Intelligencer - Shein Found Amazon’s Weakness

By most measures, for many years now, things have been going pretty well for the Amazon corporation. It’s the dominant American e-commerce firm, it’s a logistics and delivery powerhouse, and it has a wildly profitable side business in cloud computing. It has hundreds of millions of customers buying stuff from millions of sellers. It has a greater market share than its next ten competitors combined.

One of those competitors, however, appears to have Amazon’s leadership worried: Shein, the ultracheap fast-fashion app. In a December note to sellers, Amazon announced that it would dramatically decrease the commissions it takes on cheap clothing. “For items priced under $15, we will decrease referral fees from 17% to 5%,” the company said. “For products priced between $15 and $20, we will decrease referral fees from 17% to 10%.”

Introducing The City Desk, a weekly newsletter about New York. Sign up to get it every Thursday.