Amazon courts sellers at China summit as Temu and Shein gain momentum
Packages move along a conveyor at an Amazon fulfillment center on Cyber Monday in Robbinsville, New Jersey, U.S., on Monday, Nov. 29, 2021.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon is making a fresh appeal to China-based sellers as it fends off growing competition from discount online retailers Temu and Shein, which both have roots in the world’s second-largest economy.
At a conference that began Tuesday and runs through Friday, Amazon said it plans to open an “innovation center” near Shenzhen, a hub for technology companies and cross-border e-commerce that’s often referred to as China’s Silicon Valley. Amazon said it will “promote sellers in the Asia-Pacific region in product launch, brand building, and digitization.”
The company is also giving Chinese sellers access to its end-to-end supply chain service, which debuted in the U.S. in September. The offering allows merchants to move goods from factories overseas and replenish them on Amazon and other channels “in one stop.”
The annual conference for sellers in China features some of Amazon’s top brass, and typically attracts thousands of merchants from the region. While Amazon no longer operates in China, the country has become a hotspot for businesses looking to market their products to Amazon’s global customer base. At one point, nearly half of the top Amazon sellers were based in China, according to Marketplace Pulse.
Amazon said in 2023 the number of items sold by Chinese sellers on its site grew more than 20% year over year, while the number of Chinese sellers with sales over $10 million increased 30%.
Meanwhile, stiff competition in the region is emerging from Temu, owned by Chinese tech giant PDD Holdings, and Shein, which was founded in China but last year moved its headquarters to Singapore.
Shein, which primarily sells fast fashion items and accessories, launched a marketplace earlier this year that seeks to offer a wider variety of products, ranging from electronics to homewares. Some Amazon merchants have begun selling on Shein in recent months.
In late November, Shein filed confidentially for an IPO in the U.S. While a listing could broaden Shein’s popularity in the U.S. and globally, the company has faced scrutiny over its impact on the environment, ties to China and allegations that it uses forced labor in its supply chain. The company was last valued at $66 billion, CNBC previously reported.
Temu, a digital bargain basement that features a mix of goods ranging from quirky knick-knacks to cheaper lookalikes of established brands, ran a Super Bowl ad early this year and has since been on a marketing blitz. In the fourth quarter, Temu accounted for 20% to 25% of ad impressions purchased on Google, compared to “near zero” at the end of 2022, according to a recent research note from TD Cowen. Temu shoppers spend nearly twice as much time in the app as they do on Amazon and eBay.
Amazon last week updated its fees for sellers, cutting the commission it takes on clothing priced below $15 to 5% from 17%, in an apparent appeal to Shein and Temu merchants. Etsy CEO Josh Silverman acknowledged at an investor event earlier this month that Temu and Shein are “taking a little bit of share from everyone.”
“There’s a lot of people focused on selling you cheap goods cheaper, that end up in a landfill five minutes later,” Silverman said. “We think there’s a big alternative to do something different that’s truly meaningful, and in doing so, earn a spot in your mind.”
Etsy, which is known for its handmade and artisan goods, announced Wednesday it’s laying off 11% of its workforce, or about 225 employees.
WATCH: Shein’s secret sauce
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman stands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after ringing a bell on the floor setting the share price at $47 in its initial public offering (IPO) on March 21, 2024 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Reddit shares rose more than 10% on Tuesday, reversing a three-day slump that coincided with a broader decline among technology companies.
Despite Tuesday’s gains, Reddit shares are still roughly 30% below the close on Wednesday.
Reddit’s stock market upswing was likely bolstered by a Loop Capital analyst note published Tuesday that reiterated a buy rating and characterized the company’s shares as “extremely attractive.” The analyst note said that Reddit’s 50% drop on Wall Street in the past month “is excessive,” and that the social media company “has the biggest upside potential relative to Street estimates in our coverage universe.”
The company’s shares dropped more than 15% in February after the company reported weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter user numbers as a result of a Google search change that temporarily hurt its search-derived traffic. Although Reddit said at the time that it had recovered from the algorithmic shift, the user number miss spooked investors.
Reddit’s shares have since spiraled downward along with other tech companies like Apple, Nvidia and Tesla off of concerns related to President Donald Trump‘s tariffs and growing fears of a recession. The seven most valuable tech companies lost more than $750 billion in market value on Monday with Nasdaq experiencing its biggest decline since 2022.
Loop Capital managing director Alan Gould acknowledged in the note that investors are operating in a “risk-off market environment,” but he contended that Reddit “has been one of the top performing stocks over the past year,” aside from its most recent dip.
“RDDT wildly exceeded ours and Street estimates for 2024, which explains why the stock increased almost 7-fold from a $34 IPO price to a peak of $230 in less than a year,” Gould wrote, noting Reddit’s growing revenue and improved advertising tools, among other positive developments.
Reddit’s fourth-quarter sales grew 71% year over year to $428 million, which represents the fastest growth rate for any quarter since 2022.
“In our view, RDDT deserves the revaluation it had experiencing based on the growth it has shown in the recent earnings reports and future projected growth driven by the ability to narrow the ARPU gap, and data licensing possibilities,” Gould wrote.
Waymo self-driving cars with roof-mounted sensor arrays traveling near palm trees and modern buildings along the Embarcadero, San Francisco, California, February 21, 2025.
Smith Collection/gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images
Waymo on Tuesday announced it is expanding its service to include another 27 square miles of coverage around the San Francisco Bay Area.
With the expansion, Waymo will now take passengers around Mountain View, Los Altos, Palo Alto and parts of Sunnyvale, California. The Alphabet-owned company opened its robotaxi service to the general public in San Francisco in June.
Waymo will initially limit the availability of its Silicon Valley service to users of the Waymo One app who are residents with ZIP codes in the area, the company said. Waymo plans to serve more riders across the region over time. The fleet of vehicles that will be in use in the new coverage areas are fully electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles with Waymo’s fifth generation of self-driving sensors, software and other technology.
“Opening our fully autonomous ride-hailing service in Silicon Valley marks a special milestone in our Bay Area journey,” Waymo product chief Saswat Panigrahi said in a statement. “This is where Waymo began and where we’re headquartered.”
Waymo expanded its San Francisco Bay Area robotaxi service last summer into Daly City, Broadmoor and Colma. Its robotaxis do not yet carry passengers to San Francisco International Airport.
A spokesperson told CNBC that Waymo is in “active discussions with SFO,” and added that the company is “working to connect” Silicon Valley and San Francisco to “provide seamless autonomous rides across more of the Bay Area in the future.”
Waymo also recently launched a commercial robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, just in time for the city’s annual South by Southwest festival.
While would-be competitors including Elon Musk‘s automaker Tesla, and Amazon-owned Zoox, are continuing their own robotaxi testing and development, Waymo has pulled far ahead of self-driving companies in the U.S.
Before Tuesday’s expansion, Waymo said it was serving more than 200,000 paid trips per week across San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix.
Alphabet doesn’t disclose financial results for the autonomous vehicle business, but Waymo is part of its “Other Bets.” That business unit generated $400 million in the fourth quarter of 2024 and incurred operating losses of $1.17 billion, according to the company’s most recent financial filing.
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