From the "sea Amoy" to see a single product will be far away from us?

"Sea Amoy" is almost the most popular in these two years, but also the most controversial hot industry.

Alibaba, Jingdong, SF and other "high rich handsome" opened overseas channels or logistics channels, a group of passionate entrepreneurs have also joined the "sea Amoy" venture army. They are optimistic about China's "Amoy sea" army's spending power on imported goods, firmly believe that the industry will blowout.

Data show that in 2012, domestic users only increased the ship's consumption scale of Alstom by 117% over the same period of last year, much higher than the 64.7% growth rate of domestic online shopping; in 2013, the scale of overseas purchasing market transactions exceeded 700 billion yuan. IResearch reports that the real blue ocean of cross-border electricity suppliers is importing.

Right now, the focus of cross-border electricity supplier imports is still the policy of fast customs clearance, check-in and settlement tax refunds. A major driving force for the import business of cross-border e-commerce is the implementation of the postal tax policy. The latest policy interpretation is that the pilot import policy on cross-border e-commerce is gradually clarified. The tariffs, VAT, and consumption tax are the same as those of the original general trade import. Compared to the usual 30% discount rate.

On the other hand is controversial. Mushroom Street was already halted in December 2013 on the "Sea Amoy" business led by the company's CEO Chen Qi and only suspended for three and a half months from the launch. In addition, Jingdong Outsourcing, SF Feng's Buyun SFbuy, Suning Tesco overseas channels, also failed to meet expectations.

In response to a recent plan to invest in startups in "Sea Amoy", Gan Jianping, a partner at Qiming Venture Capital (formerly Mushroom Street), replied to Entrepreneurial State that it would not touch on projects with policy risks.

Sea Amoy in the end where is difficult?

Sea Amoy principles

"Sea Amoy" a bit baffling, "" Ocean Pier "founder Teng Bibo Tucao said. During the overseas student years, he started his business as a purchasing agent overseas and was the first batch of employees of eBay China. After that, he founded the foreign dock and regarded as one of the earliest entrepreneurs in overseas purchasing field in China.

He explained: The meaning of "sea Amoy" refers to consumers directly to Amazon, iHerb, Drugstore and other foreign websites Amoy goods, transport companies and other complex links and then delivered to the hands of domestic consumers. Its focus is on "Amoy." Now, "Sea Amoy" is used to refer to overseas shopping. In addition to including consumers directly to the foreign website "Amoy", but also including through the Lynx International, Yang Quay and other domestic websites to achieve one-stop shopping.

"Now more and more Chinese websites are open overseas direct mail, and do not need consumers to work so hard to foreign sites Amoy goods, to the docks and other sites one-stop shopping on the line. We believe that 'sea Amoy' will die, more willing Define yourself as a cross-border or overseas shopping. "

Amoy sea consumers in the process, do often encounter various problems difficult to overcome. The first is the language barrier, the sea before the start of the need to study a large number of Raiders; transport links complex, need to register the transfer company to obtain foreign addresses, and then sent by the shipping company to the domestic customs clearance before sent to consumers, the logistics cycle is too long, DHL, UPS and other direct mail costs are extremely expensive; not all sea Amoy to the goods are cheap; sometimes the goods will be detained by the Customs; encountered lost goods, transit company shut down, damaged goods, buy fakes, etc., Complaints, activist no door ...

Overall, the sea bottom Amoy user experience is the complexity of the purchase process, personal procurement logistics costs are too high, quality of goods and returns and other services is difficult to guarantee. All sorts of circumstances, make the user experience as those who buy large-scale overseas products overseas website.

Sea Amoy users around the various pain points, tools, shopping guide, platform class, transport companies, customs clearance companies, on behalf of operators and other types of start-up companies from different perspectives card bit market.

Large and small tool companies can be described as numerous, such as what is worth buying, 55 sea Amoy, Yi Haitao and so on. Have to do shopping sharing, discount information recommended, do rebate class, as well as statistical exchange rates, customs data plug-in. They have a loyal fan of a certain size among users of Amoy. According to industry sources, the sea Amoy business accounted for the recent hot what is worth to buy 50% of the business.

These types of tools companies, are relatively simple to integrate information flow, access to lower barriers.

Further to the depth of the supply chain to expand some of the site, can be directly in the Amazon, 6PM and other foreign sites orders, to achieve one-stop shopping, such as CN sea Amoy, sea cat season, gold hoop rods.

