The core goal of Amazon store operation is to make money, and the operation has always been carried out and promoted around the goal of “making money”.
Because the labor cost is relatively high, the seller team adheres to the principle of being as lean as possible in terms of staffing, “3 people do the work of 5 people, and pay 4 people’s wages”. With proper staffing, everyone handles things within their responsibilities step by step, and the comprehensive salary (basic salary plus commission) is relatively high, employees are satisfied, and everyone is more motivated. As for the seller’s Amazon operation team, we implement the method of one person being responsible for one store. From product selection, product listing, product optimization, in-site advertising, pre-sales and after-sales customer service, to sampling, ordering, FBA delivery and other operations, all matters are completed independently by one person. If a colleague is on vacation, he will find other colleagues to assist in handling related matters in the store.
This arrangement method will not make everyone too idle, avoiding the situation of being redundant. At the same time, each employee has clear responsibilities, and the performance is clear at a glance. Everyone is also aware of the operating status of other colleagues’ stores. The horse racing model allows everyone to work actively without being driven.
Although making money depends on people, people alone are not enough. To achieve the goal of operating profit, the core is to select good products and sell them at a suitable price. In particular, it is very important for a store to operate without interference from unexpected factors during the sales process.
What are unexpected factors? For example, complaints about infringement, complaints about stolen pictures, clearance of seasonal changes, and being copied by others, etc., which almost never happen during the operation of the seller team.
In order to avoid complaints about infringement, the seller team will conduct strict evaluation and control during the product selection stage, and directly reject any products with potential infringement risks. There are so many products to choose from in the market, why bother with products with potential infringement risks? At this point, the seller’s requirement for the team is that any products with infringement risks should not be touched. In order to save a little money on taking pictures, some sellers go to great lengths to find product pictures from other platforms or take pictures from suppliers. During the operation, they are complained about stealing pictures, resulting in the removal of products, disrupting the rhythm of operation, and even removing sellers’ sales rights, which is not worth the loss. In order to avoid this, all product pictures in the seller’s store are taken and produced by the operation staff and their own art team.
In product selection, we strictly implement the three principles of winning by rigid demand, Tian Ji’s horse racing and staying away from infringement. On this basis, in order to improve the utilization rate and turnover rate of funds, the products we selected basically meet the requirements of low price, light weight, single function, easy packaging and delivery, etc. At the same time, we avoid choosing products with fast replacement and obvious seasonality. Once these products are created, their sales are basically stable and the product quality is also controllable. Stable sales and high praise rate are the basis for the steady increase in store sales. The sales of sellers’ stores can basically maintain a steady growth.
In order to reduce the probability of being copied, we have done the following work: (1) Try to differentiate the products appropriately without increasing costs, such as changing the packaging, matching a unique label or accessories, etc., to ensure the uniqueness of your own products; (2) Avoid choosing popular products with fierce competition when selecting products. For products that can be sold every day, we directly reject them when selecting products. We do not want to snatch food from the tiger’s mouth in the fierce competition. We would rather steadily place 30 to 50 orders every day in a relatively unpopular category and product. These “small shrimp”-level products are also less likely to be copied; (3) We have registered trademarks and brand records for each store. Once we encounter follow-selling, we will drive them away immediately. Through the above measures, in operation, the sellers’ stores have basically not encountered follow-selling.
In terms of operation, our team does not engage in false orders, does not spread the goods, does not pursue thousands of orders a day, and even the advertising investment is very limited, but we do everything possible to control costs, do not pursue high profits, and maintain profits at a reasonable level in the long term. Focusing on the goals of stable orders and stable profits, we refine product selection and operate in a boutique manner. Each product is carefully created. After a period of operation, we have calculated that the investment in each store is not much, the inventory is controllable, the orders are stable, and the profits are stable. We are very content and satisfied with this situation.
Take one of the stores as an example. There are 10 products in the store, with a monthly sales amount of US$120,000 and an inventory of 400,000 yuan. The profit is stable at 150,000 yuan per month. 10,000 yuan or more.
Sometimes I see some sellers who have worked very hard but lost a lot of money. To be honest, starting a business is not easy. On the road to entrepreneurship, hard work is important, but ideas determine the way out. I hope the above sharing can bring some inspiration to sellers.