The entrepreneurial journey of Wish platform, how to achieve the successful counterattack of college students step by step. The following is a self-narration of a college student:
I am a college graduate. If nothing unexpected happens, I should have worked hard to submit resumes to major recruitment websites, make appointments for interviews, or return to my hometown to do the job arranged by my parents like other students. However, an accidental opportunity allowed me to come into contact with a platform that can be said to have completely changed my life. That is Wish, so I faced Wish with a grateful heart. Next, I will tell you about my entrepreneurial journey on the Wish platform and how to achieve the successful counterattack of college students step by step.
1. Get to know Wish
At that time, I was a sophomore student at Zhejiang Business Vocational and Technical College. My major in school was applied electronic technology. Since I had the dream of starting a business since I was a child, I ran for class committee when I entered the school and joined the school’s entrepreneurship and employment department. The school attaches great importance to building a school-enterprise cooperation platform and entrepreneurship education. Ningbo Electronic Commerce College was established based on the school. It is through learning and practice at school that I have the opportunity to get in touch with the latest entrepreneurship policies and information, participate in the online entrepreneurship training courses organized by the school, and the school’s cross-border e-commerce school-enterprise cooperation, so I chose and seized this opportunity without hesitation!
I was very impressed. As the winter vacation approached, most of my classmates had bought tickets to go home, including me. But after listening to the company boss’s speech, I chose to refund the ticket without hesitation. I believe that if I got on the bus home, then I and Wish would never have any intersection. I remember that the bosses of two e-commerce companies came to give speeches. One was mainly engaged in the AliExpress business, and the other asked us to do the mobile shopping platform-Wish business. 95% of the transaction customers on the platform completed the order through the mobile terminal. The platform uses a unique algorithm to combine the customer’s preferences and interests to push, thousands of people, that is, everyone opens the Wish platform to see different things.
It was the magical platform of Wish that attracted me deeply. Because most of our young people place orders through mobile phones when shopping online, I believe that mobile shopping will definitely be the trend of the future. This is also the reason why Wish can stand out among many well-known cross-border e-commerce platforms and become a “dark horse” in cross-border e-commerce. At that time, I chose this company that does Wish business without any doubt, and also met Mr. Fei, the “Bo Le” who is crucial to my development. I know that without him, I would not be able to grow so quickly in a short period of time. The following will introduce the management philosophy that Mr. Fei passed on to our company. It is this philosophy that made our company a company with very large sales in a short period of time.
2. Internship period
The location of this tripartite cooperation between the government, school and enterprise is the Cixi Chongshou Cross-border E-commerce Park. We successfully arrived at the destination by taking the school bus. Because the park is relatively remote and the conditions are not very good, but the “bad” conditions can train people’s hard work quality, I think this is not wrong! On the day of arrival, the teacher in charge of the park took us to familiarize ourselves with the internship site and then let us return to the dormitory. Lying on a strange bed, I thought to myself: “My major is applied electronic technology, which is completely unrelated to e-commerce. I can’t even use the most basic Photoshop, and my English is not good enough. Can I do this business well?” I was full of uncertainty. Now I think back that these are actually unnecessary, because Photoshop and English are tools. As long as you think actively, focus on doing it, and handle the details to the extreme, Wish will give you a surprise!
The next day, after arriving at the company, Mr. Fei held the first meeting for us. I didn’t remember the other things. The only thing I remembered was one sentence: “Our company’s system is a partnership system. As long as you can make achievements, pass the assessment, and be able to take charge of your own business, then the company can invest in you to establish a new company. The company will provide you with funds, venues, and personnel.” For me, who has dreamed of starting a business since childhood, this is undoubtedly the most effective shot of adrenaline. I know that what I have to do next is very “simple”, that is, to do Wish well. But the truth is far from as simple as imagined. There are many obstacles in front of me waiting for me to cross!
The first obstacle – zero PS foundation
Since I have never been exposed to Photoshop, I have to learn from scratch, otherwise I can’t even complete the most basic product launch. However, I am confident in my ability to learn new things. I started with the simplest creation of pictures. Others can complete the drawing of 6 products in a day, but I require myself to complete 12 in the same time, and to ensure quality and handle every detail. We started with men’s clothing pictures. The main picture must be attractive enough; the second picture is a size chart. To ensure that customers can choose the right size, there must be a puzzle of all colors of clothes to facilitate customers to choose the right color, and detailed pictures and lining pictures must be done. After a week, I finally filled the “pit” of PS!
