Australian retailers could benefit from a move by Chinese manufacturers to pull out of supplying goods for Amazon’s Prime Day sale.
According to sources a large percentage of what Amazon sells during Prime Day comes from China with Amazon taking a 15% commission on each product sold, and there are additional fees if sellers want their brands highlighted on the website.
According to reports Chinese manufacturers and distributors who manufacture products in China are sitting out the mid-July shopping event as Trump’s 145% tariff hammers their profit margins, according to a Reuters report based on interviews with four merchants and six consultants collectively advising hundreds of sellers.
“Amazon will be fine, but I do feel for some of the third-party sellers – they’re the ones that are going to be hurt the most in this environment,” Arun Sundaram, analyst at CFRA Research, told Reuters.
Amazon claims that current prices on hundreds of millions of items on Amazon have not increased outside of typical fluctuations despite the introduction of
Steve Green, an Amazon vendor who sells bicycles and skateboards made in China, said he’s skipping Prime Day for the first time since 2020 – claiming Trump’s 145% rate on Beijing will more than double his costs and make the discount holiday “unaffordable.”
Normally Amazon buys volume from manufacturers with goods distributed to global operations including Australia, insiders claim that goods ordered directly by Amazon Australia from manufacturers in China will not be affected however goods normal obtained via the global operation could face a problem in Australia due to the lack of global deals.
Kim Vaccarella, chief executive of Bogg Bag, a tote bag company with manufacturing in China, decided to skip the discount event this year, opting to save her inventory for retailers who sell the goods at “full price” instead of via a Prime Discount sale.
Vaccarella said she has halted production of the bags in China and is moving production to Cambodia and Vietnam.
These two countries are currently facing 10% Trump levies as opposed to 145%.
ChannelNews has been told that manufacturers are also “fed up of being squeezed by Amazon” to offer additional discounts for Prime Day sales.
Amazon has not yet announced the dates for this year’s Prime Day event.
Nearly 62% of units sold on Amazon in the fourth quarter last year came from third-party sellers, according to research firm Marketplace Pulse.
Trump’s tariff on China is also expected to slam Amazon’s sales with first-party partners, like Hasbro toys claims Reuters.
