Internet manufacturers overseas "open stores": gold panning In Southeast Asia, it is not easy to copy the "e-commerce myth"

Infographic/IC

At the end of April, TikTok officially landed the pawn of cross-border e-commerce business in four Southeast Asian countries. Thunder is small but ambitious early - with a point of view, ByteDance is expected to win 20 important markets.

In less than half a year, TikTok will support cross-border e-commerce business in six Asian countries (Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, China, Indonesia) and the United Kingdom, which is evident in the determination of the "Red Sea" to share the pie.

The trillion-dollar cross-border e-commerce market has never lacked pretenders. After nearly 20 years of development, cross-border e-commerce has explored more new models, in addition to Amazon, ebay, AliExpress and other established e-commerce, SHEIN, Shopify and other independent station rookies continue to enter the game. In the past two years, traffic stars have entered the market, and content social platforms such as TikTok and Facebook have explored content e-commerce.

With China's Internet entering the stage of stock competition, large manufacturers have put it on the agenda, of which e-commerce is an important part. Large factories with different genetic backgrounds have different paths. On the one hand, capital investment is hot, on the other hand, merchants shout that cross-border e-commerce is difficult to do, and what is in front of cross-border e-commerce is also a shuffle. Last year's Amazon store closure wave shows that cross-border e-commerce is moving towards branding and compliance, in the wave of transformation, can Alibaba, which made its early efforts, successfully transform and reinvigorate? How to realize the dream of recreating an overseas JD.com? How does TikTok catch up with the new model of content e-commerce? Does Tencent want to continue to invest overseas?

In the story of the cross-border e-commerce gold rush, the influx of players also means more unknowns.

Cross-border e-commerce "kills" traffic stars

In cross-border e-commerce, TikTok is an outlier.

Although it has only started in the past two years, it has become a new target for many merchants. "Great potential" and "good trend" This is the evaluation of many sellers mentioning tiktok e-commerce.

To some extent, the development of TikTok's e-commerce business is also affected by the popularity of domestic live broadcasting and short videos, and when e-commerce platforms fight each other, they have embarked on a new path of content e-commerce.

On April 25, TikTok announced the official launch of TikTok Shop's cross-border e-commerce business in four Southeast Asian countries (Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines). This is inseparable from Tik Tok's current market situation, its global downloads have exceeded 3 billion, and the number of monthly active users has officially exceeded 1 billion, becoming the world's most popular short video social platform.

ByteDance's determination to develop cross-border e-commerce is very obvious. According to late Post, ByteDance Global CEO Zhang Yiming mentioned in his internal goal for the end of 2020 that cross-border e-commerce is one of the three key new businesses to explore in 2021. According to people who contacted TikTok, TikTok has been digging people on overseas e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and ebay in the past two years.

In fact, even with the traffic advantage of more than 1 billion users, ByteDance has changed its previous drastic style, and every step of cross-border e-commerce has taken very cautiously. In terms of strategy, whether it is independent station, cooperation or free platform construction, ByteDance has made its own attempts.

The initial test was in October 2020, when TikTok and overseas e-commerce platform Shopify became partners to provide advertising and marketing services for Shopify merchants. It will only start building its own platform and standalone project around TikTok in 2021.

The e-commerce ecology around TikTok is both a top priority and a crisis. TikTok Shopping, an e-commerce solution launched in 2021, allows sellers and brands to sell products and services directly to consumers by providing solutions and advertising tools. Including TikTok Shop (small shop) and TikTok Storefront two models, the former that completes all transactions in the TikTok station, the project in February 2021 in Indonesia small shops to test the waters, July to open the British market, until April this year to open the Southeast Asian market to settle in. The initial launch adopts a targeted invitation system, which is only open to experienced sellers.

Xiaoli Zhang has 5 years of cross-border e-commerce experience and is currently responsible for TikTok in Hugo's cross-border platform service business. She told Shell Financial Reporter that targeted invitations only for experienced sellers are aimed at reducing time costs. "If you don't even have experience in how to get the goods out and how to get the money back, then in TikTok you will only step on the pit and lose more." As TikTok, I also hope that the first people who come in can make money, and then slowly relax the threshold. ”

TikTok Storefront is working with third-party platforms, the so-called "little yellow car" model, which is currently mainly facing the US market. In this mode, users can add shopping tags on the TikTok front end and display product details without jumping out, but the e-commerce back-end links such as collection, product management, and logistics delivery are all completed on independent sites such as Shopify and Square.

Douyin e-commerce also used this model in the early stage, as a traffic tool to divert traffic for e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, but eventually it still has to move towards a closed loop.