The second hurdle – small English vocabulary
After the pictures are finished, the next step is to release the products. We know that the sale of Wish products depends on the system’s push according to Tags, so the setting of Tags is crucial. My English foundation is poor and my vocabulary is small. I can’t set 10 Tags at all. What should I do? A good memory is not as good as a bad pen. I first looked at the big categories of AliExpress and wrote down their names. Then I found the crawler software and wrote down some hot-selling words and scene words of Wish. I would do this for every category. Slowly accumulating, I could write all the tags. Next, I needed to deal with some details. The company had just started the Wish business and was also crossing the river by the stone. So I collected Wish’s dry goods information through major forums, cross-border e-commerce media, WeChat public accounts and other channels, and did not miss any details. The meaning of a book will become clear after reading it a hundred times. I slowly summed up my own skills in setting tags.
The basic problems were solved, and the next goal was to place orders! Our first order was also very difficult to come by, but I will always remember the joy of the first order. We have been new for a month, and a total of 800 products have been put on the market, but the traffic has not increased at all, and only a few products have been collected. Every morning when I go to work, I open the store with great expectations, expecting the number of orders to be displayed as “1”. Reality is always so cruel. I even began to doubt whether this platform has customers. The previous passion has been exhausted.
It would be fine if there were no orders. We all know that Wish has zero tolerance for counterfeit products. We are engaged in clothing and footwear, and our products are prone to infringement. I remember that there was a pair of women’s shoes that were collected by someone, but no orders were placed. For the few products in the store that were collected by someone, I had to do something. I first perfected the label again and made the picture more attractive. After asking the manufacturer for the picture, I modified the product and finally lowered the price of the product. I confidently expected that the order would be displayed as “1” the next day, or even more. The next morning when I opened the store, I did see “1”, but it was a violation reminder, not an order, and I had to pay a fine of $100. This was a bolt from the blue for me. I was fined so much money before I made any profit for the company! I went to find the reason and found that the shoe box in the picture given to me by the manufacturer had “CHANEL” written on it. The shoes themselves were not infringing, but the brand appeared in the picture, which caused the infringement. This is the lesson I learned from ignoring details. After that, I reflected deeply and must pay more attention to details, and seriously study the rules of the Wish platform to get to know more brands to prevent such problems from happening again!
God will not let down those who work hard. One morning, I opened the store with my mobile phone, “Orders are out, orders are out!” I shouted frantically. It was 6 o’clock in the morning, and everyone was awakened by me in their sleep. The buyer was a Swedish customer who bought a pair of high-heeled women’s shoes. The first order also made us embark on the road of no return to focus on selling shoes in the early stage! So whenever novice merchants ask me why the new store does not have orders or traffic, I can empathize with them. Wish is a platform that makes people want to give up easily! There is a very good metaphor, “Wish is like Chinese medicine, and other cross-border e-commerce platforms are like Western medicine.” Wish requires you to patiently “regulate” slowly. The effect is not visible in the short term, but there is a “radical” effect in the later stage; other platforms have various promotional activities, like Western medicine, you can see the effect immediately after taking it, but there are side effects! My advice to new customers is to be patient with Wish. In the early stage, you can focus on one category first, and then shift your target after a certain amount of orders in this category, and defeat them one by one!
3. Incubation period
With the first order, the motivation came naturally. From then on, I embarked on the road of obsession with Wish. I looked at Wish in the morning, before going to bed at night, and even at dinner time. I was completely in a state of “obsession”. Many people asked, what’s so good about this, and why is it so attractive to you. Don’t say that for a novice merchant, looking at the popular styles of the platform in the early stage is very helpful for your product selection, but you can’t look at it blindly. You should look at it from an analytical perspective and keep a good record of the details. At that time, I was doing the shoe category, so I took the shoe category as an example.
1) Look at the styles of the platform’s popular shoes
Purpose: I think everyone can think of it. This is to see which styles of shoes foreign customers mainly like. When selecting products in the later stage, you can rely on this aspect to increase the order rate of the product. I took screenshots of all the popular products on the platform and saved them. As long as you show me the main picture of the product, I will know how many orders it can make in a day!
