In the cross-border e-commerce industry, whether it is parallel imports or fakes, they all reflect the problem of foreign supply sources: many sellers in the industry cannot obtain direct authorization from brand owners, so they have to “buy goods” from the local market, and parallel imports are produced. However, the threshold for purchasing such sources is low and the cost is high. In addition, the market competition is fierce, and the profit is meager or even loses money, which prompts some sellers to counterfeit, which leads to cross-border e-commerce fakes.
How to solve the upstream supply problem?
The method is simple: obtain direct authorization from foreign brands or retailers. However, this method is very difficult to implement, so much so that Alibaba’s Jack Ma, JD’s Liu Qiangdong, NetEase Kaola’s Ding Lei and others have personally gone abroad to “procure”. Obviously, 2015 was a bumper year, and all large cross-border e-commerce players have established cooperative relationships with many well-known foreign brands and retailers. Among them, Tmall International is leading the way and successfully invited well-known retailers such as Metro, Woolworths, Costco and well-known brands such as Shiseido, Blackmores, and Brita to settle in.
However, what should those entrepreneurial enterprises do?
Faced with well-known foreign supermarkets and brand owners, these entrepreneurial enterprises have no bargaining chips, and they can’t even get the agency of foreign second-tier brands. In this case, many companies may take risks and introduce counterfeit goods in order to survive. In fact, there is room for growth for entrepreneurial enterprises. You know, foreign goods are extremely rich, and what Chinese people are currently familiar with is just the tip of the iceberg. If entrepreneurial enterprises can deeply cultivate these long-tail products and use Internet celebrities, social media and other methods to detonate them, they will make huge profits. The common gameplay is as follows: First, mainstream brands of milk powder, diapers and other rigid products must be available, and the price should not be significantly higher than that of peers; secondly, for long-tail products, new products should be tested in stages, and potential products should be sorted out; finally, when a product shows signs of being popular, immediately organize personnel to negotiate in depth with the corresponding brand owners, and at the same time increase traffic support for the product. If we can eventually cooperate deeply with several small foreign brands and help them explode in the Chinese market, then entrepreneurial cross-border e-commerce companies can not only gain a foothold in the market, but also gain market share without burning money.
Therefore, counterfeit goods are not the only way for small and medium-sized entrepreneurial cross-border e-commerce companies to survive. At present, although there are still many pain points in foreign sources of goods, the sustainable development of enterprises depends on the wisdom of intensive cultivation, rather than the cleverness of hidden counterfeiting.