Wish platform success case: Xie Jian’s ups and downs in the transition from domestic trade to foreign trade.
I started to enter the e-commerce industry in 2009. From being an e-commerce operations director in a company to starting my own business, I have operated no less than 30 stores, involving popular categories of women’s shoes and women’s clothing on the e-commerce platform, as well as small and beautiful categories of scarves, switches and sockets, etc. At first, I thought I was a very powerful role in the e-commerce industry, but what happened later made me understand that if I want to make faster progress, I must always keep a humble heart.
The story of switching from a domestic trade e-commerce platform to a foreign trade e-commerce platform starts with the “Double 11” in 2014!
In 2014, in order to prepare for “Double 11”, all the team members worked hard to fight a beautiful battle on the day of “Double 11”. We made full preparations from stocking, promotion plans, staffing to promotion expenses. The sales target set at that time was to exceed 10 million yuan in sales performance on the day of “Double 11”. Everything is ready, only the east wind is missing. On the day of “Double 11”, the friends were full of enthusiasm and confidence! However, after the end of “Double 11”, our results were not ideal. The promotion costs accounted for 20% of the sales performance on that day, and there was still a lot of inventory in the warehouse. Because the products we sell are too seasonal, if they are not sold out this season, we have to wait until this time next year for the market to have demand.
This failure brought my career to a crossroads. The problem of funds, the future development direction of the team, and the planning of my personal career all had to be rethought!
Afterwards, I locked myself in the room and made a profound summary of the past few years in the e-commerce industry. In the past, because the technology and methods were in place, we were able to seize the opportunity every time the platform changed. However, after 2014, the large number of well-known domestic brands settled in, which brought a great impact to our small and medium-sized brand companies. At the same time, in order to increase conversion rate, the platform provides more support to well-known brands in terms of traffic and policies. In addition, due to the problem of domestic consumers’ awareness of product brands, small and medium-sized brands can only rely on product features or prices to attract consumers. Domestic designers often imitate each other and do not have many breakthroughs in product features. If merchants want to survive, they can only choose to start with price. In order to seize the market, domestic merchants take a brutal route. Everyone’s slogan is: drive yourself crazy, drive your peers to death, and make customers happy! There is no lowest, only lower! Indeed, customers are happy and get benefits, but many manufacturers have entered a vicious circle of being busy and not making money. If you want to make a difference in the e-commerce industry, you must break through this vicious circle.
At a government and enterprise exchange meeting at the end of 2014, the new term cross-border e-commerce began to rise in Wenzhou! I decided to start contacting cross-border e-commerce and transform from domestic trade e-commerce to foreign trade e-commerce. This may be the second spring of my life.
1. Language – the first mountain in the foreign trade industry
For Wish, language is the first hurdle, which is also the first insurmountable threshold to enter the foreign trade industry. It is difficult to do well without an English foundation. I am a person who does things immediately after saying it. After the English assessment, most of the team members did not meet the requirements. The team that had been built up with several years of hard work was wiped out in this transformation. This transformation was equivalent to a heavy cut on the wound that had not yet recovered. In order to develop, I could only lick my wounds and choose to get back on the road. After quickly disposing of the team, I started to set sail again alone and entered the foreign trade e-commerce industry.
Although my English level was okay in the past, I had not used it for many years and had abandoned English for a long time. During this transformation, I met a noble person in my life – my wife. She had been working in the traditional foreign trade industry before, but the increase in domestic raw material prices, the increase in labor costs, and the decrease in export tax rebate rates made the golden days of the traditional domestic foreign trade processing model gone forever. She had been in charge of communicating with European and American customers and handling shipping, documents, etc. She understands foreign trade, and I understand e-commerce operations. We complement each other and are a perfect combination. In this way, our team of two was formed.
