This business model is a brand-new export form. Taking this road, we can get rid of the traditional foreign trade model of export orders in the past few decades.
The greatest value of this model lies in the display and exposure of its own brand and innovative products.
You have the opportunity to build a strong global brand through the cross-border electronic commerce model.
Woodruff, the former chairman of Coca-Cola, famously said, "If my factory is destroyed by fire, if there is a world financial storm, as long as there is the brand of Coca-Cola, I will stand up again the next day. This is the value of building a brand and achieving operational sustainability.
Enterprises without brands, if they are not deeply cultivated in an industry, have high efficiency in all aspects, form an overall leading market efficiency, and are relatively fragile to operate, or difficult to survive.
This epidemic has caused the survival of numerous export-oriented foreign trade factories to be a big problem. The factory has no orders and the cost is huge. What would you do?
If your own brand has loyal consumers overseas, there will be a steady stream of orders, and your innovative products will be released globally in the first time, and the whole import and export business chain will be smoother.
Don't worry, because of the epidemic, there are not many customers coming to the Canton Fair this year.
Don't worry, there are many suppliers in Alibaba or global sources, and everyone is fighting for the price.
You don't have to worry, innovative products, no customer orders, no suitable channels to sell.
From the traditional foreign trade to the current cross-border e-commerce model, the development of China's import and export industry has undergone earth-shaking and essential changes.
Here we analyze the development of China's foreign trade import and export, and we will know where the opportunities are and where the wind blows.
First, the early traditional foreign trade model
The earliest traditional foreign trade needed export quotas, and only ordinary state-owned enterprises had quotas. In the early years, Shenzhen Vanke also sold foreign trade indicators. The export chain and import chain in this period are very long, with many levels, involving four or five business entities.
Product orders are placed by importers (usually brands) to exporters in China, and then transferred to manufacturing plants.
The form of logistics is:
1, the product is manufactured by the factory;
2. Quality inspection and delivery of exporters;
3. Receiving and distribution by importers;
4. Wholesalers purchase goods wholesale;
5. Retailer procurement and exhibition;
6. Consumers buy from physical stores;
1978-2000, most of the trade modes are mainly based on this trade mode.
Every logistics link in the middle will generate expenses, and the business subject of each link will make money. It is hard to imagine how low the overall sales efficiency is, and the resources in the intermediate links are wasted greatly.
I remember that in 2003, the annual export volume of Zhejiang Taizhou Huangyan Foreign Trade Group exceeded US$ 654.38 billion/year, and the head of Huangyan Foreign Trade Group was also the director of the Foreign Trade Bureau. In fact, it's just a team and two signs.
Second, an era in which a hundred flowers blossom and various modes of trade coexist.
However, the trade pattern before 2000 has actually changed, and various more advanced patterns have taken root, but they have not yet become the mainstream trade pattern.
Since Wal-Mart was founded in Arkansas in 1962, the whole value chain of import and export trade has changed greatly every ten years, and since Amazon was founded in 1992, the change has been even greater every ten years.
In particular, Amazon has triggered a great change in the form of trade, from selling books and clothing to selling organic food to selling music, movies, cloud storage services and logistics services, involving almost all kinds of products and services. Even, Bezos personally bought Washington post.
Amazon also has its own studio for making and distributing movies. Of course, its more business is to purchase goods from factories in China and then sell them to consumers all over the world.
Amazon itself has also developed into the infrastructure of the retail industry, providing sales and logistics services to millions of merchants with an open platform, and also has a strong self-operated commodity business.
What kind of company is Amazon? It is difficult for you to define and express clearly in a short paragraph today.
In recent months, the European Union has been cleaning up Amazon, saying that it is checking whether it has the advantage of using platform data, developing self-operated goods and giving more traffic to self-operated goods, thus squeezing merchants.
I was thinking, do you have to tell me? In fact, Wal-Mart and Carrefour did the same, and they also developed a large number of their own brand products.
