Recently, the "Cross-border Tide Bay Area, Intelligent Manufacturing Cohesion in Zhaoqing" forum, jointly organized by GLP and SHEIN, a leading fashion and lifestyle online retailer, was held in Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, to discuss the profound changes experienced by the cross-border supply chain and the new opportunities for the development of the smart logistics industry under the wave of Chinese enterprises going overseas.
Last year, GLP and SHEIN jointly built the Shein Bay Area Western Smart Industrial Park in Zhaoqing New Area, as an integrated smart green benchmark supply chain base, to promote the upgrading and development of the cross-border e-commerce industry in the Greater Bay Area with leading "hardware" facilities. This time, through a special forum, the two sides gathered wisdom and shared insights, adding momentum to Zhaoqing and even the Greater Bay Area to build a cross-border e-commerce industry highland with their strong "software" strength.
More than 100 people attended the event, including Pan Ruibo, Deputy Director of the Standing Committee of the Zhaoqing Municipal People's Congress, relevant leaders of Zhaoqing Investment Promotion Bureau and Zhaoqing New Area, Dong Zhonglang, Managing Partner of GLP Hidden Hill Capital, Zhu Guo, General Manager of GLP Asset China South China, Jing Xiaoxi, Head of Commerce Department of GLP Asset China, Zhu Qi, Head of Strategy and Marketing Department of GLP Asset China, relevant persons in charge of SHEIN, and representatives of enterprises from the intelligent manufacturing and cross-border e-commerce industries.
Cross-border tide in the Bay Area, China's supply chain upgrade releases new momentum
Cross-border e-commerce, characterized by globalization and digital transactions, is becoming a new engine for economic growth. Since the beginning of this year, the cross-border e-commerce industry has continued to release surging new momentum for the development of foreign trade and economic transformation and upgrading in the Greater Bay Area. From January to March, Zhaoqing's foreign trade import and export reached 8.2 billion yuan, an increase of 2.6%. Among them, the import and export of cross-border e-commerce increased by 6.2 times, and the actual absorption of foreign investment was 490 million yuan, an increase of 23.6%, ranking third in the province and first in the Pearl River Delta. Zhaoqing City has given full play to its advantages and promoted the gathering of industrial factor resources, and initially formed a cross-border e-commerce industrial cluster integrating warehousing, supply chain, logistics, labor services, foreign comprehensive services and other businesses, and the comprehensive strength of the cross-border e-commerce industry has been continuously enhanced.
During the event, the relevant person in charge of Zhaoqing New Area gave a comprehensive introduction to the business environment of the new area such as geographical location, transportation advantages, industrial base, policy support, enterprise services, and factor guarantee to entrepreneurs from all over the country, described the development potential and advantages of the new area in detail, and invited industry elites to invest in Zhaoqing New Area, share the opportunities of the Bay Area, and build a better future together.
In the keynote speech session, Dong Zhonglang, Managing Partner of Hidden Hill Capital, shared his views and insights on the trend of the global logistics supply chain in the next ten years with the theme of "A Revolution in Logistics Efficiency Exported to the World". He believes that under the superimposed influence of the strong supply chain strength of "Made in China" and the large-scale orders of "Chinese marketing", an end-to-end efficiency revolution covering global cross-border logistics, "China Delivery" will reshape the global supply chain system. The competitiveness of China's supply chain will be strengthened in the next decade, and there are huge development opportunities.
Gather industrial clusters to jointly promote the efficiency of cross-border overseas expansion
In the roundtable discussion session, representatives of cross-border industrial chain enterprises entered in-depth discussions on the two themes of "how to drive industrial clusters with intelligent logistics" and "how to improve the efficiency of supply chain in the era of going global". In the context of cross-border going overseas, how can smart logistics enterprises adapt to customer needs and iterate product strength? What are the new requirements for the supply chain of cross-border e-commerce, logistics providers and manufacturers? How can logistics automation equipment manufacturers help improve the efficiency of customers' supply chains? Looking to the future, how can all parties work together to maintain efficient operational efficiency? These key issues, which have attracted wide attention in the industry, have triggered key discussions among the guests in this forum.
Roundtable Forum: "Gathering into the Extraordinary, How Smart Logistics Drives Industrial Clusters"
Xia Huiling, founder of Zhejiang Lidart Robot Co., Ltd., believes that unlike Chinese enterprises, overseas customers are more concerned about the cost of the whole life cycle of automation equipment. This puts forward corresponding requirements for enterprises that want to go overseas, that is, the products must be stable and the service must be timely.
