Climb to deck and cross the border wind
On the vent of tens of billions, hundreds of billions, or even trillions, perhaps everyone wants to be the pig that successfully "stands on the outlet" of the wind.
Just as many years ago, the ambitious Magellan led his mighty team across the ocean, and after several twists and turns, found a huge treasure that could rewrite the history of the world;
In the business field pulled along one network line after another, those cross-border merchants who dared to take risks also successfully rode on the roller coaster of overseas gold panning with their keen sense of smell for the market.
North America, Russia, Europe, Brazil, South America... On deck and around the world, more and more potential consumer markets have been successfully opened, and such a strong cross-border boom has continued to sweep through China's business market in recent years.
Buy globally, sell globally.
On the one hand, based on China's strong industrial manufacturing system, from manufacturing to creation, as a manufacturing industry that has continued to rise in the global market for many years on the supply side, it has laid a solid foundation for the cross-border sea boom.
For example, the toy category, which has a market size of 100 billion US dollars. The report shows that the current global toy sales scale at a growth rate of nearly 20% has increased year by year, as early as 18 years its market size has exceeded 100 billion US dollars, most of the toys circulating in the global market are manufactured and produced in China.
During June 1 last year, a cross-border seller from Shenzhen revealed a data: on Amazon's platform, the top 95% of the sales volume of the entire children's toy category on the platform was occupied by Chinese sellers. With the steady growth of export volume, many high-quality sellers have a yearly revenue of more than 10 million, or even doubled.
On the other hand, the continuous innovation from production technology has also gradually extended the tentacles of the intelligent Internet to the large and small corners of the world, and under the unstoppable historical wave of globalization, the huge potential shopping demand from domestic and foreign consumers has also provided a living soil for the boom across the sea.
In the past, the army of sweeping goods out of the sea, the once explosive overseas purchasing industry, and a number of cross-border e-commerce platforms that have grown in a spurt, in the face of the strong demand for high-quality goods, the chopping carnival has no borders.
In addition, affected by the post-epidemic and other factors of the times, a large number of offline retail formats have been rapidly online, and people's consumption needs and habits have undergone major changes.
A huge market means a huge business opportunity.
This point, Zhang Yiming, who is still studying today's headlines in 2017, has a premonition and is very confident: "China's Internet population accounts for only one-fifth of the global Internet population, if you do not allocate resources in the world, the pursuit of scale effect of products, one-fifth, can not compete with four-fifths, so going to sea is inevitable." ”
"Stepping on the stroke, making too much money, it is too late to calculate!"
As a result, foreign trade policies, platform rules, overseas consumption seasons, and rules on cross-border rivers and lakes have been clarified by more and more players going to sea. I don't know when, Weibo, Zhihu and other social media platforms began to appear one after another cross-border sellers overnight rich, on the peak of life story.
When the call for sudden wealth was at its highest, Shenzhen, which occupies half of the cross-border e-commerce industry, circulated a paragraph: "I heard that the houses in Shenzhen Bay were robbed by Amazon." ”
(Source: China Business Intelligence Network)
With the rapid growth of cross-border e-commerce, the data shows that in 2020, the mainland will check and release 2.45 billion import and export lists through the customs cross-border e-commerce management platform, an increase of 63.3% year-on-year; at the same time, relevant institutions predict that by 2020, the size of China's cross-border e-commerce market will reach 15.7 trillion yuan.
Taking advantage of this wave of dividends, big players and small players rushed to enter the game, but the myth of sudden wealth that was constantly advocated in the past began to bid farewell to the golden age that could let the industry grow barbarically.
Stalled and hit the reef, it is difficult to escape the predicament
The vent is always the vent, but the myth of wealth under the vent is always facing setbacks in unexpected stalls, like the iceberg that I don't know if I will hit when sailing in the sea.
When you are still trapped in a wonderful dream and think that there is a smooth road ahead, there is always a heavy punch that falls, and the pain is so painful that you have to recognize the cruel reality.
"Give us back the money!" Or we'll kneel down en masse!" ”
In June last year, Global Tesco, the first A-share listed e-commerce company in China, bid farewell to the glorious moment when its revenue has repeatedly exceeded 10 billion yuan over the years, and ushered in the final bankruptcy application with more than 700 million yuan of huge debts.
The tens of billions of giants have landed suddenly, and what is even more tragic than it is the suppliers behind it who are owed the final payment, the capital chain is broken, and the debt has been repeatedly collected.
