AO-ji International: Eat the "small language" cake foreign trade dealers

Business ID

Company Name: Shenzhen proud based Electronic Commerce Co., Ltd.

Founder: Lu Hai

Establishment Date: 2007

Place of establishment: Shenzhen

Team Size: 300 people (Source: Southern Metropolis Daily Network)

Operating results: 2011 Total sales of hundreds of millions of yuan

Financing records: In early 2012, tens invested in other RMB

Compared to already fighting into a red Sea of domestic e-commerce market, foreign trade by virtue of "made in China" inherent cost advantage in the past few years has been doing a good job. However, with the constant killing of low-cost competitors and the restrictions of international logistics on the category of sales, the prosperity that once envied others is fast disappearing.

As one of the veterans of the Foreign trade power business, Lu Hai started to shop on ebay as early as 2003 in Germany, but what he didn't think of was that the small language market, which was inadvertently chosen, had gradually dissipated from the low cost dividend "made in China" and became the core power of his "later resident".

Listed at the ebay Germany station TOP10 big sellers

And most of the domestic foreign trade electric dealers are EB ay sellers, Lu Hai is no exception. In 2003, he also studied computer master's degree at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and he operated a shop in EB ay Germany to sell 3C accessories and computer peripheral products, and find friends in China for its selection and delivery.

Perhaps because of the keen intuition of the Wenzhou businessman, when he graduated from his Master's degree in 2004, he had hired six German employees to run shop, customer service and package shipments, and three years later, his ebay master account was among the op10 sellers of EB ay German station.

2007, has been in the German market has become a small Lu Hai decided to return, the establishment of Shenzhen AO-ji E-commerce Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Shenzhen Proud or proud base). On the one hand, he intends to reduce the overall operating costs by moving operations and customer service teams to the country, and on the other hand, looking to build factories to get more lucrative profits.

But it is not easy for any internet light Company to dabble in the production of heavy assets. After a year of trial, the move "march" was halted by Lu Hai for heavy losses. That year, the only let him feel a little consolation is, by virtue of accumulated years of market experience in Germany, Shenzhen proud to become EB ay sales of foreign trade B 2C China's first place, and to achieve a total of billion yuan sales.

This also allows Lu Hai to start rethinking the future direction of pride.

"Invisible" threshold

Compared with the English market, which occupies the dominant position in the foreign trade, German, French, Italian, and even Russian, Polish and other small language markets have obvious differences.

According to Lu Hai, although the market capacity of a single small language may be less than one-tenth of the English market, the growth rate of its network sales is far above the growth of many English-speaking countries, such as France, Poland, Spain and other countries, the average annual growth rate of network sales in 20%-30%.

On the other hand, because the market capacity of a single small language is limited, the sooner entrants are likely to occupy a certain market share, build their own channel brand and form a certain competition barrier to the successor.

But there are also many challenges to really "serve" the seemingly more attractive small-language countries online shoppers. This comes not only from the tougher laws and regulations of the EU, but also from the user's higher demand for the online shopping experience.

To this end, since 2009, Lu Hai will focus on the main energy from the ebay, A m Azon, Alibaba and other third-party platforms to the Independent B 2C website, and employ native speakers of web design, product description, marketing programs and other details of the revision and improvement. At the same time, the establishment of overseas warehousing and logistics system to make up for their own in the local Electric network competition with the short board.

Lu Hai to South all reporters frankly, although the cost of employing native-speaking staff is relatively high, because competitors in the small language market are more than the local electric business site, rather than the domestic counterparts, with his personal study in Germany for many years and Master's thesis in German completed but the day-to-day communication still can not compare with the local experience, Only a few graduates in the domestic employment or directly with Google translation to write product descriptions, is simply "play not turn".

Next, Lu Hai plans to new Brazil, Japan and many other markets at the same time, in Germany, France, Italy and other more mature market to set up a market analysis and selection team, through the local market demand for more in-depth and accurate analysis and synchronization with the domestic procurement team, to enhance their own new product development in the competitiveness. (Source: Southern Metropolis Daily Network)

At present, Germany, France, Italy three market sales have accounted for the total sales of 70%-80%, and presented Independent B 2C website and eb ay, A m Azon and other third-party platforms go hand in hand with the trend. Even with previous successes, Lu Hai says, it may not be possible to replicate in all new markets, and four or five of the 10 attempts will be successful.

Entrepreneurship Clinics

Guest Reviews:

Chen Xing Venture Vice President Xie

Two challenges after barbaric growth

Fundamentally, like the country's leading exporters of foreign trade, the initial success is based on the background that China has become the world's factory. As long as the status of China's manufacturing center continues, Chinese sellers are close to sourcing, and the use of electricity to keep the price advantage will continue. But at the same time, the small language market is a more detailed niche market for foreign trade dealers, the background of the base team and the understanding of the European market and more localized deep focus on the European markets are the main reasons for them to gain a certain share in the competition of foreign trade dealers.

After the recent three or four years of barbaric growth of foreign trade dealers, from the past, the individual, imitation goods, gradually to the team, the regular product evolution. But to continue to maintain rapid development, will face two challenges: first, the success of foreign trade in the past, mainly based on 3C products or other categories of easy to express and cross-border sales of small products, as these small products market homogeneity and gradually saturated, how to broaden the category to maintain continued growth? Second, if the former foreign trade electric dealers only use the price advantage of the two places in the gap in the fight guerrilla warfare, with the size of the foreign trade of the larger, it is inevitable to face a head-on battle with the local leading electric dealers, this and Amazon into China will encounter when, the Beijing-East competition is the same, the team has the ability of cross-cultural localization operations and financial strength?