Amazon News: AI Wars, Etsy Checkout, China’s Lead & $5 Groceries

Amazon News: AI Wars, Etsy Checkout, China’s Lead & $5 Groceries Unknown Speaker: Welcome, fellow entrepreneurs, to the Amazon Sellers School podcast, where we talk about Amazon and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle and anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch. Speaker 4: Hey, hey, hey, what's going on, everybody? We got a full house today for Amazon Seller News Live. Appreciate everybody out there joining us. We've got Noah from MyAmazonGuy, Daynon from EcomTriage, and John from Trellis. So guys, appreciate you joining us today, or joining me today, I should say. Speaker 1: Yeah, buddy. Speaker 2: Always happy to be here. Speaker 3: I just got it connected, folks. Anyone that's watching and didn't realize LinkedIn was making me give them my birth certificate, social security number to connect it. So yes, we're good. Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a little crazy. Speaker 3: I had my license out, everything out, blood sample out. Speaker 4: But all right, yeah, we're good to go. Appreciate everybody joining us. So we've got some good news today. Some interesting news with ChatGPT, a lot of AI news that Noah's got some big opinions about our first one here. He said already, so that's good. Amazon's launching a new brand and some China news as well. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into the first one here. So ChatGPT is now 20% of Walmart's referral traffic while Amazon wards off AI shopping agents. ChatGPT is becoming a major driver of online shopping traffic, accounting for 20% of Walmart's referrals and significant shares for Etsy, Target, and eBay. Shoppers are increasingly relying on AI recommendations instead of traditional search engines, shifting how consumers discover products online. Amazon, however, has blocked AI crawlers to protect this $56 billion ad business and instead pushes its own AI assistant, Rufus. For Amazon sellers, this means rivals may gain traffic from AI tools while Amazon maintains a closed ecosystem, so staying alert to how AI shopping evolves will be critical. And by the way, we're gonna go over to Noah here in a second, but if you're out there watching, if you have any opinions on the news or just anything Amazon in general, throw them in the comments and we'll bring them into the show. So let's jump over to you right away on this one, Noah. Speaker 2: Okay, so I do have big opinions on this because lots of people were making a stink about this this week and talking about it. And so I started doing some digging because I was like, Where are these numbers coming from, right? And so there were a couple of studies that were ran on this. And the thing is that I could tell a lot of people were just reading the headlines. Nobody actually read the study. So I read the study. And for, I already told this to Todd, but for Dana and John, I want you guys to just take a quick guess. How much of Walmart's total traffic do you think comes from referral? Speaker 1: Hmm, as a percentage, I'd say 12%. Speaker 3: Okay, I'm going to go with higher than that. I'm going to go with upwards of 30%. Speaker 2: Well, John, you're way off. I mean, you got one number correct. Speaker 4: 3%. Speaker 2: 3% of all of Walmart's traffic is referral. So looking at this number where people are like, oh, ChatGPT is 20% of Walmart's referral traffic. It's like, cool. That's 0.6% of all of their traffic, right? Speaker 1: Still a lot of traffic. I'd take that to my website any day. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess. But it's one of those where I think people are overstating and overblowing the amount here, right? So it's the same thing where People are wondering, why is Amazon not allowing these AI trackers? It's because it's all data at the end of the day. 60% of searches for products online start on Amazon as is. They don't need ChatGPT to be pushing them right now, because at some point in time, it's going to turn into an ad funnel of some kind. This whole idea that it's a huge boost, I think, is Not really there. Also, Google is still a very large percentage in general of that referral traffic and traffic in general on Walmart, right? So I don't know. It's like people are just searching or using ChatGPT for search, right? And it's just the same. Speaker 3: It's a matter of how are they searching for it, right? So you're going on ChatGPT and you're saying, find me the best waffle maker that's under $30 with good reviews. That's one thing. But if you're starting to talk about, Waffle makers and in general, and then it's starting to pepper it inside of that. Like everyone's talking about the new ChatGPT shopping and shopping in open AI with ChatGPT. This is horrible. It hasn't rolled out to me. I don't know why I pay the $20. I pay for every, no one knows. I pay for every single tool under the sun and GPT-5. I literally typed in what's the best waffle maker under $30. That's easy to use. It thought for 39 seconds. That's a hell of a long time when someone's making a buying decision when I can just go to Google and type it in or go to Amazon and type it in. So I don't know why I haven't been rolled out or that hasn't rolled out to me. But when you compare this to Perplexity, it pales in comparison. Perplexity instantly does a way better job. Speaker 2: The one crazy thing that hasn't rolled out to you, I was part of the beta program for it like six months ago. Speaker 3: Anyone watching knows that Noah and I probably talk every single day and he tries to one up me and I try to one up him and he'll have today. That's fine. Speaker 4: But just to confirm real quick, John, on ChatGPT, you have auto selected. You don't happen to have thinking selected in the upper left. Speaker 3: Nope. It's always thinking drove me absolutely insane. Um, I have no patience for that. It's always on auto, so it gets to decide. Um, but I did a video like comparing the two where a simple search for this, literally the same prompt that opening puts on their website. I think they put best running sneaker under a hundred dollars and it took forever for it to come back. And when it did come back, it was not in that UI that they're talking about. Speaker 4: Okay. Yeah, so still in beta, rolling it out to various people then, it looks like. But I did ask Grok, Noah, and it backs you up that it says, referral traffic constitutes less than 5% of the total website visits to walmart.com. Speaker 2: So, yeah, well, and I so I actually just looked. So I did a thing. I was just like asking GPT. I'm like, hey, so what are the best grills to buy? Right. And For reference, I would think like Walmart, if it's like a huge thing or any of these, like it would be big. The first one takes me to Weber's site, which is great. That's the new Shopify stuff, right? Next one is Ace Hardware. Next one is Home Depot, then Crate and Barrel, right? It's one of those that even still for stuff like this where even I am someone who has been having like the ability to purchase via like the AI, right? That only works maybe one time out of 10 right now, whereas most of the time they still want to guide you off the site to do it. The agent itself won't do a lot of that buying process for you. Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a work in progress. I mean, I've said it before, but AI is in its infancy mode. It's like going back to the internet in the early 90s, 1995 or something like that. And buying was extremely difficult back then, just like it is in AI now. But the thing with AI is it's going to advance so quickly, I think over the next couple years that You're going to go from the bad user interface you have today to probably something really nice, really slick that's competing very heavily with Amazon. Speaker 1: And I hope that happens and that most of the results are not from Amazon. Speaker 4: Well, yeah, that's the thing, you know, Amazon is blocking the AI agents, right? So my first thought of this was like the competition between Android and Apple. Right. Apple is very closed ecosystem. Apple itself is one of the most profitable companies in the world. But Android has a bigger user base and they're more of an open source system. So it's going to be interesting to see if Amazon goes the route of Apple and tries to stay closed and what kind of effect that will have. As these other companies like Walmart and Etsy and eBay and all of them kind of go more open source with ChatGPT and other AI systems. Speaker 1: And I look at it. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I look at it really similarly, like the reason Amazon is doing this again, like over 60% of online like product searches start on Amazon is right as is right now. They pulled out of Google ads in the US earlier this year, right. And the reason they did that is because They also already are dominating Google search as is, and they didn't see any differentiator from pulling out of those shopping ads. So why would you? And so, I mean, I think it's right on the money with that as well in the sense that, yeah, we're probably going to see that these AI won't do it. My guess though, with like GBT stuff is like, Six to 12 months from now, they're going to start rolling out advertising inside of this for the product stuff. Because like GBT is just fully unprofitable right now, right? Open AI is just like unprofitable with what they are doing. And so they have to, at some point in time, start to make money. And the only way that they can do that realistically is to go the Google route, which is offer advertising for things that people are selling. Speaker 1: Well, they're getting an affiliate commission from Etsy. So when people, you'll have a instant buy from ChatGPT and they'll make an affiliate commission. So I think they're going to play both sides here. You can pay for advertising, but also they're going to get a referral fee. Speaker 2: They're going the Amazon route, right? Like that's what Amazon does. Hey, we're going to take this referral fee, but we're also going to allow you to advertise. Pay us so you can get that. Speaker 3: You even saw, Noah, how like a month or so ago, Amazon blocked Perplexity Comet for even accessing Amazon.com. Speaker 2: Amazon Saudi Arabia. Speaker 3: What do you mean? Speaker 2: That's the only Amazon marketplace right now that you can do. So last time Todd and I were together, we were looking at that. Amazon Saudi Arabia is the only marketplace that is not blocked from AI. So if you're ever looking for something on Amazon, All of the data you get polled about listings right now, like all of these different wrappers that they have, it's all Amazon Saudi Arabia information. Speaker 3: Oh, because for a period of two weeks, I couldn't even access amazon.com with Comet. Now I can, but I don't know what happened. But literally for a period of two weeks, I had to switch back to Dia browser instead of Comet because I just couldn't even open it. Comet is the only, right now, agentic AI browser on the market, if you want to call it that, that I was literally using to agentically crawl Amazon and pull information off. And Amazon must have knew that right away and blocked it, which is wild. Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, Amazon's the behemoth, right? So they're going to try to protect their market share until they lose enough that it makes sense for them to open up. And so that'll be the question if they will lose enough or if going the Apple route will pay off for them. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: Time will tell. Speaker 4: Yeah. All right, let's jump on to the next one here because it has everything to do with what we're talking about now and you just mentioned it. Oh, yeah. So AI effect, Etsy pops 16%, their stock that is, as OpenAI launches ChatGPT instant checkout. OpenAI introduced instant checkout inside of ChatGPT, allowing users to make single item purchases directly from the US. Etsy sellers with Shopify's million plus merchants coming soon. This lets shoppers complete transactions without leaving ChatGPT, signaling a major shift in how consumers buy online. So basically kind of continuing off of what we were just talking about. Yeah, the Instant Checkout, which is interesting. The Etsy is cool, but Shopify to me is more interesting because they just said recently that they weren't gonna allow Instant Checkout. You had to go to the Shopify page to do so, but it sounds like they may be coming around to Instant Checkout inside of ChatGPT. Speaker 1: It hasn't launched for me yet. Speaker 3: I see it now. It's not native. So what it'll do is it'll show you icons and thumbnails from the Etsy thing. There's no action to it. You have to click on it. Then it expands a window over that's highlighted that says Instant Checkout. But for me, this is old news. Perplexity's Checkout. Regardless of using Perplexity Common or regular Perplexity, they have had this for months now. We can just buy directly with Perplexity. I even think at one point they were leveraging Amazon-like shipping where it was like two days or something like that. So yeah, this is kind of old news and quite frankly, you know, with something like Etsy, That's primarily like, I mean, who's shopping on Etsy, right? I mean, I know there's a ton of people that shop on Etsy, right? But I look at Etsy as evolving into a digital store. Most things that I see on Etsy, yes, there's a craft, there's a handmade, but it's gonna be the SVG files, the digital download files, the logo download files, like that's the most that I see on Etsy if I go on. Speaker 2: I think a lot of it as well is that Oh, I froze. Speaker 1: We got you. Speaker 2: Okay. I froze for a second. The most that I think it is right now as well is, you know, as you say, John, Perplexity's had this for quite a while. I mean, I remember back in like January using Perplexity to do some searches. I made a couple of videos on it, right? And I think a large part of all of this is this aspect of like ChatGPT and OpenAI being the most common consumer AI right now and like common I'm a layman's, I guess, person's AI. If you're not in the AI world, I know people who use ChatGPT just like Google search now, right? But if I talk to them like, hey, do you know what Claude is? Do you know what perplexity is? Do you know, so on, so they don't, right? They don't understand any of that. And so ChatGPT, I think that's why it's like such a big deal. That being said, I would also imagine there's like a lot of backend here of like payment processors, right? Like, are they actually going through the payment processor? I would imagine there's an issue of like, is it the payment processors attaching to ChatGPT? Okay, now there's probably additional regulation around that, right? Because there's a reason Why Google all of these years outside of like