There are two major online channels for cross-border B2C foreign trade, namely third-party platforms and independent malls (including mobile terminals). Well-known independent online stores are basically from super large sellers. In order to build brands and alleviate platform constraints, they create boutique stores. Most of them have a certain degree of verticality, typically the 3C school represented by DX and the wedding dress school represented by Lantingjishi.
In the beginning, big sellers often started from some specific product areas or countries that they were good at. For example, Youkeshu started with model aircraft parts, and later expanded to drone parts and robots according to market changes. In fields such as spare parts, having an independent station can easily reflect professionalism. A few large websites have expanded their categories into comprehensive online stores, and some capable ones have opened up into market platforms, so-called stores within stores.
In the United States, the middle class and market credibility are both high. Personalized consumption has given rise to the demand for vertical independent websites. More than 60% of independent online retailers in the United States account for this, while only about 10% in China. Most of them pass the third In the three-party market, small, medium and micro circulation and manufacturing companies have poured into the open platform to improve information acquisition capabilities and transaction efficiency.
This is what Alibaba calls a leap-forward opportunity based on “information economy infrastructure”, based on platforms, and getting rid of “big production, big brands, big circulation, and big logistics”. For sellers, the advantage of third-party platforms is that traffic is cheap, but the disadvantage is that the bigger you get, the greater the strategic risks. Third-party platforms have mature rules. The first priority is to protect the interests of buyers and maintain fair competition to the greatest extent.
The meaning of a self-built website cannot simply be understood as sales, because being online means being in a state of promotion and information dissemination. Therefore, the first function is information dissemination, followed by transactions, and independent websites are slightly more profitable. . Fund settlement on third-party platforms is slow, the business scale that a single account can achieve is limited, and it is more difficult to increase volume during peak seasons than independent sites.
According to ChannelAdvisor data, the same-store growth rate of independent websites in the peak season at the end of the year reached 60% to 80%, which is much higher than that of platform stores. The main reason is that the platform will deliberately balance the traffic distribution of different sellers to prevent one company from becoming dominant.
1. Lanting gathers momentum.
As “China’s first cross-border e-commerce stock”, Lanting Jishi is the epitome of China’s foreign trade e-commerce. It was established in 2007. On June 6, 2013, Lanting Jishi was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the United States. Listed. Anecdotally, founder Guo Quji resigned from Google China in 2009. After going to Huqiu, Suzhou to inspect the wedding dress market, he found that cheap domestic wedding dresses were sold at high prices abroad, so he decided to delve into the cross-border e-commerce industry and later expanded the category. , the current sales categories cover 14 major categories such as clothing, electronic products, toys, accessories, and home furnishings, with nearly 700,000 SKUs. It has also expanded its segmented websites for different categories and has websites in 27 languages.
According to its annual report, clothing category sales accounted for 36.2%, electronics and other general commodities accounted for 63.8%, with Europe and the United States as the main markets, and the emerging markets in South America accounted for an increasing share. At present, Lantingjishi mainly relies on the price difference between product procurement and sales to make profits. Due to the fierce competition in the main categories, low prices and high operating costs, the incremental performance in recent years has not increased profits.
In terms of product procurement, 70% of Lanting’s products are purchased directly from factories, achieving the shortest sales chain from factory to website to consumers, achieving a high gross profit rate. In terms of branding, it launched its own brand TS (Three Seasons), focusing on women’s fashion apparel; in terms of mobility, it launched mobile application App and mobile social wedding planning application InTime, launched Sale Clock’s flash sale App, etc.; in terms of internationalization, , introduced Aokang International as a shareholder, created new advantages in the traditional industry’s “Internet +” strategy, established two overseas procurement centers, and launched a global fashion open platform strategy. External merchants do not need to pay annual fees, and 15% of sales in the commission model will be used as a share.
