(Opening words: From ancient times to the present, Chinese manufacturing has never stopped exploring the other side of the sea.) In the past, those merchants who wanted to go to sea to find a new blueprint stayed at this end of the sea, pinning their overseas gold mining dreams on foreign trade ships. Later, the rise of cross-border e-commerce platforms fully opened the era of navigation made in China, allowing the vigorous productivity of Made in China to have a larger market and stage.
On September 1, the first anniversary of the official launch of Pinduoduo's cross-border business, it has steadily entered more than 20 countries and regions, covering Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Oceania, once again refreshing the ease of enterprises to go abroad, and providing Chinese merchants with unlimited potential for cross-border new exports.
Revitalize China's high-quality industrial belt, make cross-border use of the resource advantages accumulated by Pinduoduo in major domestic industrial belts for many years, and find a new blue ocean in the red sea of cross-border business. This topic will observe how Duoduo cross-border can directly connect excellent Chinese manufacturing to the vast overseas market by visiting a number of high-quality cross-border industrial belts in Anhui, Shandong, Guangdong and other places, and record the new changes and new faces of China's cross-border trade links. ）
Reporter Yang Xinyi
Using translation software to check buyers' reviews is becoming a daily lesson in Lang Xiaoming's life.
Born in a small county in Anhui Province, he did not go to university and did not speak English, but he sold lighters and razors produced in his hometown to millions of "foreigners" who had never seen each other, and made cross-border business flourishing, "something that was unimaginable before."
Over the years, Made in China has not stopped telling more stories overseas - Ali continues to increase AliExpress, Byte's TikTokShop (an e-commerce service) has expanded rapidly, and unicorn Shein has also moved frequently. Pinduoduo's Duoduo Cross-border was unveiled on September 1 last year, which not only allowed the "cross-border four tigers" to gather, but also provided a new outlet with unlimited potential for Chinese merchants who want to dig for gold on the other side of the world.
As the "first batch of crab eaters" on this new platform, dealer Lang Xiaoming has witnessed various changes since the birth of Duoduo Cross-border one year ago. Originally, he could read the buyer's reviews of the day every day, but the sales increased much faster than he imagined, "The number of reviews is almost 50,000, too many to see." ”
According to the latest data released by mobile application data analysis company Sensor Tower on August 15, due to the successful development of the European market, Duoduo's cross-border e-commerce platform Temu has broken into the top ten downloads in the world, and its popularity is still increasing. At the same time, Temu is accelerating its global expansion. Since its launch in September last year, Termu has now reached more than 20 countries and regions, covering Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Oceania.
Rushing with Duoduo cross-border is China's large number of internationally competitive manufacturing industrial belts, hiding many manufacturing "hidden champions", Cheng Dahong is one of them.
In Wenzhou, which once occupied more than seventy percent of the world's lighter orders, Cheng Dahong has held the first position in sales for 9 consecutive years, and this figure is known to local lighter factories.
In the first year of selling the most lighters, two distributors operating cross-border e-commerce platforms contacted him to sell his lighters abroad. However, due to cumbersome packaging, transportation and other links and high investment costs, Cheng Dahong "took some twists and turns" in cross-border business.
It wasn't until last year that he and fellow villager Lang Xiaoming joined Duoduo Cross-border that the road to the vast overseas market became better.
As much as possible, the non-essential intermediate links for factories are reduced, and the fully managed model launched by Duoduo cross-border has undoubtedly refreshed the ease of overseas e-commerce, allowing factory-type sellers like Cheng Dahong to make cross-border business easier and more profitable.
Moreover, with the assistance of real-time information from buyers and Xiaoer, merchants can grasp the trends of overseas consumer markets in the first time even though they are far away.
Through frequent exchanges with buyers, Cheng Dahong has continuously accumulated an understanding of foreign consumer preferences. Whether it is a lighter or a razor that returned to his hometown for production in 2019, his products have experienced many "burst orders", "basically sold out as soon as they hit the shelves".
This also makes him have a stronger motivation and motivation to upgrade products and build brands, "working a razor to make high-end products", "This is also the biggest advantage of Duoduo cross-border cross-border, and merchants have a division of labor, each doing what they are best at." ”
"Burst order" at half past two in the morning
Following the investment promotion policy of his hometown, Wenzhou's "lighter king" Cheng Dahong returned to his hometown of Shucheng, Anhui Province in 2019, spending nearly 200 million yuan to build a new factory to produce razors.
Although the factory is new, it has its own genes of "production king". In the first year and a half of production, the high cost performance of the factory's basic products is highly compatible with the main station of Pinduoduo, and the first single-head mini shaver sold out as expected.
The first hit across industries also made Cheng Dahong have a deeper trust in Pinduoduo, so when Lang Xiaoming first mentioned Duoduo cross-border to him at the end of August 2022, he had no hesitation about this "overseas version of Pinduoduo".