Google specific shopping thing, right? Hasn't allowed you to just like buy products in the Google search, right? Speaker 3: I'll tell you why. There's a really easy reason. Google is free. Most ChatGPT for anyone that's really heavily using it pays the $20 a month. So when you go to the checkout, it defaults to the same payment method that you're using for the ChatGPT. So that's the connection, right? Google, there's the friction point of like, it's free. Anyone could use it. But if you're on the paid pro, whatever the hell they want to call it, GBT, they already have your payment information right there. So it defaults, right? Because I just pulled up some bridal shower thing. I pulled them on Etsy. Speaker 4: I don't know why. Speaker 3: But it automatically has my payment information that I use for ChatGPT. So that's the connection there. Speaker 4: Interesting. Yeah, that's interesting that it's using the card built inside of ChatGPT versus one that you might have saved in Etsy or a Shopify store or something. Speaker 3: Well, because it doesn't know that, right? Because you're staying inside the GPT world and there's that, what Noah brings up is interesting. So if the payment is made through OpenAI, right? Are you getting, as an Etsy seller, instant? What does that look like if someone wants to shop directly on Etsy? What does your payout look like versus if they buy through ChatGPT? Is it a longer duration for you to get a payout? Is it instant payout? What other fees are involved in that, if any? How do chargebacks or disputes work with those kind of things? Are there stricter guidelines? Those are the questions that I would have if I was an Etsy seller. Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good question. What's even going to show up on your credit card bill? Is it going to be a charge from OpenAI or is it going to be a charge from Etsy for that product? Speaker 1: Yeah, good question. Speaker 4: Then if you try to return it, Etsy's like, you didn't buy anything. Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no order. Speaker 4: Yeah, that's interesting questions that have to be answered and I'm sure people are working on that, fixing or resolving. We're handling those kind of questions. Speaker 3: The other thing too is I'm looking at something right now, the bridal shower shirt or whatever it is. It's only two images inside of ChatGPT that are commanding for you to then buy. When you go to the PDP or whatever you want to call it for Etsy, there's a lot more images that make it more compelling to actually want to buy from. What kind of attribution is there for if that, like, how do you control or how is there any control over what images are shown for shopping with Etsy on OpenAI and ChatGPT, whereas you as the seller want to say, no, those two images you pulled sucked. They're not going to work and they're not going to convert. Use these images instead, because it looks like it's only pulling one or two images from a PDP that have a ton more assets on it. Speaker 4: Yeah, that's why I say, you know, AI is like 1995 internet right now. You know, when engineers are building things, for whatever reason, they like to make the worst user interfaces the world has ever seen. You know, and it's just that's what's at all these AI companies right now as engineers, you don't have really a lot of marketers or user interface experts and Product testers for the shopping and stuff like that. And that's what's missing where Amazon has had that forever to build out their shopping experience and make sure it's as easy as possible. So I think eventually you'll see that shift where these companies start building out that side of their business and make their interfaces a lot more user friendly outside of, you know, computer Geeks or nerds or whatever you want to call them like all of us here. Well, at least myself, I guess I don't want to speak for you guys, but you know, I think we're all... Speaker 3: Noah's a geek for sure. Speaker 4: We're all pretty experienced on computers compared to the average person out there. Speaker 2: I can be a geek. I keep magic cards. Speaker 1: Oh, you've got the magic cards. Speaker 2: They're on my desk at all times. I'll take that. Speaker 3: I'm sorry. Have you played Steven and Mag yet or no? Speaker 2: No. God, no. Speaker 3: I tried and I lost. Speaker 4: In Magic the Gathering? Oh yeah. Speaker 3: Steven has those, you know, banned cards that are super expensive and he has competitive decks. I don't even know why I tried. Speaker 4: Okay, nice. I played back in high school but I haven't played for a long, long time. I tried the online version a few times. That was kind of fun, but I don't know. Anytime I play games nowadays, it's like I feel like I should be doing something more productive. Speaker 1: Not me. Speaker 4: Oh, you're a gamer still, Dana? Speaker 3: Oh, I play games all the time. I have a game I like to call Let's Get Through the Day Without Breaking Something and Yelling at My Kids. It's a fantastic game that I always, always lose. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 4: Yeah. That's a good one. I'm learning that game as well. You don't have any kids yet, Noah, right? Or do you? Speaker 2: No, I do not. No, I do not. I just get to have creepy clowns surrounding my place at all times. Speaker 3: Those are your children behind you. Speaker 1: If he did have kids, they wouldn't be there any longer after going into that office. Speaker 2: There you go, John. That's how you keep them out. Get some clowns. I'm sure that'll work for you. Speaker 3: Let my kids come to your home office over there. Those clowns will be hanging from outside the window. Let me stop. Speaker 4: Hey Amazon sellers, tired of losing money on storage and shipping fees? Well, Amazon Storage Pros is here to take the headache out of logistics. We manage everything from inventory and creating efficient shipping plans to working with 3PLs and Amazon's AWD so that you can focus on growing your business. Start with a free storage cost audit and discover exactly where you're overspending and how to fix it. Don't let logistics eat into your profits. Visit AmazonStoragePros.com. That's AmazonStoragePros.com to get your free storage cost audit and start saving today. And now back to the show. All right, we got a comment that we can bring in here from Luvto. Sounds like it'll be a lot harder for new products to be seen since AI will suggest only certain products over browser showing a large list from search. Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder about this because, you know, just like Google search results right now, it's just a carousel of a few products and you've got even less real estate on OpenAI or on ChatGPT. So what is that really going to look like? I think that If I had to go with how I look for products on on chat GPT is I am doing product research for the best option for myself. Would I purchase through chat GPT? Unknown Speaker: I don't know. Speaker 1: Maybe once it becomes convenient like Amazon. Yeah, I would, but I'm, I'm using it for product research, not for product purchase. I has any, we all use AI a lot in our businesses today. All four of us. Have any of you purchased anything through an AI? John probably has. No. