#659 – Tariffs Shake eCom: Temu, Shein Hike Prices | Amazon 1P News | TikTok Sales Crash | Weekly Buzz 4/23/25
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Timu and Sheehan are officially hiking prices on April 25th, Amazon One P is now offering to pay more to suppliers hit by tariffs, and TikTok shop sales in the US appear to already be taking a dive before the de minimis loophole even ends. This and more on this week's episode of the Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. This is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz. We give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon, TikTok shop, e-commerce world. We let you know what new features that Helium 10 has and give you a training tip of the week that'll give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Today's host is actually going to be Shivali Patel. So, Shivali, take it away and let us know what's buzzing.

Let's start today's weekly buzz with a headline that impacts millions of online shoppers and every seller watching Timu and Shein's pricing strategy. According to USA Today, both platforms have announced they'll officially be raising prices on April 25th.

directly in response to the wave of tariffs recently enacted by President Donald Trump. In separate statements, Timu and Xi'an cited rising operational costs from global trade shifts, specifically referencing the newly announced 125% tariff on Chinese imports.

That figure includes a retaliatory move from China, also upping tariffs on U.S. imported goods to 125% as well, and a response from the White House, which as of last week doubled down on its stance against the Chinese market while temporarily pausing similar tariffs on other countries.

Timu and Shein have promised to maintain the current prices until April 25th, 2025, which is just in a few short days. But let's be real, that grace period is short and the new reality is setting in. These platforms built their dominance on sub $10 deals and free shipping fueled by the de minimis tax exemption that let goods under $800 enter the US duty-free. But

But as of May 2nd, that loophole vanishes. So while price hikes on April 25th are a direct result of the 125% tariff spike, the May 2nd date will only accelerate pricing pressure. The way I see it is everything in life comes with duality and there is good to be found even in the difficult. And for this in particular, for many years, US sellers have voiced frustration about being undercut by Timu or Shein products.

that avoided US import duties. With this change, we're now seeing a structural shift in their favor. So if you are a US seller and you've ever tried to compete against $4 dresses or $5 gadgets shipping from China, I'd say this might be your moment to recalibrate pricing, retarget customers, or even reenter product categories that had become too competitive previously. Sure, the US-China trade war just got real again, but this time its ripple effect hits e-commerce shoppers at checkout

and sellers at sourcing. I hope you continue watching to see how this plays out and let us know what's going on with your profit margins, your advertising strategy, or even what you speculate your customers will be searching for next in the comments. Moving on to what Amazon is doing in response, this could be one of Amazon's more surprising plays in this whole tariff tug of war situation because

It's not about raising prices, but about absorbing them. According to a report from the street, Amazon has started working with a select group of its first party vendors, those that buys from directly to help share the financial impact of rising tariffs. In an internal document obtained by the Business Insider, Amazon reportedly told vendors that will begin paying higher prices for their products on a case

by case basis. This is not a blanket offer you guys. It says it right over here in an internal document obtained by business insider. Amazon reportedly told vendors that will begin paying higher prices for their products on a case by case basis as Britain right over here. This is not a blanket offer. It's conditional. Vendors must agree to guarantee profit margins, meaning if their products don't hit a certain profitability threshold,

Well, they are on the hook to make up the difference. So yes, Amazon is technically softening the tariff blow, but only if the math works in their favor. If a product sells below Amazon's profit margins or profit expectations rather, then that vendor still has to pay the difference. It's a risky proposition, but it might be worth it for vendors who can't afford to lose the Amazon pipeline entirely. This move comes right after Amazon was reportedly canceling orders from vendors

sourcing from tariff affected countries, including China, meaning this isn't just about keeping shelves stocked to you guys. It's about maintaining vendor relationships and keeping the customer experience intact as costs rise. If Amazon is willing to pay more to hold onto certain products, then the bigger signal is they're concerned about long-term availability and pricing pressures. It also means we may start seeing more curated margin friendly brands on Amazon's digital shelves and

and fewer ultra lean products that cannot weather the added fees. If you are a first party vendor, this might be a conversation worth initiating. And if you're not, keep an eye out because the way that Amazon's balancing costs behind the scenes today can shape what kind of products are available to shoppers tomorrow. Next up, a change that you might have missed

But if you offer subscriptions on the Walmart Marketplace, one that will matter, Walmart just updated its terms and conditions for Marketplace subscriptions as of April 18th, 2025. And they're rolling out a new requirement for seller funded discounts.

