There are two ways for cross-border e-commerce enterprises to cooperate with overseas warehouse enterprises, namely, through leasing or cooperating with other enterprises to build warehouses and improve business. The leasing method will incur operating costs, logistics costs, and warehousing costs, while cooperative construction will only incur logistics costs.
From the perspective of the operating entity, overseas warehouses can be divided into three models: sellers’ self-built overseas warehouses, overseas warehouses operated by third-party logistics service providers, and overseas warehouses operated by e-commerce platform operators.
(1) Sellers’ self-built overseas warehouse model
This is an overseas warehouse built and operated by cross-border merchants themselves, which only provides warehousing, distribution and other services for the company’s products. The entire cross-border logistics process is controlled by the cross-border merchants themselves. In other words, the management rights are in the hands of the cross-border e-commerce companies themselves. The research report shows that personalized service is the primary reason why large e-commerce companies choose to build their own overseas warehouses. In addition, the unreliable quality of third-party services, the need to reduce their own comprehensive costs, and the characteristics of the products themselves have also become the reasons why merchants choose to build their own overseas warehouses. The disadvantage is that in the self-built overseas warehouse model, cross-border e-commerce sellers need to face local customs clearance rules, tax systems, labor policies and other barriers, and need to solve warehousing, customs declaration, logistics and transportation problems by themselves. At the same time, the construction cost and risk of self-built overseas warehouses are also relatively high. If the average daily order and delivery volume are not large, it is difficult to get a competitive price in terms of transportation. Self-built overseas warehouses are undoubtedly a high-risk and high-cost option.
(2) Overseas warehouse model operated by third-party logistics service providers
This refers to overseas warehouses established and operated by third-party companies (mostly logistics service providers), and can provide customs clearance, warehousing quality inspection, order acceptance, product sorting, distribution and other services for multiple cross-border e-commerce companies. Some third-party overseas warehouses can also provide FBA return and exchange, transfer, reprinting or labeling, product testing, and customs duty payment services. The management rights of third-party overseas warehouses are controlled by the overseas warehouse construction company. In other words, the third-party overseas warehouse model refers to the control of the entire cross-border logistics system by third-party companies. There are two main ways to build third-party overseas warehouses: leasing and cooperative construction. The rental method is more expensive, including rental fees, logistics costs, warehousing costs, etc.; the cooperative construction method only generates logistics costs.
(3) Overseas warehouse model operated by e-commerce platform operators
FBA warehouse is an overseas warehouse operated by the Amazon platform, providing one-stop logistics services including warehousing, picking and packaging, delivery, collection, customer service and return processing. The logistics level of FBA warehouse is the benchmark in the overseas warehouse industry. The daily shipment volume, product variety and number of consumers of FBA warehouse far exceed those of third-party overseas warehouses. FBA faces huge management difficulties, but except for the high shipping costs and the trouble of returns, FBA logistics is almost impeccable for sellers.