Text | The world's online business, the author | Ye Chen, Editor | Wang Shiqi
"Living elsewhere."
Lao Hu, a Yiwu driver who has been running a taxi for nearly 20 years, did not think that if the French poet Rimbaud used to encourage young people to go out more than a hundred years ago, he could now empathize with himself. "I feel that in the past two years, because there are fewer merchants due to the epidemic, it is better to make money than to go to Hangzhou."
He loves to brush up on the news. Some media have counted the total import and export value of Yiwu Customs in 2021, and the growth rate of more than 20% still reveals the confidence of "small commodity capital"; Some media have paid attention to changes in trade policies and long-term shipping prices, and Yiwu, which has been focusing on exports from the European Union and North America for many years, has also been affected.
What will happen to business? Confined to the torrent of information, Lao Hu was a little confused.
The only thing that can be determined is that on the road to the development of the city, the dividends of the past will always pass away. In the midst of the big waves, the Yiwu market has gradually shown the Matthew effect - excellent cross-border enterprises have concentrated their top-notch productivity and brand power, while many small and medium-sized merchants lack brand recognition and lack confidence in "going out" from the original main market.
Where will cross-border merchants break the gap?
At this time, Lao Hu carried us and turned into the road of Beiyuan Street. 20 years ago, it was once a rural area covered by tushan mountains, and now it is a well-known industrial park; In the lined merchant factory buildings, we met two post-95 "righteous drifters" who hit the blue ocean of Southeast Asian e-commerce.
Unlike Lao Hu, they are full of vigor and energy, and the road is slowly spreading from under their feet, through the Internet, to another "other place". Jumping growth numbers mean wealth, dreams and hopes.
The Chinese guy is looking for the consumption pulse of Southeast Asian girls
Ethan, 25, sells nearly $150,000 a month for trinkets
Is the blockbuster just "choosing the right product"?
Beiyuan Street, Liuqing 8th District, is close to the airport, and planes fly over the roof, causing the windows of Ethan's office to buzz. "I'm sorry." He was more than 1.8 meters tall, with a strong foot, tall and thin, and his voice was very low, and under the loud sonic boom, we could only hear his words a little closer.
However, Liuqing Eighth District is closer to the collection point of Lazada, the Southeast Asian e-commerce platform that Ethan cooperates with, less than 3 kilometers, and the delivery is particularly convenient, he can send goods twice a day, and the other party also comes to the door for free.
Due to frequent shipments, the 100-square-meter office doubles as a warehouse, with more than a dozen rows of containers filled with goods that will be shipped to Southeast Asia. "This side is a pin, sold around 2019, and it is still very hot; The glasses are the hits from December last year to the present, and there are hundreds of orders a day..."
"Blockbuster" is a high-frequency word that appears in Ethan's dialogue with us.
Since November 2020, his store has repeatedly preemptively launched high-heat jewelry, and the current average daily total sales have remained at about 1500 orders; During the Singles Day period in 2021, the daily sales of its store jewelry reached 5,000 to 10,000 singles, and the monthly GMV (total turnover) exceeded 150,000 US dollars (about 950,000 yuan).
How do post-95 Chinese boys find out the preferences of female consumers in Southeast Asia and sell jewelry into blockbusters?
"Usually the sales cycle of jewelry is 1 to 3 months; Once the cycle passes, sales will fall off a cliff. If the follow-up cannot keep up, the stickiness of the shop's customer base will also be reduced. In order to maintain sales, Ethan will select in advance products that may be favored by Southeast Asian consumers in the next few months based on consumption trends and data.
To verify his own selection speculation, Ethan will list hundreds of products at the same time, observe the actual sales volume changes over a period of time, and then adjust the direction of the decoration varieties promoted by the store, and finally determine which ones do explosive marketing.
Now Ethan is familiar with the explosive formula, but when he first started a business, it was not so simple.
