[Crew Review] New law requires sellers to disclose identities

In order to strengthen consumer protection, a new Act was passed, directing online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay to verify their third-party sellers. This includes authenticating government IDs and other personal and business information as well as disclosing this information to consumers.

But not all sellers are covered by the Act.

Amazon Top Terms

This section is a feast of Amazon Brand Analytics data, so dive in and find out the top 10 terms from December 18th to December 31st. Let’s find out which top terms have been dominating the list for the last two weeks of 2022!

Overall, it appears that ecommerce inflation towards the end of 2022 ended up having an insignificant impact on the retail industry during the holiday shopping season.

Retailers usually roll out their major deals leading up to the holidays, that’s why the keyword “after christmas clearance sale” took our spot #1 in today’s top movers. Products related to this keyword have already sold 83 units per day in the last few days.

Amazon’s $8 Billion Loan

Because of the “uncertain macroeconomic environment”, Amazon has secured an $8 billion term loan, which will be used to fund general corporate purposes. The loan will mature in 364 days, with an option to extend for the same period.

The lenders include DBS Bank and Mizuho Bank. The company is expected to continue to invest heavily in its operations and growth, including in its fast-growing cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services.

It will be recalled that Amazon has been implementing cost-cutting measures since last year, including laying off workers and declaring a hiring freeze. It has also offloaded some fees to third-party sellers, including shipping correction charges on returns.

How Is Amazon’s Seller Lending Business Doing?

Now that we’ve talked about Amazon as a borrower, let’s look at how it is as a lender.

According to Yahoo Finance, leaked documents show that the company’s lending business is booming. In fact, Amazon’s economists predict that the seller lending volume will double in 2023, although its own leadership team disagrees.

The documents showed that the lending arm catered to over a million customers and sellers in the previous year, with a $50 billion total transaction volume. This is a bounce back from its slower pace during the pandemic, which means sellers are more confident and ready to take more risks now that the economy is slowly recovering.

However, while more loans are expected to be requested, Amazon is still wary about defaulters and is tightening its underwriting process.

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Will Louboutin Change Amazon?

Just like its liability for third-party sellers’ product malfunction, Amazon’s liability for hosting counterfeit products on its marketplaces remains a gray area. However, a recent preliminary ruling for a case filed in 2019 indicates that the courts are willing to consider making the e-commerce giant answerable for allowing sponsored listings of counterfeits.

The lawsuit was brought by Christian Louboutin in Belgium and Luxembourg and is yet to be decided with finality, but the preliminary ruling gives hope for big brands to be better protected on the platform.

This case may become a precursor for similar rulings in other countries including the United States, which in effect may help control the presence of erring sellers and counterfeiters on the most popular online marketplace today.