Parcel self-pick-up cabinet landed in Poland
AliExpress is getting faster and faster.
According to foreign media Portalspozywczy, AliExpress recently announced that it has installed the company's first parcel pick-up cabinet in Poland. Previously, AliExpress had been using the traditional postal service to deliver goods, but from 2022 onwards, Polish consumers would be able to use AliExpress' own parcel pick-up cabinets to pick up their goods.
At present, these parcel cabinets have been installed in Wrocław, Lodz, Warsaw, Katowice, Poznan and other cities, AliExpress said that in the coming months, a total of 3,000 parcel cabinets will be installed in major cities in Poland.
The self-pick-up cabinet installed by AliExpress was completed by Cainiao Group in cooperation with World of Shipments, a global courier service provider that provides express delivery services in Europe and almost all over the world.
In fact, in Poland, there is a local delivery service giant InPost, founded in 2006, with more than 1 million self-service parcel lockers worldwide, 2/3 of which are for online shoppers and work with retail companies such as JD Sports, Holland & Barrett, Missguided and Lidl.
InPost offers a 24/7 (7/24) service designed to help retailers and carriers reduce costs as they meet the challenges of increasing package volumes. In recent years InPost has undertaken extensive investment programs, building dozens of fully automated sorting agencies, and thousands of postal parcel lockers set up across Poland to make same-day delivery possible.
According to reports, the parcel cabinet provided by AliExpress this time is smaller than inPost's.
"The development of a network of postal machine locations is a mission for us, and we want Poles not to have to rely on postmen or couriers and to decide for themselves when and where they will pick up their goods." Piotr Kocoń, CEO of World of Shipments, said.
According to statistics, the popularity of self-service pickup has a great connection with the rapid development of the e-commerce industry.
Relevant data show that more than 150,000 Polish companies have decided to sell their products and services through the Internet, and Poland's main e-commerce platforms are Allegro, OLX, Ebay, Amazon, Aliexpress and so on.
AliExpress's "Polish Dream"
Located in Central Europe, Poland is the sixth most populous country in Europe and the largest economy in Central and Eastern Europe, with a high per capita national income.
The country's GDP per capita is estimated to be around $13,454, a figure that will rise to around $16,734 by 2022. Currently, Poland has about 20 million e-commerce users, which is expected to increase to 21 million by 2022.
And, in Poland, people of all ages use the internet very often.
Surveys show that 90 percent of people aged 16 to 24 use the Internet every day, compared with 92 percent and 81 percent of those ages 25 to 34 and 35 to 44, respectively, and 79 percent of 45 to 54 years old. And among those over the age of 55, 65% go online every day.
According to a new poll by pollster ARC Rynek i Opinia, 57 percent of Poles prefer to shop online, with 21 percent of them shopping online more than once a month.
The most common purchases by Polish consumers online are clothing, footwear and clothing accessories (61%), electronics (47%), and books, movies and music records (34%).
Poland has two major peak sales seasons each year, one lasting from December to February winter and the other from July to August summer, both of which are good times for sellers to sell online.
In addition, festivals such as Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Father's Day are popular online sales in Poland, and during this time, polish consumers are also very demanding for products.
In 2018, AliExpress expanded its business deep into the Polish market, connecting Chinese sellers and overseas buyers, allowing foreign businesses and consumers to buy directly from Chinese factories.
According to PAPBiznes, AliExpress had the largest increase in the number of users as of the end of November 2021, growing by 1.43 million in the month to November and now exceeding 13 million.
Since spring 2021, shipments from China have taken up to 15 days to reach the Polish region. Previously, it took up to 40 days.
In order to shorten local delivery times in Poland and enhance logistics advantages, AliExpress built a large number of warehouses in Poland last year to increase the number of products that reach Polish consumers within three days.
During the Double 11 period last year, the first hour of AliExpress reached 90% of the first day of 2020, and the two-day transaction amount of the flagship store increased by 185% year-on-year.
Behind the eye-catching results is the global layout of AliExpress overseas warehouses, which effectively protects the customer experience and is also an important part of the globalization of the brand.
Competitors abound
According to a survey by Euromonitor International, Alibaba ranked first in the e-commerce sector in Eastern Europe in 2019.
But in 2020, as the pandemic continues to increase, Polish online shopping site Allegro overtook AliExpress to become number one, while Russian rival Wildberries ranked second and AliExpress fell to third.
Due to the multi-wave long-term outbreak of the epidemic in Europe, home and other quarantine measures have been implemented for several months, resulting in the strengthening of online shopping and becoming the outlet again, which is also the fundamental reason for the intensification of e-commerce competition in Europe.
In addition, Amazon Polish has been launched in March last year, the number of visits in just one month reached 3.7 million, in mid-October, Amazon officially launched the Prime membership program in Poland.
The move led to a direct 3.7% drop in shares of Polish e-commerce rival Allegro. In November, the number of Amazon Prime subscriptions increased from 1.7 million in October to 2.16 million.
Shopee, which has risen in Southeast Asia in the past two years, also launched the Polish station at the end of September last year, and Poland is the first stop to open the European market.
The position of Poland's e-commerce market in Europe is self-evident, the development of European e-commerce has reached a new stage, and the situation of AliExpress is also in danger.
At the end of last year, Alibaba's chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang issued an internal letter announcing that the company had upgraded its "diversified governance" system, in which Jiang Fan was in charge of the overseas digital business sector, in charge of the first-level organization of aliexpress and international trade (ICBU), and a number of subsidiaries facing overseas markets such as Lazada.
One of Alibaba's visions is to serve 2 billion consumers around the world by 2036, and Jiang Fan, as the new commander of the overseas battlefield, needs to replicate Taobao's successful experience, but also to be able to jump out of the domestic e-commerce experience and find a way to localize.
In the post-epidemic era, China's cross-border e-commerce has shifted from "traffic is king" to "supply is king", and the industry is also developing in the direction of standardized operation, which is the best period for China's advantageous supply chain to establish a brand image in overseas markets and occupy the minds of users.
The next two years is a window period for cross-border e-commerce to increase brand investment, the once hot shop model is now difficult to play the same effect, after a round of reshuffle, simple manufacturing brands, sellers without core supply chain capabilities, will also be eliminated by the market. What kind of surprises will be brought by the re-equipped AliExpress, let us wait for the good news.
Author: Hai Ge