In this way, Cheng Dahong and Lang Xiaoming hit it off, the former was responsible for factory production, the latter focused on store operations, connecting the assembly line in his hometown to Duoduo cross-border. At present, the lighter products produced in Cheng Dahong factory are mainly exported, and the export of home appliances such as razors and hair clippers accounts for 30%, and the number of product SKUs (minimum stock units) sold on Duoduo cross-border has exceeded 100.
Fortunately, Duoduo Cross-border did not live up to their trust and expectations, and the "explosion of orders" came much faster than expected. At 2:30 a.m. one day around Christmas last year, Lang Xiaoming noticed a spike in sales of an igniter in the store, "from a few orders to more than 500."
Seeing that the order volume was still soaring, Lang Xiaoming couldn't sit still, and he called Cheng Dahong to inform him, hoping that the supply chain could ensure the continuous file of this commodity link. Cheng Dahong sent additional manpower to the factory early the next morning to rush to send a batch of new goods to the Guangzhou warehouse, "For the first time, I felt the speed of the volume, and there was a flywheel effect (in product sales)." ”
Lang Xiaoming introduced that the current igniter score is as high as 4.8 points, "almost no bad reviews", "the platform will also promote good products for free, this product is now selling very well."
In the past, small businessmen engaged in manufacturing wanted to get foreign trade orders, most of them relied on the "stupid method" of going to foreign exhibitions to find customers. For this reason, Cheng Dahong went to Dortmund, Las Vegas and Dubai, but the boat and car along the way could only be exchanged for three or two retail investors, and he was not worth it.
However, the order sales on Duoduo cross-border made Cheng Dahong feel the "super cost-effective" of cross-border business for the first time. Before settling in, the factory exported less than 1,000 single goods a day, but now there are many single products with a daily export volume of more than 3,500 orders.
In terms of the proportion of factory orders, cross-border orders have risen from one or two percent to fifty percent, of which the output of more than 50% of the cross-border supply has exceeded, "This proportion will slowly increase, and the platform will be the top priority of our future development." ”
The energy efficiency of the manufacturing belt has also been fully revitalized by Duoduo across borders. "There are often 'explosive products' on the platform, that product 'exploded', you can't have no production capacity to supply", in order to expand production capacity, Cheng Dahong has successively added four-wheel machines to the factory, and the number of workers has also expanded from less than 200 last year to nearly 400, and is expected to reach 600 by the end of the year.
And every day, hundreds of thousands of razors walk out of this factory and run from small counties to the big world. Today, the factory's daily production capacity is about 150,000, and the actual shipment is 100,000~120,000, "in the future, it will increase production at a growth rate of 20% per month to meet the demand of Duoduo cross-border and other platforms."
New model to solve cross-border "old problems"
"I started to operate cross-border business on other platforms in 2018, but I didn't go deep into it, because there was no particularly efficient platform at that time, and Duoduo Cross-border was the first platform I worked on." A year ago in the summer, Lang Xiaoming received a call from Temu in the crayfish shop that the store had approved, and he realized that his own opportunity had come.
Engaged in procurement for many years, Lang Xiaoming has the heart to ask for orders from foreign markets early on. But selling goods across the ocean was not an easy task, even on the mainstream cross-border platforms of the time.
At that time, Lang Xiaoming needed to keep an eye on every link from spontaneous delivery to receipt. Difficulties such as not knowing how to put goods, difficult to grasp the amount of stock, and complicated cross-border fulfillment have consumed the mental efforts of cross-border novice sellers like Lang Xiaoming.
Once, Lang Xiaoming's selection of products on other cross-border platform stores was biased, and a batch of more expensive razors were unsold in the United States. Considering the cost of freight, it is no longer possible to return this batch of goods to the same way, and it is either waiting to pay the storage fee or trying to sell and clear the warehouse. After several twists and turns, Lang Xiaoming connected with a company willing to close the goods, took a month to clear the goods, and finally lost 100,000 yuan.
Due to the lengthy intermediate chain of domestic and foreign transportation and distribution, such troubles are not uncommon. For example, a lighter handled by Lang Xiaoming is a hot-selling product around Christmas, but the fulfillment time of other platforms is not easy to control, and it is easy to waste inventory, "I am afraid that I will run out of stock, I am afraid that the time is not mastered, and the goods are out of season, so I can only sell it at a discount or try to increase advertising costs." ”
"There are more cross-border intermediate chains, there are many places that are difficult to control when going to sea, and there are more links that merchants need to spend costs, and they also need to allocate more job docking, coupled with marketing expenses, the competitiveness of products in price will be weakened." Lang Xiaoming said.
