Selling on Amazon might not be the best idea

I figured I would see how others feel about this topic. We have been selling on Amazon for many years now. It has been an interesting experience.

Lately we have had a lot of our popular products taken to China, cloned and sent back at half cost. It has taken a lot of our business away and devalued our markets. Instead of selling the clones at similar cost to ours(which were selling fine and in large numbers) they came in at half cost.

This devalued the product line and now everyone want’s one at the cheap price. We make ours in the USA and it’s just impossible to sell it for the cost the Chinese do.

We have been trying to learn from this. We have seen a flaw in Amazons system that we believe is hurting product manufacturers out there.

When your product sells a lot on Amazon, Amazon will let others know this. A lot of the data is out there for the picking. When you see success on Amazon, others are watching. Next thing you know your great product is ripped off and offered for a price you can never compete at. This data Amazon provides others actually hurts you and your products long term success.

Had you not sold your product on Amazon, the data would not be leaked on your sales and you likely would not have been ripped off.

We know there are other ways to see if a product is worth cloning that the Chinese use but I am betting Amazon is one of the largest data points they use. If you just sold on your own website the data is much harder to get.

What are your thoughts on this?