Product selection is a big pitfall in Amazon operations. When we start the first step of Amazon operations, we need to figure out what to sell on Amazon? What is sales and how to select products? When buying on Amazon, we will have some common misunderstandings.
Six common misunderstandings in Amazon product selection
1. Subjectivism
For example, when I first started Amazon, I subjectively thought that cycling clothing was very good because I personally liked the game call of duty. I developed and designed game masks and clothes myself, and then sold them. Sure enough, some people bought them, but there were only 1 to 2 orders a week, and I was soon complained by Snowstorm.
2. Empiricism
I have a friend who is a sweatshirt manufacturer. He has done very well in foreign trade. He noticed the huge market potential of Amazon two years ago and planned to sell his products on Amazon’s platform. He made great determination and preparation in the early stage. He bought the hot-selling sweatshirts from Amazon through an American friend. He found that the quality of these sweatshirts was very average. He was very confident in his products and selected the ten Amazon sweatshirts with the most foreign trade shipments that year for production and stocking. You should know that each product has many colors and sizes. He sent nearly 1,000 sweatshirts to Amazon’s warehouse for the first shipment. The result was poor sales and a return rate of more than 20%. Later, when I analyzed the reasons with him, I found that in addition to the reasons for his own operation, the sweatshirts on the Amazon market were basically monopolized by several well-known brands such as Champion, Nike, Hanes, Gildan, etc. These brands are very expensive in China, but very cheap in the United States. This kind of error is called an empiricist error. It is not judged by investigation and data analysis, but by foreign trade experience.
3. Feasibility
Sellers often encounter such problems. As far as product selection is concerned, we need to judge whether the market has a prologue, whether it is monopolized, whether it is profitable, whether there is a risk of intellectual property infringement, whether there are strong competitors, whether there are advantages and selling points, and whether it meets the preferences of buyers. There are many dimensions and data to prove it.
4. Choose hot-selling products
This is not wrong, but choosing hot-selling products also requires conditions: First of all, you need to know what stage these hot-selling products are in. Some hot-selling products are new and perform well. These are hot-selling new products. There is no problem with this. But it is very difficult for products that have been hot-selling for many years and have thousands of reviews to continue.
5. Don’t look at the data
Subjective assumptions and confidence in your own products. This kind of blind confidence will hit a wall in the market. When selecting products, you must analyze and judge based on market data to find your own positioning.