The charm of the cross-border e-commerce model is that it allows Chinese companies to use their own brands to display and sell in overseas online markets.

This business model is a brand new form of export. By following this path, you can get rid of the traditional order-taking export model of foreign trade in the past decades.

The greatest value of this model lies in the display and exposure of private brands and innovative products.

You have the opportunity to build a strong and global brand through the cross-border e-commerce model.

Woodruff, the former chairman of Coca-Cola, famously said: "If my factory is destroyed by fire, if there is a world financial crisis, as long as there is the Coca-Cola brand, I will start again the next day. Stand up. This is the value of establishing a brand and achieving operational sustainability.

If an enterprise without a brand does not work intensively in an industry, it will have high efficiency in all aspects. And the overall efficiency of leading the market is relatively fragile in terms of operation, or difficult to survive.

This epidemic has caused the survival of countless export-oriented foreign trade factories to be a big problem. There are no orders and huge expenses, what should you do?

If your own brand has loyal consumers overseas, there will be a steady stream of orders, and your innovative products can also be sold on the market. It was released all over the world at once, and the entire import and export business chain is relatively smooth.

You don’t have to worry that there won’t be many customers visiting the Canton Fair this year due to the epidemic.

You don’t have to worry. Don’t worry, there are many suppliers on Alibaba or Global Sources, and everyone is fighting for the price.

You don’t have to worry about finding a suitable channel to sell innovative products without customer orders.

From the development of traditional foreign trade for decades to today’s cross-border e-commerce model, the development of China’s import and export industry has undergone earth-shaking and fundamental changes

In. Here, we analyze the entire development process of China's foreign trade import and export, and we will know where the opportunities are and where the wind is blowing.

1. The early traditional foreign trade model

The earliest. Traditional foreign trade requires export quotas, and only general state-owned enterprises have quotas. In the early years, Shenzhen Vanke even resold foreign trade quotas. The export and import chains of this period were very long and had many levels, involving four or five. Business entity.

Product orders are placed by the importer (usually the owner of the brand) to the exporter in China, and then transferred to the manufacturing factory

In the form of logistics. The above are:

1. The product is manufactured in the factory;

2. The exporter’s quality inspection and shipment;

3. The importer’s receipt and distribution; < /p>

4. Wholesaler procurement and wholesale;

5. Retailer procurement and exhibition;

6. Consumers purchase in physical stores;

Every logistics link in the process will generate costs, and the operating entities in each link have to make money. , it is hard to imagine how low the overall sales efficiency is, and the waste of resources in the intermediate links is huge.

I remember that in 2003, the annual export volume of Huangyan Foreign Trade Group in Taizhou, Zhejiang exceeded 1 billion US dollars per year. , and the top leader of Huangyan Foreign Trade Group also serves as the director of the Foreign Trade Bureau. In fact, it is just a team and two signs.

2. An era when a hundred flowers bloom and multiple trade models coexist

However, the trade models before 2000 are actually changing, and various more advanced models have already taken root. , but it has not yet become a mainstream trade model.

Since Wal-Mart was founded in Arkansas in 1962, the entire import and export trade value chain has undergone tremendous changes every decade. By 1992, since the establishment of Amazon, even greater changes have occurred every decade. change.

In particular, Amazon has triggered a huge change in the form of trade, from selling books, selling clothing, selling organic food, to selling music, movies, cloud storage services and logistics services, involving products and services, Pretty much everything. Bezos even personally purchased the Washington Post.

Amazon also has its own studios that produce and distribute movies. Of course, more of its business is procuring goods from Chinese factories and selling them to consumers around the world.

Amazon itself has also developed into the infrastructure of the retail industry. It provides sales and logistics services to millions of merchants on the open platform, and also has a strong self-operated commodity business.

Amazon, what kind of company it is, it is difficult for you to clearly define and express it in a short paragraph today.

In the past few months, the European Union has been cracking down on Amazon, saying it is inspecting whether it has taken advantage of platform data to develop self-operated products and give more traffic to self-operated products, thereby squeezing merchants.

I was thinking, does this need to be said? In fact, Wal-Mart and Carrefour also do this. They also develop a large number of their own brand products.

Through the cases of retail giants, we can clearly see that retailers are the main factor in the dramatic changes in business models. They serve consumers day after day and make millions of purchases. During the interaction with readers, we grasped and gained insights into consumption trends. In any country, retailers are the protagonists in discerning and grasping business opportunities, seizing trends, and triggering huge changes in the industry.