After the team was formed, we began to choose a platform to join. At the beginning, we investigated and analyzed AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Wish and some other small platforms. Finally, we chose to join the Wish platform. The main reasons for choosing Wish were as follows: First, Wish’s promotion and sales are all completed on the mobile phone. The wireless traffic and transaction volume of domestic trade e-commerce platforms have grown rapidly. If foreign trade cross-border e-commerce is a hot spot, then Wish, a cross-border e-commerce platform professionally positioned in the wireless terminal, is destined to be a dark horse; second, the Wish platform combines consumers’ personal preferences and multi-dimensional analysis for push, and the relative conversion rate will be higher; third, the push takes a thousand-faced route, while weakening the search and price comparison functions. Such a platform puts merchants in a healthy competitive state; fourth, the rules of the Wish platform are much simpler than other platforms, which is convenient for novices to start operating immediately; fifth, the platform charges reasonable fees, and only charges 15% of the sales commission after the product is sold, and there are no other fees.
2. Supply of goods – the second mountain in the foreign trade industry
After deciding to enter the Wish platform, the store quickly passed the review according to the platform requirements, but choosing what products became a huge problem. Because the logistics cost of sending goods abroad is very high, we can only choose some relatively small products, and the weight must be very light. Zhejiang has a rich variety of sources and convenient logistics, but the weight of the products has narrowed the range of choices a lot. At the beginning, considering that consumers in developed countries such as Europe and the United States are more obese, we chose a product for both men and women – weight loss foot patch. Later, the first product that the store ordered was this weight loss foot patch, and it was hot-selling for a long time, which is considered a relatively good category.
We also experienced many twists and turns when choosing sources of goods during the transformation from domestic trade to foreign trade. Women’s clothing has always been a hot-selling category on all e-commerce platforms, and Wish is no exception. At the beginning, in order to quickly place orders, we put a lot of women’s clothing products on it, but because we didn’t understand the market, many customers refunded money. At that time, Korean dramas were popular in China, and the product styles of the domestic women’s clothing industry were mostly Korean-style. The sizes of Korean-style products were different from those of European and American products. The bust and sleeve lengths differed by at least 2cm. We did not discover this problem until the customer received the product and applied for a refund and made suggestions. The hot-selling model was directly removed from the platform because of the serious refund problem.
The eyewear industry is one of the pillar industries in Wenzhou. The second type of product I chose was glasses. Because most domestic eyewear manufacturers are engaged in foreign trade processing, as long as the products are aimed at the European and American markets, they should have great advantages. However, there is also a serious problem, that is, the sunglasses styles provided by foreign merchants have their own design patents, and they are easily judged as imitations when sold on the Wish platform. This situation has been found several times. Later, we chose reading glasses with fewer imitations. It has relatively fewer styles and standard degrees. Although it is no longer a counterfeit, the main consumer group of the Wish platform is young people under 35 years old, and reading glasses are not suitable for the needs of platform consumers. This lesson tells us that choosing the right source of goods requires multi-faceted and multi-angle considerations.
3. Platform rules – You can’t be careless on the Wish platform
Combined with previous experience, we continued to add new products to the store. But the next operation made me realize the strict policies of the Wish platform.
At the beginning, we launched a short-sleeved dress with a European and American style. The product had a collection volume, but no orders. In order to increase the display rate of the product, I found a real model photo of this dress in an e-magazine on a foreign website. The product display was very strong. I directly replaced the first picture of this dress with a real model photo. At the beginning, I was full of confidence and thought that orders would be placed after the modification, but the results are often different from what we imagined. When I woke up in the morning and opened the store, I received a fine of $100, which is the most severe warning for new merchants whose stores have not yet placed orders. We are faced with two choices, either continue to study the platform rules seriously and stick to it, and make up for the $100 fine through subsequent order performance, or choose to give up and reconsider whether there are other ways to go. Maybe if you choose to give up, you don’t have to accept the platform’s fine, and we don’t have any losses. However, in the end, we still chose to persevere, carefully study the platform rules, and strive to make an order as soon as possible to make up for the fine. We must dare to take responsibility for our own mistakes.
4. Logistics problems – a difficult hurdle to overcome
In the five years of my experience on the domestic e-commerce platform, I have worked with all domestic express companies and understood the services and effectiveness of domestic express delivery. However, after the transformation to foreign trade, they all became unfamiliar.