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Yeah. See, I have not, you know, I know it's a fledgling system, but like you can do it right now, but I haven't, I don't, I don't trust it. Speaker 3: You have to think about the ICP. There's people that go to Best Buy, hold a product, and they'll buy at Best Buy. They'll never buy online. There's people that go to Walmart, and they'll walk in the store, and they'll buy from Walmart. They'll never buy from Walmart.com. Then there's people that will go to Amazon that will never set foot in a store and they will buy on Amazon. So it's a matter of who is the person that would buy from an AI search and also what is their flow like? Are they buying it because they're going into it and typing in an LLM saying, I want the best waffle maker under $30 or are they talking about is this waffle maker better than this waffle maker and the journey starts at research and then transforms into purchase. Most people on Amazon are shopping with intent. No one in their right mind opens up Amazon and says, what do you got for me today? Let's browse around. Most people don't do that. Most people are shopping because Oh my God, I need this, I don't have it. Oh my God, this just broke, I need to replace it. I need this for a gift, I need this for that. It's always need, need, need. It's never really kind of want. Very rarely in my opinion, right? But on ChatGPT, where does it start? And I don't think there's enough data to understand or they won't give you enough data to say, is it starting from research and then transforming into purchase or is it starting with purchase intent? Speaker 2: Well, I think it's also that thing where, you know, in that same study with the Walmart thing, right, for ChatGPT, they came out and they were saying that there's, you know, roughly about 1.5 billion searches every single month on ChatGPT that are product focused, right? And so I understand where they're kind of getting, you know, this idea of being like, oh yeah, we should probably be, you know, doing this where we should have all these. But it also then comes down to that factor of like, okay, people are, I'm searching, quote unquote, for products via ChatGPT, but are those same people? I mean, it's the same exact way of nowadays. Instead, what I used to do for especially higher purchase products, like a TV, for instance, I would just Google best TVs and read the first three, four articles from Tom's Guide or whoever it was. Nowadays, I don't have to do that because ChatGPT instead will just take it and give me that information immediately. Even then, when I got one of those things from Tom's Guide, it's not like I was going through and clicking the affiliate link a lot of times. I would still look for the product. I would go to Amazon and I would try and find the product and then I would still read the product there and decide if I was going to purchase. Where we're at right now, it's I think just clunky, right? Speaker 3: But have you ever searched on the same search and not to be perplexity fanboy, but if you've ever searched What's the best TV under $1,000 that's 50 inches, right? The same search in ChatGPT versus Perplexity, ChatGPT will say, here's a couple and then here's seven more that fit your criteria. Perplexity actually will go and look at all them and say, this is the best one for you. So there's a big difference in the LLMs where ChatGPT is saying, You want to say broad match versus exact match. It's giving you a broad idea of everything that fits your requirements and here's what you can pick from if you want. With perplexity, it's looking at the reviews, it's looking at this and saying, this is exactly what you want based on that criteria. Speaker 4: Yeah, so the question there, John, is going to be how much people are going to trust the AI to actually choose the best one versus giving them a list of options like one to five and saying these are the top five pick whichever one you prefer. It depends on what consumer, I guess, you're targeting. Myself, I probably wouldn't just take perplexity's choice. I'd want to see a list of five to 10. If it only gave me one, I usually ask, give me the top five or top 10, and then I can actually do my own research. But it depends on what kind of shopper you are. Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's like that's the in-between between Google search and doing it all yourself. And then there's a chat GPT where it's giving you the finite list of five to 10 that you can pick from and still have the control. And perplexity is more, we're going to scrape all the data, all the reviews, all the pricing, all the tech specs, and do all the work for you. So it's a matter of where you fit in those buckets. Is it totally DIY? If it's get me halfway there or just tell me everything I need to know. Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, and that, you know, what we're talking about with the TV kind of fits perfectly into this LinkedIn post that I have pulled up from Joseph. He was talking about the Etsy, you know, direct buy. And how it may be a bad fit because for him, he's saying that the best products to look up and research on ChatGPT are going to be expensive and boring products. Boring is subjective. I think a car is not necessarily boring. The more expensive products that are not like fashion and things like that, that you're going to do more research on and not just buy the first one that pops up. Unknown Speaker: I agree with that. Speaker 3: When someone's buying a $600 or $700 Dyson, they want more information on it. That's when they're going to go to something like ChatGPT. I would be so inclined to say that one would start with What's the best vacuum or why is the Dyson this good or how does the Dyson compared to this? So that journey is not starting with show me the Dyson to buy and then they're just going to buy it. So they're starting off with the research to understand more, right? Because no one's I've purchased many strollers in my day. Those things are freaking expensive and you want to know how does it fold flat? How does it fit? How does it store? How does it go? But I think all those different quadrants fit all different other kind of routes that you would take to find. So like, you know, fun and cheap, right, is the Instagram TikTok. That's where that journey's starting. Expensive and fun is kind of also in that same realm. And boring and cheap, when we talk about automate, well, that's just Amazon Subscribe and Save. All that crap that's on there is all on my Subscribe and Save. I don't even think about socks or toilet paper. It just comes to me. Speaker 1: You buy socks over and over again? Speaker 3: Don't get me started on socks. Speaker 2: I do. Speaker 3: Socks. Socks in my house. Socks. As soon as I take the socks off and put them in the laundry hamper, I might as well just throw them out because they're gone. I can never find them again. I'm doing the new DJ Khaled way of just, I'm going to buy socks, wear them once. And then if they come back around again, if it was meant to be, let it go. If it was meant to be, it'll come back to you. That kind of mentality. Speaker 2: My girlfriend asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year. I know, crazy, because it's only October. I told her I wanted a year's supply of socks, a new pair for every single day. And I was dead serious, because I think that would just be fantastic if I never had to worry about. The amount of time I spend trying to find matching pairs of socks is crazy. Speaker 1: What is wrong with you people? Speaker 2: They just disappeared, Dana. I