The impact of the listing of Lightinthebox on China’s small-scale cross-border foreign trade:
1. It has aroused the attention of Chinese society to small-scale cross-border e-commerce.
As a long-standing foreign trade export model, small-scale cross-border e-commerce has been on the margins for a long time. The entire Chinese foreign trade industry has never stopped arguing about small-scale cross-border foreign trade, and relevant national departments have always maintained a wait-and-see attitude. As a foreign trade business model with the most growth potential, foreign trade driving force, and global influence, both small and medium-sized enterprises and the government generally paid less attention to small-scale cross-border e-commerce before Lightinthebox went public. With Lightinthebox’s listing as the dividing line, China’s small-scale cross-border e-commerce has truly begun to develop explosively. By 2015, a complete set of small-scale cross-border e-commerce industry chains including payment, logistics, warehousing, and training services had been formed. Chinese manufacturing factories that originally relied solely on OEM exports have been working hard in the cross-border small-scale foreign trade market, and many manufacturing companies have achieved very amazing sales results in just a few years. In Shenzhen’s cross-border small-scale trade circle, annual sales of tens of millions of yuan are no longer particularly amazing. The government also gave positive guidance and evaluation, and provided many encouraging policies in terms of industry, taxation and law.
2. The real transformation from small foreign trade to cross-border e-commerce B2C.
The predecessor of the cross-border e-commerce B2C, which is in full swing now, is small foreign trade. For a long time, people’s understanding of cross-border e-commerce stayed more on small foreign trade, and believed that such an export model was limited to small exports of a few categories. The success of Lightinthebox has transformed cross-border e-commerce from small foreign trade to cross-border e-commerce. Lightinthebox started with a single wedding dress product line, and in a short period of time, expanded its product categories to electronic products, toys, accessories, household goods, and sporting goods. It continued to develop, and medium and large orders also came into being, which reflects the core value of cross-border e-commerce. Relying on the cheap advantage of China’s manufacturing industry and combining Internet technology, an innovative and efficient supply chain channel has been created. In 2008, when traditional foreign trade was hit by a cold winter, cross-border e-commerce B2C avoided the cumbersome traditional foreign trade export channel levels and directly faced end consumers, redefining the relationship between customers and suppliers, creating new value for China’s foreign trade, building an online supply chain, and truly realizing the transformation from small-scale foreign trade to cross-border e-commerce.