Amazon has recently held a closed-door event with sellers in China to tell them about its plans to launch a budget storefront that will list low-cost apparel, home goods, and other items. The Information learned about the event via presentation notes it has obtained, the notes say that Amazon will open this storefront in the fall.
With the launch of this new storefront, Amazon hopes to position itself better to compete with Temu and Shein which have expanded their US and global presence in recent years. Many of the products in Amazon"s new store are expected to cost under $20 - some products that the presentation showed off include unbranded products such as a gua sha facial massage tool, arm weights, and phone cases.
One of the issues with some of these cheap stores that import from China is the long delivery wait times. With Amazon"s offering, products will ship from China to the US in nine to 11 days.
Another way Amazon will be competing with Shein is by offering small-batch production where sellers will be able to test new items to see how well they sell before increasing production.
When asked, Amazon declined to affirm that it was launching this new storefront in the fall but a company spokesperson said:
"We are always exploring new ways to work with our selling partners to delight our customers with more selection, lower prices, and greater convenience."
It"ll be interesting to see what sort of quality control Amazon employs on this new storefront, some of these ultra-cheap stores are known to host bad-quality products, but what can you expect at such low prices? Unfortunately for Amazon, it has made a big thing of its Climate Pledge and becoming carbon neutral, so it"s not good if it"s peddling rubbish products that end up in a landfill after a few months.
Source: The Information via CNBC