E-Commerce Sellers Band Together To Navigate Tariffs, Supply-Chain Challenges—and AI

Forbes

22-04-2025

E-commerce sellers are a nimble bunch—constantly adjusting to changing consumer demands, updates to the Amazon platform and threats from new competitors. But 2025 is putting many of these small shops to the test as the trade war has brought 145% tariffs to China.
'This has been my biggest concern—and top of everybody's minds,' says Gary Huang, a veteran e-commerce entrepreneur. 'There's a lot of uncertainty in the supply chain world. At 145%, it's not cost-effective to import from China anymore, especially for brands operating on razor-thin margins—like those in the electronics niche.'
He is coming together with fellow e-commerce sellers at the 7 Figure Seller Summit 10, a free online, 3D event starting today and running through April 24. This year's theme is 'Ecom Sellers Strike Back.' Many of the attendees of the event, founded in 2018, are traditionally small or one-person businesses that will need to counterbalance rising costs by finding efficiencies with AI.
With more shoppers buying online since the pandemic, e-commerce is booming. The e-commerce market grew to $26.8 trillion in 2024 and is expected to reach $214.5 trillion by 2033, with a compound annual growth rate of 25.83% from 2025 through 2033, according to IMARC Group, a market research firm.
However, sellers will have to be nimble to survive. As one seller shared with Huang, his company has $6.5 million in purchase orders that will face $2.5 million in additional taxes that must be paid at import. Stopping the purchase orders would "stop the business," the seller said in a chat Huang shared on his website. 'Everyone (including our suppliers) [is]
Although some sellers import from countries such as India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Turkey—which got a reprieve through the 90-day pause in reciprocal tariffs—Huang says, 'no one country can replace China in terms of product selection, quality, and vertically integrated supply chains.'
Even China-based factory owners are opening factories in Southeast Asia, in Vietnam and Thailand, he adds. 'That's one workaround,' he says.
In the meantime, Huang is seeing a shakeout on the Amazon platform—and a shift to new markets. 'We're seeing a lot of panic, even from Chinese sellers—many are threatening to leave Amazon U.S. or increase prices immediately to find workarounds,' he says.
Some e-commerce sellers are expanding to Canada, says Huang. 'It's a smaller marketplace, but it could be more profitable because there's less competition and no China tariffs,' he says. 'We're seeing more interest in selling in Europe and Japan as well—large Amazon marketplaces not affected by China tariffs,' he says.
Some e-commerce brands are raising prices. However, sellers have to be careful with price increases, says Huang. 'You don't want to alienate customers. It can affect demand and your rankings.' To guide them, some are turning to AI pricing tools, such as Profasee, he says.
Here are some other key trends Huang shared:
Trend #1: AI brings new efficiencies to sellers. 'With AI agents and bots, you can reduce a lot of manual work,' says Huang. 'For example, customer service agents can be trained on your brand content, tone, voice, and FAQs. This can help reduce manual work. It may not eliminate it entirely, but it can craft a draft response your customer service person can just scan and send—or fine-tune slightly. That saves a lot of time and effort.'
Trend #2: 'Generative engine optimization' is taking hold. 'AI is becoming more and more common in all respects, and one of the trends we're seeing is going from more traditional SEO, like search engine optimization—for example, on Amazon, keyword-based search—to more of what we are calling generative engine optimization or GEO,' says Huang. 'This means it's more intent-based, more context-based rather than content-based.'
Trend #3: AI-powered search is changing the game. 'Amazon has a Rufus AI chat search assistant built into Amazon, so there's been a lot of talk that this is a huge shift in the models of e-commerce, especially for the Amazon platform,' says Huang.
Trend #4: AI copywriting tools are transforming Amazon listings. 'Creating an Amazon-optimized listing can be done using various software and AI tools, including Kidi, m10 and Dive,' notes Huang.
This is helping foreign sellers make inroads in English-speaking markets. 'Most of the biggest e-com sellers on Amazon are from China, and for them, English is a second language,' says Huang. 'Using AI tools, foreign sellers can write almost native-level copywriting. So the language barrier for domestic American sellers is no longer a barrier. That's been destroyed by AI.'
Trend #5: AI tools are improving research and competitive analysis. 'You can research competitors by going through their reviews,' says Huang. 'Maybe your competitor has a thousand reviews. The old way was you'd have to manually go through those reviews for weaknesses. Now with AI tools, you can download a spreadsheet of reviews, upload it into ChatGPT, and ask it to be a market researcher. It can spit out the top five problems in minutes.'
Trend #6: AI is making it easier for sellers to generate images. Huang finds ChatGPT 4.0's new image generation feature particularly relevant. 'It had one before, but this is leaps and bounds better,' says Huang. 'If you go on LinkedIn, you're seeing everyone creating super photorealistic models using products in different situations—supplements, beautiful models. If you didn't know, nine times out of 10, you'd think it was real.'
Sellers are now able to use AI to do about 80% of their graphics design work, according to Huang. 'Our job as brand owners is training the AI, giving it context, and fine-tuning at the end,' he says.
Meanwhile, new video-creation tools are also adding to the mix. 'Sora from OpenAI is a good one,' Huang says. 'There are fewer hallucinations and tremendous improvements just within the past year. If you asked me last year, I would have said no, it's not possible, but this year it's there.'
Trend #7: Catchy jingles and theme songs for product videos are easier to produce. Traditionally, you'd hire an agency for that, but now you can use AI to create a jingle in just minutes with a text prompt,' says Huang.
There is no doubt the e-commerce world is going to see a lot of disruption. 'For the brands that survive, this is an opportunity,' says Huang. 'There could be a shakeout, and six to 12 months down the line, the landscape might be less competitive.'