Before starting to describe the cross-border sellers’ choice of self-built overseas warehouses, many people will have a question, that is, it is obvious that third-party overseas warehouses save a lot of costs compared to self-built overseas warehouses. Although third-party overseas warehouses vary in quality, there are always high-quality partners. Why do self-built overseas warehouses still have advantages? Here, we can use a set of data to show the differences and concentration points of buyers’ choices of overseas warehouses.
A survey data shows that 70% of sellers will choose to ship only through overseas warehouses, and 20% of sellers will choose a shipping mode of half direct shipping and half using overseas warehouses. From this set of data, we can see the important position of overseas warehouses in cross-border logistics. In addition, 55% of sellers will use FBA as the main overseas warehouse shipping mode, while at the same time, 10%~30% of sellers will choose self-built warehouses, and among sellers who use both FBA and self-built warehouses, 67% of sellers will not choose third-party warehouses. What is the reason why sellers are keen to choose FBA and self-built warehouses?
As for FBA, it can provide personalized services. Previously, when sellers used third-party overseas warehouses, during the delivery process, there would often be errors in product association due to a problem with a label, and this link would not pass. For sellers, this kind of personalized service is urgently needed, but third-party overseas warehouses often cannot meet the needs of sellers in this regard, and the personalized service provided by FBA can make up for this defect of third-party overseas warehouses. However, FBA also has certain risks for sellers. Since neither third-party overseas warehouses nor FBA can be completely relied on, sellers have to build their own overseas warehouses.
Self-built warehouses are not a good choice for small cross-border e-commerce companies, because they cannot afford the costs from warehouse construction to operation and management, but for large sellers, this is an excellent choice. Obviously, a company that is too large is like a person in a high position with a strong desire for control, and choosing to cooperate with a third-party overseas warehouse will face cooperation and compromise, which will hinder the company from operating at a high speed according to its own vision.
Therefore, large companies will rely on their own advantages in financial, material and human resources to build their own warehouses overseas, and control a series of links such as warehousing, distribution, customs clearance, etc. In this way, all links are under their control, which increases the flexibility of cross-border logistics and makes it easier to adjust their own supply according to market changes, thereby realizing personalized services. This is very effective for large sellers to occupy the market as soon as possible. Although the initial investment is large, the return in the later stage is rich.