For the global monopoly of product industry chains, we are committed to extending B2B trade to B2B2C. In the future, the number of people entering this industry will become larger and larger, so large that we cannot imagine, not the current hundreds of billions or trillions, but a larger scale. In the future, in this industry, there will not be a situation where one or one hundred companies can monopolize the seller’s market. There are very few e-commerce companies exceeding 100 billion in the e-commerce industry, and in the end they will transform into platform companies. Amazon, which we all know, was originally a seller.
When sellers develop to a certain extent, they will open up the platform to people with product chain supply advantages, or people with certain marketing and certain channel core advantages, so that they can better display products and deliver products to consumers. In China, JD.com’s competitiveness is beyond words. In the future, the biggest competitor of Taobao and Tmall is JD.com. JD.com may even make a beautiful comeback like Amazon beat eBay in the United States! I believe that in the future, “small and beautiful” companies will definitely become new stars in the industry and will inevitably occupy a pivotal position in the industry.
For the current “small and beautiful” enterprises, whether in terms of funds or resources, there is indeed a gap with the so-called big sellers. This is understandable. But there is a point that cannot be denied: money is not omnipotent. “Big and strong” has a fatal disadvantage: the overall management cost and direction transfer cost are much higher than “small and beautiful”. How high is it? It is so high that it can consume all profits and even lose money.
The first suggestion is that you should not try to expand your scale or cater to financing just because others have become big. This is a more pertinent suggestion.
The second suggestion is that you must have your own core competitiveness. As for where the focus is, I will not list them one by one. Just from a few major aspects, in the cross-border e-commerce industry, we have three main pillars: one is the commodity supply system, that is, product selection; the second is the logistics system; and the third is the sales channel. Among these three modules, we must find a way to dig deep and take root in one module anyway, and have differentiated competitiveness, so that we can have the ability to develop sustainably in the future. It is not to do what others do, which is close to a dead end.
At the same time, in the export retail industry, various business models can coexist, including “small and beautiful” brand merchants and “big and comprehensive” channel merchants. There will not be a situation where “big fish eat small fish” and no small businesses exist, nor will there be a situation where small businesses counterattack big businesses. In the future export e-commerce industry, “small and beautiful” can be integrated with “big and comprehensive”, and channel merchants will create their own brands.