Amazon is still by far the leading retail website in the world. For many years, most top sellers on this platform have mainly been Americans. Top sellers from China have been increasing gradually, and in January this year (2020), the number of Chinese sellers on Amazon surpassed that of the Americans. According to market place Pulse analysis, Chinese sellers are now 49%, and those from the USA are 47%.
This analysis only considers the 10,000 top sellers (those who able to generate over $1 million in sales per year). Most of the sellers among over 1 million sellers on Amazon only sell just a few products a month - so they don't qualify to be top sellers.
China further outnumbers the USA even when the range of top sellers is increased from 10,000. For instance, if we consider the top 50,000 sellers, the USA has 37%, and China has 58%, in the top 100,000, China still has 58%, and the USA has 36%. However, when we consider the total active sellers (over 1 million), the USA is still dominant with over 50% of the sellers, and China only has 37%.
The percentage of Chinese selling in the European market places is actually beyond the average (49%) for the entire platform. For instance, 58% of the top sellers in Amazon Spain (Amazon.es), 55% of the top sellers on Amazon France (Amazon.fr), and 53% of the top sellers on Amazon Italy (Amazon.it) are all Chinese.
The penetration of Chinese sellers has led to stiff competition for players from other countries since the Chinese sell products that are slightly cheaper than their competitors. Chinese sellers have also been favored by the Amazon rules of making it easy for international sellers to sell in different market places across the globe.
