[https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...](https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=634732388)

~~~
codedokode
I think that they might be making wrong conclusions. For example, they say
that USPS is losing 80 millions dollars on delivery from abroad. But USPS is
delivering letters and goods to Americans, so you should also count how much
they save on getting cheaper goods, how much they save because prices lower
due to competition, and maybe the total balance would be in favour of
Americans.

Also, they mention that the last mile delivery is expensive, but often goods
are delivered only to the post office, not to the customer's door so the
expenses are not that high.

------
AnnoyingSwede
Amazon should make it easier to filter away things with long shipping..
Looking for motorbike parts that i prefer shipped from Germany (to the
Netherlands) i sometime go through 20-30 products before i find a local
seller. I didn't used to do this and in 80% of the cases delivery of 2 months,
with some 20% shipped within days. Amazon is terrible on tracking the objects
too. After waiting for 2 months, the day come when stuff is suppose to arrive,
only to wait another day and find out it was not even shipped yet.

~~~
TheRealPomax
To play devil's advocate: why? Unless it's fraud, those Chinese sellers aren't
violating any laws that are relevant to Amazon, and it makes them tons of
money, so why would they change something that doesn't make them run afoul of
the law? Because "to improve customer experience" is only a valid reason of
that comes with increased revenue, and it sounds like your suggestion
wouldn't.

------
CodeSheikh
Also worth reading into "Universal Postal Union", an agency within the United
Nations that is responsible for managing postal service policies for its
member countries.

"Under the current UPU’s treaty, China and other countries deemed a
'developing nation' receive a lower rate for packages shipped to the U.S. via
the United States Postal Service."

That's why it is convenient to get $3 iPhone case from Chinese/Asian country
seller at $0 shipping cost. Gotta love the loop holes, eh?

~~~
sytelus
This will make little difference. Large number of Chinese sellers already
participate in Amazon Prime to get the SEO boost. Shipping through containers
to Amazon warehouses is massively inexpensive compared to shipping via US post
even if it was subsidized. Only small inexperienced sellers just starting out
and tasting waters use US post.

------
preinheimer
Is that so different from Walmart? Perhaps not "Merchants" but the country of
origin of the products.

15 years ago we were watching reports on the Walmartization of america, and
one key line from the Frontline documentary (I think) was that Walmart
basically taught China how to sell to America.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Walmart buys a surprising number of US sourced things for a bunch of reasons
that are well outside the scope of this comment and basically have to do with
the difference between a business that chooses what to sell and buys things by
the box car and stocks them on shelves vs a business that basically proxies
consumers to many small sellers and also operates a bunch of warehouses.

------
hedora
The title and conclusions of the article are not backed by the data presented
in the article.

According to the data presented by the article, Chinese sellers have ~40%
market share.

It is possible (and likely) that these sellers represent a long tail of small
operations, and therefore << 40% of the top sellers are based in China.

------
less_penguiny
Something I've found frustrating as of late is when a merchant isn't
transparent about as much.

Case in point, I ordered an urgently needed textbook off Amazon and was
disappointed to learn that the package ended up delayed at customs for
numerous weeks. I felt somewhat violated.

~~~
guitarbill
i do wish that was move obvious (like eBay), or there was a way to
automatically exclude results from abroad by default on all searches. bonus
points for allowing me to specify some countries (like Japan) or exclude
others. it wouldn't even impact Amazon's bottom line that much, as most people
would never turn it on if it's opt-in

------
sergiotapia
What's an online store that doesn't allow chinese knock off today? Amazon used
to be good, a stamp of "This is quality" but now it's a numbers game and the
quality is a dice roll.

~~~
username223
Newegg is okay for computer parts. The various online outdoor equipment stores
aren't flooded with knockoffs. And you can always go to the manufacturer.

Amazon is still fine if you're looking for a name-brand item, but as soon as
you leave that path, who knows what you'll get? Don't take my word for it, but
I even remember reading about their "Fulfilled by Amazon" program substituting
items from different sellers with the same SKU. The result was predictable:
people scammed the system by mis-labeling cheap knockoffs.

Now that Amazon makes so much money off AWS, maybe they could use a bit of it
to put third party sellers in their own "Wild West" tab, and taking a bit of
responsibility for what they sell.