Xiao Jun, founder and chairman of Beijing Tianxia Xianzhichuang Robot Technology Co., Ltd., proposed that the development of AI large models has had a huge impact on the development of the industry. The new technology will break the original linear programming theory and method of robots, bring more general, more diverse applicable scenarios, and lower cost solutions, and promote the industry to a new height.
Wen Zehao, partner and vice president of Shenzhen Jiufang Tongxun E-commerce Logistics Co., Ltd., said that with the layout of multiple cross-border e-commerce platforms such as SHEIN, TEMU, and TikTok in overseas markets and the development of full-custody/semi-custody business, the efficiency of cross-border logistics automation continues to improve. By introducing automation equipment and making full use of intelligent and information-based means, it will greatly help small and medium-sized sellers and semi-managed sellers who are not familiar with cross-border logistics.
Zhu Guo, General Manager of GLP Asset Management in South China, pointed out that automation is the general trend of the industry, which puts forward many new requirements for the supply chain infrastructure represented by warehousing, and also brings many new changes, such as scale, space design, ESG, etc. In this process, technological progress and application scenarios form a complementary relationship.
Roundtable Forum: "How to Improve Supply Chain Efficiency in the Era of Going Global"
Xie Wenjie, head of e-commerce of Hangzhou Zhongyi Industrial Co., Ltd., shared the main pain points and solutions of large-scale sellers going overseas from the perspective of the supply chain owner. He believes that the current large-scale sellers are mainly faced with the problem of high logistics costs and timeliness that cannot be fully guaranteed. To this end, it is recommended that logistics storage and transportation providers cooperate with sellers in depth to open up the end-to-end and help reduce comprehensive costs; And through IT empowerment, it helps large-scale sellers optimize the layout of overseas warehouses, thereby reducing storage costs and last-mile costs.
Dafeng, founder and CEO of Sinbad's flexible supply chain group, believes that the era of going overseas provides many opportunities for all parties of Chinese enterprises, but at the same time, it also puts forward high requirements for the capabilities of overseas enterprises, among which the most important are globalization capabilities, digital capabilities, and standardized and refined business management capabilities.
Li Hongbo, general manager of logistics cloud of the logistics technology division of Cainiao Group, said that cross-border e-commerce is now facing challenges at four levels: "small batch, low value, timeliness and service", which puts forward new requirements for the cross-border e-commerce logistics supply chain. At present, with the development of digital, intelligent and automation technologies, the gradual accumulation of technology will bring systematic restructuring to the entire industry and provide new opportunities for logistics supply chain enterprises. In particular, the "service-oriented" feature requires us to optimize logistics fulfillment services with consumers as the center. It's not just about getting things delivered, it's about paying attention to the consumer experience. In order to deal with the communication problems of overseas consumers in different countries, Cainiao has developed cross-language and multi-channel intelligent customer service products based on large models to support cross-border sellers and logistics companies to strengthen their overseas consumer service capabilities; In order to cope with the problem of long links in cross-border logistics, Cainiao has developed a full-link machine vision system to reduce package misclassification and damage to improve the quality of fulfillment.
Yang Junzhe, president of Beijing Jizhijia Technology Co., Ltd. in China, believes that the current "volume" of the overseas market is product power, and for enterprises that have not polished their product strength, blind going to sea may become a greater disaster. As an automation equipment company, an important issue for overseas business is how to achieve flexibility. As the uncertainty of business growth increases, only by being flexible enough can we respond more positively to change, embrace change, and collaborate with partners and upstream and downstream suppliers.
Liu Peng, senior vice president of BlueSword Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., mentioned that it is very important for Chinese companies to go overseas together. Only when Chinese enterprises fully cooperate can they truly make "Chinese marketing" work.
The cross-border e-commerce industry has broad prospects, which is crucial to the smooth development of "dual circulation", and is also one of the key industries of the new economy that GLP has served in depth in recent years. Relying on the advantages of global network warehouse resources and the operational expertise of deep cultivation of the industry, GLP actively cooperates with global customers, links upstream and downstream partners in the industry, carries the supply chain needs brought about by the development of the new economy industry, and is committed to cultivating and empowering new quality productivity, achieving more efficient operation and sustainable development, and creating greater industrial, economic, environmental and social value.