I have been engaged in cross-border e-commerce for more than two years. During this period, I have cooperated directly with factories and selected products by myself. Some of them were successful, but there were also many failures. I have a few conclusions on product selection and would like to share them with small sellers, hoping to help everyone avoid some pitfalls. After all, every pitfall has an opportunity cost. The sooner you can avoid one, the faster you can get to success.
1. Choose products with low procurement costs
Try to choose products with a single product cost of less than 50 yuan. Of course it would be better if you can choose one that costs less than 20 yuan. As a small seller, you usually don’t have abundant funds. If you choose products with too high purchasing costs, a lot of funds will be occupied. It is very likely that you will not have extra money to choose other products, which will limit your performance.
2. Choose light and small products
The so-called light and small products refer to products that are light in weight and small in size. Because such products have low shipping costs, even if they are sent by express or air, the cost per product will not be too high. As long as you can ensure that you make money, choosing a fast delivery method can also make your cash flow turn around faster.
3. Choose products with low frequency of use
If a product is used frequently, the risk of it breaking down will be much higher. However, if you choose a product that is used less frequently, such as a hammer, the risk of damage will be lower because it will not be used frequently, so there will naturally be fewer after-sales problems.
4. Choose products that are not popular among big sellers
If it is a product that is already being sold by a big seller, then don’t touch it. If you find a new product and think that the market is good, but there is a high probability that the product will be followed by a big seller soon, small sellers should also choose it carefully. Of course, we can sell such products in the early stages, but we cannot be carried away by victory. We can make predictions based on sales data and replenish stocks in small batches and frequently, but it is not recommended to replenish too much at one time, because once the products start to sell well, your sales may drop sharply, and a large amount of inventory may leave you at a loss.
If you choose a product that the big sellers don’t value, you may only be able to get a dozen orders a day. But you can choose a few more such products. For example, if you choose 20 products, your daily sales will be about two to three hundred orders. After your orders become stable, you can continue to choose other similar products without worrying about being targeted by big sellers.
5. Choose products that can be sold all year round
Some products have strong peak and off-season characteristics, such as swimsuits or Christmas gifts. Although sales may be good during the season, if the inventory is not sold out during the peak season, the unsalable products may become obsolete, and the inventory piled up in the FBA warehouse will occupy a lot of your funds, and the inventory costs are calculated every day. If you have to wait until the second year to sell out the inventory, it would be a bit of a loss.
Therefore, we should try our best to choose products that can be sold all year round, so that there will be no out-of-season risk as mentioned above. Of course, if the product is related to fashion, then you must also pay attention to the rhythm and sell out the products within the fashion cycle to recover the funds before doing other money-making things.
"70% depends on product selection, and 30% depends on operation." In our daily work, we should spend more time and energy on product selection, and we should also study, think and summarize seriously in the process.
There are a lot of product selection suggestions on the Internet that are worth learning from. But what is more important is to have your own product selection methodology, and the sooner you summarize it, the better it will be for you. After all, the development of cross-border e-commerce is too rapid. In an age where the strong prey on the weak, only those who run faster and more steadily can survive.