ByteDance's caution is not without reason. Liu Hong, Hugo's cross-border COO, was one of the first practitioners to enter the field of cross-border e-commerce, and experienced the development stage of cross-border e-commerce from information platform to trade platform. "TikTok is facing a mature market, in a relatively mature field, if you do it from 0 is a very bad loss, do not set a threshold, anyone can enter, then it is paralyzed, so you must take the road of refined operation." Liu Hong said.

In addition to TikTok, there is also the construction of an independent e-commerce platform, one is the clothing independent station project Dmonstudio that benchmarks SHEIN, but it has been announced in February this year, and it has only survived for more than 3 months. Another independent platform, Fanno, is still in operation, mainly based on price advantages as a point of competition, known as "European Pinduoduo".

For ByteDance, which does not have e-commerce genes, it is difficult to re-open up a track, and Li Jincan, chief analyst of the consumer industry of The Leopard (Shanghai) Research Institute, believes that "although the big factory has the advantages of funds and talents, it is not difficult to land a cross-border e-commerce project, but for the later operation management and local market-oriented operation, the big factory does not have an advantage over the local e-commerce platform." In addition, although there is still room for increment in the cross-border e-commerce market, the third-party platform model chosen by large manufacturers has developed weakly in recent years, and the proportion and growth rate of shares are far lower than that of the independent station model. ”

TikTok needs to find a mature path, and for sellers, it is also waiting to see. "TikTok's consumption habits still need time to develop, and not many people really make money." A TikTok seller predicted with Douyin e-commerce, "Douyin e-commerce also took a while." ”

Some sellers believe that entering the market now is to grasp the first-mover advantage, but some sellers express headaches. "Most Amazon sellers aren't a good fit for TikTok." The head of an official service provider on TikTok told Shell Financial Reporter that it operates amazon, lazada, Shopee and other stores overseas, and Amazon's stores have been closed in last year's wave of store closures.

He is optimistic about the prospects of TikTok, but recommends not to blindly enter, "TikTok is currently very uncertain, and the cost of the operation team is relatively high, not suitable for large-scale entry, want to do team incubation with long-term considerations can try, first of all, the funds should be sufficient, and the expectation should be lowered." It is better to use TikTok as a long-term marketing channel."

On TikTok, manpower is still a large cost, and merchants find anchors with language and cargo capabilities as the current pain points. "To recruit a TikTok anchor, the salary may be at least 20,000 or more, and it does not include bonuses, performance and commissions." Zhang Xiaoli said that at present, China has set up fewer companies in Indonesia and other places, so there are few platforms to link local Internet celebrity resources.

Amazon closed the store, Ali and Jingdong chased the wind

"Which platform is not easy to do", many cross-border e-commerce sellers are not optimistic about this year's market.

Tracing the history of cross-border e-commerce, it is only 20 years. From the initial steady development to the outbreak period and now the cooling off period, the cross-border e-commerce that once grew barbarically has stepped into a new stage.

According to the "2022 China Cross-border Live E-commerce Industry Trend Research Report" by Ai Media Consulting, China's cross-border e-commerce investment and financing was concentrated in 2015, with 222 investment and financing incidents throughout the year, and in 2018, the annual investment and financing soared, reaching 50.9 billion yuan.

Liu Hong told Shell Financial Reporter that the real outbreak period of cross-border e-commerce was from 2014 to 2016, "At that stage, cross-border e-commerce grew rapidly, so many people made a lot of money, the so-called buying and scalping, massive SKU shop 'making fast money' also occurred in this period." ”

The growth rate of cross-border e-commerce business has declined after 2018, but the overall growth has remained stable. 2021 is a difficult year for many cross-border sellers, on the one hand, the dividend disappears, on the other hand, the Amazon store closure wave has caught many sellers off guard.

In the field of cross-border e-commerce, Amazon has always been a leader and a platform for Chinese sellers to consider going overseas. According to statistics from China Merchants Securities, in 2020, Chinese sellers accounted for 42% of Amazon's head sellers. In April 2021, Amazon shut down the sales rights of about 600 Chinese brands, including about 3,000 seller accounts involving these brands, including some brand sellers, on the grounds that gift cards manipulated reviews and swiped orders.

Liu Hong said that Amazon's store closure management for sellers did not start last year, and compliance operations have always had strict review standards and requirements. "Only this time a lot of good selling large sellers have not been spared, the account is blocked, these large sellers a year's sales may be five or six hundred million, in the hoarding spot inventory at the moment, once the account ban will make the seller's entire sales chain is cut off, the difficulty of payment caused by the break of the capital chain, and then break the original information flow, business flow, logistics, capital flow and other close links of the integration, and eventually lead to the risk of collapse." The blow is fatal. ”

Amazon hit hard, sellers realized they couldn't put their eggs in one basket, and merchants who wanted to go online to Amazon became cautious.

