Shinghi Detlefsen has experienced both sides of Amazon’s warm embrace of China-based sellers.
As an Amazon corporate employee in the 2010s, Detlefsen witnessed the company’s internal drive to offer the largest product selection possible, resulting in what one Amazon executive dubbed an “avalanche” of Chinese merchants recruited to stock the Everything Store’s seemingly endless digital shelves.
But after leaving Amazon as an employee and joining his wife to sell their own brand of supplements on Amazon, Detlefsen has also witnessed firsthand what he believes to be the downsides of what some would consider Amazon’s China-first approach.
Detlefsen argues that many China-based Amazon sellers—some hawking private-label products with unpronounceable, vowel-challenged “brand” names—are beating U.S.-based merchants not always because they have lower wholesale costs that result in better prices. Instead, Detlefsen says, many Chinese rivals benefit from a cocktail of tax and regulatory advantages that stacks competition on Amazon and other shopping websites heavily against U.S. sellers.
