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Since entering 2021, China's cross-border e-commerce industry has ushered in earth-shaking changes, and cross-border e-commerce companies that have bought out the No. 1 house in Shenzhen Bay have ushered in a difficult year. From the tightening of platform policies, to the landing of the new VAT policy in Europe, to the soaring cost of logistics, under multiple blows, cross-border e-commerce has rapidly shuffled.
The Amazon banning tide has overthrown the dominoes of the cross-border e-commerce industry chain. Affected by the wave of closures, opening up additional channels has become a need for sellers, and independent stations have become a common choice for sellers. Deloitte's December report" "Asia-Pacific Digital Trade under technology empowerment" surveyed cross-border sellers' intentions to establish independent stations in some national markets, and the results showed that 24% of Chinese sellers have built independent stations, and 47% of sellers have not built a website but have intentions, almost twice the former.
In China, where cross-border e-commerce is concentrated, independent stations have become a hot word for a while, and SaaS service providers that provide website construction services for independent stations have also become the focus of attention in the industry. As 2021 draws to a close, another SaaS has received tens of millions of dollars in financing. FunPinpin recently received a $10 million Series A round of financing, which was led by Innovation Factory and financial advisor to Wanshi Capital. This round of financing funds will be mainly used for product research and development and market expansion, including Amazon boutique sellers and DTC sellers.
In FunPinpin's view, 2022 is very likely to become the first year for Chinese DTC brands to go global. "Shop customers will encounter many challenges, cross-border e-commerce after the baptism of 2021, next year there will be a large number of Amazon boutique sellers transformation, the entire independent station market will not only not be cold, but also will be an outbreak of the year."
Overseas traffic changes
In fact, from the perspective of traffic, the cross-border e-commerce industry is ushering in huge changes.
Overseas traffic dividends have spawned many domestic cross-border e-commerce sales. In June 2013, Lanting went public, and the essence of its business model is to grab google AdWords and SEO traffic dividends. In the same period, many cross-border e-commerce companies have also chosen the station group model, and Lanting Jishi, Aopeng, Xiaoke, and Star Link have all been the beneficiaries of the station group model.
For standalone stations, traffic is critical. "Traffic is the key password for a single site." Zhong Yang, operation officer of FunPinPin, said, "The real brand to achieve the final end, the traffic composition may be 70%, or even 80% is free traffic, but the emerging brand paid traffic may be 90%, in fact, the early stage needs the brand's investment, need to design a whole set of traffic programs from the beginning to the middle to the middle to the late stage, which is the only way." ”
However, with the fading of overseas traffic dividends, the cost of independent website sellers is getting higher and higher, and the ROI is generally getting lower and lower. Zhong Yang also noted that as the cost of overseas traffic rises, the cost of diverting the flow from independent stations basically accounts for about half of the revenue of independent stations.
For overseas marketing, FunPinPin has many years of experience. In response to the disappearance of the traffic dividend, Zhong Yang suggested optimizing the efficiency of the existing traffic platform, "How to optimize the way of existing traffic, many merchants feel that it is the algorithm of the platform, but how to make your ads more accurate to the customer you want, you can rely on the understanding of this category and overseas markets, customers, based on this understanding of the experience judgment." Secondly, to continuously optimize and iterate on the data, FunPinPin's experience is that it can do automated and AI delivery. ”
On the other hand, it uses innovative ways to get traffic. "TikTok's reds, or INS reds marketing is not innovative," Zhong Yang said, "there are many overseas traffic opportunities, not monolithic, such as overseas network alliance marketing, various communities, including FunPinPin is also trying the Chinese brand traffic overseas alliance play, which belongs to the innovation of traffic." ”
Under the change, in 2020, FunPinPin, who has been deeply engaged in overseas marketing for many years, decided to invest in the SaaS track of building stations to create a closed-loop service of "independent station construction + drainage".
Jianzhan SaaS received tens of millions of dollars in financing
WooCommerce data shows that only 26% of the global online stores will make Shopify a website in 2021. According to the ResearchAndMarkets report, the global SaaS market size is expected to grow from $225.6 billion in 2020 to $272.49 billion in 2021, with a compound annual growth rate of 20.8% and reach $436.9 billion by 2025.
In the overseas independent website building SaaS market, players such as WooCommerce represent the previous generation of website builders, while Canada's e-commerce SaaS service company Shopify represents the website builder into the 2.0 era. The reason why the track of independent station service providers has attracted attention is also inseparable from Shopify. In the 6 years since its listing, Shopify's stock price has gone all the way up. However, just 2 years ago, Shopify was just an obscure Canadian small e-commerce company, less than half the size of eBay, but in 2020, its total transaction volume reached $119.6 billion, accounting for 40% of Amazon's sales.
In the view of Ruan Fei, director of innovation workshop investment, in the track of saaS, there is a chance to give birth to companies of more than 10 billion US dollars in the future. On December 28, FunPinPin, a SaaS service platform for Independent Website Construction in China, announced that it has obtained a series A financing of tens of millions of US dollars led by Innovation Factory, and the funds will be mainly used for product research and development and market expansion, focusing on empowering DTC sellers and Amazon boutique sellers.
"FunPinPin takes independent website construction as the entry point, and has become the leading website construction service platform in the market by combining the core demand points of the two independent station sellers in the combination of website construction and drainage." Nguyen Fei said.
In fact, according to incomplete statistics, there are currently more than 400 SaaS tools on the market. In Zhong Yang's view, to reflect differentiation, it is necessary to start from the ecosystem of independent stations. "The future development of saaS of independent stations must not only be a website building tool, but also extend to more ecosystems, including creating a service closed loop of building + drainage, station building + payment, station building + supply chain and other models."
According to Zhong Yang, in the face of the core pain points of Chinese sellers in terms of website building, marketing, ecological resources, data security, and localized operation support, FunPinPin has created a full-link website building service platform that is more suitable for Chinese sellers to help Chinese sellers carry out global layout more efficiently.
FunPinpin's core business, in addition to the main website construction services, also includes the creation of "single-site station construction + drainage" one-stop closed-loop service. In terms of traffic, it can provide sellers with advertising and notification optimization services, including Google GMC account/Facebook account, etc.; in terms of litigation credit line, it can provide stable merchants with an advertising credit line of 100,000 US dollars. "FunPinPin team members have a lot of overseas marketing experience, and have opened up cooperation channels with Google, TikTok, Facebook and other head traffic parties, which can help merchants reach more global consumers."
In terms of localization, FunPinPin also supports multi-platform data keying, including Shopify, Amazon, AliExpress, etc. And can provide a variety of vertical category templates, including POD category exclusive plug-ins, and hold COD mode single settlement.
When it comes to seller data security, FunPinPin provides triple-factor merchant data encryption. First, build a rigorous data architecture to ensure the integrity, security and mutual independence of the business background data from the bottom of the system, and the merchant can permanently support the full export or migration of the data during the cooperation period. The second is to set up a tens of millions of data security funds, and if there is a business data leakage, effective compensation can be obtained. Third, once the risk control team finds that the merchant has been infringed by other merchants in the system, it immediately closes the infringing merchant site after determining it.
In addition, FunPinPin will release its own research and development of the application market next month, or will become the first domestic website platform with an application market. The role of the self-developed application market is to connect global developers through standardized APIs, so that more mature plug-ins can be connected to the FunPinPin platform, including plug-ins on Shopify, and can provide businesses with development services.