don't know what to tell you. I do laundry. There's only two of us in the house. It's like I do laundry and some other is gone. They evaporate into thin air. I don't know. Speaker 1: I'm getting the death stare from my wife. Apparently, for my own health, you guys are so right. That's horrible. I totally agree with you. Okay, she's smiling now. I'm good. Speaker 4: I just buy like 20 pairs of the exact same socks. So that way, no matter which two I grab, they're always a pair. Speaker 1: Oh, nice. Speaker 3: But you're talking about you can grab two. I can't find any. I have a house of five people, mind you, and I am wearing my wife's socks right now because I could not find socks and that was the only pair of socks I could find and I don't care. Noah, I'm putting that on my birthday list that I want a year supply of socks this month later for my wife. Speaker 2: There you go. Speaker 4: Yeah. All right. Nice. Yeah. It's going to be fun to watch the AI shopping revolution. That's for sure. It's definitely going to be coming. It's just a question of how far off it is before it really makes a dent in normal shopping. I was just reading that Google Shopping is still approximately 41% of US shoppers use Google Shopping when they're searching for products to buy. And that's the share I think that ChatGPT and these other AIs are going to steal first and then Amazon is probably going to be secondary after that. Speaker 3: But it's a matter, you have to steal something from a market that already has acquired it. Like it's impossible to steal my business for toilet paper. It's already on subscribe and save. It's already done. There's no stopping that train, right? How do you steal market share away from Amazon from that subscribance? For something commoditized and everyday like toilet paper, paper towels, socks, deodorant, soap, it's I would say impossible. Speaker 4: Yeah, I want to say nobody, but I'm sure there's one person out there, but almost nobody is going to ChatGPT and asking them which is the best toilet paper for me to buy. That's for sure. Speaker 3: There's some maniacs out there. Speaker 4: I'm sure there's some. Speaker 3: Do the extensive research on two-ply versus three-ply with ripples and you know. Speaker 1: No, no, it's got to be bamboo, bamboo toilet paper. Speaker 3: Have you ever used bamboo toilet paper? Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. Speaker 3: It's horrible. Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. Speaker 3: It's horrible. Speaker 2: There's a bamboo toilet paper lover out there who is going to see this exact clip and they're just going to go on Reddit and hate us. Speaker 4: They're going to blast the show and triple our viewership. Speaker 1: That way we'll have three people watching. Speaker 4: Yeah, right. All right, let's jump onto the next one here and change topics a little bit. China reaches global majority on Amazon. Chinese sellers now make up 50.03% of Amazon's global active seller base, marking the first time they've surpassed half of all sellers across international marketplaces. Their rise has been fueled by AI-powered listening optimization, proximity to manufacturing and government export subsidies, allowing them to compete on price while scaling quickly. For Amazon sellers in the U.S. and other regions, the key takeaway is that while Chinese sellers dominate in the numbers, American sellers still generate more revenue per seller, averaging over double the sales. Competing successfully will require leveraging AI tools, improving efficiency, and differentiating through branding and premium positioning rather than just pricing. Speaker 3: Oh my God, Todd, is the sky blue? Is the grass green? China is the most on Amazon? Speaker 1: I never would have guessed it. Speaker 2: I never would have guessed that, you know, US sellers that have to actually, you know, submit actual cost of goods information and pay actual customs duties and fees and have higher priced products that aren't crap would, you know, Outdo revenue from $2 knockoff. You guys going on haul recently? Unknown Speaker: I posted a thing the other day. They do, on haul now, they do dollar products. Speaker 2: Did you know that? Speaker 1: Do they? Speaker 2: Yeah. They cap it at three. You can only have three. And if you buy anything else on Amazon to get your overall order basket over $25, it's free shipping. How, who's making money on this? Speaker 1: Right? Speaker 2: Like, and it's like, why is Amazon even appeasing it? How much does Amazon make on that? 2 cents? Speaker 3: Why is Amazon appeasing it? I was just seeing I had $3 in my wallet so I could just throw it away because that's exactly what you'd be doing if you bought $3 items on haul. Amazon's doing it because they're coddling and stroking and appeasing China sellers just like they do when it comes to advertising. Oh yeah, look at all the quality stuff. Look at that, it's great. Speaker 1: Look at the little eyeballs. That are blinking there. I've never seen this on Amazon. Speaker 3: Yeah, because that's basically wish.com. They basically just have that on inside Amazon. The point is, Noah, you've seen this. We talked about this before, too, is that the same people have a majority of the same people that are allowed to run sponsored product ads with hero images. That break every single guideline, image guideline, brand guidelines that you want. If you look at things like footwear and workwear on Amazon, which is their space when it comes to zappos and shoes, you're supposed to show one shoe 45 degrees, nothing more, nothing less. You have China sellers showing lifestyle images. Hammers on steel toes, icons popping out, and that's going through as a sponsored product ad. But if an American seller went to go do that, they would be crying on eBay or Walmart to try to sell their stuff because they'd be banned on Amazon. Speaker 2: Are any of you three in Minnesota by chance? Speaker 3: Yes, I am. Speaker 2: I just went on there. You can buy a Minnesota state flag, three foot by five foot for $1 and not only can you buy it for $1, you can save 25% at checkout. Speaker 1: Nice. Speaker 3: The entire state of Minnesota should. Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just crazy and I seen to that Amazon Hall just opened up in France and Spain. Speaker 3: So that's wildly offensive that the garbage of Amazon Hall is expanding to other countries. I agree. It's literally, it's literally just an outlet for Amazon to appease the China sellers to, to have the free reigns, to dump their inventory, to do whatever they want to do. Cause literally no one is making money. That is a, a pure logistics move, churn and burn kind of play. Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah. It's uh, yeah, I don't know. It's, It's one of those things that there's people that buy it though, right? That's the... Speaker 3: But if you were to look at the people... Here's the thing. If you were to look at the people that buy from Wish.com, from Timu, from anything like that, sure the stuff is cheap, right? But what's the return rate for them buying the same thing? They're not. And there's no way those reviews are great. If you ever bought anything on Any site, I'm not knocking Timu or anything like that, but anything that's a dollar, people's expectations should be a dollar, but they're not. And people get fooled, and there's millions of TikTok videos where they show, hey, I ordered this on Timu, I ordered this shed, and they get it, and it's a dog size shed. Oh my God, I thought it was gonna be this huge giant thing, you know? But there's no way that someone's saying, wow, I ordered that, you know, dog harness that was a dollar on Amazon haul. I can't wait to go back and get four more of them. No, they got pissed. It probably didn't work. It probably broke. And what did they do? They're not going to go and leave a negative review because it was a dollar. It's people value time over money for buying something for a dollar. If it doesn't work out, if it's garbage, what do you do? Anyone on this call, anyone watching it, you're going to take it or throw it away and keep on moving your life. You're not going to go and spend valuable time to write this extensive negative review for a dollar. And they know that. Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, what you receive from Hall or Temu or any of those is definitely not going to exceed your expectations. That's for sure. Just going to be some cheap, cheap junk. So I don't know what do you guys think it with all the everything that's going on with like closing the the tariff loophole and the added tariffs and stuff like that. Do you expect to see this China majority ever change or you think it's just going to keep growing? Speaker 1: I think that the sellers and manufacturers have already taken things into account and have inventory in the United States, a lot of it. And if they don't, they'll run it through Mexico or something like that. Speaker 4: The Chinese sellers you're saying or? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: Well, think about it like this. If something costs you 10 cents in China and you were to slap a 500% tariff on it, do you really think they're going to stop selling that? Okay. So it went from a dollar to $5. It's still going to be cheaper than anyone else out there. They're still going to sell. Speaker 2: That's the thing though. It doesn't go to $5. One of the primary problems with like battling Chinese sellers all these years is the aspect of, They're not representing their true cost of goods. Tariffs do jack all to a Chinese seller because they would require them to play by the rules, which is represent what their actual manufactured cost of good is prior, right, for a tariff to do anything. But if they're already just listing their manufactured cost of goods for what a US seller for the exact same product is saying $2 a unit, right? They're just representing it as $0.02 a unit. And it's like there's literally zero change for them. Oh, instead of $0.02, it now costs them $0.10. Big whoop, right? Like, whereas, you know, it's comparatively, you know, $10 for the US seller. And that's, you're never going to win that battle at the end of the day, because it would require them to play by the same exact rules, which they won't because there's no repercussion for them not to. Speaker 1: Check out this Chinese business name I found. Speaker 3: I buy from them all the time. They're great guys. Speaker 4: Yeah, they're a really reputable company. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Speaker 2: You like that email too? Speaker 4: Memorable name. I've got a few comments from Deal Hunter. He says, I saw Hall and purchased some items last week, I guess he's trying to say. He's asking if he can flip Amazon to Amazon from Haul. Speaker 3: You know what would be wild is if you bought it off of Haul and then you went to go sell it on Amazon and they said there were some restrictions or something like that. That would be an article to write for sure. Speaker 4: Yes, for sure. Flipping from Haul to Amazon, I'm sure they're not going to be happy about that and you'd have to find the exact same product. How to Sell on Amazon.com versus Hall, otherwise technically you'd be... Speaker 3: What would be wild is if you had brand registry for a brand, bought a hell of a ton of a $1 item and just called it your own brand and then was reselling it like that and making a killing off of Amazon's own business. That'd be interesting. Speaker 4: Yeah, you could definitely, I mean, people do that from the dollar store all the time. I was just reading an article of someone, I forget what the product was, but they're buying it for a dollar at Family Dollar and then selling it on Amazon for like $12. People do it from the dollar stores to Amazon, so doing it from haul to Amazon I'm sure would be possible, but you may be violating some terms of service on that. Speaker 3: There's a good business model right there, Amazon, if you're listening. If someone has a buyer account and a seller account, let them connect the two and then just buy the item from haul, offer it on Amazon and do MCF and just send it right over there. Speaker 1: No, why not? Why not make the fulfillment address the FBA center and just send it right back in the FBA under your own shipments and then get the hazmat warning and then get. Speaker 4: Yeah, DealHunter said he was happy with his purchase that he made last week on Amazon. Speaker 1: Hang on a second. Speaker 4: And he found, he did find the same product for $19 more on Amazon. Speaker 3: Wait a minute, DealHunter. You just found, forget about having a good, you just found an opportunity. Just start selling it. You bought it for a dollar and you got it for $19? Good. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 4: Give it a try. If you're getting a product to your house and then sending it back in, Amazon's probably not going to figure anything out, even if it is against terms of service. And if they do, then I guess you just stop selling it. Speaker 3: No, you just move to China with your China address and then everything's allowed. Speaker 2: It's gated. Oh, it's a gated product. That's even better. Speaker 4: Gated. Speaker 3: Oh, you don't say, oh, it's gated, but you can buy it on... Speaker 4: So you buy a hundred of them from Amazon haul and submit the whole invoice to get ungated Perfect oh my gosh, yeah, I feel like all of us could harp on this for just ever I Yeah, it's it's one of those things that's just never gonna go away. I mean, it's, it's just kind of the nature of the world, Amazon, or China, I mean, is the manufacturing capital of the world. And until that changes, this is going to be the facts of e commerce. Speaker 1: I just, here's my gripe. Fine, give the whole world opportunity to do business. But don't sell garbage. I made the joke, Amazon trash haul, but I firmly believe that that's basically what's on there. It's just trash. Now it could be changed. I was seeing some things on there like, eh, it could be a good product. But I mean, it's so strange. John, you said it when, who does haul cater to? The listings are different. The display page is different. Everything is totally different from the standard Amazon. It looks nothing like Amazon. It looks more... Speaker 2: It's not catering to Amazon consumers. I think the deeper thing is consumerism as a whole within the U.S. and people buying trash that just buy trash. But the people who are on Haul are never... I said it when Haul came out. People were worried, oh, is this going to be a new competition for me? It's like, no. The people who are buying from Haul are never going to be your buyer. They are not somebody who is going to go on Amazon, find your product and buy it. Because the people who buy on these platforms, whether it's, you