~~~
stevenwoo
The last time I ordered from NewEgg, five different items came from five
different vendors, one sent me a cat 5 network cable instead of the keyboard I
ordered (the address indicated the source was only 400 miles away in southern
California so can't blame China for this one oddly.) NewEgg is now no
different from Amazon with third party sellers. I just drive to Fry's now or
if I'm willing to take chance, eBay.

------
miguelmota
Amazon is polluted with knock-offs. It's often a hit or miss when ordering
cheap electronics

------
notacoward
40% of top sellers because every item is sold under a hundred different made-
up brand names to pad the search results. No one of them pulls in many suckers
(the products sold this way are consistently crap) but they do add up.

------
herbst
Amazon is essentially AliExpress with a 50-500% markup. Especially if you live
in a country nearly nobody delivers to. Like Switzerland.

------
m463
This is how things work. Walmart, Target, Amazon, etc... they are all just the
local landing pad for the global container shipping system, which
statistically originates in china.

~~~
techslave
they aren’t. they add value by doing QA, stocking inventory, having a
reputation to uphold (taking returns, etc), handling recalls, and so on.

------
dqpb
China's manufacturing dominance is the ultimate Trojan horse.

------
qbaqbaqba
Figures for aliexpress are even more shocking.

------
imjustsaying
To what extent are Americans even allowed to sell anything in China?

------
throwwaythrow
In addition to the 25% levied on the $200 billion in Chinese imports, today:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/the-
latest...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/the-latest-china-
vows-countermeasures-to-raised-us-
tariffs/2019/05/10/485e32e6-72dd-11e9-9331-30bc5836f48e_story.html)

President Donald Trump says his administration is beginning the process to
impose 25% tariffs on another $325 billion in Chinese imports, covering
everything China sells the United States.

This will definitely have an effect on Amazon FBA sellers eventually, as
foreign factories continue to move out of China until...they're all gone. Then
the Chinese factories will try to flood Amazon with goods...until Trump
focuses on Amazon, after he tariffs all of Chinese's goods.

~~~
systematical
If the reports about them basically extorting U.S. companies into giving away
technology are true, coupled with the outright theft of technology then we
can't put enough tariffs on them until they start playing by the rules.

I only wish a smarter guy was doing this. We could've used our allies to also
slap tarrifs on them as well. The top export markets for China are the US,
Japan, Germany, South Korea. A pretty good list of strong U.S. allies. We
could've crippled them with a steadier hand.

------
wintorez
I'm surprise. I was expecting a higher percentage.

------
ProAm
Walmart is a town killer, Amazon is an economy killer

------
partiallypro
That does explain all the fakes.

------
rgbimbochamp
Does a single DB query qualify as research?

------
hsnewman
Is it possible that the tariffs are an attack on Amazon (Bezos) who Trump
doesn't like?

~~~
tantalor
No, tariffs are waived on packages <$800 so Chinese merchants can skate by
while US importers are penalized.

 _Packages whose declared value is under $800... will generally be cleared
without any additional paperwork prepared by CBP._

[https://www.cbp.gov/trade/basic-import-export/internet-
purch...](https://www.cbp.gov/trade/basic-import-export/internet-purchases)

~~~
baybal2
Well, it will play against people who resell from inland, and towards
dropshippers from abroad.

------
SubiculumCode
This is absolutely gutting the American small-business retail sector and the
jobs that sector supports. I'm not 100% confident what the solution should be,
but these types of stories really underscore how tech is enabling accellerated
job displacement in America, and the need for new solutions, perhaps like
Andrew Yang's UBI proposal.

~~~
SubiculumCode
The point stands.

