Is it okay to do cross border e commerce now?

The domestic cross-border e-commerce business began in the early 21st century, and after nearly 20 years of industry development, it has now entered a period of stable development. After the rapid growth trend in the past few years, the growth rate of China's cross-border e-commerce transaction volume has declined significantly in recent years, from 2013 to 2019, and the slowdown in growth largely reflects the end of the growth dividend period of China's cross-border e-commerce industry.

The policy boosts the development prospectsIn June 2020, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) issued the Announcement on Launching the Pilot Program for Cross-border E-commerce Business-to-Business Export Supervision, adding "Cross-border E-commerce Business-to-Business Direct Export-9710" and "Cross-border E-commerce Export Overseas Warehouse-9810"**. Under the influence of the epidemic, the development of cross-border e-commerce is an important measure to do a good job in the "six stability" work and implement the "six guarantees" task. In the first half of 2020, favorable policies were continuously introduced, which pointed out the country's consistent support for cross-border e-commerce.

Data show that since 2010, the transaction scale of China's cross-border e-commerce industry has almost maintained a growth rate of more than 20%, and in 2019, according to the statistics of the China E-commerce Research Center, the scale of China's cross-border e-commerce transactions reached 100 million yuan, a year-on-year increase. According to the fundamentals of Chinese enterprises going overseas and the dependence of foreign countries on China's retail goods, it is preliminarily estimated that China's cross-border e-commerce will still maintain an average annual compound growth rate of 12% in the next six years, and the transaction scale will reach about 26 trillion yuan by 2026.

The development process of China's cross-border e-commerce has gone through four stages: germination, start, outbreak and stability. Before 2005, cross-border e-commerce was mainly online display, offline transaction mode, 2005-2010 China's cross-border e-commerce industry gradually realized the whole process of electronic transactions, cross-border imports to standardization, platform development. Since 2017, many cross-border e-commerce support policies have been intensively introduced to promote the explosive and savage growth of China's cross-border e-commerce.

After 2017, the industry entered a period of integrated development, Alibaba acquired NetEase Kaola, increased the concentration of cross-border import platforms, and embraced new retail, opened a number of offline stores, and a number of cross-border export platforms contacted the capital market to seek listing and financing.

1) Embryonic period (late 90s-2004): still attached to traditional foreign trade. Cross-border e-commerce originated in the late 90s, and the initial form was to display supply and demand information online and complete transactions offline.

2) Start-up period (2005-2010): independent & formed. With the gradual improvement of e-commerce infrastructure, online trading platforms have begun to appear, and cross-border e-commerce has gradually realized functions such as first-class transactions and order logistics management.

At this stage, it is still dominated by the first-class business model, but the merchants have begun to establish stable cooperative relations with the first-class chain factory.

3) Savage Growth Period (2010-2016): Growth & Differentiation. With the formation of high-quality industrial clusters in the first chain, the rapid expansion of cross-border e-commerce channels and categories, the rapid growth of industry transaction scale, and the rapid growth of industry transaction scale, the business model has begun to differentiate, which is mainly divided into three modes: pan-product distribution, brand boutique, and self-built independent station.

Problems such as inventory continue to emerge in the savage growth, and enterprises begin to optimize them; The brand boutique model has gradually grown, and cross-border e-commerce has begun to pay attention to product differentiation and independent research and development.

4) Steady growth period (2017-present): refined operation. As the upstream and downstream industrial chains tend to be basically complete, relevant laws and regulations and promotion policies are improved, and cross-border e-commerce is gradually standardized.

Enterprises have come out of the barbaric growth, paying more and more attention to the development of high-quality products and the refined operation of the brand, and the competition is no longer a simple distribution of goods and first-class, but the comprehensive ability of the enterprise. The product quality of cross-border e-commerce has been steadily improved, and the brand awareness of leading enterprises has gradually taken shape, and a certain degree of barriers have been formed.

In 2021, cross-border e-commerce will become the first choice for enterprises to carry out international development and the vanguard of foreign trade innovation and development.

The epidemic situation abroad is serious, and cross-border e-commerce is more difficult this year as a whole, and there are also a few breakthroughs. The specific analysis is as follows:

1.Under the influence of the epidemic, many people abroad are unable to work normally, or even unemployed, the overall purchasing power is definitely weakening, and the desire to shop will also decrease.

2.The pandemic has affected international logistics. Many countries have taken stricter control over foreign trade imports, and even closed some routes, etc., many of the original routes in international logistics have been restricted to varying degrees, and logistics is also constantly under the influence of the epidemic.

If the price is adjusted, then the sales of the product will be affected, and if the product is not adjusted, the profits under the original price of many products will be compressed, and even lose money.

3.Under the influence of the epidemic, the delivery timeliness of logistics has been greatly reduced. The original 10-30 days can arrive, now it takes more than 30 days, or even 60-90 days, customers have a lot of requirements for logistics timeliness, if the time limit of the order is too long, it will greatly affect the customer order.

4.Under the influence of the epidemic, a small number of categories have seen growth, showing opportunities.

Because of the impact of the epidemic, the demand for masks, epidemic prevention supplies and other products has increased significantly, and foreign countries themselves are insufficient in the production of these things and rely on imports, so for sellers who entered the industry early, they have earned a lot of profits.

On the one hand, the habit of exercising abroad is more common, on the other hand, you can't exercise freely outside, so there is a lot of demand for indoor sports equipment and sporting goods.

DIY, gardening supplies, etc. also show good opportunities, because after a long time at home, you have to find something interesting to do, so these things can be a good way to pass the time, entertainment and leisure.

