Amazon to ship electronics in Brazil from third-party sellers
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SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc began offering electronics from third-party sellers to Brazilian shoppers on Wednesday, expanding beyond books in the fiercely competitive e-commerce market in Latin America’s largest economy.
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Amazon Brazil's country manager Alex Szapiro poses for a photograph during an interview with Reuters in Sao Paulo, Brazil October 17, 2017. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker
The long-awaited move will offer televisions, cell phones and laptops from hundreds of independent sellers on Amazon’s website in Brazil without involving the company in the tricky logistics that have hurt many online retailers in the country.
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Alex Szapiro, Amazon’s country manager in Brazil, declined to say if there were plans for the company to stock its own electronics inventory or open a fulfillment center to ship third-party goods more efficiently, as it did simultaneously with the launch of independent sellers in Mexico two years ago.
 
“Each country has a different playbook,” said Szapiro in an interview with Reuters at Amazon headquarters in Sao Paulo. He helped launch the company’s Brazil business with e-books in 2012 after running operations for Apple Inc in the country for five years.
 
Shares of local e-commerce rivals MercadoLibre Inc, Magazine Luiza SA and B2W Cia Digital have fallen 14 percent, 17 percent and 20 percent, respectively, in the past week on concerns of heightened competition from Amazon.
 
Keeping pace with the local e-commerce market, Amazon will parcel purchases into as many as 10 monthly installments without interest, a practice the company started in Brazil for Kindle e-reader sales in 2014, then extended to Mexico and other markets.
 
Sellers will be paid up-front, minus a 10 percent commission to Amazon and fees of 19 reais ($6) per month or 2 reais per item. Szapiro called the 10 percent commission a “promotional” rate without saying when or how much it would eventually rise.

Amazon Marketplace: It's Bigger Than It Looks
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During a talk I gave at the Retail Global Conference, I met Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of Marketplace Pulse, and had the opportunity to discuss with him the current and future state of the Amazon marketplace, one of the larger marketplaces his company researches.
Marketplace Pulse is an independent research company that collects ecommerce data from sellers and marketplaces around the world and seeks to deliver valuable insights into, and updated business intelligence about, ecommerce trends. Its research team collects information about all aspects of marketplaces, from Amazon to eBay to Etsy. It then sells the data-driven insights gathered to ecommerce business owners looking to learn from and leverage trends in the industry.
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Talking to Kaziukenas at the conference, I found it eye-opening to learn about the size of the Amazon marketplace (bigger than most would think) as well as other fascinating insights, such as the way China affects the market, the average seller's income from the platform and Kaziukenas's own views on the relative competition inside the Amazon marketplace.
My questions just kept coming . . . How many sellers are in the marketplace? How many are selling more than $1 million per year? What makes a successful seller? Read my interview with Kaziukenas to learn his responses, and more.
Q. To start, what is the Amazon marketplace?
A. Some sales on Amazon.com are done by Amazon itself, and some are handled by marketplace sellers. Amazon has done a good job hiding the complexity of this from customers, meaning that they often are not even aware of this.
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In 2017, in the second quarter, the units sold by marketplace sellers for the first time exceeded those [sold] by Amazon itself. I find this to be surprising to most, but over the years Amazon has built infrastructure to allow sellers to grow, and in turn [to help] Amazon grow, itself.
Many successful retailers are now being born, only selling on Amazon. It's almost a special skill, being good at selling on Amazon, as it involves managing the tools available in the ecosystem, various services like fulfillment and advertising, etc.
 
Q. How big is the Amazon marketplace market?
A. Credit Suisse has published some estimates on this, and I think they make sense. They estimated the marketplace to contribute $135 billion globally to Amazon's own sales. Yep, $135 billion. They also estimate that by 2020, the marketplace will have grown to $259 billion. This makes the Amazon marketplace a much bigger market than most countries' ecommerce markets are -- which also means many sellers and brands are trying to be part of it.
My best estimate is that the marketplace has at least five million marketplace sellers on Amazon, two million or more of which are on Amazon.com alone. 
 
We estimate that roughly one million new sellers will join in 2017 -- half of that on Amazon.com, and half on the other international marketplaces.
 
Q. Wouldn't that mean, then, that the competition for any seller is millions of other sellers?
 
A. While there are millions of sellers out there, it's a weak metric, as it misses the point. Many sellers are not often active, and even fewer are businesses of size. The most relevant number for this is something Amazon said earlier this year, when they mentioned that there are 100,000 sellers with $100,000 or more in sales a year.
 