know, Hall, Timu, Sheen, like all this, like they're not, they're buying there for a specific reason. And it's because of exactly that, that they want to just like find the lowest price thing. They don't care how crap the product actually turns out to be. And they will continue going back and they will see something else and they see something shiny and they're like, Oh. Speaker 3: I see the expensive one on Amazon and I don't want to buy that one. I'm going to buy the cheap inferior one because I don't want to spend the money. So it's not the consumer. Speaker 4: And that's the, here's the thing. It's, it's not garbage products that are the problem. People buy garbage products all the time from Walmart and dollar stores. And as long as it works for whatever basic purpose they had until it breaks a few times in, they're fine with it. The problem more I think is the misrepresentation of products, making them look like they're not garbage products and then also skirting all the rules and violating the rules and getting away with it as you were saying, John, that's the bigger problem. Speaker 3: I mean, there's a fair share of garbage out there, I'll be honest with you. When you're buying straws, for example, and you're buying a pack of disposable straws, There's the grade plastic where you put the straw in the disposable cup. It's going to go right into the cup. Then there's the kind of straws you put it in. It's going to flex and bend and curve and snap in half and stuff like that. To an extent, there is, but I don't think the people that are spending a dollar care if it's garbage. If you buy a pack of straws that are 100 and 20 of them suck and 80 of them are good, who cares to spend a dollar? Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, more where I have the issue is these companies that are advertising on say, you know, Facebook or Instagram, and they make the product look like the best thing you've ever seen before, like the dog shed, for example. They advertise it to you with like a lady standing by it and it's bigger than the lady and then you get it and it's a little miniature mock-up of it or something like that. That's where I have the bigger issue. Speaker 3: The best one I saw ever was on Timu and it was the person got it and the visual was a door, like a front door of a house, a wooden front door with a wreath Right on the door with a decorations like happy fall or something like that on it and it was beautiful and the assumption was that you were getting the beautiful wreath that was on the door and the lady got her package and it was a vinyl covering that you put on your door that makes your door look like that door with the wreath and the sign on it, which is the wildest thing I've ever seen. Speaker 4: Okay. Yeah, that reminds me of the teddy bear that someone bought. It was supposed to be like this six foot tall teddy bear. And in the pictures, it looked really cool. And when they got it, like the legs were five feet long or something like that. And then the body is like a foot. But the way they positioned it in the picture, it looked like a normal teddy bear. Speaker 2: Honestly, if I got that though, I feel like I wouldn't be all that mad just because of how comical the situation would be. Speaker 4: It would be kind of funny, yes. Speaker 2: If you're spending like $3, $4, it's like who cares? Speaker 3: Scams like this have been going on. It's not just lately, it's just the way you represent and word something. Literally back in the 90s, maybe you guys have heard the story. There was a moment when radio contests were a thing and people would have to show up and do something and the radio person would be there. So there was a contest at a Toyota dealership and they had announced something where it said, hey, you keep your hand on this Toyota. Whoever keeps their hand on the longest will win a Toyota. And literally people were there for like upwards of like one or two days, like peeing in bottles, like I'm not taking my hand off this. And then the winner was like, yes, I win, I win. And they're like, here you go. And they gave them a Yoda. It was a toy Yoda. That was what they were winning, but they thought they were winning a toy Yoda. But because of the way that they're wording things, and the lady had a whole big lawsuit. She was like, I want to win a Toyota. Like, no, no, no, man, we said toy Yoda. And it just the same tactics and mentalities are supplied now to e-commerce. Speaker 4: Yep. Yeah. Snake oil salesmen and, uh, you know, people taking advantage has been around forever. That's never gonna change, but with Amazon though, with them letting them get away with it is a big issue, especially with how they come down on US sellers versus the Chinese sellers a lot of times. But yeah, it's the world we live in. So let's go ahead and jump on to the last story here and then we'll wrap things up. So Amazon debuts a new grocery brand with nearly everything under five bucks. Amazon has launched a grocery line where most items cost less than $5. Positioning it as a value focused brand in the competitive grocery space. This expansion into low price essentials reflects Amazon's push to capture more share in everyday consumer goods. I'm just curious on your guys' thoughts on how this will affect grocery sellers in general that are out there. Speaker 3: This is not new. Noah, you're younger than the rest of us, so maybe you don't know, but anyone else remember going to a grocery store and there was a specific aisle that was called No Frills? And that aisle would just have everything that was in the grocery store, but it would just be white boxes with black letters. So it would be No Frills cereal, No Frills toilet paper, No Frills soap, No Frills this. I've never seen that in my life. You've never seen No Frills? Speaker 1: Nope. Unknown Speaker: Have you guys seen No-Name? Speaker 2: No, but there's a brand that I know about called No-Name. It's only in Canada. And No Name basically is that where they don't care about the branding, which is hilarious because the No Name brand in itself turned into a huge brand. But that's what they do is they didn't care about any of that. And so they just sell everything you can imagine. It's just No Name brand. Speaker 3: Yep. That's exactly what No Frills was in the grocery. And every grocery store in the tri-state area here in New York City had that. They phased that out because what happened was The grocery chains themselves were like, we're not going to do the no frills. We're going to do our own. So like ShopRite has like bowl and basket, like that ShopRite's brand of pasta, of cereal, of this, of that. So it's essentially no frills, but it's just their own brand. That's all that Amazon's doing with this year. They're just making their own brand at a cheaper price. But my question is, are they taking the Costco Kirkland route or are they just throwing garbage in a box? Like a Kirkland, for example, when you buy Kirkland Peanut butter, I'm gonna make up something. That peanut butter is sourced, it's really like Jif peanut butter or whatever it is. It's always name brand with a different label on it. Like if I look at these graham crackers or this applesauce, is it coming from another name brand that they've leveraged partnership with by just putting in a discounted price with their brand on it or is it inferior products? Speaker 2: No, so there's nothing, this is one of those things that's been going