47% of Top Amazon Sellers Based in US, 38% Based in China

47% of the top Amazon.com sellers are based in the US, and 38% are based in China, according to Marketplace Pulse analysis of the top sellers whose business addresses can be reliably determined. Brooklyn, New York hosts the zip code with the most Amazon US-based sellers, and Shenzhen is home to a third of Chinese sellers on Amazon.

Top 10,000 sellers on Amazon.com were considered because, as a group, they represent the majority of the marketplace GMV. Each seller in the group has yearly sales exceeding $1 million. The Amazon.com marketplace has over a million active sellers; however, many of them only sell a few products a month.

Among US-based sellers, most are based in California, representing 22% of US sellers. Other common locations include New York, Florida, and Texas. These four biggest states make up 50% of US sellers.

11219 zip code in Borough Park, Brooklyn, New York is the single most populous zip code. 08701 zip code in Lakewood, New Jersey, and 91789 zip code in Walnut, Los Angeles County, California, come next. Borough Park is home to one of the largest Orthodox Jewish communities outside Israel; the prospect of building a business on Amazon has led to a boom across the Orthodox Jewish community in New Jersey and New York.

“There is a certain transformation that is going on right here,” said Rabbi Yehoshua Werde, who runs a nonprofit called Crown Heights Young Entrepreneurs. “This is like the Gold Rush in the 1840s. Whenever there is an economic shift, it opens up opportunity.” Leticia Miranda of BuzzFeed News has recently covered the community of Orthodox Jews selling on Amazon.

For Chinese retailers and manufacturers, Amazon is the most efficient direct-to-consumer platform to reach the US and European shoppers. The share of China-based sellers has increased from 24% in 2016 to 38% in October 2019. However, during the last twelve months, it has slowed down in growth and is not expected to surpass 50% soon. A similar increase of China-based sellers has been observed on Amazon’s European marketplaces as well.

Guangdong province is home to 40.3% of Chinese sellers. Shenzhen hosts a third of third-party Chinese sellers on Amazon and is estimated to be the city with the largest number of Amazon sellers anywhere in the world. It is a major city in Guangdong province, one of the leading commercial and manufacturing regions in China.

Growth of Chinese sellers has coincided with the use of Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service, which has allowed their products to have the same two-day Prime shipping as domestic sellers - Chinese sellers are thus more likely to use FBA than the US sellers. Almost all top Chinese sellers use FBA, while only 75% of top US-based sellers do. Therefore most Amazon shoppers are oblivious to the business location of the seller.

The stories of Borough Park, Brooklyn, and Shenzhen, Guangdong, are different, but the two locations, 8,053 miles apart, are each growing on Amazon thanks to their self-organizing communities.

Share it:
Get data-driven insights about online retail

Juozas Kaziukėnas

Founder of Marketplace Pulse, Juozas wears multiple hats in the management of Marketplace Pulse, including writing most of the articles. Based in New York City. Advisor to other startups and entrepreneurs. Occasional speaker at conferences.

Get Data-Driven Insights About Online Retail