Online Sales Grew This Much During the Holidays [Crew Review]

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Hey Reader,

Merry belated Christmas everyone.  Before we begin, make sure to give yourself a second-chance at getting the gift you really wanted and take the 2 minutes to fill out our Annual Software Poll and win a year of EcomCrew Premium.

In case you missed it, Canada has decided to take up Trump's offer and will be joining The Union later in 2025...OK, just kidding. However, one piece of union news that is real is that the "Largest job action in Amazon history" is over but Teamsters has warned to "stay tuned" regarding further job action.

Read about the current state of the Amazon strike and how it could potentially affect seller fees going forward.

The Latest in eCommerce & Amazon

📈 Online Sales Grew 6.8% Year Over Year. According to data from Mastercard, online sales grew 6.8% compared to last year (it was 3.8% growth for retail sales overall).

🤖 ChatGPT Makes More Moves to Becoming For-Profit Entity I guess we were naive to think ChatGPT would actually stay a not-for-profit. In a blog post (conveniently released and buried on Boxing Day), the OpenAI board detailed its plans for further moves to becoming a for-profit company. 

🪧 Government Sues Walmart for Delivery Driver Practices. It seems delivery drivers are all the attention this holiday season. The Consumer Financial Protection Board is suing Walmart for its practice of forcing its Spark drivers to use their payment platform to access their earnings.

Amazon Seller Spotlight: FinTie

• Third Party Seller Rank: #35 Overall 
• Amazon Link: iHealthLabs
• Company Website: www.fintie.com
• Estimated Revenue: $25 million
  

FinTie has been around since 2011 and was founded in Columbus, Ohio. Two things make them unique. The first is that FinTie is case seller that is based in America in a sea of Chinese competitors. The second is that FinTie has significant revenue yet it's spread out amongst nearly 8000 SKUs with few hero-SKUs in the mix (most of its top sellers are doing tens of thousands of dollars in revenue per month, not hundreds of thousands).

FinTie offers a huge catalog of cases for relatively low demand products. Here's an example of a case for a Kodak Step Camera that sells just 100 units a month.  Apparently it's possible to build a big business with a lot of singles.

You can check out the other top third party sellers here.

Amazon Tactics - Five Tips for Dealing with Chinese New Year

🏮Chinese New Year is just around the corner. Here's five tips for dealing with Chinese New Year and the supply chain havoc it will reap. 

From the YouTube Channel

📽️With Chinese New Year approaching, do you really know what incoterms are? Also, with Amazon now only compensating 'manufacturing cost' knowing what other terms like DDP and CIF mean could make it easier to get more money from Amazon. Check out this quick video on incoterms and what they mean. 

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Thanks for reading and happy selling
EcomCrew.com