According to a notification sent to participants, sellers who want to continue offering subscription-based products must now provide a discount either 5% off per item or up to 15% if customers have multiple subscriptions in their carts from the same seller. It's kind of like Amazon subscribe and save, but this is Walmart's, uh,

subscribe and save. This move is framed as a response to seller feedback with Walmart saying they're enhancing the value of subscriptions by layering in added discounts. But

Let's be real. This does also shift more of the cost burden onto sellers, especially those offering consumables or products that already have tight margins. And here is what it means for you. If you are currently enrolled in Walmart subscription program, and you don't want to participate under these new terms, you will need to manually unenroll your SKUs. Walmart has provided a step-by-step link to help you do that. But if you do not take action, you're automatically agreeing to fund those discounts on eligible orders.

This is why if you are a seller on Walmart, especially in categories like health, beauty, or household goods, double check your subscription enabled listings. This change is not optional and it could eat into profit margins if you're not proactively pricing for it.

which is the whole reason you're in business, right? To profit. Loyalty programs like this can drive repeat orders, but only when the economics work on both sides. So make sure that you're not giving away value without a strategy to really retain it. I think this is a good place to segue to chat about our other favorite platform. Sales are already starting to dip for Chinese vendors on US platforms.

And one of the biggest examples of that is TikTok shop, which saw its U S gross merchandise volume drop from nearly 291 million at the end of March to just over 197 million last week. That is pretty strong decline. And that decline started shortly after Trump's latest round of tariffs on Chinese imports was announced signaling that cross border trade pressure may already be showing up in consumer spending habits.

Now, here is what is really curious. The de minimis exemption that allows goods under $800 to enter the US tax-free has not officially ended yet, and it's not set to expire until May 2nd. So why the drop now? That's a great question. Some sellers are speculating it's not just about the tariffs already in effect, but

It's more of a preemptive shift in strategy. For example, one Guangdong based cosmetics merchant just shut down her US TikTok shop operation entirely and has pivoted to Europe and Southeast Asia. You can read up more on that on the MSN article I was just looking at.

Others have raised their prices for US customers by 10% to cover the rising cost of logistics and customs clearance, which are already trending up even before the tariff deadline hits. The broader takeaway, even before the policy change kicks in, Chinese sellers may be adjusting course and platforms once flooded with ultra low cost goods could begin to feel the shift in pricing and availability. Whether this drop is just a temporary reaction,

or an early sign of a longer term decline, it's a space that I think every US seller should be keeping an eye on. Here is something that might sound a little familiar because it echoes a feature that Amazon just started testing a couple weeks back.

If you remember, we talked about Amazon's new buy from me function inside the shopping app where their AI agent can complete a purchase for you on another brand's website without you ever leaving the Amazon app. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Well, now, according to new code strings spotted by developers seen here, OpenAI and Shopify are gearing up for something strikingly similar. ChatGPT appears to be integrating a native shopping flow directly into the chat experience, complete with product offers,

pricing, shipping info, and even a direct checkout handoff to Shopify. This would mean that users can not only discover, but actually complete purchases entirely inside of a ChatGPT conversation without being bound to external sites.

a big step for agentic commerce and one that positions Shopify's massive base of merchants right in front of ChatGPT's rapidly growing audience with minimal friction or extra integration. From what's visible so far, the Shopify checkout is embedded behind the scenes, implying a deeper partnership rather than just affiliate linking. Testing Catalog says this move puts open AI directly in competition with, say, Microsoft's

co-pilot merchant program, as well as perplexities buy with pro that launched last November, which are all pushing towards in-chat purchasing experiences for sellers and e-commerce brands. It signals a fast arriving future where AI assistants aren't just recommending products. They're completing transactions. They're the ones completing the transaction.

So my big question to you is really, are you optimized for a world where AI is not just a shopper's guide, but the buyer too? Because this isn't just about better discovery, is it? It's about who owns the checkout. You'll want to ensure your SEO is properly combed through and set up for maximum potential both on and off of the major platforms. Go back to your SKUs, optimize for visibility and conversions. And if you're not on Shopify, maybe it's something to consider.

A quick update from AI.com on Walmart that could have a quiet but meaningful impact for sellers. Walmart also just announced it's overhauling how it maps its delivery zones. So if you check this article out, what you're going to find is instead of using the outdated zip code boundaries, it's now using geospatial technology to divide regions into precise hexagonal grids.