2. Cross-border communication.
The first cross-border e-commerce company to be listed in China was Global Tesco, which acquired the 100-yuan trousers industry. After changing its name to Cross-border Tong, it successively invested in Qianhai Patosun (export cross-border incubation of multiple 3C brands), Guangzhou Bailun (export comprehensive services), Shenzhen Tongtuo (big seller), Cross-border Yi (import) Many cross-border e-commerce companies, such as customs clearance logistics and distribution) and Yiji Cloud Commerce (import supply chain), are gaining momentum and are striving to be the first in the industry.
20% of its sales are generated on third-party platforms, and 80% come from its various independent websites. The same-store sales of multiple websites are leading the industry. For example, multiple vertical e-commerce platforms such as Gearbest (the largest 3C site) and Sammydress (the largest clothing site) have more than one million IP addresses per day per site, with a total SKU of more than 250,000, and clothing categories account for about 70%. The unit price of the product is about US$10. There are about 9 overseas warehouses covering an area of about 50,000 square meters. The inventory turnover is 2.5 to 3 months. There are about 40 million registered users. The unit price of the customer is US$50 to US$60. The conversion rate is about 1.5% and the repeat purchase rate. Between 30% and 40%, it has become the largest export B2C cross-border e-commerce company in China in 2015.
In terms of import e-commerce, Cross-border Tong has built cross-border imports covering its own platform (Wuzhouhuihaigou) and third-party platforms, mobile terminals, micro-commerce, and O2O offline experience stores (20) The e-commerce system has a broad layout.
In addition to GearBest, which focuses on 3C, the global e-commerce site Everbuying is also very large. Its sales cover more than 200 countries and regions around the world, with more than 6 million registered users on a single site and more than 2 million actual purchasing users. In addition, there are 8 websites in the clothing and accessories category, as well as multiple sub-stations in small languages, such as Spanish igogo.es, etc.
Cross-border Tong is large enough and accurately positioned among channel sellers. Currently, it only needs to develop product categories. The growth of users or traffic will be enough to ensure scale growth, and then it can develop supply chain finance, cross-border logistics and supporting transportation. construction.
3. Others.
“There is Lanting in the north and DX in the south.” DX is listed in Hong Kong and specializes in standardized low-price 3C small electronic products. It is the undisputed “boss” in this field, with 120,000 votes a day at its peak. Invested by IDG. DX is the first true foreign trade B2C in China. The founder, Chen Lingjian, withdrew from the eBay platform as early as the beginning of 2007 to do business on the entire network. With its advanced technical structure, strong price competition capabilities, and ultra-low labor costs, DX The rapid rise of Internet marketing technology and the rapid rise of sales in 2010 reached 200 million US dollars.
DinoDirect (Dalong.com) is the “big brother” of Chongqing’s foreign trade B2C. It was founded in 2009. It started as a virtual game currency. It sells itself and also operates for others. It has received multiple rounds of VC investment and is good at it. EDM marketing focuses on developing non-English markets, covering six major countries and regions including Russia, Brazil, India, Europe, the United States, and Australia. The main products sold are electronics, clothing, and gardening. Dalong.com claims that it currently adopts a cross-border O20 model, shifting from B2C to B2B. It has more than 10 branches, more than 20 overseas warehouses around the world, and its own payment “DinoWallet”.
From the perspective of product supply and marketing, in addition to self-operated and self-purchased B2C, B2B investment is also carried out through the OSell cross-border O2O online trade fair. Dalong.com is present in many major cross-border pilot cities, trying to integrate logistics goods and alliance overseas retail systems to solve the problem of “last mile” cross-border sales services.
Fuzhou Zongteng is a super big seller, widely rumored to be No. 1 on eBay in the industry. It operates steadily, has built a strong overseas supply chain system and transnational logistics solutions, and is second to none in the overseas warehouse operation industry. Milan.com is the “first brother” of Chengdu’s foreign trade B2C. It is positioned as a global clothing marketing platform and has received investment from Sequoia. PatPat focuses on cross-border maternal and infant toys. Shenzhen Tongtuo is mainly engaged in 3C, a large seller on multiple platforms, and adopts low-price tactics.