Through the case of retail giants, we can clearly see that retailers are the main factors that have greatly changed the business model. They serve consumers day after day and have grasped and gained insight into the consumption trend in millions of interactions with consumers. In any country, retailers are the protagonists who have insight into and grasp business opportunities, seize trends and lead great changes in the industry.
So it is enough to observe the changes of an industry and see the performance of this industry in the retail industry.
Observing the changes in the cross-border e-commerce industry, we must also observe the changes in the retail industry in our country. Through its changes in the retail industry, we can see the future of this industry.
The result of a hundred flowers blooming in the retail industry is that various forms of trade coexist, and it is still difficult to tell the winner from the loser.
Let's take a look at the following trade forms:
Wal-Mart/Target/Sears in the United States and Tesco/Carrefour/Metro in Europe were not able to import goods in the early days of their rise, but they skipped the wholesaler link and bought goods directly from importers.
Therefore, the main body of import and export is composed of factories/exporters/retailers, and this model has probably lasted for more than ten years.
In the middle of the development of chain stores, the number of their stores is hundreds of thousands, the purchase volume is huge, and the purchasing ability and premium ability are very strong. At this point, importers or exporters are also skipped.
During this period, many orders were provided by cross-border supply chain companies, and the service gross profit of these companies was also very low.
During this period, numerous well-known multinational supply chain companies emerged, one of which is Li & Fung Supply Chain Company in Hong Kong, with a turnover of tens of billions of dollars. Although the gross profit is very low, the annual net profit is several billion Hong Kong dollars.
In recent years, Hong Kong Li & Fung has been in full swing, and its peak value in the Hong Kong stock market once exceeded HK$ 200 billion.
Since 1992, China opened its retail industry, Wal-Mart/Carrefour/Tesco/Metro/JUSCO/7-1/Family and other retail giants have successively entered the China market and opened retail stores to sell goods directly to consumers in China.
At the same time, they also set up a local procurement center in China, which not only serves the procurement of local stores in China, but also serves the procurement of goods in all stores around the world.
During this period, I often hear some factory owners say that Wal-Mart is going to audit the factory qualification, which is a big deal. Wal-Mart has long been one of the top three companies in the world's top 500.
Imagine being a qualified supplier of Wal-Mart, just like buying a long-term meal ticket. Once it passes the factory audit, all the colleagues in the factory will be excited about it.
These retail giants who have been active in optimizing the procurement supply chain in China have gradually evolved into the form shown below:
Factories-overseas retailers-overseas consumers
The performance of Li & Fung in Hong Kong is getting worse and worse, not because colleagues in Li & Fung Group don't work hard, but because the traditional business model has been gradually replaced by a shorter supply chain business model.
In the past ten years, Li & Fung has lost customers and turnover every year, and its natural performance has plummeted, losing money for several years in a row.
No enterprise or individual, no matter how big the business scale and financial resources are, can go against the trend.
Third, the import and export trade model in the next few years-cross-border electronic commerce trade model
By 20 10, the retail infrastructures in Amazon and Yi Bei are relatively mature and open, and cross-border e-commerce has started to rise.
In the past ten years, there has been a trend of cross-border e-commerce export entrepreneurship in Shenzhen. Global Tesco, Youshu, Tongtuo Technology, Aoji, Haiyi and other enterprises were established and grew up at this stage.
The difference between domestic and foreign commodity prices is too great. The money of cross-border e-commerce is too easy to earn, and hot money in the field of venture capital has entered this field. At the same time, it also gave birth to several listed companies. Global Tesco went public with the help of Baiyuan Pants, a traditional clothing listed company, and Youshu and Tongtuo Technology also embarked on the backdoor listing.
Every big cross-border giant operates hundreds of accounts, hundreds of categories, and its turnover is above several billion RMB. Although, compared with multinational retail giants with hundreds of billions of dollars, the gap is very huge.
But after all, it has opened a hole, which can expose China's brand and product innovation overseas, and have the opportunity to establish a long-term, sustainable and closed-loop business chain.
The emerging cross-border e-commerce trade form is estimated to last for several years and gradually become the mainstream trade form. Amazon and Yi Bei have developed into overseas retail infrastructure, through which products can be sold to markets all over the world.