2) Look at the ratio of collections to purchases
Purpose: The size of the ratio can show the popularity. If the number of collections of this product is very large, but the number of purchases is small, it is mostly because of the price. I will record this product to see if there is room for price reduction and potential for exploration.
3) Look at reviews
Purpose: I mostly look at 1-star or 2-star reviews, because these are points that can be corrected, and they are also my starting point. If a customer comments that the product logistics is slow, then I have to consider whether this situation can be avoided with the current logistics speed. In addition to observation, you also need to analyze.
(1) Analyze what the main picture of the hot-selling product is like, why the follow-selling product is not selling well, why the follow-selling product can “kill” the hot-selling product, etc.
(2) Analyze how the details of the hot-selling product are set, and whether there are any unique features.
(3) Analyze how to set tiered prices to improve product conversion rates.
All of these require you to be very meticulous, every detail must be handled in place, and a lot of time must be spent on research. This is why our company only focuses on Wish! After a few months of slow accumulation, I have already had a certain feeling for product selection, and finally ushered in the first hit – a pair of shoes, which is undoubtedly the best reward for my efforts in the past few months!
This hit was perfected by me step by step, and I watched its traffic slowly increase and more and more orders were placed. So I remembered this feeling and used the same method to make other models. The subsequent operations became much more handy, and I also completed the tasks expected by the company!
4. Establish a new company
In October 2016, I had the ability to operate the platform independently, and the company also fulfilled its promise at the time and established a new company for me. I want to open a new store and start again. I have become more motivated. Although I have encountered many problems, compared with the past, I already have a lot of operating experience, and the speed of doing it is much faster. The store was ordered the next day after passing the review.
After two months, there was a little order volume, and the manpower became insufficient. At that time, we were in a remote place in Cixi, and we were doing a school-enterprise cooperation project. Many students from many schools were unwilling to come here, so we moved to Ningbo Jiangbei 158 E-commerce Mall. It can be said that this relocation was a turning point for the company. Compared with when we were in Cixi, we had more resources to use! The venue, personnel, and logistics resources were very abundant!
At that time, our goal was to achieve an annual sales volume of 10 million yuan, because in the previous company, we achieved a daily sales volume of 10,000 US dollars after a year of hard work. At that time, I still felt uncertain about the goal of 10 million yuan, but Wish is indeed a platform that can bring you endless surprises. At the end of 2016, our actual sales volume far exceeded this goal!
This is not only because we have no concerns about logistics and funds, but the main reason is that my product selection ability has been sublimated again. From the previous follow-up sales, I have entered the secondary development stage of the hot products, and have conducted a deeper exploration of the selling points of the products! The following processing has been done in details such as the reduction of refund rate, product maintenance, and customer purchase experience.
1) Secondary development of products
We know that foreign consumers are fatter, but they also want to wear some beautiful clothes. The size of clothes made in China is smaller, so we will select several models from the hot products and contact the manufacturers to make larger sizes of clothes, up to 5XL. Why choose hot products? Because this product is recognized by customers. If we develop this product at this time, it will reduce the risk of stockpiling and improve the conversion rate of the product. Wish push is money. If the output rate of your product is higher than that of others under the same push volume, then why doesn’t Wish push yours?
2) In-depth exploration of product selling points
At that time, there was an inflatable sofa on the platform that sold very well, but we discovered it relatively late, so how did we achieve overtaking on the curve? To grasp the psychology of customers, we know that most of the customers on the Wish platform are “post-90s” who like novel products. At the same time, they also like luminous things, so we added USB-charged outdoor night lights to the product. The visual impact brought by the new product makes the product very unique, so the new product has achieved good sales!
3) Refund rate of Fashion category
The high refund rate of Fashion category has always been a problem, and we have thought of many ways. Finally, we added a size chart to the product pictures and details to inform customers of the product size. Although it is very cumbersome to make a size chart for each product, it greatly reduces the refund rate of the product and extends the product life cycle!
We rely on the handling of details and require ourselves to improve a little bit every day. After a year of accumulation, there has been huge progress! In August 2016, I passed the certification of Wish official instructor. In October, I also shared my experience in product selection and my mental journey at the Wish Annual Meeting in Shenzhen. I hope that more young people like me will join Wish, focus on doing Wish, and believe in Wish at all times. Wish will definitely give you big surprises!