The overseas warehousing model refers to the online foreign trade trading platform, logistics service providers, etc. independently or cooperatively providing one-stop logistics and management services such as warehousing, sorting, packaging, and delivery of products to cross-border e-commerce sellers in the target market area, so as to improve the seller’s cross-border logistics and delivery capabilities and levels and optimize the customer’s cross-border e-commerce logistics experience.
The overseas warehousing service model requires sellers to first store the goods in a third-party warehouse in the target consumer market area so that the goods can be sorted, packaged and delivered as quickly as possible after the buyer places an order. The advantages and disadvantages of the overseas warehouse logistics model are as follows:
(1) Advantages
Reduce the seller’s logistics costs, that is, directly ship from the local area of the target market, which is equivalent to domestic logistics, and is obviously cheaper than shipping from domestic to customers.
Improve the delivery time of products, that is, when the seller ships the goods to the overseas warehouse, he has already solved various problems related to cross-border logistics, such as transportation, customs declaration, and customs clearance. Therefore, after receiving the customer’s order, it can be shipped directly from the overseas warehouse at any time without having to consider the customs declaration and clearance of the goods.
The overseas warehousing service providers have professional management experience and staff, which saves sellers the trouble of goods warehousing management.
The highly intelligent ERM warehouse management platform allows sellers to place order delivery instructions in front of the computer, so as to process orders more conveniently, and can automatically process orders in batches to achieve synchronization between orders and shipments.
Providing more detailed and clear inventory management and inventory counting services, the warehousing platform system can automatically display the current sales volume and inventory balance of products, so that sellers can clearly understand the logistics cost of each order.
Simple and efficient return processing process, that is, when customers apply for a return for various reasons, the goods will be directly returned to the overseas warehouse, avoiding various additional losses caused by transporting goods back and forth between China and abroad.
(2) Disadvantages
When sellers store goods in overseas warehouses, they are transferring the control and management rights of the goods to the overseas warehousing service providers. This requires sellers to accurately judge the creditworthiness of overseas warehousing services and establish a trusting relationship with service providers. In this regard, sellers can first send a small amount of goods to overseas warehouses in order to understand the overseas warehousing process, experience related services, and then establish a long-term cooperative relationship with the service provider.
In terms of warehousing costs, sellers should compare the current delivery method with the cost of using overseas warehousing services and choose a more suitable logistics model. For example, if the monthly order volume of the store is too small during the off-season, it is not suitable to use the overseas warehousing model. In this regard, sellers can choose overseas joint storage logistics services during the peak sales season of goods based on the sales of the store.
Restrictions on the nature of goods sales. The overseas warehousing logistics model requires a certain amount of goods to be stored in overseas warehouses first for advance stocking. Therefore, if the customer purchases a customized product, the overseas warehousing service cannot be used.