As growth engines stall, cross-border e-commerce sellers find themselves navigating through fog. Yet crisis often breeds opportunity. The unexpected surge in demand for heating products during Europe's energy crisis has allowed sharp-eyed merchants to turn handsome profits, staging a remarkable "winter comeback."
With peak season approaching, sellers face a critical dilemma: should they rely on established products or gamble on new launches? This question weighs heavily on countless Amazon sellers. Compounding the challenge, the crucial "new product period" appears to be undergoing subtle but significant changes.
The Hidden Concerns Behind "Easy Living": When Owners Disengage, What's Next for Employees?
While competitors work overtime scrambling for sales, employees at one Amazon company enjoy an enviable lifestyle: monitoring ad metrics, processing shipments, with ample free time remaining. No internal competition, no KPIs, no threat of pay cuts - the epitome of an "Amazon civil servant." The only drawback? Commission earnings have plateaued.
What explains this company's unconventional approach during Q4 peak season? One operations staff revealed: "We're a small company where the owner handles product development. Recently, he's locked himself in the office, disengaged from daily operations. Initially we thought financial constraints prevented new launches, but over time we realized he's completely checked out. Even our promising sales projections don't motivate him anymore. So we've settled into maintaining existing products."
This guaranteed-income, semi-retired lifestyle leaves employees conflicted: Should they push the owner to re-engage or continue this comfortable stagnation?
A veteran Amazon seller offers a different perspective: "This might not be bad strategy. In tough markets, aggressive moves often lead to greater losses. What appears as disengagement could actually be strategic patience." Indeed, with rising ad costs and intense competition, reckless new launches risk significant losses. Some speculate the owner might be quietly developing a potential blockbuster, waiting for the next market opportunity.
For employees, this period could serve as valuable preparation time. They might study product development, identify promising niches within existing categories, and create comprehensive business plans - adopting a partnership mindset to potentially revitalize the company's growth.
Is New Product Promotion Becoming Mission Impossible?
Without "black hat" techniques, Amazon sellers find new product launches increasingly challenging. Creating bestsellers now requires exponentially more effort than before.
One seller admitted launching zero new Halloween products this year, contrasting with last year's 30+ listings that yielded mixed results - some with 50% margins, others total losses, ultimately netting zero profit. "Playing it safe" has become this year's prevailing strategy, with many categories dominated by established products engaged in price wars.
Yet some sellers still venture into new launches. One merchant described expanding into a new product line with five items, only to encounter dismal sales and ineffective ad placements after two weeks. His SP ads appeared exclusively on competitors' pages with abysmal click-through rates, forcing him to seek peer advice.
Industry experts suggested several remedies:
- Verify adequate ad exposure by comparing competitor rankings and search volumes
- Optimize ad strategy by concentrating budgets on fewer campaigns
- Ensure precise keyword alignment between ads and product listings
- Implement negative keywords to improve Amazon's listing recognition
- Consider adjusting launch timing relative to major sales events
A Critical Change in Amazon's New Product Period
Sellers have detected an important shift in Amazon's "new product period" - a crucial phase for successful launches. Previously, linking new listings to established products helped accumulate reviews quickly. Now, this practice may forfeit traffic support, making products ineligible for bestseller lists and losing their new product advantage.
Multiple sellers report this issue. Analysis suggests merged listings cause Amazon to recognize the original product's launch date, disqualifying the new item from new product benefits and New Releases (NR) list eligibility.
Debate continues about when the new product period actually begins - upon listing creation, FBA stocking, or first sale. Most evidence supports the sales-initiation theory.
As Amazon transitions from growth to maturity, with shrinking opportunities in saturated categories, smaller sellers must exercise extreme caution with new launches - particularly when entering unfamiliar categories. However, niche opportunities still emerge intermittently, requiring sharp market insight and rapid execution capabilities for sellers to achieve breakout success.