Cross-border e-commerce ushered in an outbreak: rising orders, training hot SMEs urgently need to be branded

Under the epidemic, cross-border e-commerce in many places ushered in an outbreak period.

Statistics show that from January to April, the total value of imports and exports of cross-border e-commerce goods in Hebei Province increased by 3.3 times year-on-year. In the same period, the import and export value of Shandong Province through the customs cross-border e-commerce management platform increased by 1.5 times to 1.36 billion yuan.

Behind the rapid increase in turnover, many shortcomings also need to be made up. The 2020 government work report proposes to accelerate the development of new formats such as cross-border e-commerce and enhance the international freight capacity.

Cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test area

Cross-border e-commerce ushered in an outbreak.

From January to April, China (Henan) international trade "single window" completed 32.29 million cross-border e-commerce imports and exports, with a value of 3 billion yuan, an increase of 161% and 150% year-on-year. In the first four months of this year, the Guangzhou Customs Customs Zone supervised the import and export of commodities by 11.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7%.

In the first quarter of this year, Fujian’s total import and export of goods trade decreased by 3.6%, but imports and exports of provincial enterprises through the customs cross-border e-commerce management platform increased by 7.7 times. In March, Guangxi's cross-border e-commerce import and export volume was 63.58 million yuan, an increase of 4.7 times.

"Under the epidemic, we not only did not reduce sales, but increased it by about 50%." Xu Ling (pseudonym), a cross-border e-commerce owner in Dongguan, told reporters that their main store sells directly abroad, with annual sales of 20 million yuan.

Xu Ling said that because of the impact of the epidemic, many orders of traditional foreign trade factories have been cancelled, and more people from abroad also buy things online, so many domestic foreign trade factories are transformed into cross-border e-commerce, which is undoubtedly more beneficial to the business of enterprises .

Ye Feng (pseudonym), the boss of another cross-border e-commerce company in Guangdong, said that his company’s main business revenue reached 800 million yuan in 2019. Compared with the same period last year, sales have increased somewhat this year, mainly due to the sales of anti-epidemic products Soar. About 70% or 80% of the customers who have signed contracts with them are in the field of anti-epidemic products or masks. Due to the compensation for the sales of epidemic prevention products, the company's performance was basically not affected by the epidemic.

The outbreak of cross-border e-commerce has attracted more attention in this area, especially as the list of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive experimental areas continues to expand, and various regions continue to issue follow-up measures.

Since mid to late May, Liaoning Province issued the "China (Fushun) Cross-border E-Commerce Comprehensive Pilot Zone Implementation Plan", proposing that by 2025, the scale of cross-border e-commerce transactions will reach 10 billion yuan, of which cross-border e-commerce B2B (commercial Business) accounted for 70%. Cultivate more than 60 leading enterprises related to cross-border e-commerce to form a good cross-border e-commerce ecosystem.

Fujian Province issued the "China (Quanzhou) Cross-border E-Commerce Comprehensive Pilot Zone Implementation Plan", which proposed that through three years of planning and construction, it will focus on creating 3-4 demonstration-driven functional parks, and strive to reach the total import and export of Quanzhou cross-border e-commerce by 2022 It exceeded 45 billion yuan.

When interpreting the "China (Yueyang) Cross-border E-Commerce Comprehensive Pilot Zone Implementation Plan", the Hunan Provincial Department of Commerce proposed that the Yueyang Cross-Border E-Commerce Comprehensive Pilot Zone be built into a pioneer zone for cross-border e-commerce innovation and development, and an accelerator for foreign trade optimization and upgrading. The city became a central city for cross-border e-commerce in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.

It is understood that in addition to the well-developed cross-border e-commerce itself, the industry chain in this field is also expanding, and e-commerce training and incubation has become a "sweet bun".

Xu Ling has set up a department dedicated to training. If factory enterprises and foreign trade entrepreneurs need to open channels to sell, they will provide technical assistance to open stores and train related businesses. "Each month we only accept the quota of 10 companies. One company pays 10,000 yuan. The monthly income is 100,000 yuan. There are also 1 million income in a year."

Tan Kerun, founder and operation director of Guangzhou Hummingbird Cross-border E-Commerce Service Co., Ltd., said that they specialize in cross-border e-commerce incubation. Due to the urgent need for many factories to transform into cross-border e-commerce during the epidemic, sales in the first quarter increased by 10 %.

Logistics, brand shortcomings to be filled

Ye Feng said that under the impact of the epidemic, channel transformation has been put on the agenda for Chinese companies.

Pan Helin, executive dean of the Digital Economic Research Institute of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, said in an interview that the background of cross-border e-commerce ushered in a major outbreak. First, cross-border e-commerce business is in a stage of rapid growth, especially with the development of the Internet, not Few cross-border e-commerce companies are cultivating in Southeast Asia and other places, resulting in a significant increase in C-to-C (consumer-to-consumer) sales. The second factor is the short-term epidemic. Because offline sales and purchases are not possible, customers' online consumption habits are gradually cultivated.

However, the development of cross-border e-commerce is not without shortcomings. The impact of the epidemic on cross-border e-commerce is also very obvious. Among them, the most obvious impact is logistics.

"Costs of cross-border e-commerce stores are not high, the main cost is logistics costs." Xu Ling said that during the epidemic, freight, especially air freight, rose a lot, and transportation in some places was interrupted, which hit the seller harder.

"Now Chinese products go out, either by sea or by air. If we can develop small packages, further improve the timeliness, and further reduce the cost of logistics, Chinese manufacturers can quickly send goods to foreign consumers. At hand, this has enabled Chinese companies to reduce cross-border e-commerce burdens." Tan Kerun told reporters.

Pan and Lin pointed out that the characteristics of cross-border e-commerce are very detailed, and have new requirements for the entire international cargo transportation capacity. The customer experience depends largely on this. Therefore, behind the benign development of cross-border e-commerce, there are higher requirements for convenient access.

Xu Ling said that in addition to logistics, another issue is brand building. Chinese companies need to focus on brands, register foreign trademarks in a timely manner, take the brand route, and protect their products.

Pan Helin said that China has a mature industrial chain, and cross-border e-commerce has the opportunity to be a brand, which can challenge some of the original brand models.

However, for SMEs, branding faces cost challenges. This has led to another trend in the development of cross-border e-commerce: cluster development.

Pan and Lin pointed out that the acquisition cost of small and medium-sized manufacturers is relatively high. If they can join the cross-border e-commerce clustering and become a link in the cluster, they can share the advantages of clustering, reduce costs and improve competitiveness. Tan Kerun also said that in the future, many small and medium-sized enterprises will go towards cluster development of e-commerce.