A MarketPlace of Ideas

 so Steve okay yes guess what what the Chinese are taking over Amazon oh my god again actually is the first time isn't it absolutely something very interesting before we hit the road I went to this thing I was invited as a speaker to this thing called the cross-border summit and I learned some pretty interesting kind of insider info there so let's go on the road and talk about and find out okay don't leave okay yep do you buy anything of Amazon actually I bought my lens for my camera off Amazon p.m. and I buy stuff off Amazon every time I go back to visit home because it's super convenient I love it it's great okay anyway what we're going to be talking about here is third-party sellers on Amazon okay so if you wanted to basically you know you know China yeah okay but if you were if you were in America right now and you kind of wanted to start selling some products from China right what would you have to do well if I was going to sell products in China first I would have to go on Alibaba and then apply for some of these factories for samples first I'm going to have to do market testing for those samples because I got to make sure that they're not some piece of shit you know chintzy little thing like I bought bulk stuff ups off there before one time I bought a hundred USB drives and all of them were broken so you got to obviously order some shit first and then product us that make sure it's okay and then put in your big order right but it takes a long time and you got to go through customs and a lot of times stuff gets stuck there right a lot of times things like on the Chinese side if you don't know anyone you're probably going to get the lower end version of that of said product because quality controls pretty bad here anyway by the time the product shows up at your door you paid a lot more money than you would if you're here domestically and you might not get what you wanted so that's pretty much how it goes down okay I got to give you some insight as to you know why I'm talking about this I I was at that crossroad of some Express and it's basically people that live in Hong Kong or overseas or in Asia somewhere in there doing business with China a bunch of people doing presentations and the one go I did this really I'm going to stick up his image here so give him some credit and he does watch our videos okay he gave give some pretty good insight into all this okay and yeah just like you said if you're going to start a business maybe out of your basement or whatever you first need to do all this stuff like contact the factory get samples and they normally want like some kind of minimum order quantity anyway you get your samples in there look crap you send them back it's very costly it's very time-consuming let's think about two to three months to finally get the product that you want yeah and then you bring in say like a hundred of these things to test the market right and then if you sell out of them then you can autumn or and it takes ages right but if for instance my wife wanted to start selling on Amazon yeah all she needs to do is call up her her friends who aren't a factory because you know your child or your wife as well right now all of your Chinese Raziel know people who run factories what 50 – sure yeah so she just called front of her friend who runs a factory can hop on a bus you know right or take a taxi or whatever and get to the the factory the same day yeah go and look at the product see the products that she wants check out the quality make a deal because she's Chinese because she knows the person so they're not going to try to rip her off right so you'll get it she'll get a very good competitive price and they'll probably like give her a sample right then in there though she can just look at the product so you don't need to go through my mouth yeah you don't need to go through that whole initial process right and she could theoretically have like a container worth of this stuff to ship off in very good a week right listen a week because she's domestically here in China so I'll probably not have to deal with like really bullshit customs things that we've had to go through absolutely and that they know the the loopholes I know how to write around it number one that that the ease of getting into being a third party Amazon seller here in China is so much easier right yes I mean getting the product sourcing the product right so this recently came to light because in America I don't think people have to disclose where they live now that's it's anonymous yeah it's anonymous but in Europe they have to disclose where the sellers come from right to exit China they recently did this little study and it shows that like 25% of third-party sellers are coming from China at the moment Wow in most countries some even more I think Spain is 28% some other countries more some less but there's a huge percentage of the online sellers the third-party sellers are coming from China yeah and I'm can only guess it in America it's probably more absolutely especially with anonymity you know yeah and there's another massive advantage Chinese people have here and that is they have access to like incredibly good shipping very cheap shipping yeah and these massive sort of almost cities that are built up around this so you know when you're sitting in your basement at your house you've got maybe I don't know a couple like a couple hundred items at most yeah then you're going to run out very quickly right here they can literally because it's so cheap to ship across the country here they can go and set up a like a warehouse you can have like tens of thousands of things available like at a moment's not right or if they've got good you know connections with the factory they can get a whole shipment of things made right a couple days right so they have access to this massive network of you know making stuff and having stuff and it almost no cost to them so they've got a massive advantage it's a big advantage that actually happens quite often around China there's a whole city's in judging that will only make buttons or only make toilet seats and that's kind of how business works here yeah and like you said it's a huge advantage because they have this one kind of empire that does this stuff really efficiently right yeah now the thing that I want to bring out and the thing that I mean a lot of people will probably look at this headline and say like they're taking our jobs and opportunities and stuff the reason I think there is a little bit of unfairness to this yeah it's because what they did is Amazon set up here right yeah Amazon cncn now the thing is if I go on Amazon CN all of the search results for the stuff in America or abroad are not there right yeah it's only stuff I can buy in China or a buyer sorry a