Last month Amazon launched Haul, a low-price marketplace competitor to China-based Temu and Shein.
Temu and Shein have made headway in the U.S., shipping extremely low-cost items directly from China. Reuters reported in December 2023 that Temu had captured 17% of the U.S. market among discount retailers, which include Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and Five Below.
Temu and Shein are the first and second most downloaded shopping apps on the Apple App Store, per Yahoo Finance in April 2024.
Amazon Haul
Amazon needed more low-cost options to stave off this rapidly growing Chinese competition for, essentially, the dollar store market.
At the time of writing, Haul was available only in the Amazon app, and its listings were separate from the general Amazon marketplace.
Prices for Haul items are $20 or less, with many under $10 and some as low as $1. Shipping is free for orders of $25 or $3.99 otherwise.
Haul brings dollar-store items to Amazon via its app. Click image to enlarge.
Seller Impact
Informed Amazon sellers have warily anticipated Haul for months.
Amazon presumably believes Haul will attract shoppers, which seems to be the case. On Black Friday 2024, Amazon offered 50% off for everything on Haul to help kickstart interest. Marketplace Pulse reported many of the nearly 3,000 sellers participating in Haul sold out of key items during the promotion.
“If you’re a merchant selling low-ticket items, Haul is just another means to help price-conscious consumers find your products more easily,” wrote Katie Moro, global director of managed service at Productsup, a provider of ecommerce product content, in an email.
“Shoppers don’t have to set a filter to narrow their search to products in your price range. They can scroll through the Haul storefront on the Amazon app freely, knowing the products meet their budget requirements,” Moro continued, “Haul provides a huge benefit to your business in this way, as it helps compete with merchants on Temu or Shein.”
Thus Haul might be a marketplace booster.
It could also impact customer acquisition tactics, private label brands, and arbitrage sellers.
Customer acquisition
Some brands will likely use Haul to promote loss leaders and acquire customers. Loss leader strategies are similar to advertising. A brand buys an ad or sells a product at or below cost to get sales.
“It’s a similar strategy to the viral Lululemon belt bag. Compared to the usual price tag of its athletic wear, Lululemon made the bag significantly cheaper,” wrote Moro.
“By attracting first-time buyers to its brand and exposing them to the quality of its products, Lululemon could establish customer loyalty — what starts as a small belt bag purchase evolves into a pair of leggings, and so on. Similarly, you can leverage the high visibility of Haul to expand your audience reach with a few cheaper items and then continue to build the customer relationship on the regular Amazon storefront with the rest of your product catalog,” according to Moro.
Private label rival
Many private label sellers on Amazon source products from China. Nothing stops those Chinese manufacturers from selling directly on Haul — a common practice for items on Temu and Shein.
If Haul products started appearing in the regular Amazon marketplace, sales of private-label goods could suffer.
Arbitrage competitor
Ecommerce drop-shippers that rely on AliExpress-style arbitrage could also face competition from Haul.
These sellers typically use Dsers and similar apps to identify products on the AliExpress marketplace and resell them at a profit via Shopify and marketplaces.
This sort of retail arbitrage works because relatively few consumers know about AliExpress or how to access it. Amazon Haul makes direct-from-China retail mainstream; every AliExpress seller could end up on Haul.
Cheap Ecommerce
Only time will tell whether any of these scenarios play out, and many other factors could impact direct-from-China retailing —new U.S. tariffs, for example.
What we do know is the popularity of cheap ecommerce items, very cheap.