 
This is a few orders of magnitude smaller than the oft-mentioned millions. But I feel like this is important to grasp: Marketplaces always have a long-tail distribution of sellers. There might be many of them, but only a small percent sell in volume.
 
Scott Schenkel of eBay recently said that, "About 80 percent of our gross merchandise volume is through B2C sellers that do over $10,000 a month, and the rest is 20 percent; that’s less than that." It's similar on Amazon too.
 
Q. How many are selling more than $1 million a year then?
 
A. We researched this earlier this year and came up with a solid estimate. The number we got was that there are roughly 10,000 sellers with sales at $1 million a year or more. This compares to the 100,000 sellers with $100,000 yearly sales. Of course, this is estimating the market size for the overall Amazon marketplace; and not all of those sellers are selling on Amazon.com.
 
Q. What do these successful sellers have in common?
 
A. First, they often use the Fulfillment by Amazon [FBA] service to off-load inventory to Amazon. We again estimated that more than 60 percent of top sellers on Amazon.com are using Amazon Marketplace, and this number has only increased over time. It is simply hard to compete with other sellers while handling the fulfillment yourself. Plus, customers with Prime memberships get to have the same two-day shipping experience when using FBA.
 
 
Second, they either do private labeling really well, or they have mastered retail arbitrage. These two different types of sellers are quite distinct, with private labeling definitely being the golden ticket for now. It has simply become very hard to compete while offering the same products everyone else can sell.
 
The margins in resell make it a decreasingly inviting business venture on Amazon. This may also shed some light on the rise in Amazon affiliate websites, which don't involve ecommerce themselves but instead market products from Amazon marketplace sellers. A great example is Family Tent Center, which reviews the best camping gear and markets its content to earn a commission when people buy products from Amazon through their site.
 
Q: You mentioned China. How is the Chinese market affecting Amazon?
 
A: Yet another thing we researched! Estimating how many Chinese businesses sell on Amazon is quite hard, as the marketplace is anonymous, and thus it is nearly impossible to determine where a seller is located -- especially if they use FBA for inventory, making their inventory domestic.
 
Thus, for the United States, it is similar, if not higher. Every Chinese business wants to sell on Amazon.com -- it is the biggest market. So, a third or more sellers on Amazon.com are based in China. And, no doubt that number is only going to get bigger.
 
Amazon is a widely known market in China, and the [number] of businesses going after it is hard to grasp. Sellers definitely need to make sure they don't find themselves competing on price with them, as often that is impossible to win.
 
Q. In the end, is it worth buying an Amazon marketplace business?
 
A. Most of the time it is. The market opportunity, as I mentioned earlier, is massive, and buying a business can kick-start a venture faster than starting from scratch. It looks like there are plenty of options in the market, and growth opportunities are big, too, as Amazon.com continues to get bigger, as more Prime members join.
 
 
Related: 4 Reasons Why Amazon's Product-Search Dominance Matters
 
I'm eager to see consolidations of Amazon businesses: someone combining a seller, or more than one, with a software provider for sellers, and maybe a logistics expert -- or, some mix of those. In a way, creating a super company which has more things under its control. I think, especially, that combining great minds for product development, with manufacturing experts, and logistics experts can make a big difference.