Therefore, to observe changes in an industry, just look at its performance in the retail industry.

When observing changes in the cross-border e-commerce industry, we must also observe changes in the retail industry in the country where we are located. Through its changes in the retail industry, we can see the future of this industry.

Due to the flourishing of the retail industry, various forms of trade coexist. It is still difficult to distinguish which one is better and which one is worse.

Let’s take a look at the following coexisting trade forms:

In the early days of the rise of Wal-Mart/Target/Sears in the United States and Tesco/Carrefour/Metro in Europe, they did not have the ability to import. products, but has skipped the wholesaler step and purchased the products directly from the importer.

Therefore, the main body of import and export is mainly composed of factories/exporters/retailers. This model has probably lasted for more than ten years.

In the middle stage of chain store development, they have hundreds or thousands of stores, huge purchasing quantities, and strong purchasing power and price premium ability. At this time, importers or exporters are also jumped over. .

During this period, many orders were provided by cross-border supply chain companies, and the service margins of these companies were also very low.

During this period, countless well-known multinational supply chain companies emerged. One of them is Hong Kong's Li & Fung Supply Chain Company, with a turnover of tens of billions of dollars. Although the gross profit is very low, the annual The net profit is several billion Hong Kong dollars.

These years have been a prosperous era for Hong Kong Li & Fung. Its peak value in the Hong Kong stock market once exceeded HK$200 billion.

Since China opened up its retail industry in 1992, retail giants such as Wal-Mart/Carrefour/TESCO/Metro/Jusco/7-11/FamilyMart have successively entered the Chinese market and opened retail stores to directly cater to Chinese consumers. Those who sell goods.

At the same time, they have also established a local procurement center in China, which not only serves the procurement of local stores in China, but also serves the procurement of goods for all stores around the world.

During this period, we can often hear some factory owners saying that Wal-Mart is going to review factory qualifications. This is a big deal. Wal-Mart has long been ranked among the top three companies in the Fortune Global 500.

In imagination, being able to become a qualified supplier of Wal-Mart is like buying a long-term meal ticket. Once you pass the factory audit, all colleagues in the entire factory will be excited.

These retail giants have been active in China to optimize their procurement supply chains, so the value channels have gradually evolved into the form of the picture below:

Factory -- --Overseas retailers----Overseas consumers

As a result, Hong Kong Li & Fung's performance is getting worse and worse, not because colleagues at Li & Fung Group don't work hard, but because of the traditional business model , has been gradually replaced by shorter supply chain business models.

In the past ten years, Li & Fung has been losing customers and turnover every year. Naturally, its performance has plummeted, and it has suffered losses for several consecutive years.

No company or individual can go against the trend, no matter how big its business scale and financial resources have been.

3. The import and export trade model in the next few years---cross-border e-commerce trade model

By 2010, the retail infrastructure of Amazon and eBay was relatively mature and open. , cross-border e-commerce began to rise.

In the past ten years, the trend of cross-border e-commerce export entrepreneurship has emerged in Shenzhen. Enterprises such as Global.com, Youkeshu, Tongtuo Technology, Aoji, and Haiyi Group are all at this stage. , were established and grew up respectively.

The price difference between domestic and foreign goods is too great. Cross-border e-commerce is so profitable that hot money from the venture capital field has entered this field one after another. At the same time, several listed companies were also spawned. Global Tesco went public with the help of the traditional clothing listed company Baiyuan Pants Industry. Youkeshu and Tongtuo Technology also took the road of backdoor listing.

Every major cross-border giant operates more than hundreds of accounts, hundreds of categories, and has a turnover of more than billions of yuan. Although, compared with the multinational retail giants with hundreds of billions of dollars, the gap is very huge.

However, after all, a gap has been opened, allowing Chinese brands and product innovations to be exposed online overseas, and there is an opportunity to establish a long-term, sustainable, closed-loop business chain.

The emerging cross-border e-commerce trade model is expected to continue for several years and gradually become the mainstream trade model. Amazon and eBay have evolved into overseas retail infrastructure, through which products can be sold to markets around the world.

Although this trade model is still in its early stages and in an extensive form, the development trend is already obvious.

As market competition becomes more and more intense, companies that operate with refined operations and develop scale will gradually win out and become giants leading the industry.

