Overseas purchasing agents, also known as “overseas purchasing agents”, use purchasing agents, third-party platforms or Moments to purchase goods for domestic consumers and deliver them through cross-border logistics. In most cases, purchasing agents provide new products or preferential information for consumers to choose from. . Overseas shopping is a direct transaction, while purchasing on behalf of others is more like a service or resale.
Purchasing agents have strong flexibility in cross-border e-commerce and can promptly discover information on price differences, new products and promotions at home and abroad. The size of the global purchasing agent market is approximately 80 billion to 100 billion yuan. In the past, it was difficult for individual purchasing agents to reach a large scale. Simply purchasing online or scanning goods in stores were abnormal “errands” services, and they focused on purchasing local brand products in a certain country.
Due to suspicions of private trade, such as the case of stewardesses overseas purchasing agents being sentenced, personal purchasing agents have legal and policy risks, and the source of demand and the establishment of trust are problems, and are often limited to word-of-mouth among acquaintances and friends. With the continuous emergence of overseas purchasing platforms and overseas shopping apps such as Taobao Global Shopping, Yangquan, Haimi, Taojie, etc., purchasing agents have moved to more open platforms.
Purchasing platforms can solve issues such as service specifications, qualification review and transaction guarantees. After joining the platform or being actively recruited, some purchasing agents began to appear in another form as “Buyers” for overseas shopping. This is a term that existed in the 20th century. It originally referred to “fashion sellers” in the high-end market, and “Buyers” for overseas shopping. It is a C2C model that selects overseas products and puts them on the platform for sale to consumers, similar to Taobao. The difference between these buyers and traditional purchasing agents is that they are more interested in discovering and selecting goods for users, unlike offline purchasing agents who select products and then help them purchase them.
Overseas shopping buyers have gradually begun to operate in teams, operate professionally, and have refined division of labor in procurement, customer service, packaging and delivery, etc., and have put forward higher requirements for product selection capabilities, capital accumulation capabilities, etc. . Buyers can not only be responsible for the purchase of goods, but also participate in many tasks such as brand promotion, product pricing, store management, and product promotion. The United States has the most well-known brands in the world, both online and offline retail are developed, and buyers are the hottest. If you do it early, it will be easier to “seize the top”.
For cross-border e-commerce import companies, the fastest way to expand long-tail categories is to recruit C2C buyers to open up the supply chain and product selection. The platform effect can meet the fragmented individual needs of users. , forming a scale. As early as 2007, Taobao Global Shopping was launched. There are various small retail purchasing agents on it, but the transaction scale ranks first in the industry. Each brand has its own advantages. For example, Yangquan’s “Handmade for Overseas Buyers” and on-site shopping live broadcast APP are quite innovative, and new buyers The number of lots is large; Darling’s buyer team is the official product selection guide, and Jiemi Purchasing provides buyers with a unified logistics and transportation platform; gathering buyers from more countries is the key to the platform’s competitiveness.
The C2C model of purchasing on behalf of others also has some shortcomings, such as transparent product prices, thin profits, fluctuating exchange rates, low thresholds, high liquidity of buyers, large number of after-sales customer complaints, uncontrollable logistics timeliness, and flaws in “genuine products” It’s hard to guarantee.”
However, as some large corporate purchasing agents are transforming into “purchasing agents and dealers”, they have developed from “scanning goods” on the street to buying goods in bulk by buyers or logistics providers. The products are distributed on behalf of purchasing agents or domestic e-commerce companies, and some functions of overseas shopping transshipment are also compatible. Overseas purchasing agents have evolved into a plug-in army for cross-border e-commerce, and the upstream centralized distribution and purchasing agents will become a stable supply channel. Professional purchasing companies such as Taiwan Paoke Bang, Korean Product Purchasing Agency, American Shopping Network, and Myday can further study their innovations in system and operation localization to help users choose the products they want faster.