The essence of export overseas warehouses is to localize cross-border e-commerce trade, enhance consumer shopping experience, and thus improve the competitiveness of export cross-border e-commerce enterprises in the export destination market. Its value to export cross-border e-commerce enterprises and industries is obvious. At present, export overseas warehouses have become a “weapon” advantage for cross-border e-commerce to leverage overseas markets.
(I) Overseas warehouses help solve the problems of long cross-border logistics time and transportation risks
For example, it only takes 3 days to deliver goods to customers through US export overseas warehouses, while it takes 15 to 20 days to ship directly from China. Especially during peak seasons such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, overseas warehouses can solve the problem of “congestion” of goods. Because direct mail shipments during these periods all rely on air transportation, the explosive growth of cargo volume has caused the air transportation logistics system to paralyze, and the delivery time cannot be guaranteed (usually more than twice the usual time). E-commerce sellers often “eat bad reviews” because they cannot deliver goods as promised. In addition, overseas warehouses can effectively solve transportation problems such as loss, damage, and delays in the logistics process.
(II) Overseas warehouses help to increase the profit margin of a single item
In mature markets such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany, consumers’ requirements for product delivery time exceed their sensitivity to price. Domestic sellers concentrated on building or renting overseas warehouses in these markets, which not only meets consumers’ timeliness requirements, but also improves sellers’ pricing level. eBay data shows that 45% of respondents said that using export overseas warehouses helps to increase product prices, and the average price of goods stored in overseas warehouses is 30% higher than that of similar goods shipped directly.
(III) Stable supply chain helps to increase product sales
The establishment of export overseas warehouses enables sellers to deliver goods to the sales market in advance to complete stocking, ensuring a stable supply of goods. Since the goods are shipped from export overseas warehouses and become local delivery in the destination country, it brings consumers a good customer experience, thereby increasing the number of visits and transactions of online stores. eBay data shows that 72% of the interviewed sellers said that the sales conversion rate of goods stored in export overseas warehouses is higher than that of direct mail goods. Among similar goods, the sales volume of goods shipped from overseas warehouses is on average 3.4 times that of goods shipped directly from mainland China.
(IV) Overseas warehouses help expand sales categories
The centralized transportation model adopted by overseas warehouses breaks through the restrictions on commodity weight, volume and price, which helps expand sales categories. In the traditional cross-border retail logistics system, many oversized, overweight, and unconventional shaped commodities cannot be transported through the postal system and international dedicated logistics, which greatly limits the types and volumes of commodities. The commodities are shipped to export overseas warehouses in batches for storage, so that large and fragile commodities can also be traded through cross-border e-commerce platforms. The centralized transportation model adopted by export overseas warehouses breaks through the restrictions on commodity weight, volume and value, which helps expand the sales categories of Chinese sellers. In recent years, the sharp increase in retail exports of electronic, auto parts, and home gardening products is precisely due to the application and development of export overseas warehouses.