Vietnamese Sellers Take Over Amazon Best Sellers on Mother’s Day, Forcing Top Chinese Sellers to Step Aside
Mother’s Day just passed. A quick look at Amazon data reveals that Chinese sellers, who have long dominated top listings in five major categories—kitchen, clothing, home goods, jewelry, and cosmetics—have experienced a noticeable drop in BSR (Best Seller Rank). Meanwhile, in the first four of these categories, customizable and PoD (Print-on-Demand) products saw a surge in sales. Most strikingly, Vietnamese sellers, without needing to prepare inventory or shipping in advance, used newly launched products to quickly surpass Chinese sellers—who worked hard to stock inventory but were heavily burdened by tariffs.
If doing business means “riding the trend,” then even before the U.S. tariff hike on China, frequent account audits across major platforms and intense competition among Chinese sellers were already pushing many toward the realization that traditional e-commerce models are no longer sustainable. Continuing with conventional methods is tantamount to self-destruction. The performance of products on Amazon this Mother’s Day further confirms: PoD is the new battleground for cross-border sellers as traditional e-commerce enters an era of diminishing returns.
In this article, we’ll show you real-world examples of this unavoidable reality and the opportunities it brings.
Part 1: Vietnamese Sellers Overtake Top Chinese Competitors in Saturated Categories
1. Problems Facing Chinese FBA Sellers Today
Let’s look at the performance of blankets. The image below shows a product sold by a Chinese seller, which had been a consistent Amazon Best Seller before Mother’s Day and the U.S. tariff increase. Here’s a breakdown of the data:
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Price: $29.99
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Variants: 31 adult blankets + 31 kids blankets = 62 total
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Reviews: 27,276
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Rating: 4.8 stars
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Tag: Amazon’s Choice
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Sales: ~1,000 units/month
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Inventory investment: With at least 3 units per order, the inventory cost is likely 3–5x monthly sales
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Estimated inventory cost: Before tariff increase, the total cost (procurement, shipping, storage) was ~50% of retail price. Thus, 3,000 units x $15 = $45,000 ≈ ¥328,500
After the tariff hike, costs may increase another 50–70%
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Profit: For typical Best Sellers, net margins are usually 10–20% (sometimes even negative after ads and returns)
So, ~ $2,999 (¥21,892) to $5,998 (¥43,785) per month
While earning ¥20–40K profit on a single listing seems good, the required inventory investment of ¥328,500 means the seller takes on 7.5–15x more financial risk just to earn that return. This is the harsh reality traditional FBA sellers now face.
2. How Vietnamese PoD Sellers Quickly Overtook Chinese Best Sellers
Now let’s see how these Vietnamese sellers surpassed the Chinese blanket sellers.
Among the Top 4 Best Sellers in blankets, the Chinese seller (analyzed above) had the lowest price and most reviews, but was pushed to #3 by two Vietnamese PoD sellers.
Meanwhile, an American seller with over 1,800 reviews and a mid-range price point could only land at #4.
The Vietnamese sellers at #1 and #2 were using FBA, with one listing priced at $42.95 with only 64 reviews, and the other priced at $55.99 with 35 reviews.
3. What’s Behind the Vietnamese Success?
Does this make you question everything?
Many big sellers have already realized that due to the brutal competition, even Best Seller listings now serve more as branding or traffic drivers, offering little to no real profit.
To maintain Best Seller status, a seller must:
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Price lower than competitors
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Get more (and better) reviews
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Spend more on ads
Yet these two Vietnamese listings each had fewer than 50 reviews, were priced nearly double the Chinese listings, and still achieved over 800 sales each.
There’s a shared design element: both used the phrase “Mama Bear” in the print. Searching “Mama Bear” on Amazon reveals that even listings at the bottom of the search page share the same traits—few reviews, high prices, and 100–1,000 monthly orders!
