Hai is almost the hottest of the two years and the most controversial hot spot in the industry.

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

Alibaba, Beijing-east, Shun Fung and other "high handsome" open overseas to buy channels or logistics channels, a group of passionate entrepreneurs have joined the "sea Amoy" entrepreneurial army. They are optimistic about the Chinese "Sea Amoy" army of imported goods consumption capacity, firmly believe that the industry will be blowout.

Data show that in 2012, domestic users only through Alipay's sea Amoy consumption growth of 117%, far higher than the domestic net 64.7% growth rate, 2013, the overseas purchase market transactions of more than 70 billion yuan. The real blue ocean of cross-border electric dealers is imported, the consultancy report said.

At the moment, the focus of the Cross-border electricity importers is still the policy of fast customs clearance, inspection, tax refund and so on. One of the major drivers of Cross-border electricity import business is the postal tax policy, the latest interpretation of which is: the pilot policy on cross-border electric commerce has gradually become clear, and the postal tax and the original general trade import "Tariff + VAT + excise tax" compared to the usual 30% discount margin.

On the other hand is controversy. Mushroom Street has been in December 2013, the company has been CEO Chen personally led the "sea Amoy" business shout stop, from the line to the announcement of a pause only 3.5 months. In addition, Jingdong overseas purchase, Shun Fung's Sfbuy Fung Yun, Suning easy to buy overseas channels, also failed to achieve expectations.

In response to the recent plans to invest in the "Sea Amoy" field of pioneering companies, Gan Jianping, the managing partner of Qiming Venture Capital (formerly invested in Mushroom Street), said to the "entrepreneurial state" that it would not touch a policy-risky project.

Hai, where is the hard part?

The principle of Hai

"Sea Amoy," the word is a bit inexplicable, "Ocean Pier" founder of the Blue Waves spit Trough said. Foreign students, he started from overseas purchasing, is the first group of ebay employees, after the founding of the foreign terminals, is China's first batch of overseas buyers of the field of entrepreneurs.

He explained: "Sea Amoy" means that consumers go directly to Amazon, Iherb, drugstore and other foreign websites Amoy goods, and then through the transfer of complex links to domestic consumers. It focuses on "Amoy". Now, the "sea Amoy" has been used to refer to overseas shopping. In addition to including consumers directly to the foreign website "Amoy", but also directly through the Cat International, ocean terminals and other domestic websites to achieve one-stop shopping.

"Now more and more Chinese websites have opened overseas direct mail, do not need consumers to go to foreign sites so hard to Amoy goods, to the ocean terminals, such as one-stop shop shopping on the line." We think that ' Amoy ' will die, more willing to define their own for cross-border shopping or overseas shopping. ”

Consumers in the sea Amoy process, do often encounter a variety of problems difficult to overcome. First, the language barrier, sea Amoy need to study a large number of introduction; transport links complex, need to register the transfer company to obtain foreign addresses, and then sent to the mainland by the transit company, after the clearance before the hands of consumers, logistics cycle is too long, and go DHL, UPS and other direct mail costs are extremely expensive; Sometimes the goods will be seized by the customs, the loss of goods, transshipment company closure, merchandise damage, buy fakes and so on, complaints, rights-free door ...

Overall, the sea Amoy user experience Poor root lies in the purchase process is complex, personal procurement logistics cost is too high, merchandise quality and return goods and other services difficult to guarantee. Situation, so that users experience less than those large-scale procurement of overseas products overseas purchase sites.

Around the sea Amoy users of various pain points, tools, shopping guides, platform class, transshipment companies, customs clearance companies, operators and other types of start-up companies from different angles of the card market.

Large and small tools companies are numerous, such as what is worth buying, 55 sea Amoy, Ishai and so on. Have to do shopping sharing, preferential information recommended, to do rebate category, there are statistical exchange rates, tariffs and other data plug-ins. They are in the sea Amoy users have a certain size of loyal fans. According to industry insiders, the sea Amoy business accounted for the recent big hot what is worth buying 50% business.

These types of tools of the company, are simply more simple integration of information flow, entry threshold is lower.

Further to the depths of the supply chain to expand some of the sites, directly in the Amazon, 6PM and other foreign website orders, to achieve one-stop shopping, such as CN Hai, the Sea cat season, golden overseas purchase.

