If 2014 is the first year of cross-border e-commerce imports, then 2015 is the first year of cross-border e-commerce imports 020. This year, the cross-border e-commerce O2O experience stores that exploded in South China quickly spread across the country, showing a trend of blossoming everywhere.
Let’s take a look at how the cross-border e-commerce imports O2O model evolved. In August 2014, the Waigaoqiao Import Commodity Direct Sales Center located in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone triggered a buying spree among citizens. This model has nothing to do with cross-border e-commerce and belongs to the traditional general trade tax-paid business format, but due to the concepts of “free trade zone” and “direct sales”, it has attracted a lot of attention from consumers. Since this model is essentially general trade, it can be replicated and promoted outside the free trade zone without any obstacles. Its core is the offline direct sales model of “going to domestic agents”.
As China’s first free trade zone, Shanghai has not only developed the “imported goods direct sales” business format, but also promoted “bonded display transactions”. Under the “bonded display and transaction” model, consumers can experience the goods in the free trade zone (or bonded area). If they decide to buy, the merchant will initiate the general trade procedure and clear customs to ship the goods to consumers. Later, Chongqing borrowed from this practice and made a breakthrough, taking the lead in extending bonded goods to the main urban area (non-bonded area) and building an “extension platform for the bonded goods display and transaction center outside the area”. Guangzhou referred to Chongqing’s practice and launched the first local cross-border e-commerce O2O experience store, Meiyue Youxuan, in the core business district of Zhujiang New Town in January 2015. After the launch of this model, it has attracted great attention and controversy. Simply put, the cross-border e-commerce O2O experience store is a combination of “cross-border e-commerce” and “bonded display and transaction extension platform”, so that this type of experience store can not only enjoy the travel tax rate of the cross-border e-commerce model, but also extend the store to the prosperous areas of the city.
However, the pain point of cross-border e-commerce O2O is that it cannot pick up the goods on site, and consumers must be guided to purchase on the online platform. Therefore, the vast majority of current cross-border e-commerce O20 stores combine general trade with cross-border e-commerce, not only providing duty-paid goods that can be picked up on site, but also providing goods under the cross-border e-commerce model.