Part 2: Analyzing Vietnamese Sellers’ Product Selection Strategy
If you look carefully, you’ll notice these two Vietnamese PoD sellers are also using FBA—different from typical PoD sellers.
This raises two key questions:
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How do they know which PoD designs + base products will sell?
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How are they managing FBA fulfillment for PoD?
Let’s break down their product selection strategy.
1. PoD Product Research Basics
PoD research differs significantly from traditional product research on Taobao or Amazon. It involves:
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Trending themes
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Design elements
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Base product selection
2. Trending Themes
PoD is all about capitalizing on trends—positive or negative. Holidays, anniversaries, graduations, birthdays, weddings—PoD products should revolve around such recurring events.
Take Mother’s Day for example: Most successful designs include the words Mother or Mum.
Since Etsy is the top platform for PoD product launches, searching “Mother” on Etsy reveals the dominance of gifts for mothers, far surpassing gifts for grandmothers or wives.
Searching “Mum” yields even higher popularity.
3. Popular Design Elements
After identifying a theme, you can explore Etsy keywords like “mum gift,” and focus on Etsy labels such as:
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Etsy Picks
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Popular Now
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Bestseller
Designs with these tags often generate hundreds of sales/month and are proven by the market.
On the same page, Mama Bear appears as a repeated element. When searching “mama bear,” it’s also the only Etsy auto-suggest keyword that is a design element. Its sales, wishlist numbers, and history confirm that Mama Bear is a winning motif.
4. Choosing Base Products
Base products are the items on which your designs are printed.
For Mother’s Day, these typically include: kitchenware, clothing, home decor, jewelry, and cosmetics.
Because PoD doesn’t require inventory, Vietnamese sellers test the same design across various base products to gauge performance.
5. Trying Multiple Designs
Next, they convert the “Mama Bear” motif into multiple design styles and use different PoD platforms like Etsy or Merch by Amazon to generate mockups and test ads.
No inventory is needed—PoD platforms handle all logistics. Sellers just need to upload the design and run a small ad campaign to see which ones convert.
Compared to traditional FBA, this method reduces go-to-market time from 3–6 months to just a few days or even hours.
6. Scaling via FBA After Product Validation
Once a design performs well on Etsy, Vietnamese sellers move it to FBA for scale, already knowing market demand.
That’s how they achieve 3,100 monthly orders effortlessly.
Part 3: More Successful Cases from Vietnamese Sellers
Besides blankets, Vietnamese sellers excelled in other categories this Mother’s Day:
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Yard Decorations: 9 reviews, 400 orders/month
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Desktop Decor: 5 reviews, 600 orders/month
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Wooden Desk Decor: 72 reviews, 1,000 orders/month
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Scented Candles: 25 reviews, 2,000 orders/month
Why Are Vietnamese Sellers Winning?
To recap Hui Creative core point:
“Continuing with traditional selling methods is self-defeating. The success of Vietnamese sellers proves that PoD is the new battleground in a changing global trade landscape.”
Here’s why Vietnamese sellers are outpacing their Chinese counterparts:
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They combine data with creativity, while many Chinese sellers rely on copying or minor modifications
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They leverage global supply chain shifts, while Chinese sellers focus only on China-based supply chains
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They embrace zero-inventory models, while Chinese sellers still over-invest in overseas stock and global saturation tactics
Part 4: Explore PoD and Global Markets with Hui Creative
Hui Creative has always evaluated cross-border e-commerce opportunities with a global perspective. Since meeting Vietnamese sellers last year, we’ve become more convinced that the path of standard products on traditional platforms is narrowing.
This year, Hui Creative brought over 10 top Amazon Chinese sellers to Vietnam for an on-site tour and exchange. Many of our members have already begun their PoD journeys.
This week’s Hui Creative video course will teach you how to register and list products on Etsy.
And from June 30 to July 5, we’ll be taking our members to Japan for a week-long learning tour—exploring how Japanese online and offline retail can offer new opportunities for Chinese sellers.