seller that will be able to export it properly right yeah now when I brought my lens for my camera they have to import it from the US right and then I had to paid shit tons of like fees right yeah all kinds of like border good speeds electronics fees all those kind of stuff anyway long story short they have this website for their own stuff for domestic sales right and the issue is that recently they they made it impossible for someone on Amazon CN so us right yeah foreigners that don't have a Chinese ID which is 99% of 99.999% of foreigners you don't have Sinese ID cards so you can't register an account anymore to pay okay number two if you want to buy something now not like when I use my credit card my visa from back home now you have to use a Union pay or a Drupal ball which is a li pay or Chinese method of payment so to shop ourselves and the sellers the key word here is that's what we're talking about on Amazon Xia and you have to be a Chinese citizen with Chinese bank and credit details so what they the reason I say it's kind of unfair is that they've completely restricted the market for a you know an entrepreneurial foreigner that would want to set up something similar in China because we do have the connection right we have every connection that a Chinese person does to be able to get factory goods and ship stuff abroad we can make some pretty good money right now a huge thing that happen is that they've caught all those people off so they have to go back to the foreigners living here that did import-export have to go back to the traditional methods and I'm kind of restricted and I I'd be fair to assume that Taobao and Alibaba is probably the same yeah I don't remember can have a taco shop everybody I know who does any kind of business like this they go through Chinese first they get their wife or their friend or something it kind of sets up the scenario you know a lot of people face is that if you get a Chinese partner there's a lot of signs that you'll be taken advantage of yes and so you're kind of left at the mercy of the Chinese partner when you're trying to do this kind of stuff so that's that was my counterpoint to the whole thing is yes it's China's Chinese people are taking advantage of the you know anonymity and that the ease of being able to set up shop in a foreign country even though that they're not residents of that country and also restricting any potential competition here from foreigners that would want to set up an import business for Amazon in China yeah okay but that's something that the West when we do business okay we rely on good business practice right right and there are some sort of unwritten rules of good business etiquette where do we get on my right side otherwise I can't see you English okay so there are some unwritten rules about doing business like don't take advantage of certain situations it's not good business you know that kind of been bright but Chinese people don't adhere to those business etiquette because they don't understand them right and they don't understand why people wouldn't just you know if they could make money make money good set bro yes sir another overdo absolutely all the time so from that perspective of course if they've got the option to flood the international markets and just kind of grab a big deal they will right I mean for instance one of the speakers at this event was best tech and they sell they even said on Amazon is their biggest revenue right it's a massive company and apparently all of the power supplies who is power supplies and something else apparently best excels 73 percent of all power supplies and whatever other thing they were doing wow really dry yeah on on Amazon like out of all the power supplies sold on Amazon seventy-three percent of them come from this company Wow so it's a huge market and they were turning over like millions upon millions maybe even billions I can remember every year but you know I don't listen to numbers and presentations okay too much but yeah the thing is there's it's huge and I think most of Chinese businesses that are selling overseas at the moment are all going through Amazon you know what I mean yep man we've got some crazy-ass traffic over here yes it's not nice not really anyway yeah yeah so you guys would enjoy that perspective on on things that kind of happened day to day here and things are changing constantly and sometimes it's not that all I want to say is that if you want to remain competitive as a third-party Amazon seller you have to start thinking like Chinese people do Yeah right and you have to start you know maybe sourcing something that they can't write very fast stop trying to get all your products from China the other go elsewhere get something that's like locally made right can't be made here correct you know or have a very good savvy Chinese person thank you well yeah there we go with that problem you know working here on the ground problem is again if you don't know them incredibly well they'll probably you know probably going to help your competition out and television anywhere not that the foreigners will do with anyone hey was any work for TCL everyone had side businesses and was undercutting each other all the time yes it's not like a China versus for anything it's a China China's Chinese business kind of lack of ethics things however the restrictions I just talked about are kind of anti foreigner yeah they are China's always been very protectionist in the other side FM like the joint venture stuff that they do it's such a which we're going to talk about another yeah oh I mean basically I just wanted to bring this up because I was at that meeting yeah that's exactly that cross-border summer thing and you know it was actually pretty fascinating to see because I didn't know about it and apparently people didn't really know until Europe kind of made it mandatory that you have to disclose where you are right right selling stuff from court so yeah cool so anyway good luck to all of you Amazon sellers out there you're up against an army here you go get creative you know do some good marketing and stuff and good luck so anyway see milk anything you'd like to tell everybody before we sign off whether you like to you know go up against the bevy of Chinese medicines on the internet trying to get their get rich quick scheme or you're just a mom-and-pop shop selling you know your your milk and soda pops I implore you to like comment and subscribe cool and whether or not you are having lovely sunny weather over wherever you are for you you see this massive gray we love you all the same so until next on you know the drill stay awesome [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] as you I remember you [Music] I remember you [Music] I remember make me stronger [Music] [Applause] [Music]