The most basic function of these websites is to optimize the sea purchase process: first, remove language barriers and synchronize overseas product information in real time; secondly, enable consumers to enjoy shopping smoothly without having to hold dual-currency or multi-currency credit cards, and these websites can support All major commercial banks in mainland China online banking and Alipay, TenPay and other means of online payment. In the back-end, these companies will be transhipment, customs clearance and other aspects of the integration of the company, and order tracking system to support returns and other services.

Light business, or heavy business?

According to an unnamed shopping guide industry veteran analysis, do cross-border e-commerce and domestic e-commerce similar. Shopping guide can be used as an initial importer of overseas purchasers, but simply to do shopping and other traffic entry-level enterprises, due to the relatively low degree of integration of the supply chain, easy to encounter the ceiling.

Mushroom Street, the beautiful that 51 rebates, meters off the net and several other companies, despite the rapid development of the early stage, but because of the upstream platform Lynx, Jingdong and other strong dependence on the ceiling need to be forced to transition. This is also the reason Mushroom Street self-built e-commerce platform to do good shop.

As pointed out above, if the overseas purchase of entrepreneurs only to be done under the single, with the purchase now Taobao not much difference, still belongs to the purchasing role. Currently able to do with the depth of cooperation with foreign B2C sites to achieve very few companies to order synchronization. Although the overseas field of entrepreneurs who claim to be able to do price, inventory and other Invoicing synchronization with foreign countries, but this is not the case. For example, there may be occasional consumer orders, the lack of stock or price increases. Whether real-time synchronization, subject to the depth of cooperation with foreign suppliers.

Tao Tao, founder of Hai Tao and Golden Clam Stick, pointed out that the real-time update of prices and inventories is nothing more than the frequency at which websites capture foreign information. If the capture is performed in one second, it will surely guarantee the synchronization of the information, The cost is relatively high. Seizing only 10,000 kinds of product information daily is certainly not the same as the technical means and costs required to track millions of product information daily.

According to CNOOC founder Xie Wenbin observation, the vast majority of overseas websites are crawling iHerb, Amazon, Vitacost and other foreign B2C information to consumers. He pointed out that large-scale B2C such as Amazon can not open the price and inventory system for domestic entrepreneurs, and start-up companies can only cooperate with some small B2C websites. Has been walking in this direction, the equivalent of a dead end. "The first day to sell a dozen single, twenty single, but when selling a product to a hundred single, how could Amazon give you a hundred stocks?"

This is one of the reasons CN Hai Tao chose to take the self-support model. It is similar to the only product will be the first purchase of special goods stocking, and positioning in the boutique sale. In addition to selling products, it will do purchasing, take the initiative to recommend products, or made by the consumer purchasing needs. But the sale is more concentrated color.

Another case comes from the docks in the ocean. It had been considered similar to the sea cat season shopping guide mode, but the assessment eventually give up. "The consumer experience is divided into: one is the experience of the web-side, belonging to the shallow experience; there is a deeper experience, such as when to buy things to buy? These are relatively heavy offline experiences. "

Zeng Bibo did not deny the value of the shopping guide mode, but the ocean terminal more energy spent in the heavy part of the offline experience.

To this end, it chose a platform similar to Lynx International platform, screening qualified individual buyers and merchants to shop in the shop platform, and self-built Beihai International Logistics, to achieve overseas direct mail. Really let the ocean pier business showing the explosive growth of the App "overseas sweep artifact" on the line, by the buyer simultaneous broadcast live abroad discount promotions, just on the line soon, they take up 50% to 60% of the transaction volume. This makes Zeng Bibo also feel surprised.

Similar to the pattern of foreign investment and shopping malls, shopping search site to help buy just on-line "Amoy sand", but its investment is not a personal buyer, but a foreign business or shopping platform.

"Do logistics company, customs clearance company, system integration, on behalf of the operating company will live very moist. Do Lynx international platform for this, will live a very moist .All can hook up with the supply chain, will live very moist But only to do the shallow level of information-oriented shopping guide, can only live two or three years unless self-change. "Zeng Bibo pointed out sharply.