on forever, right? So I mean anybody who's literally ever been to like a name brand grocery So for around me, it's Meijer, right? So Meijer is like our grocery store, and you can buy the exact same product as any name brand, but just a Meijer brand version of it, right? And that's all this is, is Amazon is just doing that. Majority of these giant food companies and everything, and even it goes further than food. It supplements, it comes down to, I mean, like even, you know, like Metamucil or whatever it is, the like fiber thing, right? Speaker 4: Oh, now it really did freeze up. Speaker 2: Like ingredient list and they sell how to make their product. Oh, did I freeze up this time? Speaker 1: Yeah, you did. You're back. Speaker 2: Well, either way. So all of them, all of them sell their literal formula, right? And all of their ingredient list, everything to anybody who wants it and allows people to white label that exact formula. It's why you can get all of these, you know, quote unquote, I mean, great value, right? Is Walmart's thing like this whole thing of like, oh, it's an unbranded thing. It's like, no, it's, it's literally just the same exact product that probably cuts a few extra corners compared to the name brand. But it's going to be 95% the exact same thing. Speaker 3: But it matters which one like I know when they Deploy this even further, you're going to get a slew of YouTube and TikTok videos where they're going to say, Hey, Amazon groceries, chunky chocolate chip cookies. Which is it more like? Is it more like Chips Ahoy? Or is it like, what is it the dupe for? Right? There's a woman on TikTok that literally does this where she'll say, Hey, do you like Chick-fil-A sauce? Oh, you do? We're in Walmart. They're great value. This sauce is identical to Chick-fil-A sauce. Speaker 2: Or that's the thing, whether or not it is a dupe of something that's really popular, like Oreo, for instance, Oreo doesn't actually give their formula for Oreo out and doesn't let people to white label it. Whereas, same thing with Cheez-Its, they don't do that either. That's why people have cheese cracker squares and everything. But it's never the exact same, because those are companies that never do. Meanwhile, you have something like Heinz, like ketchup, where they just give out the exact formula and you can purchase that at any point in time. And so there are companies that will do that. Speaker 3: I'm going to stop you on the ketchup. Have you not seen Heinz put out Today we're gonna talk about specific color branded guidelines for their hue of their ketchup for restaurants and businesses, for consumers to ensure that they're actually getting Heinz ketchup if it's in the bottle versus, because what they were previously doing was doing those color-coded bottles where you could never see the insides and they were refilling it with off-brand ketchup and Heinz had a big problem with that. So now Heinz, if you go and look at it, All ketchup is not the same, that if it doesn't look like this, it's not Heinz ketchup. Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's kind of the point. It's like, again, they'll sell the formula, but then the company that buys the formula will change X, Y, and Z, because it's, you know, 20 cents cheaper, and now they can sell a product that's cheaper than Heinz at a discounted rate, right? Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: Like, that's the big thing that all these companies are doing, and at the end of the day, yeah, it's going to be probably an inferior, slightly product, because it's not, you know, they're just doing it en masse as a unbranded quote-unquote, which is always funny to me. That's like unbranded when it's like just whatever the brand is, whether it's Great Value, Amazon Grocery, whatever it is. Speaker 3: By the way, fun fact, in the 90s, they had, I think it was Heinz, they came out with green and purple ketchup. Speaker 4: I remember that. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 3: I'm shocked they still don't have that because I would love that. Speaker 4: Food guys. So good. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: My thought on this is that Amazon is only going to adopt the brands that have extraordinary sales velocity where they can, you know, leverage their own Their own system to basically take market share from Chips Ahoy from Castrol, motor oil slash cooking oil, um, nuts, um, apple juice and stuff like that. So I, I like, I think that Amazon is primarily going to sell garbage foods. As compared to like Kirkland from Costco or Trader Joe's, for instance, they both heavily lean into their own brands, but they, by and large, do a really good job of sourcing like good quality products. And Amazon is not that. They don't give two shits about our diet. They just want the revenue. Speaker 3: Well, that's what I'm talking about. That's why I referenced the Kirkland one because there's people that do reviews and say that like the vodka from Costco is on par almost exactly like Grey Goose. It's not on par for like Absolute, right? So like if you're buying theirs, you're actually buying the better version. What Dana's kind of saying is that it's their house brand, but they're cherry picking the best of the best to be their house brand. Speaker 4: And this is where branding comes in. Like you said, this is nothing new, making a generic version of whatever product. But people are still buying Heinz Ketchup or Chips Ahoy because of the branding that goes behind that and the perception that it's better, whether it is or not, like with the vodka and the Grey Goose example. They may be very similar or the same perhaps, but if you've got Grey Goose sitting on your table and the guests come over, that's going to look a lot better than having the Kirkland. Speaker 3: That's where you take the Grey Goose bottle, you fill it with the Kirkland, you put the cap back on, you open the door. Speaker 1: I say Amazon Grocery, that's what you're going to see in Airbnbs that you rent. You get Amazon Grocery welcome cookies. Speaker 3: I'll buy for my kids Amazon grocery the way my kids eat snacks and stuff like that. If I could save money and it's the same as Chips Ahoy or the same as crackers, I couldn't care less when it comes to that. So you're going to find an influx of parents and people with kids and all this other kind of stuff that's buying it ad nauseum all the same time, all the same, I'm buying all this, my kids won't know the difference. Speaker 4: For sure. All right guys, well we'll go ahead and wrap it up there. I appreciate you all coming on the show and I appreciate everybody out there watching. Every Friday at 1 p.m. Eastern, we do the Amazon Seller News Live, so look forward to seeing everybody next week. Speaker 1: Yep, bye everyone. Speaker 4: Have an awesome weekend. Speaker 2: Take care, buddy. Speaker 4: Later, guys. Unknown Speaker: This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School podcast. Thanks for listening fellow Amazon seller and always remember success is yours if you take it. Speaker 4: Hey, if you made it this far in the show, I really hope you enjoyed it and I'd like to ask you a favor. Could you head on over to Apple or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this and leave us a review? It would be greatly appreciated and would help us continue to grow the show and offer more episodes for you. Thank you. God bless and have an awesome day.