On 23 March, a Walmart spokeswoman confirmed that hundreds of people would be laid off at the company's five e-commerce order fulfilment centres in the US and that the laid-off employees would be able to find work at other company shops with pay for 90 days. The spokesperson declined to call the layoffs a mass reduction in force and said that the warehouses continue to operate as normal and that Walmart has not issued warnings for other locations because it is not yet certain of the total number of employees who will ultimately be laid off and rehired.


On 20 March, global cross-border e-commerce giant Amazon announced plans to lay off a further 9,000 people in the coming weeks. This is Amazon's second major layoff this year, following the firing of 18,000 people in January this year. Together with the layoffs, Amazon is downsizing by at least 27,000 employees this year.


In February, Alibaba Group announced its fourth quarter 2022 financial results, in which Ali's total number of employees raised a lot of concerns. At the end of 2022, Alibaba had 239,700 employees, compared to 259,300 at the end of the previous year. That means that for the whole of 2022, the number of Alibaba Group employees decreased by 19,576.

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The world's e-commerce giants have been laying off more or less staff since last year, meaning that the e-commerce industry has entered a phase of downward global economic development and gradual industry development after nearly 20 years of furious expansion, and staff reduction and efficiency improvement are the first tricks most companies think of, and the e-commerce giants are not exempt.


According to the latest forecast by the US market research firm eMarketer, the annual growth of global e-commerce sales in 2022 is expected to be 12.2%, an increase of 4.1% year-on-year, especially the decline in profits is more obvious. According to Amazon's annual earnings report released not long ago, Amazon's net loss in 2022 reached US$2.7 billion, the worst result in history, far worse than the net profit of US$33.364 billion in 2021, equivalent to losing a Poundland; in March this year, Amazon released the company's fourth quarter earnings report for fiscal year 2022, Amazon's fourth quarter net sales of US$149.204 billion, compared with the same period last year Net profit was $278 million, down 98% from $14.323 billion in the same period a year earlier. In addition to Amazon, other leading e-commerce platforms have also experienced revenue hit and profit decline. eBay, the US e-commerce giant, reported full-year revenue of US$9.775 billion in 2022, down 6% year-on-year, with adjusted net profit of US$2.312 billion, down 13% year-on-year; Wayfair, the US and European home e-commerce platform, reported total net revenue of US$12.2 billion in 2022, down 10.9% year-on-year, with a net loss of US$1.3 billion. 10.9%, with a net loss of US$1.3 billion, a 10-fold increase in losses year-on-year; German e-commerce giant Zalando reported revenues of €10.34 billion last year, down 0.1% from 2021, with net profit falling to €16.8 million from €234.5 million in 2021.


As shopping restrictions due to the global new crown epidemic recede, more and more consumers are returning to brick-and-mortar shopping; as well as the overall appetite for buying in the global market, which has declined over the last year due to the dark cloud of inflation hanging over the world; in the last six months, new platforms, including Temu and TikTok, have rapidly emerged to carry goods live online, diverting the market share of traditional e-commerce, leading to a more competitive overall e-commerce environment. A few days ago Anzhi Capital partner Yan Weihua predicted that the growth rate of global e-commerce sales from 2022 onwards will gradually decline, mainly because the global e-commerce volume is already large.

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The growth in sales is accompanied by a plunge in net profits, showing the fierce and deteriorating competitive environment for global e-commerce. The sharp drop in profits has made cost cutting and staff reductions the primary option for companies to turn things around. As Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement posted on the company's website recently, Amazon has hired a large number of additional employees in the past few years, but the uncertain economic outlook for the future has forced the company to choose to cut costs and staff. The company plans to make a final decision and notify those being laid off by mid to late April. In response, Yan Weihua recently said that the global e-commerce in the wake of the new crown epidemic has signalled a development inflection point, with global online e-commerce consumption growth slowing significantly in 2022 compared to 2021, and e-commerce entering a new competitive phase. From a platform perspective, in the second half of 2022 and into this year, both Amazon and other large companies are further streamlining costs through significant staff reductions and expenditure control. In this context, it bodes well for the increasing pressure on platform sellers to face rising fees and costs in the future.


However, Zhang Gwak, President of AliExpress, believes that international market demand is now gradually picking up. From the situation in different countries and markets, the consumer confidence index in Europe and the United States is picking up, while ASEAN and the Middle East are experiencing rapid growth in demand for non-consumer goods such as building materials and machinery and equipment. Changes in overseas market demand are also presenting different industry opportunities on Ali International. For example, orders for products related to new energy vehicles are booming, and currently new energy vehicle charging piles are the foreign trade goods with the highest conversion rate on Ali International, with overseas demand soaring 218% in March this year. Yan Weihua affirmed that the e-commerce industry still has a bright future, as both in terms of scale and growth rate, the efficiency and growth of global e-commerce must still be much higher than the traditional business and retail industry.