However, the glorious era of cross-border connectivity and Global Tesco came to an end, which was only a small microcosm of the industry shock at that time.
A "death email" from Amazon has plunged many heavyweight players in cross-border industries such as Patoson, Aoji, Tongtuo, Ape Man, and Youshu into an emergency crisis in which the capital chain is frozen. A wave of wailing "number closures" rushed in, and someone helplessly asked: "My product is frozen, what should I do?" Someone angrily rebuked: "Amazon doesn't want people to do business anymore!" ”
According to reports, last year, due to the storm of Amazon's suspension, some companies were blocked 180 stores, more than 30 brands were affected, the total amount of freezing reached 85.2 million, and the blocked payment exceeded 140 million yuan. Due to the suddenness of the incident, there is even news that some big sellers flew to the Amazon headquarters in Seattle, USA overnight to communicate...
But no matter how much they wailing, there is a saying: People under the eaves have to bow their heads.
Regarding the reason for the large-scale suspension, Amazon's official email to the merchant mentioned that it is because of the long-standing behavior of these accounts to manipulate user reviews, resulting in a large number of "false comments" at the same time, as well as the phenomenon of "malicious swiping" that has been repeatedly prohibited.
I have to say that although the platform chooses a sword to seal the throat for the rules, it is also really bloody, and almost overnight most players in the industry are deeply aware of a truth, under the increasingly strict regulatory policy of the platform, the rules of the game that were once a period of cross-border barbaric growth will eventually be eliminated.
If you only take care of the immediate interests, and then carry the set of games that were once widely circulated in China to overseas, all kinds of chaos are just old wine for new slots, the pursuit of traffic is king, low-cost internal volume at the same time, complaints and complaints from consumers are flying all over the sky.
To be sure, whether in domestic or foreign markets, in a business world where regulation is becoming more and more intense, compliance must be followed before business.
After many players stalled and touched the reef, the myth of the former wealth has also ushered in a new turning point. Under the turmoil, as one seller said: "Everyone is like entering a gold panning factory, and even music people have opened cross-border e-commerce, which is too hot." ”
With the emergence of more entrants, competition has become more and more intense, policies have changed frequently, and the operating costs of merchants have risen repeatedly, and more options and retreats have begun to be considered.
In other words, money is not as easy to earn as before, and in order to resist the risk, it is better to put the eggs in a few more baskets.
Conquer the world, giants go to sea
"I'm going to TikTok, are you coming?"
In recent years, under the frequent changes in Amazon's policies, many industry players want to get rid of the shackles of the platform and begin to focus more on some new platforms with more potential.
As an industry insider said, from platform-based cross-border e-commerce to cross-border e-commerce with live streaming, short videos and other new forms of rapid rise of cross-border e-commerce, there are more and more cross-border platforms in the global market, which means that today is different from the past, there are more choices for merchants, and the huge market is being accelerated.
In the future, who can shake Amazon's hegemony and occupy a new height of traffic, everything is difficult to predict.
For example, in the "Top 10 Global Popular Mobile App Downloads in March 2022" announced not long ago, the downloads of Douyin and the overseas version of TikTok reached the top of the download list with a score of more than 63 million. At the same time as its popularity is high, TikTok's determination to increase e-commerce in recent years has become more obvious.
Test the waters of live e-commerce with goods, launch TikTok small shop, launch independent e-commerce platform Fanno... Every time ByteDance breaks through the new move of overseas e-commerce, it can attract a large number of industry players to lay out in advance, and there is no shortage of people who want to be the first to eat crabs.
At the same time, under the environment of peaking the domestic Internet traffic dividend and weak user growth, there are not a few giant players who are as determined to go to sea as byte.
Burdened with the two mountains of user growth and long-term profitability, if the giants still want to tell a new story in the second half of the e-commerce competition, then overseas is a battlefield they cannot escape.
From the "overseas digital business sector" set up by Ali after the adjustment of the organizational structure, including overseas business such as AliExpress and domestic trade, recruiting veteran Jiang Fan to go overseas; to the overseas version of "Kwai" to break through and continuously improve the priority of overseas business;
Then to the Chinese cross-border e-commerce platform "Shein", which has successfully subverted the global fashion wave in 7 years and is moving towards all categories; or the logistics giant "Ji rabbit", which has successfully killed from the 100 billion market in Southeast Asia.
If you look at the e-commerce world from a global perspective, from platforms to supply chains to warehousing and logistics, the opponents here come from all over the world.
Giants go to sea, everywhere is a challenge, everywhere is also an opportunity.
Author: Stop one