There are no opportunities for retail giants here. The retail infrastructure industry has formed a huge oligopoly market that is difficult to shake. In the future, new brands will emerge one after another, large and small giants in market segments.

Precisely because it feels the popularity of cross-border e-commerce, China has made decisions and supported this emerging trade model from the entire national level.

The state has given dozens of cities across the country the qualification to set up bonded zones, and also supports the listing of cross-border e-commerce companies in the capital market. It strives to promote this emerging trade model and support Chinese brands across the ocean.

Just a few days ago, Shenzhen’s cross-border e-commerce giant, Anker, also submitted an application for listing on the GEM. It is estimated that it will be approved and listed in the near future.

Anker Innovation is an excellent cross-border e-commerce enterprise. It is sold in North America, Europe and Japan under its own brand Anker, with annual sales exceeding RMB 6 billion.

It takes a high-quality route, not only intensively cultivating products, but also achieving refined operations in sales and technology, and its operation efficiency is very high.

Such an enterprise is a classic case of the future model of cross-border e-commerce, and its future development is promising.

4. Future business model and direction of efforts

Although China is currently experiencing a craze for cross-border e-commerce across the country, it is not the early days after all. It has passed. The industry’s dividend period.

Several listed companies have emerged in this industry, and competition will become increasingly fierce.

Therefore, we can’t just be enthusiastic. A few friends drank wine and pooled some money, and then started to enter this industry.

In fact, cross-border e-commerce is quite complex because the business involves at least two countries, two customs, two languages ??and cultures, and even some countries have several hours of time difference. High.

At this time, you need to be cautious when entering the market. Although the market size is still growing by dozens of percent every year, it is no longer easy to make money in this industry.

I have read countless industry materials, visited Amazon and eBay on the spot, and communicated with many friends in cross-border circles. I also have companies and colleagues overseas. Here, according to the market and The development direction of the industry, and your own understanding, draw the direction in which you need to focus your efforts.

The following opinions are for everyone’s discussion only. Even if you read them, you must think independently and refer to them carefully. They are three parts of medicine and poison. You have to have your own way and way of living, and form a business system that you can currently operate.

Of course, everyone can communicate with each other, learn more, and make progress together. If you need to add my WeChat, you can send me a private message.

If you want to survive and develop well in the future, you have to work hard in these three aspects.

1. Product innovation:

The first is product innovation, which must meet the needs of the local market.

If we still introduce ordinary products and enter overseas markets, then in fact you will no longer be able to compete with cross-border giants such as Global Tesco and Youshu. They have more people and more money, so they use money to hire people. They can kill you because they have people staring at the rapidly rising product SKUs every day. Once your ordinary product takes off, death is not far away.

Therefore, your product must be excellent and have patent or brand protection. In short, your product must have a threshold and cannot be easily copied.

Otherwise, you may make this product well and it will be a hit, and then the market will be quickly harvested by big sellers. After working hard for hundreds of days and nights, we returned to before liberation in one night.

Choose distinctive products, the threshold is relatively high, you can get twice the result with half the effort, it is easy to open up sales, and it is relatively easy to make breakthroughs in business.

Below, let’s take an example to illustrate the great role of product innovation:

Anti-blue light glasses

The following anti-blue light glasses are available in children’s and adult styles. According to the original words of the supplier, during the epidemic period, from March to April to May, 100,000 pairs of glasses were supplied to the market in a single month, which was not enough to sell.

I estimate that he earns more than a dozen yuan per set, and he makes a profit of hundreds of thousands of yuan a month just from the product series of glasses.

During the epidemic, children must take online classes at home, and the use of tablet computers has suddenly increased.

Mothers are afraid that their children will become myopic if they watch too much screens, so they use them to place orders. Mothers’ love for their children is infinite. I also bought a few for my family. I don’t know how useful they are, but I want to express my love. Under the epidemic, everyone is helpless, so it is important to give them a little warmth. Objects are sometimes not just objects, they are also objects that convey feelings.

This product appeared at just the right time and became a hit immediately.

Huawei's super fast charging power bank

This mobile power supply is super fast charging, 12,000 mAh.

Charging the battery is super fast. Charging from the mobile power source to the mobile phone is also faster.

This product is very in line with the needs of the market. If consumers are willing to pay for speed, it will definitely be very popular.

People who are busy with business and have a lot of phone calls and messages often face the dilemma of insufficient mobile phone battery.