Although this trade model is still in the early stage and is in the form of extensive management, the development trend is already obvious.
With the increasingly fierce market competition, enterprises with refined management and developed scale will gradually win out and become giants in leading industries.
Retail giants have no chance, and the retail infrastructure industry has formed a huge oligopoly market, which is difficult to shake. In the future, new brands will appear, subdividing the big and small giants in the industry market.
It is out of the feeling of cross-border e-commerce that China has made decisions and supported this emerging trade model at the national level.
The state has granted dozens of cities across the country the qualification to set up bonded zones, and also supported cross-border e-commerce enterprises to go public in the capital market, striving to promote this emerging trade model and supporting China brands to cross the sea.
Just a few days ago, Anker, a cross-border e-commerce giant in Shenzhen, also submitted an application for listing on GEM, which is expected to be approved for listing in the near future.
Anke Innovation is an excellent cross-border e-commerce enterprise. It is sold in North America, Europe and Japan under its own brand Anker, with an annual turnover of over 6 billion RMB.
It takes the boutique route, not only intensively cultivates products, but also realizes refined operation 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 can be expected.
Four. Future business model and direction of efforts
Although China is now a cross-border e-commerce boom all over the country, it is not early after all, and the dividend period of the industry has passed.
There are already several listed companies in this industry, and the competition will become more and more fierce.
Therefore, it can't be hot. As soon as a few friends drink wine and earn money, they start to enter this industry.
In fact, cross-border e-commerce, because the business involves at least two countries, two customs, two languages and cultures, and even some countries have a time difference of several hours, the complexity is still quite high.
Be cautious when entering the market at this time. Although the market scale is increasing by tens of percent every year, it is not easy to make money in this industry.
I have read countless industry materials, visited Amazon and Yi Bei on the spot, and exchanged views with many cross-border friends. I also have companies and colleagues overseas. Here, according to the development direction of the market and industry, as well as their own cognition, draw the direction that needs to be focused on.
The following views are for your discussion only. Even if you read it, you should think independently, carefully refer to it and learn from it. They are three poisonous drugs. You should have your own ways and methods to form your own operational business system.
Of course, we can communicate with each other, learn more and make progress together. If you need to add me to WeChat, you can trust me privately.
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 also launch ordinary products and enter overseas markets, in fact, you can't compete with global cross-border giants such as Tesco and Youshu. They have more people and more money, so they can kill you with money. Some of them stare at the rapidly rising product SKU every day. Once your ordinary product comes up, it is not far from death.
Therefore, your products must be excellent and protected by patents or brands. In short, your products must have a threshold and cannot be easily copied.
Otherwise, you may have finished this product and exploded, and then the market will soon be harvested by big sellers. Worked hard for hundreds of days and nights, and returned to before liberation overnight.
Choosing distinctive products has a high threshold, twice the result with half the effort, easy to open the market and relatively easy to break through in business.
Below, give an example to illustrate the great role of product innovation:
blue light proof glasses
The following anti-blue glasses are available for children and adults. According to the supplier's original words, 654.38 million pairs of glasses were supplied to the market in March-April-May during the epidemic period, which was not enough to sell.
I estimate that he earns more than 10 yuan a set, and he earns more than one million yuan a month for this product line of glasses.
During the epidemic, children had to attend classes online at home, and the use of tablet computers suddenly increased.
Mother is afraid that her children will be nearsighted if they look at the screen too much. They are used to placing orders to buy, and their love for their children is infinite. I also bought some for my family. I don't know how it works, but I really want to express my love. Under the epidemic, everyone is very helpless. It is very important to give them some warmth. Things, sometimes not only things, but also things that convey feelings.
This product appeared at the right time and sold well immediately.
Huawei Super Fast Charging Mobile Power Supply
This mobile power supply is super fast charging,1.20,000 mA.
Charging is super fast and faster than charging a mobile phone from a mobile power supply.
This product is very in line with the market demand, and some consumers are willing to pay for the speed, which will definitely be very popular.
People with busy business and a lot of phone calls and information often face the dilemma of insufficient mobile phone power.
