The so-called vertical self-operated cross-border B2C platform refers to a platform that focuses on a certain field, such as maternal and infant products, clothing, beauty products, food, etc.
Advantages: It can strengthen the management and control of suppliers.
Disadvantages: Large-scale capital investment is required in the early stage of development.
Typical representatives: Mi Ya Baby, which focuses on maternal and infant products, Strawberry.com and Sasa.com, which focus on cosmetics, and COFCO Womai.com, which focuses on food.
COFCO Womai.com focuses on food business and has a clear corporate positioning. In order to ensure product supply and logistics transportation, the platform has reached cooperation with many overseas suppliers and focuses on the development of cold chain logistics. COFCO Womai.com conducted its second round of financing in August 2014, with IDG Venture Capital and SAIF Partners investing US$100 million in the platform. Most import e-commerce companies may face problems in overseas supplier management and logistics. In order to improve its own operating efficiency, COFCO Womai.com focused on solving these two problems and obtained financial support.
In 2014, some consumers believed that the Kao diapers and Maclaren Quest strollers purchased from Miaya Baby were not genuine products, which affected the reputation of the platform. In order to solve this problem, starting from the third quarter of 2014, Miaya Baby shipped diapers from Japan to the cross-border e-commerce bonded warehouse in Ningbo, and then used the bonded import model to send the goods to users. In order to improve the sustainability of its own development, Miaya Baby took this as a lesson and strengthened the supervision of suppliers to ensure product quality.
In addition to ensuring product supply and strengthening the management of suppliers, self-operated B2C platforms must also pay attention to the construction of logistics links. The threshold requirements for business entities are relatively high. Therefore, only a few merchants are truly vertical self-operated cross-border B2C platforms. Merchants such as Strawberry.com and Sasa.com also have other profit channels while operating online businesses. They are not purely self-operated B2C platforms. In recent years, many overseas retailers have also opened B2C e-commerce operations for domestic consumers in the Chinese market, but there is still a big difference from the habits of Chinese consumers.