Overseas warehouse service refers to a one-stop control and management service for cross-border e-commerce to carry out warehousing, sorting, packaging and delivery of goods at the sales destination.
Composition of overseas warehouses.
To be precise, overseas warehouses include three parts: first-leg transportation, warehousing management and local distribution.
1. First-leg transportation
Chinese merchants transport goods to overseas warehouses by sea, air, land or combined transportation.
2. Warehousing management
Chinese merchants remotely operate overseas warehouse goods through the logistics information system and manage inventory in real time.
3. Local distribution
The overseas warehousing center delivers goods to customers through local postal or express delivery according to the order information.
Classification of overseas warehouses.
1. Official overseas warehouse of the platform
The official overseas warehouse of the platform is a “one-stop” logistics service provided by the platform, including warehousing, picking and packaging, delivery, collection, customer service and return processing, such as Souq’s FBS and Noon’s FBN. The world’s largest e-commerce platform overseas warehouse is Amazon’s FBA. It is said that Amazon’s largest warehouse in Phoenix, USA is the size of 28 football fields.
2. Third-party overseas warehouses
There are two ways for cross-border e-commerce sellers to cooperate with third-party overseas warehouses: leasing and cooperative construction. The leasing method will incur operating costs, logistics costs, and warehousing costs; cooperative construction only incurs logistics costs, and is generally based on leasing.
3. Self-built overseas warehouses
Self-built overseas warehouses are a process of purchasing, building, and improving warehouse sites initiated by enterprises overseas through their own financial resource advantages. Enterprises use their own financial advantages to choose suitable overseas warehouse addresses and warehousing models to maximize their warehousing supply chain advantages.
However, the current construction of overseas warehouses in the Middle East is relatively high in terms of both labor costs and capital costs. Some regions have many restrictions and requirements on overseas warehouses in terms of policies.