Amazon to pull plug on China retail operations

Amazon.com Inc on Thursday said it is notifying sellers that it will no longer operate a marketplace nor provide seller services on its Chinese website, Amazon.cn, from July 18.

"We are working closely with our sellers to ensure a smooth transition and to continue to deliver the best customer experience possible," said a spokeswoman in a statement.

"Sellers interested in continuing to sell on Amazon outside of China are able to do so through Amazon Global Selling."

Amazon shoppers in China will no longer be able to buy goods from third-party merchants in the country, but they still will be able to order from the United States, Britain, Germany and Japan via the firm's global store.

Amazon expects to close fulfillment centers and wind down support for domestic-selling merchants in China in the next 90 days, one of the people said.

The move underscores how entrenched, home-grown e-commerce rivals have made it difficult for Amazon's marketplace to gain a foothold. Consumer insights firm iResearch Global said Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's Tmall marketplace and JD.com Inc controlled 81.9 percent of the Chinese market last year.

"They're pulling out because it's not profitable and not growing," said analyst Michael Pachter at Wedbush Securities.

Ker Zheng, a marketing specialist at Shenzhen-based e-commerce consultancy Azoya, said Amazon had no major competitive advantage in China over its domestic rivals.

Unless someone is searching for a very specific imported good that can't be found elsewhere, "there's no reason for a consumer to pick Amazon because they're not going to be able to ship things as fast as Tmall or JD," he said.

Amazon's customers in China will still be able to purchase the firm's Kindle e-readers and online content, and the company's local website, amazon.cn, will continue to exist, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud computing unit that sells data storage and computing power to enterprises, will remain as well.

The US-listed shares of Alibaba and JD.com rose 1 percent on Wednesday after Reuters first reported the move, before paring gains later in the day. Amazon's shares closed flat.

US retreat 

The withdrawal of the world's largest online retailer – founded by Jeff Bezos, who later became the world's richest person – comes amid a broader e-commerce slowdown in China. Alibaba in January reported its lowest quarterly earnings growth since 2016, while JD.com is responding to the changing business environment with staff cuts.

It also follows the Chinese e-commerce retreat of other big-name Western retailers. Walmart Inc sold its Chinese online shopping platform to JD.com in 2016 in return for a stake in JD.com to focus on its bricks-and-mortar stores.

Similarly, the country appears to factor less in the global aspirations of fellow US tech majors Netflix Inc, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google, Wedbush Securities' Pachter said.

Amazon bought Chinese online shopping website Joyo.com in 2004 for $75 million, rebranding the business in 2011 as Amazon China. But in a sign of Tmall's dominance, Amazon opened an online store on the Alibaba site in 2015.

Amazon is still expanding aggressively in other countries, notably India, where it is contending with local rival Flipkart.