This super fast charging treasure can fully charge your mobile phone within 1 hour, and it can be charged to 40% or 50% in ten minutes, which greatly reduces your tension and anxiety about the power of your mobile phone. Although expensive, it is still worth starting with.
This is the best green tea sold by Xiaomi, the big leaf green tea in Kunming, Yunnan, and the taste of Biluochun green tea in Starbucks is the same. You can feel that it is high-quality tea as soon as you drink it.
This kind of tea leaves are large, and the brewed tea is clean, without tea powder and impurities, and the estimation in the sorting process is very strict.
It tastes comfortable, refreshing, fragrant and sweet, and can conquer you at once.
According to a box 100g, if you can brew 30 cups, the average cost is 2 yuan/cup, while Starbucks' green tea 1 cup costs 20 RMB.
After I tried it, it felt good. I found a manufacturer and bought a whole box, dozens of boxes.
I picked two boxes and prepared to send them to Japan by express delivery for local colleagues to try. Also ask them to ask, Japanese friends around them, how is 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 tea is very good.
He likes drinking tea very much. In the office of 100 square meter, there is a tea-making area and a mahogany coffee table for five people.
He is an old tea drinker. In his office, there are dozens of pots of good tea. He showed me dozens of rare teas and selected several varieties for me to drink. He talks about tea while making tea, which is very authentic.
He told me that there is no good tea in Japan. Every time he goes to Japan, he takes 20 cans of Phoenix single fir tea and keeps a few cans for daily drinking. Life without good tea is really hard.
In addition, dozens of cans of tea were personally given to Japanese partners by the president of the cooperative company when he visited them, as precious gifts from afar, and told them how to make tea.
After he took 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 for you and help you promote it to dozens of presidential offices. Every time he takes dozens of boxes of tea to Japan, the journey is thousands of kilometers, which is very inconvenient.
Most bosses in Chaozhou are inseparable from tea in their work and life. They just make tea and drink tea at work.
I remember the boss of my first job was chaozhou people. When he sees me in the office, he will make me kungfu tea. While making tea, he told me the truth of being a man, arranged the tasks to be handled, and talked about the future development plan. Sometimes, we can talk all morning.
It was in the process of drinking tea that I slowly learned to manage and grow. The boss will make tea for you himself. His brain/eyes/mouth/hands are all used together, and his movements are skillful. This attitude, this kind of kung fu, makes me feel that he is full of enthusiasm and dedication. A good cup of hot tea is refreshing when you drink it. You can say anything, accept anything, and learn from your bones.
Tea, after drinking, is refreshing, cheerful, active and clear-headed, and it is not tired to express for hours. Taking tea as a friend is far better than coffee and wine.
The tea culture in China is profound and has a long history, and there are countless minority teas. So tea is really a good category.
But Mr. Tian said that tea delivery is a big problem, which is why he always takes a suitcase of tea to Japan. He has his own logistics company, but he does not deliver goods. Why?
Because tea belongs to the category of food, and Japan has very strict requirements for food, and has implemented the highest food safety standards in the world, and Japanese customs inspection is also very detailed.
Therefore, the sampling rate of express tea is high. If there is inspection, the customs clearance time will be more than a few days, and the cost of unpacking inspection will be paid, which will affect the customs clearance time of a whole batch of goods. Logistics companies do not accept express parcels of tea or food.
It was originally expected that after several months of talks, the plan to export tea to the Japanese market fell through.
But I didn't want to give up, so I registered the trademark of tea in Japan, and it took several months to get the temporary trademark. In the future, several boxes of tea to be sold in the Japanese market will be arranged to be tested in the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, and Japanese companies, Japanese goods and Japanese inspection reports will enter the Japanese market in batches in the form of general trade. If you go through customs in this way, you can do the Japanese market.
I have applied for the tea trademark registration of Miko, Japan, and negotiated with the tea factory.
According to this workflow, it is estimated that it will take 12 months for tea to enter the Japanese market. Because the green tea in spring is picked and produced around Qingming every year, there will be trademarks, new tea samples and quality inspection next spring.