For example, on cross-border e-commerce platforms based on the platform model, logistics costs generally account for 15%~20% of the selling price of goods, and advertising fees for popular categories are as high as 20%~30% of the selling price of goods, "especially during the epidemic, the lack of transportation capacity, logistics costs rose sharply, and the distribution at that time made us lose confidence in doing cross-border."
In his view, Duoduo's cross-border full custody model is a "through train" that allows merchants to save worry, effort and money. In the fully managed mode, the factory only needs to be responsible for producing goods and delivering them to the platform's domestic warehouse, and the platform is responsible for marketing, drainage, sales and overseas distribution.
Specifically, Duoduo Cross-border can provide merchants with one-stop services including website drainage, cross-border logistics, legal affairs, intellectual property rights, etc. At the same time, through the flexible supply mode of small amount, multiple times and quick response, the platform can identify, summarize and feedback to business on changes in consumer demand in different overseas markets in a timely manner, and provide long-term and stable orders for production enterprises.
"Under the fully managed model, the platform can also play its own advantages and work with us to optimize the cost to the best." Lang Xiaoming explained, "When discussing cooperation with overseas social apps (mobile phone software) and logistics companies such as Facebook (Facebook), the price obtained by the platform and the funds that can be invested are obvious advantages. ”
In addition to saving time and costs, the new model of full custody has not compressed the profit margins of merchants, but has shown "small profits but quick turnover" in many popular categories.
Compared with the profit margin of a single product, Cheng Dahong pays more attention to sales, "Duoduo's cross-border order volume is much larger than other platforms, so the overall profit is not low." ”
After the county razor went overseas
The consumer market has always changed rapidly, especially when facing consumers in different regions, how to detect market changes and grasp consumers' consumption habits and preferences? Duoduo cross-border uses a group of people as an answer.
They are called "buyers" and play the role of the central core of the entire transaction chain. On the one hand, buyers are responsible for communicating with factories and suppliers, participating in the whole process of product selection, price verification, arranging cargo flow and market operation; On the other hand, they observe the big data of purchases in real time and provide merchants with demand and business recommendations.
During the first time he settled in Duoduo Cross-border, Lang Xiaoming would communicate with buyers on WeChat almost every day, which allowed him to quickly pass the run-in period with the platform, and later their conversations mostly revolved around what to sell and how to sell.
For subtle changes in the consumer market, buyers are always the first to perceive them. Through the sensitive and efficient information transmission of docking buyers, Lang Xiaoming knew for the first time that overseas consumers prefer simple black and white to the small fresh macaron colors popular in China; The power of the razor should be made larger to be more in line with the usage habits of overseas consumers; Products such as shavers and hair clippers have their own peak sales seasons and need to be in place in advance.
"The platform has a lot more big data than us, and the suggestions provided by buyers can allow us to keep abreast of consumer trends and help create a stage explosion, which is also to maximize the advantages of platform big data and supply chain resources." Lang Xiaoming thought.
Moreover, merchants can also actively understand market demand on the platform, improve product quality, and find the key to creating the next blockbuster.
Lang Xiaoming often looks at buyer reviews, he feels that business must be close to consumers, and those evaluations are the most real voice, "For example, some consumers mentioned that the razor standby time is short, we immediately contacted the factory and optimized the 400 mAh battery to 600 mAh; If a consumer mentions in a review that he is particularly interested in a certain attribute of the product, I will consider enlarging this in the main image or title of the product. ”
In the eyes of Lang Xiaoming and Cheng Dahong, today's huge user scale and rapid expansion of Duoduo cross-border in overseas markets are like replicating the growth myth created by Pinduoduo in the Chinese market.
It is also optimistic about the platform that they decided to work deeply, optimize old products, develop new products, and conquer more overseas consumers with Made in China.
"I am now very motivated to do cross-border, I want to do a good job in quality and make a brand", in addition to the daily work in the factory, Cheng Dahong's recent thoughts have been spent on the update and iteration of overseas products, "The foreign pet products market is very large, and I am discussing with Mr. Lang to develop new products for pet shaving." ”
Internet analyst Zhang Shule believes that the cross-border fully managed model implemented by Duoduo is beneficial to factory-type and industry-trade integrated businesses, empowering the mainland's high-quality industrial belt and further releasing the productivity of the industrial belt. At the same time, Duoduo cross-border has also enabled Anhui, Hubei and other central regions to give full play to their own resources and industrial advantages, promote the economic development of central regions, and become a powerful new engine for inland cities to develop export-oriented economies.
"Do upward, do far", this long-term focus on professionalism and creativity is not only Cheng Dahong and Lang Xiaoming's request for the little razor in their opponents, but also their expectation of Duoduo cross-border. From small counties to big worlds, from the old paradigm of going overseas to cross-border new worlds, Duoduo cross-border and thousands of excellent manufacturers in China have worked together to tell new and far-reaching stories of Made in China.
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