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1 100 million sellers were blocked.

Amazon set off a big earthquake.

The past two months have been the darkest moment in cross-border electronic commerce, China.

At the end of April, Pazhexun, known as the "Three Masters of Amazon", first encountered a critical attack. His 606 best-selling products were removed from the shelves, and a large amount of funds were frozen by Amazon, which caused heavy losses.

You know, this is a barley company with annual sales of nearly 5 billion, and Amazon said it was closed.

Surprised, no one expected that a large-scale tide of titles had just begun.

On May 9, Australia, one of the "Four Small Schools in South China", lost a large number of links to its Amazon store and blocked its account. At that time, just open Aoji's Amazon website and click on the product link, and a dog will appear.

On June 16, Xinghui announced that some shops involved in the three brands of RAVPower, Taotronics and VAVA under Shenzhen Zebao Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. were suspended from sales by Amazon platform on the same day.

Only after more than half a month, on the evening of July 6, Tianze Information, a listed company, also announced that about 340 online stores of its e-commerce "Youshu" were blocked and 65.438+0.3 billion yuan of funds were frozen.

Overnight, the brand revenue dropped from 45 million to 654.38+00,000, and 654.38+0.400 employees left.

According to incomplete statistics, since April, there have been more than a dozen big sellers with titles, involving more than 40 brands, most of which are 3C products. Many big sellers in Shenzhen, such as "Four Less in South China City" and "Five Tigers in Sakata", including Patoson, Oki, Tongtuo, Ape, Zebao and other companies, have encountered a large number of Amazon product links being removed from the shelves.

A blocked "list" circulating across borders

After recruiting a group of human traffickers, the ban continued. According to industry estimates, more accounts will be detected by Amazon, and at least 200,000-300,000 sellers have problems with their accounts, which have been included in the scope of review.

For the cross-border e-commerce circle, the past June was a "dead June", and almost every day there were negative news such as titles, store closures, bankruptcy and layoffs.

Under the madness of Amazon, the whole cross-border electric business circle in South China was in a panic, and many sellers even declared bankruptcy directly.

It was also during this period that a large number of online stores of Tesco, a well-known cross-border e-commerce company on Amazon, were blocked and their funds were frozen. These tens of billions of sellers were even filed for bankruptcy and reorganization by banks.

The impact of this wave of titles is self-evident. As you know, once Amazon punishes the seller, it means that the seller's shop or brand is blocked, and the funds and goods in the account will be frozen by Amazon.

According to Ian. Com, the amount of funds detained in the past month is about 20-30 billion yuan, which is estimated to involve all sellers' funds or exceed 1000 billion yuan.

Once many numbers are blocked, there is no possibility of recovery. For the seller, this is equivalent to being sentenced to death directly.

A "once-in-a-decade earthquake" is spreading among cross-border e-commerce.

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Data leakage triggered a major rectification of the platform.

For e-commerce, June was originally a carnival season.

Domestic 6 18 has just ended, followed by the global promotion of Amazon member day.

But what they didn't expect was that on the eve of Prime Day, cross-border e-commerce sellers in China were waiting for the earthquake.

Amazon, what the hell happened?

In fact, there are signs. At the beginning of 20021,many China sellers received the official mail from Amazon:

Your account is at risk of being deactivated. We contacted you because you seem to have violated one or more of the following requirements of Amazon.com Seller's Code of Conduct, which affected customers' ratings, feedback and comments; Manipulate the sales ranking; Artificially increasing network traffic.

Isn't this a common list, comment and ranking in China? We are all used to it. Besides, China sellers swiped their bills on Amazon, and Amazon turned a blind eye before.

This kind of regular mail did not attract the attention of the seller.

But no one expected that this time Amazon was serious. Different from sealing some small fish and shrimp in the past, this time several big sellers were directly picked off the horse.

I thought it was enough to make an example, but the next "blood wash" was beyond all sellers' expectations. Big sellers have been blocked one after another, making the whole cross-border e-commerce circle start to panic.

There are practical reasons for Amazon's sudden increase in rectification.

Just in May, a network security organization named "Security Detective" released an open AWS elastic search database. The data here is directed at the fake review organization on Amazon.

More than130,000 pieces of direct communication information between suppliers and customers show that these customers are willing to provide false comments in exchange for free products.

The seller's praise has been proved by the hammer. Whether considering data security or public opinion security, Amazon must strike hard.

In an open letter entitled "Building a Trusted Customer Review Experience" on June 16, Amazon bluntly said:

"In 2020, we stopped more than 200 million suspected false comments before customers saw them, and more than 99% of them were discovered and deleted through our active monitoring ... At the same time, we took measures against sellers' accounts that obtained commercial benefits through false comments. "

This letter from Amazon is not only a response to the wave of "titles", but also a slogan for the gray industrial chain of "brushing the list".

In today's cross-border e-commerce circle, "brushing the bill" has long been an open secret.

Amazon platform has always been "commodity-oriented, light shop", and everything is commodity-centered, and the presence of shops is extremely low.