The most basic function of these websites is to optimize the sea-buying process: First of all, the removal of language barriers, real-time synchronization of overseas commodity information, second, so that consumers do not have to hold a double currency or even multi-currency credit card, can be smooth shopping, these sites can support all the mainstream commercial banks in mainland China and Alipay, Tenpay and other network payment means. At the back end, these companies will be transshipment, customs clearance and other aspects of the company integration, and have order tracking system, support returned goods and other services.

Light business or heavy business?

According to an unwilling to be named Shopping guide industry veteran analysis, to do cross-border electricity and domestic electricity business similar. Shopping Guide can be used as an early entry point for overseas entrepreneurs, but simply do shopping guide and other flow-level enterprises, due to the degree of integration of the supply chain is relatively light, easy to encounter the ceiling.

See Mushroom Street, Beautiful said, 51 rebate, meter folding nets and several other companies, although the early development of faster, but due to the cat, Beijing-east and other upstream platform dependence is strong, after encountering the ceiling need to be forced to transition. This is also the reason why Mushroom Street builds electric business platform to do excellent shop.

If the person pointed out, if the overseas purchase entrepreneur simply only to do to order, with Taobao now on the purchase not too big difference, still belong to the purchasing role. At present can do with the foreign company website Deep cooperation, achieve order synchronization of companies very few. Although overseas acquisition of the field of entrepreneurs announced to be able to do prices, inventory and other invoicing information and foreign synchronization, but this is not the case. For example, occasionally there will be a consumer orders, inventory or price increases. Whether real-time synchronization is limited to the depth of cooperation with foreign suppliers.

The first 55 sea Amoy and Golden Overseas purchase founder Tao pointed out, can do the price and inventory of real-time update, is nothing more than the site to crawl information frequency of the high and low, if one second crawl, sure can ensure information synchronization, but the cost is relatively high. Capturing only 10,000 kinds of commodity information per day is different from the technical means and cost of tracking millions of commodity information every day.

And according to CN Sea Amoy founder Xia Wenbin observation, the vast majority of overseas shopping site is to crawl Iherb, Amazon, Vitacost and other foreign consumer information, pushed to consumers. He pointed out that large companies such as Amazon could not open prices and inventory systems for domestic entrepreneurs, and that entrepreneurial firms could only work with small business websites. Keep going in this direction. "The first day to sell more than 10 single, 20 single, but when the sale of a product to 100 single, how can Amazon give you 100 inventory?"

This is the CN Sea Amoy choice to take the proprietary mode of a reason. It is similar to the only goods will, first purchase special goods stock, and positioning in the boutique special sale. In addition to special selling products, it will also do shopping, the initiative to recommend goods, or consumers to purchase demand. But at present the special sale color is thicker.

Another case comes from the Ocean Terminal. It has considered to do similar to the sea cat season, Golden Shopping guide mode, but the assessment of the eventual abandonment. "Consumer experience is divided into: one is the experience of the web end, is a shallow level of experience; there is a deeper experience, such as when the purchase of goods arrived? Can I buy it after payment? These are relatively heavy offline experiences. ”

Once the blue waves did not negate the existence value of the shopping guide mode, but the more energy of the ocean dock is spent in the heavy offline experience part.

To this end, it has chosen similar to the international platform model of the cat, the selection of qualified individuals and businesses to open the platform shop shop, and since the establishment of SEA international logistics, to achieve direct mail overseas. The real let the Ocean Terminal business to appear the explosive growth is the app "the Overseas sweep goods artifact" the on-line, by buys the hand to live the foreign sale store the discount promotion information, just on-line soon, then occupies the turnover 50%〜60%. This makes the once blue waves also feel surprised.

And the foreign investment model of the dock is similar to shopping search website to help 5 buy just online "Amoy sand", but its investment object is not a personal buy, but foreign merchants or shopping platform.

"Do logistics companies, customs clearance companies, system integration, on behalf of the operation of the company will live very moist." Do the day Cat international such platform, also will live very moist. All those who can hook up with the supply chain will live a very good life. But only do the information level of the shopping guide, such as shallow level, only live two or three years. Unless you change yourself. "Had the blue waves sharply pointed out.