This super fast-charging power bank can fully charge your mobile phone in one hour, and charge it to 450% in ten minutes, which greatly reduces your stress and anxiety about the battery of your mobile phone. . Although it is expensive, I still think it is worth it.

This is the best-selling green tea on Xiaomi Youpin. It is a large-leaf green tea from Kunming, Yunnan. Its taste is similar to that of Starbucks' Biluochun green tea. Once you drink it, you can tell that it is high-quality tea.

This tea has large leaves, and the brewed tea is very clean, without tea powder or impurities. The sorting process is probably very strict.

When you drink it, it tastes very comfortable, refreshing, has a long fragrance, and has a sweet aftertaste. It can conquer you in one go.

According to a 100-gram box, if you can brew 30 cups, the average cost is 2 yuan/cup. However, Starbucks green tea costs 20 yuan per cup.

After I tried it, I thought it was good, so I went to the manufacturer and bought a whole box or dozens of boxes.

I picked 2 boxes and planned to courier them to Japan for local colleagues to try. Also ask them to ask their Japanese friends around them, how do they like this tea? Will there be a market in Japan?

I also sent two boxes to Mr. Tian, ??the boss of a Japanese logistics company in Shenzhen. He opened it on the spot and drank it. He also said that the tea was very good.

He likes drinking tea very much. In the 100-square-meter office, there is a tea-making area and a mahogany tea table that can seat five people.

He is an old tea drinker. There are dozens of cans of good tea in the office. He showed me dozens of collected tea leaves and selected a few varieties for me to drink while making tea. , while talking about tea, the talk was very authentic.

He told me that there is no good tea in Japan. Every time he goes to Japan, he brings twenty cans of Phoenix Dancong tea and keeps a few cans for himself to drink daily. Life without good tea is really too much. It feels bad.

The other dozen cans of tea were personally given to the president of the cooperative company when visiting the Japanese partners as a precious gift from afar, and they were told how to brew them. Tea.

After he drank a few sips of the green tea I brought, he said he felt good. He said, if you want to sell this tea in Japan, I will endorse it and help you promote it to dozens of presidents’ offices. Every time he carries dozens of boxes of tea to Japan, it is very inconvenient to travel thousands of kilometers.

Most Chaozhou bosses are inseparable from tea in work and life. They make and drink tea at work.

I remember that the boss of my first job was from Chaozhou. When he saw me in the office, he would make me Kung Fu tea. While making tea, he told me the principles of doing things and being a good person, arranged the work tasks to be handled, and talked about future development plans. Sometimes, we can actually talk all morning.

I slowly learned management and growth while drinking tea. The boss personally makes tea for you. His brain/eyes/mouth/hands are all used at the same time, and his movements are skillful. This attitude and effort make me feel his deep enthusiasm and concentration. A cup of good hot tea will make you feel refreshed as soon as you take it into your mouth. Everything can be said, accepted, and learned in your bones.

After drinking tea, your mouth will not be dry, you will feel refreshed and happy, your thinking will be active and clear, and you will be able to express yourself for several hours without getting tired. Meeting friends with tea is far better than coffee and wine.

China’s tea culture is extensive, profound and has a long history. There are countless niche and high-quality teas. Therefore, tea is really a good category.

However, Mr. Tian said that express delivery of tea is a big problem. This is why he always brings a suitcase of tea to Japan. He has his own logistics company but does not deliver goods. Why?

Because tea belongs to the food category, and Japan has very strict food requirements and implements the highest level of food safety standards in the world, and Japanese customs inspections are also very detailed.

Therefore, the random inspection rate of express tea is very high. If there is inspection, the customs clearance time will be several days longer, and the cost of unpacking and inspection will also be paid, which will affect the customs clearance time of the entire batch of goods. Logistics companies do not accept express packages of tea or food.

Originally planned and discussed for several months, the plan to export tea to the Japanese market fell through.

However, I didn’t want to give up, so I registered a tea category trademark in Japan. It would take several months to get a temporary trademark. In the future, we will arrange for a few boxes of tea to be sold in the Japanese market to go to Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries to get inspection reports, and enter the Japanese market in batches with Japanese companies, Japanese goods, and Japanese inspection reports in the form of general trade. After clearing customs in this way, you can enter the Japanese market.

We have applied to register the honey Kou tea trademark in Japan and have negotiated with the tea factory.