In other words, if you shop on Amazon and search for keywords, Amazon will use an algorithm to calculate the page weights of all products and then show them to you in order.

The higher the product ranking, the higher the exposure and click-through rate, and the more orders. Those backward products are hardly exposed, let alone delivered.

In Amazon's algorithm, the three core indicators are sales volume, conversion rate and favorable rate.

In other words, in order to increase sales, merchants on Amazon must improve the ranking of their products, and the brush list was born. Finally, there is even a saying in the industry:

You may die if you brush a bill, but you can only die if you don't brush it.

In such an atmosphere, the ash production of "single brush" began to increase wantonly. The most common way is that the seller will use clips, leaflets, coupons, brochures and so on. Induce buyers to make positive comments/scores on product packaging.

A more intense example is "Wu Sangui":

New businesses, "one cabinet to send, one cabinet to brush, one cabinet to kill", is to brush the rankings.

Unexpectedly, now "Wu Sangui" meets Amazon's "Zhang Sanfeng":

Seal up accounts, brands and funds.

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Cross-border e-commerce, the end of the era of barbaric growth

The concept of cross-border e-commerce is not new, as early as the beginning of this century.

However, it is also a matter of recent years that China Merchants has made efforts in overseas e-commerce.

20 14 While domestic e-commerce giants such as Cat and JD.COM began to go overseas, international e-commerce giants such as Amazon also began to attract Chinese people.

Since 20 15, cross-border e-commerce has embarked on the fast track of development, and traditional retailers, domestic and foreign e-commerce giants, startups, logistics service providers and supply chain distributors have entered the global battle.

A large number of China people began to flood into Amazon, but at that time, China sellers were not optimistic. At that time, China factory lacked overseas sales channels, and China sellers did not understand foreign consumption habits. But soon, just three years later, the hot topic of foreigners became:

How to "beat" China on Amazon?

The complete industrial category and super production speed make the supply chain of cross-border e-commerce in China extremely strong. It is no exaggeration to say that on Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce platform, China sellers can cover 99% of categories.

At the same time, China sellers on Amazon will carry forward the "preferential cashback" set overseas-

Spend a lot of money to brush a lot of praise and improve the star rating;

Attach "gift cards" with different amounts to the package and ask consumers to leave five-star praise to get the money on the gift card;

The crystal transparent Christmas tree advertised by the buyer turned out to be made of inferior wood. ...

The high profit margin of the cross-border e-commerce industry is also tempting a steady stream of entrants.

According to the survey of DoNews, the profit rate of a product can be as high as dozens of times around 20 15.

An ordinary thermos cup is sold to American customers at the price of 15 yuan in China and $25 on Amazon, and after deducting commission and transportation costs, it can still make a profit of nearly 120 yuan.

A steady stream of entrants has spawned a huge market. The White Paper on Cross-border Export E-commerce Industry in 2020 shows that in 2020, China's cross-border e-commerce import and export 1.69 trillion yuan, of which exports1.2 trillion yuan, accounting for nearly 70%, with a year-on-year increase of over 40%.

In addition, the data disclosed by the State Post Bureau also shows that by the end of 2020, among all cross-border e-commerce packages in the world, packages sent from China will account for more than 60%.

At the same time, smart capital quickly smelled the smell of money.

According to the statistics of Yibang Power, in 2020 alone, there will be more than 30 cross-border e-commerce financing cases, half of which will exceed 1 billion yuan and 202 1 more.

More companies are scrambling to enter the market. Sky Eye Survey shows that there are more than 600,000 cross-border e-commerce related enterprises in China. Since the beginning of this year, China has added more than 42,000 cross-border electronic commerce-related enterprises.

On the Amazon platform, these companies are gearing up, thinking that they can rise rapidly by "brushing". What they didn't expect was that Amazon actually made a "swipe" move.

Whoever wants to climb to the top of the mountain will fold at the foot of the mountain.

For cross-border e-commerce, the era of barbaric growth in the past is coming to an end.

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End of movement

For a long time, on the bright side, e-commerce platforms are actually strictly prohibiting "brushing" behavior.

According to the regulations of Amazon platform, once the seller violates the rules, he will be warned or permanently closed his account.

So is China. Look at the slogans of major platforms-

Taobao: It is illegal to brush a bill. In severe cases, the store will be closed permanently.

JD。 COM: Resolutely put an end to counterfeit goods and strike hard at swiping bills.

Pinduoduo: False delivery, frozen payment and fine.

But in fact, it is really rare to have a large-scale title like Amazon this time.

It must be noted that not only China sellers, but also foreign sellers. But among them, the sellers in China really worked hard.

In essence, from barbaric growth to benign development is the only way for any industry, as is cross-border e-commerce.

In the era of barbaric growth, the rules are not perfect and there are loopholes everywhere; But in the second half of the year, it is still about products and services.

If China sellers want to truly go global, they must "self-revolutionize" their thinking, otherwise-

You can't find the new continent along the old map.