Written by丨Lin Ke
Jinjiang, Fujian Province, enjoys the reputation of "China's shoe capital".
It is said that more than 1 billion pairs of sneakers are produced here every year, and about one-sixth of the world's people wear sneakers are made here.
Li Rui and Wang Li are husband-and-wife sellers in the "shoe capital", and currently have several self-owned factories and three to five hundred employees. In the past two years, they have been unable to bear the involution of the industry, and the business profits of the couple have become more and more meager.
They took a fancy to the good outlet of cross-border e-commerce, and chose to settle in the SHEIN platform, which provides a nanny-style "agent operation" cooperation model, and achieved a sales volume of 1,000 pairs per day in half a year.
The rejuvenation of old businesses is inseparable from SHEIN's digital platform, flexible supply chain capabilities and one-stop overseas empowerment service system.
SHEIN is an indisputable cross-border e-commerce giant, which benefited from the "small single quick reaction" model at the beginning of its rise, which transformed the upstream and downstream of the apparel industry supply chain.
Since the platform strategy was officially proposed, its ability to drive the industrial belt to go to sea together has been "sinking", helping the industrial belt to go to sea with cross-border e-commerce, and at the same time, it has also empowered more industrial belt sellers through platformization, and created a new infrastructure for small and medium-sized sellers to go to sea together.
When Chinese enterprises enter the era of great exploration, going to sea is not only to say goodbye to involution.
Like Li Rui and his wife, more and more Chinese sellers and the industrial belt behind them have upgraded their production models, changed their business models, reshaped their brand power, and answered new propositions about the new quality and productivity of foreign trade.
Flexible fission, new qualitative change
In China's manufacturing industry belt, there are mostly small and medium-sized factories with "traditional family business model", showing the characteristics of agglomeration of factors and high synergy, such as clothing, home furnishings, bags and jewelry in the Pearl River Delta, shoes and accessories toys in the Yangtze River Delta, and characteristic industrial belts have been formed in specific regions.
Taking Guangzhou's garment industry as an example, the industrial belt backed by cross-border sellers includes textile mills, fabric factories, garment manufacturing factories and other chains.
Over the past years, SHEIN has also innovated the flexible supply chain model with the help of the industrial belt and achieved global development.
More small and medium-sized sellers rooted in the industrial belt are not only part of their own industrial belt, but also can drive other enterprises upstream and downstream to go international together.
For example, Taizhou, Zhejiang Province is a world-renowned glasses industry belt, gathering various production factors such as materials, packaging, design, and fitting equipment, with more than 1,800 glasses manufacturers here, with an output value of more than 12 billion yuan, and a prominent cluster effect.
After more than ten years of operation by his father, Zhang Min knows that the company's advantage lies in many years of product manufacturing experience.
In Zhang Min's eyes, the glasses manufacturing industry is now filled with the smoke of low-price competition, and the value of SHEIN is that it has brought him a new idea of going overseas: going overseas is not only to digest excess capacity, but to explore new business models.
Help small and medium-sized sellers release production capacity and improve the new quality productivity of the industrial belt - this has also become a new landing point for SHEIN to promote the "500 City Industrial Belt Plan".
"Through the process of full-link digitalization, small and medium-sized sellers can obtain the blessing of compound energy, which is the new quality productivity. Wang Xin, president of the Shenzhen Cross-border Association, commented.
To do long-term business, it is not only necessary to establish its own customer base, but also to grasp the trend and create the competitiveness of explosive models.
Relying on SHEIN's flexible capabilities, small and medium-sized sellers in the industrial belt have learned to "respond quickly to small orders", keep up with popular models, trends, and trends, and will also design by themselves to think about the preferences of various countries, and their product development capabilities have been significantly improved.
Zhou Siqi's factory is located in Huidong, Guangdong, and the high-heeled shoes produced have been supplied to offline stalls for a long time, and in the past, stall customers told him what popular elements were and how to change the style.
The number of factories cooperating with each stall is increasing, and his factory orders are getting fewer and fewer.
After settling in the SHEIN platform, Zhou Siqi's personal feeling is that the platform system can help sellers develop and design products - customers in Southeast Asia generally need shoes with more space, and customers in Europe and the United States especially like to wear high heels of more than 8 cm to parties....... Gradually, the best-selling styles in his store kept up with market scarcity and overseas trends.
"The preferences of each country are different, and SHEIN assists sellers in developing new products to determine the follow-up production through sales and trends, rather than blindly putting new models and stocking up. ”
Zhang Min said that SHEIN's flexible supply chain model has given sellers the confidence to innovate.
Platform empowerment, brand confidence
In the vast international arena, Chinese small and medium-sized sellers lack brand confidence, and SHEIN provides them with a new window for brand growth.
SHEIN started from its own brand, and the biggest difference from previous cross-border e-commerce platforms is that it knows that there are big waves in going to sea, and sellers have more flexible needs on top of overseas basic operations.
