An important link involved in cross-border O2O is cross-border logistics. Since products flow between different countries, the process they have to go through is naturally much more complicated than domestic logistics. Not only does it take longer than domestic logistics, but it often causes various factors to prevent products from being delivered to customers in time, which will undoubtedly greatly reduce the customer’s service experience. Therefore, the best way is to stock up in moderation.
My friend Ms. Zhang had to resign and stay at home because she had to take care of her children in elementary school. Ms. Zhang, who was used to being busy, was very uncomfortable with the life atmosphere after resigning, especially after her children went to school during the day, she was alone at home with nothing to do, which made her feel an inexplicable panic, so she wanted to find something to do for herself. Under my advice, she became a cross-border micro-e-commerce. The reason why I suggested that she do cross-border micro-e-commerce is that her sister-in-law works in Australia and can help her purchase cross-border products.
In this way, Ms. Zhang officially started her cross-border micro-e-commerce career. She mainly sells Australian clothing and food. At the same time, in order to avoid food expiration, she deliberately chose dried fruit foods with a very long shelf life. Her sales method is very simple, that is, to sell through channels such as WeChat groups, WeChat Moments, and people nearby on WeChat.
At the beginning, her performance was good, but after a while, she found that there were fewer repeat customers. Puzzled, she asked several old customers for the reason, and finally learned that the answer was that the delivery time was too long and the logistics speed was too slow, which made the customer’s shopping experience very bad. After learning the reason, she began to stock up in moderation.
In this way, the logistics time of about 10 days in the past can be shortened to three or four days, or even one or two days, which greatly improves the customer’s purchasing experience, and the old customers in the past have also become repeat customers. Ms. Zhang’s performance is much better than before, and many times the money she earns in a month is twice as high as her previous salary.
There are many benefits to stocking up. For example, it can reduce time costs. After the customer places an order, the product can be delivered to the customer immediately through domestic logistics, so that the customer can receive the product faster, which can greatly improve the customer experience; stockpiling can also reduce logistics costs. There is a huge difference in logistics costs between sending only one cross-border product at a time and sending a batch of cross-border products at a time. The latter is obviously much more affordable and economical than the former.
Of course, stockpiling cannot be too casual, which will not only cause a backlog of goods, but also affect the operation of capital flow. Therefore, cross-border micro-e-commerce should estimate the most reasonable stockpiling quantity based on its usual sales situation. For example, you sell imported cosmetics from France, and the average daily sales volume is 5 sets. Then when you stock up, you only need to stock up 35 sets of cosmetics. In other words, the stockpiled goods should be enough for your sales of about a week. If there are too few, they may be out of stock due to some weather factors; and if there are too many, the inventory cost will increase.