Articles

Dec 9, 2016

Uncovering Fake and Fraudulent Amazon Marketplace Sellers

To help customers understand which sellers shouldn't be bought from we launched Scam Sellers at www.scamsellers.com. In August we started paying attention to the fraudulent sellers issue when we noticed that there is a growing amount of scamming activity on Amazon. Sellers would join the marketplace, promise great pricing for popular products, but fail to ship any of them. However by noting a 2-4 week shipping time they are often able to deposit their earnings from Amazon before they get suspended, and by the time customers start to wonder.

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Dec 8, 2016

Most eBay Stores Have Been Operating for Years, Some Since 1996

eBay was founded on September 3, 1995, 21 years ago, and since then ecommerce as a whole has changed drastically. Yet as we found in our research many of the retailers from 90's are still around today. 19,000 stores were launched this year. Yet there are stores still operating since eBay launch.

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Dec 7, 2016

Etsy Shops from Nearly Every Country in the World, US Makes up 75%

English-speaking countries make up most of the list, with US shops at 75% of total shops, followed by United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Since launch in 2005, 11 years ago, Etsy has been most visible there, however as it grew bigger and as international shipping got easier and more affordable many more sellers joined the platform. 10% of Etsy shops are from all over the world.

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Dec 6, 2016

Over 1,000 New Sellers Join Amazon.com Every Day

Amazon USA marketplace added 54,000 new sellers in a month. 120,000 new sellers joined all Amazon marketplaces in a month. Since we looked at this back in July, the growth rate has accelerated and Amazon USA has remained growing at a steady pace.

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Dec 2, 2016

Fastest Growing eBay.com Sellers November 2016 Report

November had Black Friday and Cyber Monday, both of which eBay was betting big on too. eBay reported that 7:00pm PST was the peak shopping time on mobile and overall. eBay also reported that mobile GMV (gross merchandise volume) share vs. desktop increased 15% year-over-year.

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Dec 2, 2016

Fastest Growing Amazon.com Sellers November 2016 Report

Just last month it was all about Halloween, but it immediately switched to Christmas gifts buying. Sellers like JAF GIFTS or Christmas Central are first to have massive growth because of it. The trend we are noticing is sellers focused on a specific category of products, like Christmas gifts, having the best pricing and products. Big sellers with thousands of brands are having a hard time competing with so many niche sellers.

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Nov 30, 2016

At Least $1 Billion Sales by Amazon Marketplace Sellers During Holiday Weekend

Adobe Digital Insights estimates Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday 5-day period sales at $12.8 billion, up by 15.2% from last year. It is hard to estimate how much of that was Amazon sales, but we think it was somewhere in the range of 25-50%. So with $3.2-6.4 billion in sales by Amazon during the holiday weekend we think it is safe to assume at least $1b in sales was from marketplace sellers.

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Nov 29, 2016

Analyzing All 1,357,529 Brands on Amazon

A very interesting metric for us is what sort of brands are on sale on Amazon, how many sellers sell them and how brands grow and shrink on the marketplace. A lot of the brands offered by a single seller or two are misspelled or mistaken brands. Of the 1,357,529 total brands on Amazon, at least a half could be discarded as duplicates. Each seller on average has 68 brands. However this average number is meaningless as it hides the distribution - most sellers have 10 or less brands.

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Nov 28, 2016

Black Friday Visitors to Brick & Mortar Stores down 3.5%, but 22% Growth Online

Earlier this month Foursquare estimated that foot traffic to stores will be down by 3.5% during the Black Friday sales day. Now that the Black Friday has passed we are seeing reports that this prediction was largely true. Online though, Black Friday set an estimated new record with $3.34 billion in sales, up by 22% from last year. Mobile accounted for $1.2 billion, a 33% increase from the year before.

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Nov 24, 2016

US Ecommerce Grows To 8.4% Of Total Retail Sales

The US ecommerce market continues to grow, largely driven by leading marketplaces like Amazon, eBay and Walmart. According to the Q3 2016 report from the US Department of Commerce, online orders accounted for 8.4% of total retail sales, up from 7.4% a year ago. Ecommerce sales grew by 15.7% compared to Q3 2015, reaching over $101 billion. Ecommerce sales have been growing by 15% for over a year. A big part of this is Amazon which reported 26% growth the same quarter.

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