Author| Zhang Zhibai
Edited by | Yang Peiwen
Design | Yan talks about Mengjie
China's "Double 11" has just ended, and the South Korean Customs Department can't sit still.
According to a news that "the Korean Customs Department will implement a special customs clearance policy during the peak season of overseas direct purchases", in order to cope with peak seasons such as China's "Double 11", the Korean Customs Department has set up 6 teams to support local customs and work overtime at night and weekends to handle import and export business.
China's "Double 11" actually began to make the South Korean Customs Department work overtime?
In fact, not only the Customs Department, but also warehouses in Incheon, South Korea, there is a situation of accumulation of Chinese goods. Local media reported that because young South Koreans were keen on China's "Double 11" shopping festival, customs warehouses were full of goods and had to send more people to work overtime to handle these packages from China.
Yes, Koreans in 2022 are experiencing the first "Double 11 explosion".
No one expected that South Koreans, who have always been confident in their own products, also chose to grab Chinese manufacturing on "Double 11". It even pushed a Chinese e-commerce platform AliExpress to the first place in the download list of South Korea's App Store shopping software.
01
Koreans also celebrate "Double 11"?
Yes. Many people may not know that the history of Koreans living "Double Eleven" can be traced back to 39 years ago.
Different from the "Singles' Day" that we started with college students' self-deprecation on the Internet, "Double 11" was first called "Pai Pai Music Festival" in Korea. "Pai Pera" is a chocolate bar launched by Rakuten Biscuit Company, and in order to promote the product, Rakuten launched a marketing campaign on November 11, 1983.
Later, it became popular among students in the Gyeongsang-do area of South Korea to give chocolate bars to each other, hoping to become slim like chocolate bars. Slowly, the "Pai Pai Music Festival" evolved into a popular festival in Korea, where friends exchange gifts to "give each other blessings", and couples give each other "you are my only one".
(Image: cr.ins, nadaeyup)
Such a festival with strong commercial genes in itself is more natural to convert into a shopping festival.
By this year, Koreans "finally" turned Double 11 into a shopping festival. According to CCTV, young South Koreans are "on top" for high-quality and inexpensive Chinese goods, and "Double 11" has become one of the most popular shopping seasons in South Korea.
A sister Xu Yingzhu interviewed said that it costs 100,000 won (about 540 yuan) to buy a sweater in South Korea, and only 20,000 won on China's e-commerce platforms. Even if you take into account customs duties and delivery fees, it is much cheaper than South Korea.
Chinese goods are becoming more and more fragrant to Korean consumers.
At present, the economic situation in South Korea is not optimistic. According to relevant reports, the local beef price in South Korea has now reached 101,610 won (503 yuan) per kilogram, and the fried chicken chain has officially entered the era of 20,000 won (100 yuan).
Especially for young Koreans, basic living expenses have skyrocketed.
Although in this context, Korean consumers are more inclined to choose low-priced goods, but they are not willing to reduce their requirements for product quality. Such requirements, looking around, can only be met by cost-effective Chinese manufacturing.
According to the latest data from the Statistics Agency of South Korea, in the third quarter of this year, the amount of money spent by South Korean people to buy Chinese goods increased by more than 20% year-on-year.
On Korean social media, there are also a large number of nanny-level "Taobao daigou" guides, teaching people how to use Taobao to buy Chinese things step by step.
In this context, this year's South Korea's "Double 11" unsurprisingly "exploded".
02
For the first time, a Chinese shopping app became the first in Korea
South Korea has not been the focus of discussion among domestic cross-border merchants.
The general impression of the public is that the Korean e-commerce market itself is relatively mature and the market structure is stable, and it is not easy to break in; Second, I always feel that South Korea's manufacturing industry itself is good, and it seems that Koreans prefer to buy things produced in their own country.
Therefore, although it is close at hand, it has rarely been heard of domestic cross-border merchants discussing South Korea in the past. Even if the RCEP came into effect at the beginning of the year such a big dividend, everyone still discussed more Southeast Asia.
But how did such a market that is easy to be ignored suddenly "explode"?