In 2019, this young man from Wuyi County, Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province, took 50,000 yuan borrowed from his college classmates and rented two rooms and a hall in Yiwu as a base for cross-border e-commerce. "At that time, spring toys were popular in short videos, and a batch of goods was entered."
The ideal is very full, and the wrong payment is very sad. Ethan soon discovered that the spring toys on the shelves were rarely seen in the cross-border market, and the inventory could not be digested for a long time. "Whoa." He nodded toward the corner of the warehouse, "Those toys are still there." ”
At the end of 2019, the store only had dozens of orders a day, and the three partners who started his business left one after another, leaving only Ethan insisting.
His finances were dire at the time. "One day at noon I went to the noodle restaurant and picked the cheapest vegetarian noodles, 10 yuan, and I swiped 4 bank cards to pay it."
He became more cut.5 In addition to the cost of rent, payment, freight and so on, the negotiation of goods, the collection of goods by the factory, and the packaging and dispatch are all self-managed.
Over the past six months, Ethan has gradually become familiar with the consumption preferences of the Southeast Asian market, and has also gained a little experience in the selection of products, such as hair bands and pins suitable for Southeast Asian women's dress.
However, Yiwu's merchant base in the Southeast Asian market is not small, and the jewelry category products are fast and competitive. As a result of the inner volume, merchants generally encounter the pain points of insufficient sales stability and lack of stickiness of the customer base.
What if "choosing the right product" isn't enough for consumers to remember the store? Fortunately, he didn't wait long – a new track with e-commerce whales was in front of young entrepreneurs.
The closure of stores and the breakup of factories during the epidemic cannot break the dream of cross-border e-commerce
Yiming, born in 1999, has its own supply factory
Is it enough for cross-border merchants to achieve a closed loop from production to sales?
Still in Beiyuan Street, the park of Fenli Group, a ming trotted all the way to pick us up.
He wears a gray-and-white sports coat, his hair is slightly messy, and he looks like a male classmate in the next class in college.
In fact, he did just graduate. "I studied e-commerce as an undergraduate, and my sophomore year began to explore the operation of cross-border e-commerce, mainly doing necklaces, rings and other jewelry, until now." A 23-year-old boy from Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, described the experience of hitting and breaking walls in entrepreneurship.
Although it is also a decorative small commodity, unlike Ethan in Southeast Asia, Yiming is the first to meet the European and American markets. In 2019, he was exposed to the supply chain of Yiwu's small commodity market for the first time through Alibaba's 1688 platform. "Funds are limited, so first wholesale low-cost small commodities in Yiwu and sell them on an e-commerce platform in the United States."
However, the outbreak of the global COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 interrupted the young man's cross-border e-commerce dream. Because of the lack of brand power, logistics were blocked, and the store reopened after the epidemic eased slightly, but it could not receive orders.
To make matters worse, in June of the same year, the local manufacturers in Yiwu who cooperated also parted ways with Yiming. "At that time, I was too young, and when I placed an order, I hit the payment, and as a result, the manufacturer shipped slowly, and we couldn't move, often making trouble."
Do you still buy and sell? It is a difficult problem facing college entrepreneurs.
A month later, Yiming made a decision to continue to deepen cross-border e-commerce, but rely on the existing foundation to build a closed loop of its own production, sales and even brand development.
He stared at the production line when he was urging orders at the factories he worked with. "The production of small commodities in the jewelry category is not complicated, coupled with the complete foundation of the Yiwu factory park and the opening of small factories, it is not difficult for small and medium-sized merchants with a certain amount of capital accumulation." In July 2020, Yiming's jewelry factory opened; In October, the previous cross-border e-commerce stores began to re-list.
At present, the "little boss" Yiming is setting his sights on the future.
The business experience of cross-border merchants after 95
Yiwu does not lack a sharp and unique vision. On January 1, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world's largest free trade agreement, came into force; In the future, more than 90% of the region's trade in goods will gradually achieve zero tariffs. On the same day, Yiwu Customs issued the first RCEP Certificate of Origin, proposing to build overseas sub-markets in indonesia, the Philippines and other populous countries. Its sword refers to the intention of the vast market in Southeast Asia, which is self-evident.