Product innovation is to find products with competitive threshold, with certain market space and gross profit, which is not easy to be copied and attacked by peers in China. In addition, products that have a competitive advantage in foreign local markets.
There are great differences between countries. As long as you put your heart into it, you can always find suitable products.
2. Brand building:
Excellent products are only the starting point of success.
You also need to know how to build a brand and build a brand overseas.
You may think it is difficult to build a brand abroad. In fact, the infrastructure of various brands in developed countries is relatively perfect, and the data is open. They live in an honest society, and the market competition is far less fierce than that in China, so it should not be too difficult to do it. It should be something that can be done according to the picture, and there are ways.
As long as you try hard to find in the local market, communicate with the relevant institutions of brand building every week, establish more contacts and make more attempts, you can get practical data, learn, practice and optimize, and slowly you can make a breakthrough. In fact, there is no special prescription.
The establishment and dissemination of brand itself is based on high-quality products. Without good products, even the best brand communication company can't help you break through. With good products and good reputation, you can make a breakthrough by doing it slowly. It's just a matter of time, speed and efficiency.
Of course, brand and product positioning, target audience, unique functions and selling points, and any brand story are all basic skills, so we should sort out and position ourselves first.
Overseas brand communication agencies only help you spread, but they can't change the brand positioning and product quality of your design.
From an actual case, we can clearly understand the weight of product innovation and brand communication. Amazon is a product-oriented e-commerce platform. Excellent products are king and the foundation of all success.
Anke Innovation, which will be listed soon, has always attached importance to research and development, which is its core competitiveness. By the end of June 2009, Anke Innovation Company had 732 technicians and R&D personnel, accounting for 54.22% of the total number. At the same time, a number of core technologies have been formed in various product fields. By the end of June, 2065438+2009, the company had 478 domestic and foreign patents.
The original name of Anke Innovation is Haiyi Co., Ltd. It even changed the company name of the listed main company and added the word innovation.
"Anke+Innovation"
From the design of brand logo, it wants to tell us that Anker is an innovative company, which has grown to today's scale because of innovation since childhood. Moreover, because of innovation, it will go further. Listing is just an event and a powerful boost in this process.
You said that how much this enterprise attaches importance to innovation has been rectified, and the word innovation has been integrated into the company name and brand logo.
We often think that advertising, traffic and operation are more important. This is a short-sightedness and misunderstanding of cross-border e-commerce. Heavy operation, light products, light brands, will be a big fight.
Without the ability of product innovation and brand building, the more you do, the less you get in return and the more efforts you make.
As the market competition becomes more and more fierce, you will become more and more passive. Maybe, if you invest for five years, you will lose everything in one year.
3. Operational efficiency:
Say one thousand, say ten thousand, we still have to return to the basic operation of cross-border e-commerce.
What we are talking about here is operational efficiency, which is four words, "operation"+"efficiency".
In other words, what you are doing now is not enough. Now that the early cross-border e-commerce dividend period has passed, it is not enough for you to rely solely on operations.
You must be efficient and surpass your peers in all aspects of operation in order to survive and develop well. Speaking of efficiency, this is another big event.
If we want to improve efficiency, we must standardize the operating system. It is a huge workload to redesign every operation link, standardize/digitize/streamline/online, and arrange the operating system of each post.
Verb (the abbreviation of verb) looks forward to the future cross-border market, which will be the long tail era of prosperity for many minority brands, many small giants and many brands.
I believe that there are many small and medium-sized companies with innovative models like Anke that have been working hard. They pay attention to product innovation and concentrate on a certain field, which has a great chance of winning.
In the future cross-border export market, more and more China brands will go to sea, bringing new brands, new domestic products and new experiences, completely subverting foreigners' old impression of China goods.
This will be a great era of new domestic products and the rise of China brands. Not only Huawei, but also Xiaomi, as well as numerous SME brands, will also shine in overseas markets, forming a colorful world of China goods.
In the near future, China's innovative products will appear in the mobile phones of consumers all over the world for the first time. You just need to place an order.
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