Ever since Amazon.com opened its platform for cross border sellers, the number of products and sellers increased significantly.
As a  business in India, you too can sell your products on Amazon USA
You may already be exporting your products to USA or may be selling your products in India – offline or on Amazon.in. Or you may be an absolutely new business with its sole aim to sell on Amazon.com USA
Whatever be the case, it is very much possible for you to sell your products on Amazon.com as well as many other Amazon sites worldwide including Middle East, UK, Australia and Canada
Points to remember:
- Platforms like Amazon.com are marketplaces. They only provide sellers with an easy way to list and sell their products. Amazon does not actually assist any specific seller directly. You, as a seller, have to take steps to sell
- Selling is not easy. While Amazon has several marketing and promotion tools, they all require knowledge and a good understanding to be used effectively
- Selling is not cheap. Cost of customer acquisition in countries like USA can range from US$ 50 to US$ 150 **. It may be cheaper on Amazon (to be tested by you for your products) but you still need to make investments
- Small marketing budgets get you little or no results. Selling on Amazon requires you to plan your marketing investments. Be ready to spend money consistently over a period of 6 to 12 months and be ready for investments that may at times be equal to the sales value of products sold. That is to say, initially you may invest US$ 50000 and get sales of US$ 50000. Don’t be disappointed. It will take you some time for your products to get visibility and come up the ranking and listing
- Be ready for product returns. Ecommerce provides consumer convenience and product returns of 20% or more are very common. Factor this into your business plan
- Manage your reputation. Selling is one thing. Getting bad product or seller reviews is another. If you get bad reviews, your account can be blocked and in some cases can be closed. And that is not good for your business specially since you have already sent over the inventory into Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA) USA for sale
- Provide high levels of customer service. Online selling means that the customer is remote and has never met the seller. The buyer (consumer) needs to get high levels of customer service. This could be for product installation, usage or general troubleshooting. Even if the service is after a month or more of buying the product, the customer still has a choice to go in to Amazon and give a bad review if they don’t get good after sales service. So, if your products require after sales service, this is something that you need to watch out for.
- Get a team. Experience counts and helps. Get a good team to lead the project before you start. It’s not an easy task and needs a lot of focus.
- Find a good outsourcing and selling partner. There are specialist service providers like ND commerce – Ecommerce Solution Provider(ndcommerce.in) that provide services in the cross border ecommerce area. They can assist you with several of the processes relating to outbound cross border ecommerce out of India.
Summary:
Cross border ecommerce presents a significant opportunity for any business. However, it also requires deep thought, high focus and significant investments.
Some topics not covered include brand and trade mark registration, supply chain management, logistics and fulfilment, destination warehousing, duties and taxes, product pricing and more.
To know more about how ND commerce can assist your brands  to be sold on Amazon USA, write to mukund@ndcommerce.in