Entrepreneurial story: The Mickle of cross-border electricity quotient

Business ID

Company name: Shenzhen Love Tao City Network Technology Co., Ltd. (ATC)

Founder: Bo, Shao Zhe, Chen Dabiao

Establishment Date: July 2010

Place of establishment: Shenzhen

Team Size: 108 people

Operating results: 2011 sales of more than billion yuan

Financing Records: None

If we want to outline a classic path of growth for the Cross-border electricity dealers in Shenzhen, most of them are "starting from ebay, Am A-zon, and after completing the primitive accumulation of experience and capital, they set up their own independent web site".

On the one hand, EBay, Am azon These mature third-party platforms are really more suitable for "new people", and let them focus primarily on building supply chains and front-end marketing capabilities, but from another perspective, long-term attachment to one or several platform growth, there is always a "controlled" feeling, In the wings gradually abundant, naturally will produce "single fly" idea.

In June 2010, Bo, who had been in Germany for 6 years, returned to China as the latest batch of sellers to enter ebay in Shenzhen. Two years later, has become the ebay Asia-Pacific "top-rated" sellers and annual sales of billions of him, but want to step out of the path of predecessors, to make a "Mickle" style of new attempts.

Six-month play to ebay

If, as early as six or seven years ago, Shenzhen's foreign trade electric dealers choose to start from EB ay, or because at that time to build an independent B 2C site high technology barriers, then for the June 2010 only to enter the ebay Bo, the choice of EB ay rather than independent B 2C site, it is a perceptual choice of results.

Prior to this, Bo in a domestic industrial power production enterprise, and was stationed in Germany, responsible for business-to-business import and export business. Over the past 6 years, he has found that while the total value of each order in the B 2B business is relatively large, the number of customers is dwindling, while some domestic peers are doing a good job of making business on ebay.

"I just saw someone doing it on ebay and doing it very, very successfully, only to find out that it can be done and that it can be done very much," he said. "Bo explains his intention to go home and start a business," Often, you can't think of everything. ”

July 2010, Shenzhen Ai Tao City Network Technology Co., Ltd. was registered, Bo and two other old colleagues who have worked in the power industry for nearly a decade Shao Zhe, Chen Dabiao with a handful of early employees, starting with their most familiar battery category (cell phone batteries, laptop batteries), contacting factories for stocking, combing the supply chain, Start from scratch and learn how to operate and maintain ebay accounts.

"The last few months were really hard. "Because EB ay has a limited number of shelves for new sellers each month, Bo and the sales team can only honestly start with the number of products on the shelves of 30 a month." On the one hand, through the investment of some market costs small pieces of merchandise promotion, such as power cord, mobile phone color shell, to attract passenger flow; On the other hand, the product description, delivery timeliness and praise rate of three latitude to improve, in order to win the next one months to increase the number of shelves.

In only half a year, by December 2010, Amoy City from a new ebay seller to become the Asia-Pacific "T op-r Atedseller" (Ebay sellers rank divided into seller, P ow Erseller and T op-r Atedseller level Three ), not only to remove the number of goods on the shelves of restrictions, but also to enjoy the turnover cost discount and "D ailyd EAL" platform promotion resources, such as preferential tilt.

According to Bo, this is mainly relying on a "company account as their account to maintain" sales team, he even clearly remember, when the company account for the first time from the ordinary seller into the "Pow Erseller" when the salesman rushed into his office, while talking about the scene of tears.

But more importantly, compared to the individual sellers, company-run love Amoy city as early as Bo in the idea of starting a business and back from Germany before the establishment of a warehouse in Germany, coupled with the new United States and British warehouses, as well as the leasing of third-party warehousing in Australia, in most foreign trade, the bosses also put "overseas positions" As a trend to negotiate, Amoy City has already achieved the overseas four branches.

Mainly responsible for supply chain management Shao Zhe told the south reporters, in fact, the overseas position is not as expensive as people think, except for the rent of the warehouse itself and hire a few experienced warehouse management personnel, Amoy City also through the employment of some part-time staff to reduce the operational costs of overseas warehouses. On its current scale, as long as the increase in the cost of each commodity through the overseas warehouse is not more than 0, 3 dollars, are within its affordable range.

Alternative "Ceiling" breakthrough method

In 2011, on the EB ay on the more comfortable Bo began to expand the sales category to pet supplies and security supplies field, with different sub accounts for sale, to reduce the number of categories for users to bring "messy" browsing experience. Meanwhile, in April, the city of Amoy entered the Amazon platform, and at the end of 2011, the sales share on the Amazon platform increased to 30% of total sales.

Ordinarily grow to this scale and time stage, most of the foreign trade will be to build a consumer website, as if only really out of the third party platform "on their own", is really the fate of their own hands. Revelation, Amoy City also set up their own website, and has formed a certain sales scale, but Bo does not seem impatient.

"Just look at everybody is doing so, so also follow, specific to which direction to go before the time to think carefully." Bo smiled. The Shao Zhe, sitting aside, explained to the reporters in the south, in his view, the "growth ceiling", which is commonly thought to be met on a third-party platform, is more about sales and profit bottlenecks in a single category, but it does not necessarily become a bottleneck for a company's own growth.

Compared with domestic e-commerce, the most prominent advantage of foreign trade is to have a broader market boundaries and a richer product category to choose from. Therefore, for Bo, Shao Zhe, at this stage, a growing way is to reproduce the previous in the power supply, security and pet supplies on the operation of the model, independent operation through different sub accounts, and to some higher profit margins of the category to expand.

According to Bo, as early as about a year ago, EB ay platform, the client manager has suggested to the home, clothing and other gross margin relatively high and growth of the category on the expansion, and in his view, this year so many domestic clothing manufacturers headache inventory problems, it is more likely to become their own opportunities to enter the clothing.

Theoretically, this expectation through the simultaneous operation of multiple sales of different products of the sub-account to obtain stable growth of the company's "Mickle" style of growth, is not completely not feasible, but the South reporters also from some have been in the category after the expansion and returned to the foreign trade of the electricity dealers learned that, This approach not only for the early selection of the ability to have a higher demand, but also in the late operation of the dimension, the previous segment of the market and the management of the warehouse after the coordination has a large pressure.

In this regard, Bo also admits that this is his most distressed problem, "must allow new products have a certain growth costs, and even short-term unsalable, but the speed of the whole turnover must be raised, we are now strengthening this work."

And another long-term problem that must be addressed for Amoy is how the end users and small B sellers who are now relying on the ebay platform and are driven primarily by price will truly become loyal to their users. In other words, even if it is only sold on a third-party platform, how to establish its own channel brand, so that the company can achieve a stable growth to provide longer-term protection.