Essentially, Walmart can now better pinpoint delivery coverage filling in gaps and overlapping store regions. This new system allows customer orders to be fulfilled by multiple Walmart locations in the same area rather than just being locked to one store, let's say. So if one store doesn't have the product, another nearby one can actually pitch in allowing for more complete, faster deliveries. The result?

Walmart says this opens up delivery access to 12 million more households and expands who can qualify for the same day delivery. Meaning some sellers can now see the products get to customers even faster. It's not really the flashiest update of the week I'd say, but when it comes to speed and convenience, every improvement counts, right? All right. Now for something that's not about sales or strategy, but about making a real impact.

Amazon's Force for Good 2025 application is officially open and it's a chance for sellers like you and I who are doing meaningful work in our communities to get recognized and featured by Amazon. This program highlights sellers supporting causes like education, sustainability, disaster relief, and underserved populations. If this sounds like you, then this is your opportunity to share your story and get exposure at Amazon Accelerate this September. Past winners include the Women's Bean Project, helping women break cycles of chronic unemployment,

Bloom Daily Planners, who donate planners to incarcerated women and local shelters,

and Papa Rozier Farms, which supports education and job creation in Haiti through their natural products. The deadline to apply for this is April 27th, 2025 at 1159 PST. So if your business is making a difference beyond your products, this is your moment to step forward, my friend. Your work deserves to be seen and Amazon's giving you the platform to do just that. Second to last, I have a quick update for those of you that are running Amazon DSP campaigns as of April 18th.

Amazon has officially rolled out bid adjustments inside of Amazon DSP designed to give advertisers more flexibility without the hassle of juggling multiple line items. This means that you can now apply custom bidding strategies, both simple and complex within a single line item. This gives you more control over when, where, and how aggressively you are bidding, especially if you are integrating your own data or proprietary logic into campaigns.

Amazon also released new reporting features alongside this now live via reporting API with console access as well as bulk actions being supported. Case in point is this beauty brand, Coty, which was able to reportedly use these adjustments to boost return on ad spend by 28% and new to brand ROAs by 36%.

If you are an advanced advertiser looking to move beyond Amazon's built-in automation and make your campaigns more customized and scalable, then this could be worth a closer look. If you're not running DSP though, obviously this is not going to be as pertinent to you. And last but not least,

Wrapping up with a quick update from Amazon Freight. If you remember, we reported before that Amazon Freight was making it easier for sellers in the US to move less than truckload shipments. And now it looks like that expansion is rolling into Europe. According

According to Amazon, their freight forwarding service is now offering broader intermodal options and pricing transparency across UK and EU. That means more streamlined access to freight quotes, GPS track shipments, and customs compliance all inside of Amazon's ecosystem. It's especially relevant for manufacturers and retailers and e-commerce brands looking to scale up without the usual logistics headaches.

Not a major headline this week, but something worth watching if your inventory moves across borders or you're exploring alternative shipping partners.

With that, it is time for this week's new feature alert. I am excited about this one. I think this one's going to turn a whole lot of heads. If you are a seller trying to find creators who can move the needle for your listings, this is for you. This tool is something Helium 10 elite members have had early access to for a little while now, but as of this week, it's officially rolling out to Diamond Plan users too. It's called Influencer Finder.

And it makes discovering and connecting with influencers who are already creating content for Amazon products faster and easier than ever.

So whether you want to see who's reviewed products in your niche or what platforms they're active on or even get direct contact details, all that is now just a few clicks away. I'm talking about if you've been getting stuck trying to vet influencers manually or you didn't know where to start, this is going to help you when it comes to outreach and product promotion. So let me turn it over to Kerry, who's going to give you the full breakdown of how Influencer Finder works and why sellers are already loving it. Kerry, take it away.

Today's new feature update is a very exciting tool and it's completely new and it's called our Influencer Finder tool. It is going to help you to find influencers for Amazon and for other platforms super quickly. So I'm going to show you how it works. The first thing you want to do is you want to log into your Helium 10 account and then you're going to go under the tools menu and you're going to find it here under influencer finder under marketing. Okay, so that's where you'll find this tool and this tool is super

so exciting because basically all you have to do is fill in these parameters and you can find influencers that are really targeted for your specific needs. And so one thing you could do is you can actually do it by category. So say maybe you wanted somebody in the baby products and you wanted maybe just like, okay, so maybe you had a potty trading tool or a certain product, or maybe you have like baby apparel or something like that. So you can check that and you can apply the filters and you can literally find

other influencers who have already started sharing about apparel for babies and you'll get that right there. So that's one way you can find them. You can also find them by their influencer names. So like if you go on to our Manny's Mysterious Oddities, you can see where these videos actually show up. So this is where they show up in the carousel. They're on the videos at the very end. And you can see these are videos done by influencers.