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Amazon ships an average of 1.6 million packages per day. Yes, per day. According to CNBC, about 55 percent of people start their online shopping searches on Amazon. This means that if you have something to sell and you're selling online, if you don't have a presence on Amazon, you are missing out on over half of your potential market. Sell On Amazon
Related: 3 Things You Should Consider Before Listing Your Products on Amazon
One of my favorite quotes is, The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is today. If you're in ecommerce and the thought of selling on Amazon has never crossed your mind, well, you're behind the eight ball. The good news, however, is that it's never too late to get started. Today, I'm going to tell you how to get started and get your first 100 sales on this retail monster.
Get set up on Seller Central.
In order to start selling on Amazon, you need to create an Amazon Sellers account. Amazon goes through this step by step on its website.
There are over 20 categories open to all Amazon sellers, and then 10 or more that are only open to Professional Sellers. In order to list products in these particular categories, you will need special approval from Amazon, and in many cases, this approval is not easy to get. My family started a dermatologist-backed skin care and beauty website,  and we sell in the "Beauty" category on Amazon, which is one of the most difficult to get this approval for. It took us eight months to get through all of Amazon's "gates." That's a story for another day, (or you can hear more about it on  but the point is to be prepared for this process to take some time and effort. Trust me though when I say that it will be worth it in the end.
Related: 7 Pitfalls to Avoid When Launching on Amazon (Infographic)
Find a product that's going to sell.
Once you're all set up to sell on Amazon, the next step is actually deciding what to sell. If you have your own brand, you will need to go through the brand registry process, and that's another topic in and of itself. If you are reselling other brands' products, however, you need to decide which of these products to list on your Amazon store. This is a big decision, as you'll need to invest in purchasing inventory beforehand. There are several things to consider:
The cost of the products: The best advice I was given when I started selling on Amazon was to pick a product that you can sell for cheap. We were trying to break into the beauty category and as soon as I heard "sell something for cheap," I immediately thought of my baseball card collection. My business partner (and sister), however, came up with the idea of selling lip balm. This was perfect for us because it is relevant in our category, and even more importantly, we could stock up on a good amount of inventory without a huge financial investment. My sister and I have consulted with many brands that have sold millions of dollars per year on Amazon, so we knew this strategy has worked.
Amazon sales rank: Every product sold on Amazon has a sales rank, which is determined by one of Amazon's algorithms. Products are ranked within their category and a lower sales rank means that a product has a higher chance of selling and a better track record of sales. A product with a lower rank should take a shorter amount of time to sell, while a product with a higher rank will likely not sell as well or as fast. If you can find a product with a sales rank of under 10,000, you should be great to go.
Related: The DNA of the Successful Amazon Seller
Within Seller Central, when you go add a product, type in the ASIN or UPC code and you can see the product's sales rank. You can't, however, base your decision of what to sell solely on this number.
If you have no idea where to start in your product search, or want to get a benchmark of what a great sales rank looks like in your category, check the list of Amazon Best Sellers within your product category. You can also hire an Amazon consultant who will be able to help you in your product search as well as in all other areas of selling on Amazon.
Pricing competition on Amazon: Another important factor to consider is the price that other sellers are listing your potential new product at. For us, in the beauty category, if you are a legitimate, authorized seller like we are, the brands set the prices for all of the products. The suggested retail price (SRP) for the lip balm we mentioned earlier, for example, is $3.89. We cannot sell the product for any lower than this. So, we need to be very careful when deciding to list a product on Amazon because if there are other (unauthorized) sellers listing the products for lower than its SRP then we won't be able to make any sales on that particular product. Think about it -- if you go to buy your favorite sunscreen on Amazon and you see one offer for $30 and another for $50, which are you more likely to choose?
Even if you don't have to follow manufacturer pricing guidelines like we do, you still have to be aware of the listing prices of other sellers, as you don't want to get into a pricing war, driving your prices down so low that you'll never be able to make a profit.
Low prices and free shipping: While you don't want to start any pricing wars, you do want to price your products as low as possible, at least to start. Even if you're breaking even or losing a little bit of money in the beginning, making sure your prices are lower than anyone else's will get people in the door and get you the sales volume you need to really grow your Amazon presence. Ensuring your prices are the lowest will also help you get into the Amazon "Buy Box," which will lead to more sales.
Another way to ensure your price is the lowest is by offering free shipping. This is something, once again, that you can do just to start, if it's too costly for the long run.
Related: 10 Steps to Selling Your Product on Amazon (Infographic)
Get feedback.
When I say "get feedback," I don't mean get reviews for the product you're selling, I mean get feedback for your actual Amazon store. When shopping on Amazon, people want to know that they're buying from a trustworthy seller, and the best way to show customers that is to have reviews from other buyers that say so. Having feedback from our past customers makes potential new customers trust that we're legit.
 

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When you search on the internet for someone to purchase your inventory. Know that there are a lot of options. There are companies that will outbid one another for your inventory – which is good news for you because you can really take advantage of whoever offers you the best price. However, if you overplay that card. You can be sitting on your inventory for longer than planned.
You should know the value of your inventory and know what is the least amount of money you’ll accept for your purchases. From our experience, there are only a few real bulk inventory buyers out there in the liquidation industry. Everyone else seem to really be just brokers or middlemen.
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Liquidate Products, LLC is our top choice when it comes to the needs of liquidating wholesale merchandise. They are fair in their evaluation, and above all – they know the importance of keeping your brand alive. With Liquidate Products, LLC – they make it a point to make sure that your product does not go into the liquidation, secondary market and diminish in value.