Zhang Xiaoli is in charge of the TikTok business process, often docking the seller's end, seeing the data plummeting. "Compared to last year, the number of new Amazon merchants on our side has decreased by nearly 80% per month this year. This is not to say that there is no cross-border e-commerce business to do, but everyone's confidence in the Amazon platform has weakened, maintaining a wait-and-see state, and the market is more selective. ”

A seller who has been working at Amazon for 4 years described "the environment has been very harsh this year." "Before I was able to get up in Amazon for half a year, now it is difficult to improve in a year." Under strict control of brush orders, he plans to open up other markets this year.

Although the growth rate of cross-border e-commerce has slowed down, it is far from saturated from the perspective of the entire market. A number of industry research reports have remained optimistic about the future of cross-border e-commerce, and are even more optimistic about China's cross-border e-commerce export business.

During the period of Amazon's consolidation, China's e-commerce platforms also began to exert efforts in overseas markets, and Platforms with e-commerce genes such as Alibaba and JD.com rushed ahead to grab the beach.

"At present, most of the large domestic manufacturers that join cross-border e-commerce are positioned on the platform that connects domestic suppliers and foreign consumers. The outbreak of the epidemic has increased the proportion of overseas consumers shopping online, creating a lot of incremental space for overseas e-commerce markets, China has a perfect supply chain system and rich e-commerce experience, and profitability is the fundamental reason for the layout of cross-border e-commerce by large factories. Li Jincan said.

As early as 1999, Alibaba laid out Alibaba International Station overseas, and was one of the earliest largest manufacturers in China to get involved in cross-border e-commerce. In 2010, AliExpress was officially launched from Alibaba International Station, and after years of development, it has evolved into today's B2C cross-border e-commerce platform.

AliExpress also had its own highlight moment, early to avoid Amazon's sharp edge in Russia, Brazil and other countries to open the market, 2010-2014, AliExpress annual turnover maintained 300% to 500% growth, the number of sellers reached more than 200,000 (registered accounts including unopened stores have been close to 2 million).

With the gradual maturity of the cross-border e-commerce field, the rules established by AliExpress in the early days of low-threshold drainage are backed by the labels of "chaos" and "low quality". "There is no pressure to basically brush orders on AliExpress, but it takes a lot of money to brush orders to do it." One seller said that low traffic and poor products have caused merchants to flow to other platforms.

At the end of last year, Alibaba underwent personnel adjustments and set up an "overseas digital business segment", including two overseas businesses of AliExpress and International Trade (ICBU), as well as a number of subsidiaries facing overseas markets such as Lazada, which were managed by Jiang Fan, the group's president. This move is seen by the outside world as a sign of Alibaba's restart of the "going to sea" strategy.

JD.com is not willing to miss the outlet of cross-border e-commerce, compared to Alibaba, JD.com has the advantages of logistics and self-operated brands.

Jingdong cross-border e-commerce began in 2015, this year is the outbreak of cross-border e-commerce, Jingdong global sales is committed to providing solutions for Chinese merchants, on the one hand, cooperation with local enterprises, the establishment of Jingdong Indonesia (JD.ID) and Jingdong Thailand (JD CENTRAL); on the other hand, the launch of cross-border e-commerce platforms, JOYBUY English station and Russian station, in 2018 and launched Spanish station. In addition to attracting merchants to enter their own platform JOYBUY, it also cooperates with mature third-party e-commerce platforms to help merchants enter wal-mart, Google shopping and other head cross-border e-commerce platforms.

At that time, although Jingdong International failed to reach the top, it was also a good trend. In 2020, JD Indonesia's valuation exceeded $1 billion, becoming indonesia's sixth unicorn company. JD Thailand GMV increased by 170% year-on-year.

However, while local e-commerce is growing, the development of the JOYBUY platform as an "overseas JD.com" has come to an abrupt end. In 2021, JOYBUY announced a business upgrade to a B2B platform, claiming that it would not affect merchants' sales on third-party platforms (Walmart, etc.).

Giants are divided into many worlds, and three kinds of enterprises are facing elimination

Just when people think that JD.com's going to sea is blocked, JD.com's other layout - logistics is gradually gaining momentum. According to the data on the official website, as of December 2021, JD Logistics has 80 bonded warehouses and overseas warehouses, and international routes cover more than 220 countries and regions, gradually achieving 48-hour global communication.