So if we click on this one right here, let's see right here. This is Doug and Nikki. And so you can actually find there, if you wanted to look up some information, you can actually find information on Doug and Nikki by just putting in the influencer name, Doug and Nikki.

You can apply filters and there, I think that's them. Let's look at the, yep, that's them. So we've got this right here. So it shows you all kinds of great information. It shows, you know, posted videos, the ideas list. So the ideas list would be on their page. So they've got a bunch of ideas lists.

lists. So the more of those they have, that means potentially the more, you know, things that they are, you know, promoting in their other social media, and you could potentially get in these ideas lists and get some more exposure for your products, photos posted and then upper carousel. So this is important to the upper carousel and lower carousel are where these videos are located. So this is all upper carousel. And if you scroll down, these are in the lower carousel. And

The aim would really be to try to get your products in the upper carousel or sorry, the videos in the upper carousel. But, you know, both is really good. But those who get theirs mostly in the upper carousel might potentially be a little bit better at this whole thing. You can also see when their first video was posted. It looks like they started in January of 2025. So only a few months ago, which is amazing. Look how many videos they've posted in that much time. He is amazing.

They're hustling. Okay. This is just all really good information. You can also find their social media if they are linked. So if we see that their social media is linked up here in the right hand corner, you can actually, it'll be linked here and you click on it and you can actually see and, you know, directly go to their Instagram profile and you can DM them right there. Or sometimes you might see, you know, TikTok or YouTube and you can go to those profiles as well. It'll literally take you straight to them by clicking on here.

and then show you what that is. Okay, so let's go back to the just finding some people. Okay, so what if, you know, for our different products, we wanted to find something, someone gothic, and you wanted to see like in their biography, and I'll show you where the biography is. It's in this top part here. So they've got, you know, a lot of travel and RV stuff like that. But maybe we want to find somebody that's into goth, and we want to apply those filters to just find some influencers for goth. And it looks like we've got five. So

So we could potentially, you know, go onto their social media and contact them to see if they would be willing to potentially do a video for our, our coffin shelf or any of the other Gothic products that we offer. Okay. So you can also do, you know, excluding phrases in the bio if you wanted to, you can look up, you know, based on the number of upper carousel videos or the number of videos posted. So if you wanted a minimum, like you wanted to see that they have minimum have maybe a hundred videos, um,

and that's what you want to look for in just an influencer, you can find a bunch of influencers that way. You can filter by how many ideas listed, 'cause maybe you want to see that they're kind of creating these idea lists and maybe sending outside traffic, and then photos posted, you can also do it by video link. So there's a lot of ways that you can filter this information, and it's really, really exciting because now with the Influencer Finder, you can be very, very targeted with finding

influencers because, you know, before you just kind of get onto these platforms or just kind of look around on Amazon to try to find somebody who could review your products, but now you can actually find them and potentially contact them so that they can review your products. So it's very targeted. Like, like you saw, you can actually go really deep dive into the category. You can search by, you know, a keyword with the content,

potentially be in your bio like I showed you with the goth and how we found those influencers that were very, very targeted. So it is an amazing tool. And if you haven't checked it out, you should go ahead and try to check that tool out because it's going to be a game changer for helping you to get those UGC videos from influencers. So we hope you like it. And if you have any suggestions, you can leave them in the comments.

Thank you, Kerry. I hope everyone's already thinking of ways to incorporate that into your marketing stack because the opportunity is massive. Now, let's keep the momentum going with this week's strategy of the week brought to you by Bradley. He's diving into one of the most powerful features inside Helium 10 Cerebro tool, historical trend analysis, to help you make smarter keyword decisions by looking at the seasonality and search behavior over time. Over to you, Bradley.

Let's go ahead and get into my number one strategy that you can only do with Helium 10. Let me first go ahead and kind of like paint the picture here.

of what it is. Let's say, for example, if I record this in January, I might look at, hey, what's going on for the 4th of July product? And if I were to look at the 4th of July decorations, for example, right now in January, I would get a number of products here that are some of the best sellers. However, are these the best sellers of products overall for 4th of July? Probably not. You know, not many people are buying 4th of July products in January.