Because of this, Yiwu now needs the "golden beam of the sea" of Huili e-commerce even more. For small and medium-sized merchants, "knowing how to take advantage of the situation" is equally important as "being able to select products and have a production chain", and the former can often play a wonderful catalytic role in the stage of opening up new markets.
In 2020, when Yiming was building a closed loop between the supply chain and the sales chain, Ethan also ushered in the opportunity to build its own explosive goods and sticky stores.
After weighing the characteristics of a number of platforms, he chose to enter Lazada, Alibaba's flagship e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia. At that time, Lazada's logistics services, marketing diversion, merchant community, etc. in Yiwu had reached a scale. These resources are urgently needed by small merchants like Ethan.
The cooperation between merchants and platforms constitutes an opportunity for Yiwu small commodities to break through the barriers of the Southeast Asian market and create explosive stores.
In April of the same year, in the Thai e-commerce shop opened by Ethan, the daily sales of a pearl pin exceeded 300 for the first time; In November, with the blessing of Lazada's "Double Eleven" promotion, pins and other jewelry can sell more than 2,000 orders a day on average; In May 2021, an event called "'Adorned' Unstoppable" was in full swing on Lazada, and Ethan's jewelry store enjoyed two major benefits: increased diversion and freight reduction.
Yiwu cross-border merchants learned about the Southeast Asian market from Lazada
Under the model of "intensive cultivation and selection + accurate runway + e-commerce activities", Ethan has finally achieved the goal of creating a blockbuster, and the stickiness of the store customer base continues to grow.
On the other hand, Yiming's thinking focuses on how small businesses can upgrade their brands on the runway of the cross-border market.
The strength of Yiwu small commodity manufacturing is beyond doubt. Around small commodities, more than 150 professional villages and towns of various types have been developed locally; Take the jewelry to say things, when the Olympic champion Yang Qian became popular overnight, the Yiwu factory could complete 100,000 pieces of "champion same style" small yellow duck hair card in 24 hours, which is "Yiwu speed".
The export dividend brought about by the abundant productivity is also one of the reasons why some small and medium-sized merchants are prone to blindness and stick to the old ways in the cross-border market. But young merchants are determined to change.
"No change, no. After relaunching, I found that the European and American markets as a whole showed weakness, and low-end jewelry without brands was difficult to sell. Yiming said.
Around New Year's Day, he organized a project team of about 10 people to try design and development and brand marketing, and began to improve the quality of commodity materials, "such as rings that used to be rhinestones, now use zircon, the manufacturing cost is 40% more expensive, but it is not easy to fall off, and it looks good." And his new store also chose the Southeast Asian market.
According to the "2021 Southeast Asia Internet Economy Report" jointly released by Google, Temasek and Bain in early November last year, Southeast Asian e-commerce will create US$120 billion of GMV in 2021, an increase of 62% year-on-year; It is expected to reach $234 billion in 2025.
"There are two considerations for moving into Lazada. First, the local small commodity manufacturing industry in Southeast Asia is weak, our products are competitive, and the profit space provided by the platform is relatively large; Second, the consumption level in Southeast Asia is lower than that in Europe and the United States, but there is a trend of improvement, proving that Lazada is an upward runway, which is very suitable for small and medium-sized merchants to incubate their own brands while making profits. "He is confident in the market space and brand capacity in Southeast Asia and is ready to make a big deal out of it."
Whether it is Ethan, who takes advantage of the opportunity to create a blockbuster, or Yiming, who borrows the "city" to incubate the brand, and two post-95 entrepreneurs, more and more young generations are becoming the most active cross-border business factors in Yiwu.
When they think about "business elsewhere", they also reflect the courage and wisdom of young Yiwu to explore the development of new tracks in the face of cross-border changes.