Amazon has over 100,000 Vietnamese sellers

Gijae Seong, head of Amazon Global Selling Vietnam, said amid the Covid-19 pandemic, sellers have been focusing on products with high demand such as kitchenware, sports gear and house decoration items.

The world’s largest e-commerce company has also been working with Vietnamese exporters to sell medical masks to the U.S., and would continue this partnership to sell masks, gloves and protective clothing, he said.

Before demand surged for pandemic-related products, the most popular items sold by Vietnamese sellers had been women and children’s fashion, 3D cards and paper flowers, he added.

Tran Van Tuoi, CEO of Sea Grapes Vietnam, which sells sea grapes on Amazon, said this year his company participated in the Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions for the first time and saw sales rise by 300 percent. They rose by 500 percent on Thanksgiving, he added.

Amazon has in recent years been recruiting Vietnamese sellers by organizing workshops to teach them how to reach out to global customers.

Eric Broussard, Amazon’s vice president of international marketplaces and retail, said Vietnam is a country with strengths in manufacturing and a large number of good sellers, which is why his company has been investing and expanding there in recent years.

Amazon Global Selling on Tuesday unveiled a task force in Hanoi to support Vietnamese sellers and launched a Vietnamese version of its sellers’ information center.

But their initial success notwithstanding, Vietnamese sellers need to make improvements to reach more customers.

Lai Viet Anh, deputy head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Vietnam e-Commerce and Digital Economy Agency, said local firms need to educate themselves on e-commerce, study foreign customers’ preferences and overcome language barriers as cross-border sales require direct interaction with buyers.