The first to "eat crabs" is the domestic cross-border platform AliExpress. Chinese may not be familiar with it, but in the field of cross-border e-commerce, AliExpress has always been called the "overseas version of Taobao". In fact, this is also the shopping software launched by Taobao's parent company Alibaba in overseas markets.
Chinese businessmen with a keen sense of smell found on South Korean social media that even if the language is not comprehensible, there are still a large number of Koreans relying on other people's strategies to "look at pictures and shop". It turns out that Koreans like Chinese goods so much!
In fact, Koreans have always been "honest" with Chinese goods, such as Xiaomi, which has almost become a must-have brand for Korean college students; Another example is a multi-functional camping stove on AliExpress, which was bought by young people in South Korea during this year's "Double 11".
From this point of view, Chinese goods have more "cultural potential" to explode in East Asian neighbors.
In addition, the AliExpress team also found that South Korea is actually the fifth largest e-commerce market in the world, with a small population, but the overall scale is comparable to the entire Southeast Asia. And the logistics conditions are much better than in Southeast Asia!
South Korea and Shandong, China across the sea, if you build a warehouse in Shandong to ship, the fastest delivery to South Korea will arrive in 3 days, and even achieve the same logistics time as the local e-commerce platform, which is completely different in cross-border e-commerce.
Thus, the plan began, the first step, to open a warehouse in Shandong. At present, AliExpress has two cross-border commodity stocking warehouses in Shandong Province, Yantai warehouse and Weihai warehouse, which are specially oriented to the Korean market, and merchants prepare the goods in the warehouse in advance, and Korean consumers can deliver them as soon as they order, and they can be delivered the next day.
Such logistics efficiency, coupled with the cost performance of Chinese goods, has greatly stimulated the purchase of Korean consumers. Qin Ying, manager of Baoyuntong Company, the operator of the cross-border e-commerce supervision center in Yantai Comprehensive Bonded Zone, said in an interview that they declared the export of 520,000 cross-border e-commerce packages in a week.
The second step is to do "tens of billions of subsidies". Since June this year, AliExpress has taken out 10 billion won in South Korea to subsidize consumers.
The third step is to do "Double 11". This year's "Double 11", AliExpress invited South Korea's top vertical Internet celebrities and YouTube bloggers to conduct 23 group purchases.
The "three-board axe" of China's e-commerce experience immediately took effect. According to TDI, an independent data analytics firm, AliExpress users in South Korea grew 22% from January to September.
South Korea's "Seoul Economic Daily" also mentioned in the article: "AliExpress is growing strongly in the local area and is becoming the most popular 'borderless' cross-border e-commerce platform in South Korea."
On "Double 11", AliExpress became the first place in the shopping software download list in the Korean App Store. This is the first time that a Chinese e-commerce platform has topped the Korean market.
This "first" is undoubtedly good news for domestic cross-border merchants.
Before AliExpress, the most popular e-commerce platform in South Korea was the local Coupang, which used to sell local Korean brand goods, and before 2018, Chinese merchants were not even allowed to settle in. Although it has begun to attract investment to Chinese merchants, it is still not as good as Korean local brands in terms of platform traffic recommendation.
The popularity of Chinese e-commerce platforms such as AliExpress has greatly changed the embarrassing situation of Chinese merchants in South Korea.
In particular, the Korean e-commerce market still maintains double-digit growth under its own large base, which is a lot of incremental space for the cross-border e-commerce market that has already "killed" into a red sea.
In addition, as a developed market, South Korean consumers also have higher purchasing power, which is also more conducive to the export of a range of high-quality and high-value Chinese goods. Zong Que, industry leader of AliExpress Korea, said: "In South Korea, the return and exchange rate of Chinese goods and other problems are much less than in other markets, and Korean consumers are more satisfied with the quality of Chinese products."
03
epilogue
10 years ago, China experienced the first Double 11 "burst", and since then, Chinese e-commerce has embarked on a fast track.
In 2022, the "unpretentious" South Koreans have finally seen the battle of China's "Double Eleven". We may be able to imagine the story of the future. This should be a good story for Made in China.