Amazon, Inc. is one of the world's largest retailers of e-commerce and cloud computing services at all levels. Their motto is: From A to Z, which translates to From "A" to "Z", meaning they offer everything.
It is a Marketplace that allows selling products worldwide and especially in North America. In order to understand its dimension, here are some numbers:
- More than 300 million registered customers globally.
- Amazon reported North American net sales of $67 billion, representing a 21.9% increase in the second quarter of 2020.
- International sales exceeded $30 billion, representing a 35.5% increase from a year ago.
- Finally, worldwide revenues were $113 billion, up 27.2% from the previous year.
Clearly analyzing all of the above we can see the importance and interest that many have in selling through this platform, since they probably see it as the easiest way to take their products to international markets and especially to the United States.
Selling on Amazon
Now, the first thing is to understand who can sell on Amazon and the second thing is what can I sell.
Who can sell on Amazon?
In principle anyone can sell on Amazon, to register the requirements are very simple:
- Business email address or Amazon customer account
- Valid credit card
- Government ID (identity verification protects sellers and customers).
- Tax information.
- Telephone number.
- A bank account to which Amazon can send the proceeds from your sales to you.
And it is particularly convenient for manufacturers and producers, since they are direct sellers and can offer more competitive prices.
What can I sell on Amazon?
To say what to sell on Amazon you should consult the list of Product Categories, this establishes the categories that have no selling restriction, then there is another list called as Categories with Restrictions, which indicates some conditions with which the products must comply in order to be sold online.
How to decide what to sell on Amazon?
You should analyze what to sell, probably, it does not make sense to sell your entire portfolio, therefore, here are some criteria to decide:
- Market: in case you have the possibility to focus on a niche market this can become a competitive advantage on Amazon, which will prevent you from having to operate in a highly competitive market against large sellers and companies, you will have a better chance to stand out and satisfy the demand of your customers.
- Demand: it is important to ensure that there is demand for the type of product you want to sell, regardless of whether you operate in a niche. We should avoid products that everyone is selling, especially large companies, where competition will be too difficult. That said, to assess market demand, you can do a Google search for the products, review best seller lists on Amazon and other sites, as well as review search volume tools, such as SEMrush, which gives you an idea of how many people search monthly for the potential products you are interested in marketing.
- Competition: Competition is directly related to both the market and demand. Ultimately, you will want to try to find the right space that is in demand, but not too competitive. Again, you'll want to avoid product areas that are already fully covered by big brands as well as other Amazon sellers.
- Pricing: In terms of pricing, you will also want to try to strike a balance. Aim for products that are not too expensive but can sell for a fair amount. While it might seem advantageous to buy more expensive products that you can then sell for a higher price, it can be much harder to succeed on Amazon this way.
- Size: one of the biggest costs of selling on Amazon is shipping. When trying to decide which products to sell, think about shipping costs. Look for products that are small and fit easily into the packaging; after all, the smaller and lighter the product, the more affordable your shipping costs will be.
What's next?
5 things to do before selling on Amazon
1. Define the value proposition for the US market: this is the main offer you provide to your customers that adds value to them, to their lives. By adding value to your customers, this offer becomes compelling to consume. In this way, if we find ourselves with an undecided customer, this value proposition is the one that helps to finalize the sale. To learn more we invite you to visit:
2. Multi-languages: as we saw Amazon allows us to reach the whole world and mainly the United States, this means that we must be able to have the information of our catalog in at least two languages, Spanish and English.
3. Inventory management: inventory management is key to sell successfully on Amazon. Put yourself in the feet of the buyer, you know how it feels to click on an item you want or worse you need, to discover that it is out of stock, this will make you lose great sales opportunities. To solve this you should consider:
- Choosing a broker: to import your goods to the United States you will need a customs broker, unless you are shipping by UPS, DHL or FedEx, in which case it is included as a service, but it makes the product more expensive.
- Warehousing: you must consider the demand and rotation of the products, to have a place to store them and according to the rotation time, so will be the associated costs.
4. Ominicanality: establishing a digital strategy brings the challenge of having to manage many channels, this adds a lot of complexity, as each platform requires administration which translates into a lot of work, the only way to manage this is through an ominicanality that allows us from a single platform to manage all the digital channels that we have enabled.
To learn more about how to manage an online sales strategy we invite you to schedule a consulting session at this link: Meeting.