Qin Ligang, the Shandong boss who makes stainless steel straws and glass tableware, didn't know how to sell overseas business at first, and he didn't know that there was a platform called SHEIN.
Later, SHEIN employees came to Qin Ligang's factory to introduce him to the business doorway, such as the preferences of consumers in different countries, how to arrange the production rhythm in different off-peak seasons, and put forward specific requirements for product technology.
English cake stands, leaves on knives and forks, swans, and "disco balls" on straws.......
Compared with before, Qin Ligang's e-commerce channel product design style meets the tableware choices of overseas customers for banquet guests, parties, and afternoon tea.
According to Boss Qin, since entering the SHEIN platform, the shipment has reached 8,000 pieces/day, and there are more than 200 workers receiving tableware orders from all over the world every day.
Qin Ligang is not an exception, many sellers in the industrial belt have strengthened their integration capabilities such as new product development, quality and efficiency improvement, insight into trends, and supply chain upgrading under SHEIN's platform model.
Spring and summer are the time of year when music festivals gather in the United States, with lively programs and dazzling carnival parties, gathering young men and women who walk briskly and wear fashionable items.
Their personalities are flying, and the "combat boots" under their feet alone have a variety of styles such as high, shiny, laser, rhinestone, and tassel. Most of these items come from China's manufacturing industrial belt in Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Fujian.
Zhou Siqi is one of the manufacturers behind these popular items.
With the help of the SHEIN platform, he became popular overseas, which made him more confident in taking care of the family factory.
Now, he and his industry belt peers and sellers learn overseas popular styles on their own every day, and in the next year, they plan to develop products from different countries and regions independently, and make the market more refined and vertically segmented.
Obviously, what SHEIN has helped him achieve is not only the overseas of products, but also the overall ability and brand power of the industrial belt.
Relying on the influence gradually accumulated by the SHEIN platform from overseas, the Made in China overseas group composed of sellers began to confidently deliver their brand business cards.
It's not a tide, it's a long-distance runner
The cross-border e-commerce track has gathered new quality productivity elements, and SHEIN stands at the forefront of the trend and has always been firm in the creed of long-termism.
Flexible supply chain is the core competitiveness of SHEIN, and SHEIN has established a garment manufacturing innovation research center covering an area of nearly 60,000 square meters in Guangzhou, aiming to explore the frontier of lean and flexible production and empower full-link merchants and suppliers.
SHEIN is also constantly improving the integrated smart infrastructure suitable for cross-border e-commerce, including investing more than 15 billion yuan to lay out an integrated smart supply chain base integrating warehousing and logistics functions in China.
It is worth mentioning that SHEIN will also provide operational training for platform merchants and suppliers, and this year it will once again strengthen the support of "new excellent business", and launch the "90-day growth training camp for new businessmen" and the "excellent business support plan" to help more "difficult households to go overseas".
As a bridge, SHEIN not only helps more outstanding small and medium-sized enterprises, brands and products to go global, but also feeds the talent development and training of the manufacturing industry through the integration of its supply chain and the upgrading of the industry, driving a large number of upstream and downstream industries such as domestic trade and export, manufacturing, warehousing and logistics, transportation, as well as the employment development of millions of people.
Guangdong Qingyuan is one of the representatives, in view of the scattered distribution of some clothing industry chains in the local area, SHEIN platform service capabilities well integrate the supply chain, manufacturing, logistics, e-commerce and other upstream and downstream industries, has driven hundreds of local employment.
Empowering and supporting its most unique capabilities to more industrial belts and businesses, SHEIN has demonstrated its benchmark enterprise pattern and determination to go overseas with high quality.
To promote the high-quality development of cross-border e-commerce, relevant policies also actively advocate the "cross-border e-commerce + industrial belt" model, support leading enterprises to drive the coordinated development of upstream and downstream supply chains, and drive more traditional industries to go overseas through the "cross-border e-commerce + industrial belt" model.
In response to this trend, SHEIN deepened the dual-engine strategy of "self-operated brand + platform" last year, and proposed the "500 City Industrial Belt Plan" under the platform strategy.
Up to now, more than 300 industrial belts in more than 20 provinces have settled on the platform, covering mainstream industrial belts such as bags, clothing, underwear, small commodities, toys, footwear, and accessories.
In Guangdong Province, where the SHEIN supply chain center is located, the SHEIN platform has achieved full coverage of 21 prefecture-level city industrial belts.
China's cross-border e-commerce has entered the era of great navigation, and some people say that the future of going to sea is destined to say goodbye to "barbaric growth", and high-quality going to sea is the way to win.
SHEIN has been deeply involved in brand going overseas for many years, and is interested in building a cross-border e-commerce platform to boost the industrial belt to "go overseas to find new growth poles", and explore the possibility of "going overseas to create new quality productivity and brand power".
With the mentality of a long-distance runner, SHEIN is expected to continue to lead Chinese brands and Made in China to exert influence in the international market.
(Names used in this article have been changed)