For the future of the shopping guide site how to break, Angel Bay investment director Ye Dongdong's point of view is: "Shopping guide business itself is unsustainable, but many internet companies are to do the flow of business, such as Taobao is essentially the world's largest shopping guide." "He pointed out:" Taobao at the beginning of the flow into the C store business, to a certain extent began to do the day Cat Mall. Then look at Jingdong, the first to do business, their own procurement of goods sold to consumers, and later also attracted businesses to settle in, equivalent to the flow of traffic to the merchant. In the end, Jingdong and Taobao become the electric business empire. Whether it's an early adopters platform or a shopping site, entrepreneurs in overseas buying areas follow the same business logic. ”

In fact, it is not easy to do a good job as a shopping guide for cross-border electricity dealers. The first bottleneck is how to use low-cost logistics distribution to consumers, the equivalent of the integration of the logistics part of the supply chain, this is because the process of organizing goods, need to use a large number of existing logistics resources, such as airlines, customs clearance companies, distribution companies, warehousing companies, each link is very fragmented. CN Hai, Golden and several other companies are taking the form of outsourcing. Mushroom Street, a leading company in the domestic electric business, is also encountering difficulties in integrating back-end supply chains. In addition to Mushroom Street Korean clothing category is not suitable for overseas purchases, many entrepreneurs pointed out that the biggest problem of Mushroom street is the weak back end, in customs clearance and other links lack of experience, customs clearance problem is more serious, logistics timeliness is difficult to guarantee.

Grey Lot

With Mushroom Street in the same period of the sea to buy Fung Yun Sfbuy has been expected to pass its own advantages in logistics test water cross-border distribution and customs clearance services. A year is about to pass, but Sfbuy has been slow to progress. According to the industry, sfbuy freight price floating around 40%, and on a number of transshipment commodity restrictions, "unless Wei themselves to do can be successful." A sea Amoy players pointed out: "Shun Fung do transshipment no one to buy, because they are going to the formal customs, the price is too expensive." ”

Indeed, the sea Amoy areas do exist in the gray area, often appear some platform "real goods mixed with selling fake, black off white off with the" phenomenon.

Take Taobao global purchase, it is a typical purchase platform, was founded in 2007. Global purchase is not directly involved in procurement, logistics, warehousing and other overseas commodities trading process, but a large and small individual sellers and merchants settled in. Here already has 30 billion ~ 40 billion yuan market size, occupy at least 70% of China's market share. Its biggest problem is that small and medium-sized sellers of product quality and purchase channels is difficult to control, parallel imports flooding. This is also the question of Beijing-East overseas purchase.

Once the blue Ocean said: "The sunshine of the regular army must be afraid of parallel imports, fear of the bottom line of competition." Parallel imports are really lethal, supply chain management efficiency is much higher than ours. He pointed out that the maintenance of the foreign terminals like to buy authentic part of the consumer enough.

In addition to the industry to be standardized, the blue Ocean has pointed out that one of the bottlenecks in the field of entrepreneurs is the stock of businesses. "If the platform does not connect with the merchant's system, it is difficult to ensure that there is enough inventory, easy to appear oversold or super buy phenomenon, plainly is the supply chain problem." "This is also the reason that the Ocean Terminal spends many years trying to attract investment.

Ocean Dock for many years of investment experience is: Many businesses are unwilling to docking invoicing system, because of the existing distribution and circulation system changes too large, businesses do not see sales are not willing to butt. "Chinese consumers order the name of the address is Chinese, and many U.S. retailers database does not support Chinese double-byte, the other database can not save the mailing address." If you let each other's ORACL system or SAP system to change, support double-byte, need to invest very much. There are a lot of goods merchants do not understand Chinese, how docking? The search process is painful, and the success rate may be only 1%.

And in the luxury goods and cosmetics investment, vertical electric platform Show Network for many years with overseas suppliers to maintain close cooperation, can obtain the European retail price of the 5〜7 fold of new products, tax rebate after the basic and European retail price synchronization, and even lower prices. and show network in the overseas establishment of some logistics warehousing facilities, already have a certain advantage.

In the frequent contact with foreign suppliers in the process, has felt that the import of Cross-border electricity business is not by throwing money can be solved, can only wait patiently. "Chinese people are very excited, but far away from overseas retailers do not feel, their sense of smell is not so sensitive, the sea Amoy volume is not enough." This becomes a product barrier. "In the view of the blue waves, even if only the goods will be in China to do the tail goods, once go to the international market is not necessarily effective, because the foreign tail cargo channel has been quite smooth, the only product talks suppliers also need to consume a lot of energy." Once the blue waves spent 2 hours a day in the service, feeling the temperature of the market, he predicted that the outbreak of the market may still need two or three years waiting period.

Wen/lynn