It is estimated that after this work process, tea will enter the Japanese market in 12 months. Because spring green tea is picked and produced every year around the Qingming Festival. Only in the spring of next year will there be a trademark and new tea samples for quality inspection.

Product innovation means finding products that have a competitive threshold, have a certain market space and gross profit, and are not easily copied and attacked by Chinese peers. Moreover, products that have competitive advantages over foreign local markets.

There are huge differences between countries. As long as you pay attention, you can always find the right product.

2. Brand building:

Excellent products are just the starting point for success.

You also need to know how to build a brand, and do it overseas.

You may think that it is difficult to carry out brand building abroad. In fact, the infrastructure for various brand building in developed countries is relatively complete, and the data is publicly available. They live in honest societies and have market competition. It is also far less intense than the Chinese market, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to do. It should be something that can be done according to the drawings and methods.

As long as you search hard in the local market, communicate with relevant organizations of brand building every week, establish more links, and make several attempts, you can obtain data on actual operations and learn while doing so. Practice, optimize as you go, and you'll make breakthroughs over time. In fact, there is no special cure.

Brand building and communication itself are based on high-quality products. Without good products, no matter how good a brand communication company is, it cannot help you break through. If you have a good product and a good reputation, if you work slowly, you can make breakthroughs. It's just a matter of time, speed and efficiency.

Of course, regarding the positioning of the brand and product, the target group, the unique functions and selling points, and the brand story, these are all basic skills, and we still have to sort out and position them ourselves first.

Various overseas brand communication agencies only help you with communication. They cannot change the brand positioning and product quality you design.

From a practical case, we can clearly understand the weight of product innovation and brand communication, and Amazon is a product-focused e-commerce platform. Having excellent products is the way to go, and it is the basis for all success.

Anker Innovation, which is about to go public, has always attached great importance to research and development, which is its core competitiveness. As of the end of June 2019, Anker Innovation Company has 732 technical and R&D personnel, accounting for 54.22% of the total number. At the same time, it has formed many core technologies in various product fields. As of the end of June 2019, the company has domestic and foreign patents* **478 items in total.

The original name of Anker Innovation is Haiyi Co., Ltd. It even changed the company name of the listed company and added the word "innovation".

“Anker+innovations”

Judging from the design of the brand logo, it wants to tell us that Anker is a company that focuses on innovation. It is because of innovation, and It has grown from a small age to today's scale. And, because of innovation, it will go further. Going public is just an event and a powerful boost in this process.

You said, how much does this company value innovation? It has made rectifications and integrated the word innovation into its company name and brand logo.

We tend to think that advertising, traffic, and operations are more important. This is a short-sighted and misunderstanding of cross-border e-commerce operations. If you focus on operations, light on products, and light on brands, you will be in trouble. .

Without the ability of product innovation and brand building, you will do more, get less return, and work harder the more you do.

As the market competition becomes more and more intense, you will become more and more passive. Maybe, after five years of investment, you will lose everything in one year.

3. Operational efficiency:

Speaking of one thousand, but ten thousand, we still have to return to the basic operation work of cross-border e-commerce.

What we are talking about here is operational efficiency, which is four words, "operation" + "efficiency".

This means that it is not enough that you can do operations now. Now that the early cross-border e-commerce bonus period has passed, just being able to operate is no longer enough to gain a foothold.

You must be efficient and surpass your peers in all aspects of operations to survive and develop well. Speaking of efficiency, this is another big thing.

To improve efficiency, we must standardize the operation system. Redesigning every operation link to standardize/digitize/process/online and arrange the operating system for each position is a huge workload.

5. The outlook for the future cross-border market will be a long-tail era with huge niche brands, countless small giants, and multi-brand prosperity

I believe there will be Many small and medium-sized companies similar to Anker's innovation model have been working hard. They focus on product innovation and focus on intensive cultivation in a certain field, so they have a good chance of winning.

In the future cross-border export market, more and more Chinese brands will go overseas. New brands, new domestic products, and new experiences will completely subvert foreigners’ old impressions of Chinese products.

This will be a great era of new domestic products and the rise of Chinese brands. Not just Huawei, not just Xiaomi, but countless small and medium-sized enterprise brands will also shine in overseas markets and form The colorful world of Chinese goods.

In the near future, China's innovative products will appear on the mobile phones of consumers around the world for the first time. All you have to do is place an order.

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