In January 2022, JD announced that it will become Shopify's first strategic partner in China, creating a "one-stop selection platform" for Shopify merchants - JD Sourcing, and at the same time using JD's supply chain and logistics capabilities to establish dropshipping (one piece of distribution) 2.0 to provide reliable services for Shopify merchants around the world.

Liu Hong analyzed that although each one is laying out cross-border e-commerce, but the positioning is different, Alibaba's advantage is the supply chain, it has penetrated into the bottom of china's supply chain, so it is more to do the extension of global e-commerce at the bottom of the trade floor. Jingdong is relatively strong in e-commerce genes, relatively strong in logistics, it mainly solves the problem of the last kilometer of e-commerce, so Jingdong did not concentrate on participating in the competition of the platform, but invested energy in the layout of the logistics system, more focused on the improvement of the ecology from the infrastructure of e-commerce.

The positioning of the two is traceable in the founder's speech. In 2017, Ma Yun said: "Amazon is an e-commerce company, and Alibaba is not, Alibaba's goal is to help every small and medium-sized enterprise compete with industry giants like Amazon and IBM." Three years later, in 2020, Liu Qiangdong said, "I am confident that I will bring my accumulation in retail infrastructure, from logistics to supply chain, technology and other capabilities to the world." We want to help Chinese brands succeed overseas and rebuild a JD.com overseas. ”

According to the statistics of the General Administration of Customs, the total cross-border e-commerce exports of the mainland in 2021 will be 1,391.8 billion yuan, an increase of 28.3% year-on-year. Attracted by the trillion-dollar scale, no one wants to miss this big cake, and each side is using its own advantages to attack the city.

In addition to the self-built platform, the big factories also participate in the form of investment, especially in the Southeast Asian market, lazada and Shopee, there are Chinese companies. Alibaba acquired Lazada for about $1 billion in 2016, becoming the controlling shareholder of Lazada, and in 2017, it spent another $1 billion to increase its stake, from 51% to 83%. Not long ago, it was rumored that Alibaba planned to spin off lazada, to which Alibaba said that it would not publicly respond to this matter.

Shopee and Tencent also have a deeper relationship, Shopee's parent company sea has the title of "Southeast Asia Small Tencent". Tencent also holds a 21.3% stake in SEA in 2021, not long ago, Shopee announced that it had decided to close its India operation "in view of the uncertainty of the global market", and in January, Tencent just announced that it was insisting on reducing its stake in SEA to 18.7%.

Li Jincan said, "At present, byteDance, JD.com, Tencent and other large manufacturers in the layout of cross-border e-commerce account for a low share, will not bring a greater impact to the entire cross-border e-commerce market competition, but with the reduction of platform traffic dividends and the intensification of homogenization competition, the cost of obtaining traffic is higher, and higher requirements are also put forward for the perfection of the supply chain system and rapid response capabilities." ”

In addition to the challenges of supporting infrastructure such as supply chain, warehousing, logistics, payment, and services, there are also problems such as talent shortage, policy changes, localization, and international environment.

Wang Xin, president of the Shenzhen Cross-border E-commerce Association, said that China's economy is going out, but the genes, teams and knowledge culture of going out are not strong enough, so it is necessary to have a well-trained and strong country to do a good job in the back, and train the team well, so that we can go out, so that we will be beaten less and less cut leeks.

Regarding the future development of cross-border e-commerce, most people in the industry point to brand going overseas and compliance. Zhang Xiaoli believes that in the process of cross-border e-commerce towards branding, three kinds of enterprises will be washed away: there is no operational ability, middlemen and no overall awareness of compliance awareness.

Li Jincan believes that with the influx of a large number of players, the industry will usher in a major reshuffle in the next 1-2 years. From the perspective of the entire chinese cross-border e-commerce competition pattern, the competition between third-party platforms and independent stations is worthy of attention. In recent years, a large number of startups in the domestic independent station industry have emerged, the industry has entered a period of rapid growth, there is no absolute leader at present, in addition to SHOPPINGLINE, Shoplazza, the development of more mature SaaS service providers Weimob, Youzan, etc. have also launched independent station cross-border products. In addition, the solution provided by the local head social media e-commerce commercialization, Google has provided its own e-commerce platform and search page, Facebook has provided its own shop function, and e-commerce commercialization is also undergoing a part of the grayscale test, so the overseas of Chinese manufacturers will also face pressure from local brands in exporting countries.

Beijing News shell financial reporter Song Meilu Editor Wang Jinyu Proofreader Wang Xin