ChinaBuye and LightTake were founded by the initial entrepreneurial team separated from DX and began to gain fame. BuyinCoins originated from Shanghai and is one of the rare sellers in East China in the field of foreign trade B2C; Banggood is an independent website owned by a famous company in Guangzhou and owned by eBay experts Zou Shuangxiong, and has developed rapidly; PandaWill adopts a free trial strategy, and the products submitted by consumers are tried out The report was published on social networking sites, and the marketing is smart; TinyDeal (Digital Age Technology) is a famous independent 3C website in Shenzhen. The website looks a bit simple but has a lot of orders.
SW-BOX focuses on mobile phone accessories and does not follow the trend of bargaining. The unit price per customer is relatively high. The user experience of the website is extremely strong. It has unique product selection, new products are put on the shelves quickly, and it focuses on content. Chiang Technology started on eBay, and has grown from a purely independent B2C to tens of thousands of votes per day. It was once a strong competitor of DX.
Chinavasion is a large-scale 3C B2C company. It does a good job in B2B2C and takes a boutique route; the brand Anker is a familiar case. SheIn is a fashion brand website from Nanjing. The website adopts a punk style, with clearly classified sections. The marketing method is to provide free trials. Shenzhen Silidi Technology is a service-oriented enterprise dedicated to promoting the development of open source hardware.
4. How to build your own independent website.
Most of the big sellers with independent websites have learned from eBay. Times have changed, and it is a bit sad to say that B2C e-commerce has become a winner-takes-all business game, and other merchants who do not have a large amount of strong funds or a “financier” are feeling even more anxious. A self-built mall does not seek traffic but rather endorsement of the brand, and it requires patient management to gradually build brand influence. Once it has search rankings, it will be a strong support.
The independent station needs to provide a complete set of transaction payment, logistics, dispute resolution, after-sales customer service and other functions. Some functions can adopt a strategy of combining third-party access and own services. For website building, there are many software tools at home and abroad. Among overseas sellers on Amazon, Magento and Shopify account for 43% and 35% respectively of their own platforms. They support multi-language product descriptions and provide seamless inventory management. CMS extension plug-ins such as WooCommerce, Drupal and LMShop are also popular. welcome.
In terms of payment solutions, third-party payment gateways or credit cards can be integrated such as PayPal, Amazon Payments, Alipay, ProPay, Carte Bleue and 2Checkout and other local third-party payments, or directly use fourth-party aggregation payment StripeBraintree, BlueSnap , Borderfree and Global-e, etc. The selection of logistics products is more diverse and flexible offline, and cost-effectiveness comes first. The key is to provide users with traceable status information. Self-owned online stores do not already have a large amount of customer traffic like existing e-commerce platforms, but they need to put more effort into developing potential customers. In terms of promotion, many independent foreign trade websites follow the low-price attraction strategy, with a high bounce rate, generally reaching 40%, and low user stickiness and repurchase rate.
As the main sales channel, platform stores are not only important sales channels, but also important drainage channels, such as store decoration tips, or putting a B2C mall leaflet in the delivery package to help promote your own mall for free.
Low brand awareness, lack of fixed user groups, and high marketing and traffic costs are common problems faced by all independent websites. To attract customers and build trust, the core is to look “local”, and the repurchase rate is based on a perfect user experience.
When selling in multiple countries, product details, website content and terms of service should reflect the local language style; prices should be displayed in local currency and local payment methods should be used; poster copy content should reflect local culture and go away from Chinese style, from fonts and designs , color, and layout conform to the aesthetics of overseas users; formulate terms, privacy policies, guarantee regulations, and return policies in accordance with the regulations of the target market. In short, it revolves around a truly qualified foreign language e-commerce website.