For the future of shopping guide website how to break through, Ye Dongdong Angel Bay Investment Director's point of view is: "The shopping guide business itself is not sustainable, but many Internet companies are beginning to do the flow of business, such as Taobao is essentially the world's largest shopping guide." He Pointed out: "Taobao first flow into the C store business, to a certain extent began to do Lynx mall B2C. Look Jingdong, the beginning to do B2C, their own purchase of goods sold to consumers, and later also attract businesses settled, the equivalent of The flow of traffic to the merchant.At the end, Jingdong and Taobao have become e-commerce Empire.Regardless of doing early B2C platform, or shopping guide site, the field of overseas entrepreneurs follow the same business logic.

In fact, simply doing cross-border e-commerce shopping site is by no means easy. First of all, the bottleneck to be overcome is how to deliver the low-cost logistics to the consumers, which is equivalent to integrating the logistics part of the supply chain. This is because a large amount of existing logistics resources are needed to organize the goods, for example, airlines, Customs clearance companies, distribution companies, warehousing companies, each link is very fragmented. CN Haitao, Jin Baopang several companies are taking the form of outsourcing. Even Mushroom Street, the leader in e-commerce shopping in China, is having difficulties integrating the back-end supply chain. In addition to this category of Mushroom Street, South Korea's clothing is not suitable for overseas purchase, many entrepreneurs pointed out that the biggest problem Mushroom Street is back-end weakness in the clearance and other links lack of experience, customs clearance problems more serious logistics timeliness is difficult to guarantee .

Gray lot

The same year with Mushroom Street launched the purchase Feng Yun SFbuy once expected through its own advantages in the logistics test cross-border distribution and clearance services. A year is coming, but SFbuy has not made any progress. According to industry insiders, SFbuy shipping prices go up about 40%, and many restrictions on the types of goods transported, "unless Wang Wei to do it possible to succeed." A sea Amoy game player straightforward said: "Shun Feng transit do not buy it, because they are all formal customs, the price is too expensive."

Indeed, there is indeed a gray area in the field of Amoy Amoy. Frequently, there are some platforms in which "genuine fake goods are mixed with selling goods and black customs are mixed with goods".

Take Taobao global purchase, it is a typical purchasing platform, was established in 2007. Global mergers and acquisitions are not directly involved in the buying and selling of overseas goods such as purchasing, logistics and warehousing. Instead, individual sellers and businessmen of all sizes have settled in. There have been 30 billion to 40 billion yuan market size, occupy at least 70% of China's market share. The biggest problem is that small and medium sellers of product quality and purchase channels difficult to control, the proliferation of parallel imports. This is also a matter of Jingdong Outsourcing.

Zeng Bibo frankly said: "The sunshine of the regular army must be afraid of parallel imports, worried that there is no bottom line competition .Performing is indeed very lethal, supply chain management efficiency is much higher than us." In this regard he pointed out that the maintenance of the ocean like to buy genuine That part of the consumer is enough.

In addition to the industry to be standardized, Zeng Bibo pointed out that one of the bottlenecks in the field of entrepreneurs is the business inventory. "If the platform is not docked with the business system, it is difficult to ensure that there is enough stock, oversold or overbought phenomenon, and that is the supply chain problem." This is why Ocean Terminal spent years trying to attract investment.

Yang Wharf years of investment experience is: Many businesses do not want docking docking system, because the existing distribution and distribution system changes too much, businesses do not see sales simply do not want dock. "Chinese consumers place orders under the name of the Chinese, and many retailers in the United States does not support the database double-byte Chinese, the other database can not be deposited mail address if the other Oracl system or SAP system to get rid of, Support for double-byte, requires a lot of investment. There are many merchants do not understand Chinese, how docking? "The search process is very painful, the success rate may be only 1%.

In luxury goods and cosmetics category, the vertical e-commerce platform Cathay network for many years with overseas suppliers to maintain close cooperation, access to the European retail price of 5-7 fold new products, the basic rebate and the European retail price synchronization, Even lower prices. And catching network in overseas established part of the logistics and warehousing facilities, already have some advantages.

In the process of frequent contact with foreign suppliers, Zeng Bibo felt that importing imported goods across borders was not something that could be solved by throwing money at it and could only wait patiently. "Chinese stakeholders are very excited, but the distant overseas retailers do not feel that they smell less sensitive, the sea is not enough Amoy. This has become a product barrier." In Zeng Bibo seems that even the only product will be Wei Wei in China It is not necessarily effective once you get to the international market because of the smooth flow of the Weihuo Ode to foreign countries. The supply of Weiho products also needs to be energy-intensive. Zeng Bibo spend 2 hours a day to do customer service, feel the market temperature, he predicted the outbreak of the market may also need two or three years waiting period.