Study the platform rules carefully, select new products carefully every day, and the Wish store has issued the first order. On the day of the order, we were extremely excited. After difficult choices and stumbling all the way, we finally achieved results in the new field and new platform. This sense of accomplishment cannot be described in words. While we were happy, we had to face another problem. Through what channel the order was sent to the customer became a problem that needed to be solved immediately. In the past, when sending samples to customers in the foreign trade industry, DHL or UPS was used. Large goods were shipped by container shipping or first-leg warehouse air transportation. The value of our order was too low, so we could not use these commercial express. Later, I learned from the Wenzhou Cross-border E-commerce Association that I could send goods abroad through e-mail or China Post Small Parcel, and the cost was relatively low. At the beginning, because the store products had just started to sell, there were too few orders, and the staff of e-mail and China Post Small Parcel were not responsible for door-to-door pickup, so we had to deliver the goods to the local service station every day. The scorching sun was scorching the earth, and the outdoor temperature at noon was as high as 40 degrees, but it could not stop our enthusiasm to set sail again. In order to save working time, we delivered goods at noon, because it was too hot at noon, everyone was taking a lunch break, and there would be no traffic jams on the road. A round trip took exactly 1.5 hours, and I persisted for more than a month. With this tenacity and persistence, our store’s orders have made a new breakthrough, with about 20 orders per day, and there is an upward trend every week. Both e-mail and China Post Small Parcel began to arrange staff to pick up the goods every day. The logistics problem was perfectly solved.
We solved the language problem, the source of goods problem, became familiar with the platform rules, solved the logistics problem, and the store continued to issue orders. Although the transformation from domestic e-commerce to foreign trade e-commerce was bumpy, I finally got through it. However, what happened later was also a test for me.
5. Firm confidence in Wish – the first face-to-face meeting with the investment manager
Just when the order volume was increasing every day and I was full of hope for my future, it was revealed that merchants went to Shanghai Wish Company to defend their rights, and many Wish merchants in the group accused the Wish platform of temporarily withholding merchant payments. At that time, I was also very worried. Although the payment was always received, the amount of unpaid payments increased with the increase in the number of orders. Just as we were hesitating, an announcement appeared in the Wish merchant backstage: Wish will hold a Wish training meeting in our local area in the near future in conjunction with Wenzhou Post. I signed up immediately, and finally someone helped me solve the doubts in my heart.
I remember that the meeting that day was held in a large conference room in our local post office. Many people came to the venue, most of whom were doing AliExpress, and only a few were doing Wish, and the person sitting in front of me was a Wish merchant who had his payment withheld. The first half of the meeting was about the rules of the platform. When we started to answer questions, everyone raised many opinions about the platform’s temporary withholding of payment. The investment manager gave very detailed answers. On the day of the meeting, I also raised all my doubts. The investment manager patiently answered them and carefully understood the current order situation of my store. At the same time, he gave me great encouragement. I still remember what she said at the beginning: As long as you keep your current attitude and work hard according to the platform requirements, you will definitely gain a lot! This training has strengthened my confidence in the Wish platform.
6. Keep a grateful heart-share business opportunities selflessly with more people
Although the transformation from domestic trade to foreign trade has been bumpy, relying on the team’s persistence and the advantages of the platform, the number of store orders has continued to rise, and personal wealth has also changed a lot.
When talking about the Wish platform with colleagues who used to work in domestic e-commerce, many of them said they had never heard of it. I have perfectly transformed from domestic trade to foreign trade through the Wish platform, while many of my friends who are doing e-commerce are still in the “red ocean” of domestic trade e-commerce. I want to change some people through my efforts, so I told them the advantages of the Wish platform and let them have a better development direction.
In July 2016, Dongou Education and I passed the official certification of Wish. I and the people from Dongou Education conducted several public welfare publicity in local universities in Wenzhou. Several universities decided to open cross-border e-commerce majors, especially for the Wish platform. In future courses, I will lead more college students to understand Wish, learn the rules of the Wish platform, operate Wish stores, cultivate more talents with Wish professional skills for the society, and contribute to the transformation of Wenzhou’s local domestic trade into foreign trade, and the transformation of traditional foreign trade into cross-border e-commerce foreign trade.