The online small wholesale model of Dunhuang.com conforms to the online order model of small orders and high frequency, creating a precedent for China’s cross-border e-commerce platform. Many Chinese suppliers have also responded flexibly, changing the previous large container order model and making great progress in small online foreign trade. The small order model of cross-border e-commerce has the following four advantages over the traditional large foreign trade orders.
1. It conforms to the purchasing habits of buyers in the era of cross-border e-commerce
In the golden period of economic prosperity in foreign trade, international buyers choose Chinese suppliers more because of the cheap advantage of Chinese suppliers. Large orders can bring large-scale production, and finally purchase cheap goods, which brings sales profits to buyers. However, the overall world economy is currently in a downturn, and large buyers lack confidence in the market. In addition, they are more rigorous in the use of funds during the economic downturn, so they have given up the large order procurement model. This is also the main reason for the bankruptcy of many foreign trade production enterprises that have long relied on the traditional large order model to survive. I have a different understanding of the sharp drop in external demand. The economic downturn will have a certain impact on the world’s purchasing demand, but the consumer demand in many mainstream markets still persists. Cross-border e-commerce directly connects with terminal retailers and small wholesalers in overseas destination countries through online methods, skipping traditional large importers, realizing the flattening of transactions, activating the purchasing demand of the destination country, and accumulating small amounts into large amounts through high-frequency small-batch sales. Therefore, the times are changing, and the sales model is also changing.
2. The profit margin of the small-amount wholesale model is relatively high
Under the traditional large-amount order model, overseas buyers use large quantities to lower the supplier’s price. In order to attract customers, suppliers often reduce prices against their will. In the small-amount wholesale model, the target customers are small wholesalers and retailers. They originally purchase small quantities, so their ability to premium products is relatively weak. On the contrary, many small-amount wholesale businesses involve customization and personalization, so the supplier’s premium ability is relatively strong, and the product can be sold at a very good price.
3. Online small-amount model is most likely to generate data sedimentation
In the classification of cross-border e-commerce, small-scale foreign trade exports still belong to the category of cross-border B2B, or a more accurate description is the model of cross-border B plus small B. Compared with Yidatong’s cross-border large-amount B2B, Dunhuang.com’s small-scale foreign trade wholesale model began to retain online data such as payment and logistics at the earliest. Because the amount of small-scale wholesale funds is not large, customers are willing to guarantee transactions online, and suppliers are also willing to guarantee online payment transactions before delivery. Small-scale foreign trade has opened up the online dataization of cross-border e-commerce and provided a reference for the dataization of current comprehensive B2B cross-border e-commerce.
4. Cross-border logistics of small-scale foreign trade is better solved
Compared with retail platforms such as eBay and “AliExpress”, the customers of small-scale foreign trade wholesale platforms are more concentrated in wholesalers and terminal retailers, so the timeliness requirements for goods are not high, which is more in line with the trade operations of traditional foreign trade exports. According to my experience, in the small-scale foreign trade wholesale business, many foreign trade export companies still choose traditional foreign trade sea transportation exports because such a sea transportation model has the lowest logistics costs.