January of the year, right? And you could see some of the top rank ones on this page. Like here is one here. They sold 400 a month, but that's not really a top seller for 4th of July products. If I were to actually just look in brand analytics using Helium 10 or using Seller Central, and if I look all the way back into what the top month or the top week was last year in 2024, June 23rd to June 29th, I could see that there was a

400,000 search volume for this keyword. And I could see what the actual top product was. And this product, as you can see the number one product last year, it is barely even selling right now. Only a hundred people bought it in 30 days, but it was selling tens of thousands of units back last June. So that's one scenario.

Which is, hey, it's a seasonal product. What are the keywords it's ranking for now? All right. But what are the keywords that were driving sales to it back then? For example, if I were to run Cerebro on it right now, take a look. Uh,

It has, let's see, 2,000 keywords right now that it's ranking for. I mean, it's selling right now. Some seasonal products are not even in stock, but this one is in stock. 2,000 keywords. Let's see. For a search volume of over 1,000 and where it is ranking between 1 and let's say 10. So this is where it's getting from sales from now. How many keywords are there? Zero. Zero.

Look at that zero keywords. I would probably have to take this down to 500 or something to see if it's even ranking for it. Only one keyword. It's for Memorial Day, which makes sense, right? Memorial Day is before 4th of July. Okay. So only one keyword. So if I was doing my research right now in Cerebro, if I was using some other tool out there like Cerebro, I would find very few highly relevant keywords that are driving sales to this product.

Is that going to help me create my listing for 4th of July? No. So if I'm using another tool, I would have to wait until 4th of July or June to at least see what the top keywords are. But watch this. What I can do inside of Helium 10 is I hit the historical trend button. Okay. And with that, I'm going to see, Hey, let's go back to June.

of 2024. And let's actually see, hey, what were the keywords driving the sales to this product that I know was selling great last June? Because it was brand analytics, one of the top ones. And so now let's go ahead and look at

500 keywords, 500 search volume and above rank one through 10. And now instead of one keyword, look at this. I've got 65 keywords and I can see, Oh, 4th of July decorations, USA decorations for party, 4th of July decoration, 4th of July decor, et cetera, et cetera. So now all of a sudden I can see what the seasonal keywords are, even though we're not in season, because it's like, I'm taking a time machine in cerebro and

all the way back to last June and last July to see. All right. So that's one use case scenario for this strategy. Another use case scenario. Let's say there's a product that you know historically is a great seller because you were monitoring them before. Um, or maybe you were looking in brand analytics, what were the top sellers, but that product is not even in stock at all right now. For example, here's a product that actually is the number one selling coffin shelf throughout the year.

But as you can see right now, it says currently unavailable. All right. So if you were just to use the regular Cerebro or you're using another tool that's out there to try and find what the keywords that this product is ranking for, what would you find?

You're going to find nothing right here is a helium 10 Cerebro running Cerebro and there is no keywords that it's ranking for. These are all coming from Amazon's relevancy. Amazon recommended no keywords that this is ranking for it. So then, you know, how would you see what are the top keywords for coffin shells? Because this is the number one selling coffin shelf throughout the year. It just so happens that right now it's out of stock.

Again, take the time machine back and find out when it was in stock and what keywords were driving sales. So right now, like I said, Cerebro or any other tool out there is showing nothing. Well, let's go back to like, say, October of last year when it was in stock. It was ranking for over a thousand keywords. Hey, for keywords, I have a search volume of at least 500 keywords.

Where was it ranking from one through 10? For example, I can do that search. And now I've got 14 keywords here that were driving sales. When any other tool out there,

would have shown absolutely nothing. All right. So guys, this is the number one thing that is unique to helium 10 is this historical Cerebro available on the diamond plan. I had long wanted this for years from helium 10. I would have paid $300 just for this. It is that valuable to be looking at, um, products that are seasonal, uh, to be looking at products that are out of stock, take a time machine in Cerebro back and

even though I maybe I never had searched this product before, you're going to see information on it.

Thank you, Bradley. That was super insightful and a great reminder that looking at historical keywords trends is not just about data. It's about timing your strategy to perfection. Whether you're launching a new product or optimizing an existing one, these insights can give you a serious edge. And that wraps up this week's Weekly Buzz. From major tariff changes and platform updates to new tools that help you work smarter, not harder. We hope you're walking away with a few action items and a whole lot of clarity. We'll catch you next week to see what's buzzing.