Therefore, if you want to do cross-border, you must find the category of opportunities at the moment, the overall situation is not good at present, but business opportunities also exist in the crisis.

Now is the bonus period, it is recommended to enter the market now.

Whether or not you make money doing Amazon depends on your method of operation, not on the platform.

As the originator of global e-commerce, Amazon's influence on the whole world is huge. The first export cross-border e-commerce platform that Chinese foreign traders come into contact with is also Amazon, and the Amazon platform is also the fairest competition platform (I will not describe in detail about the traffic distribution mechanism of the Amazon platform). Secondly, the gameplay of the no-source mode allows those merchants who do not have a source of goods to join, find suppliers by themselves, and choose the delivery logistics method.

At this point, due to the difference in domestic and foreign exchange rates and consumption habits, many powerful merchants can earn millions or even millions a year, and from this point of view, Amazon cross-border e-commerce is very profitable. However, Amazon is the world of high-level players, and if you have no operational experience, it is best to find an incubator to take you to grow, and with their ERP system tools and shipping logistics channels, you can grow by leaps and bounds. If you rely on your own strength to compete, you will face many problems that you can't encounter on domestic e-commerce platforms.

In general, doing Amazon cross-border e-commerce is very profitable, but low-level players may not be very suitable for Amazon's competition mechanism.

The monthly turnover is hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the monthly profit is tens of thousands of dollars, and I am honest, it is really difficult for one person to do it. It's basically really unlikely now. Because the source market is now very transparent, no matter what category it is, it is almost impossible to escape competition with big sellers, and the profit margin is relatively limited.

Coupled with the characteristics of cross-border e-commerce, daily cumbersome after-sales, cross-border delivery, and distribution of new products, it is very difficult for a person to do it in terms of time and energy. So you really don't believe how many orders you have given you screenshots at every turn, even if the screenshots are not fake, and it is not something that you can do as a newcomer, this must be the result of a team operation.

The cross-border e-commerce industry is on the rise, and there are many opportunities. At present, cross-border e-commerce platforms are also selective, each with its own characteristics, and you can choose a platform that suits you to operate.

At present, the cross-border e-commerce platform is in the stage of vigorous development, for sellers, there is still a lot of room for choice, compared with the development situation of domestic e-commerce, in the near future, the prospects of cross-border e-commerce are still very good.

At present, there are many well-known platforms for cross-border e-commerce, such as Amazon, eBay, Wish, Shopee, AliExpress, etc., which are already familiar to everyone, and there are many well-known cross-border e-commerce companies in the industry. At the beginning, starting from the selection of platforms, these mainstream platforms have their own advantages, and they can choose the most suitable platform for their own operation according to their own needs and their own conditions.

This paper introduces the main modes of cross-border e-commerce in China, which are mainly divided into business-to-business (i.e., B2B) and business-to-consumer (i.e., B2C).

Under the B2C model, Chinese enterprises directly face foreign consumers, mainly sell personal consumer goods, and mainly use air parcels, mail, express delivery and other methods in logistics, and their customs declaration subjects are postal or express delivery companies, which are mostly not included in customs registration in 2019.

Answer the synergistic relationship between cross-border e-commerce and cross-border logistics: cross-border e-commerce and cross-border logistics are highly positively correlated, and there is a long-term and stable equilibrium relationship between the two, and there is a causal relationship between them. In the long run, the relationship between cross-border e-commerce and cross-border logistics is mainly manifested in the positive promotion of each other, but there is also a certain mutual inhibition relationship, and the long-term dependence of cross-border e-commerce on cross-border logistics is stronger than the dependence of cross-border logistics on cross-border e-commerce.

In the short term, cross-border e-commerce is mainly affected by its own factors, while cross-border logistics is greatly affected by cross-border e-commerce, and the relationship between cross-border logistics and cross-border e-commerce is mainly manifested in the same direction, and the growth of cross-border logistics has no obvious reverse inhibition effect on the growth of cross-border e-commerce in the short term. In general, China's cross-border e-commerce and cross-border logistics initially showed a good synergistic relationship between 2008 and 2016, but the significance level of the synergistic relationship was relatively low, and the conditions and relationship between the two for coordinated development still need to be further improved. The factors affecting the collaboration between cross-border e-commerce and cross-border logistics include the collaborative environment, collaborative mechanism, collaborative relationship, collaborative ability, collaborative willingness, individual characteristics, and collaborative expectations.

Shenzhen cross-border e-commerce **** is based in Shenzhen, relying on the national enterprise industrial belt, to solve the difficulties of factory and enterprise sales order channels, the lack of high-quality platform chains, the difficulty of traditional enterprise brand exports, the difficulty of sellers to choose products, the difficulty of industry talent employment, etc., and quickly build a cross-border e-commerce industry center along the Belt and Road.

Founded in 2015, based on the cross-border e-commerce industry, Cross-border Exchange is a leading business company with a complete chain system in the cross-border e-commerce industry. We are committed to building a cross-border circle integrating cross-border e-commerce and cross-border e-commerce industry resource integration, platform and seller chain in Shenzhen City. Build cross-border e-commerce business cooperation, settlement, operation, project incubation, project planning, project docking and cross-border talent delivery docking global order services.

Cross-border exchange focuses on cross-border e-commerce platforms, and connects with well-known cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, eBay, Shopee, Walmart, Rakuten, Wish, DHgate, Lazada, Aliexpress, Newegg, etc. Cross-border Exchange has many years of experience in e-commerce management, is well versed in the cross-border e-commerce process, and understands the pain points of cross-border e-commerce practitioners. It has a practical and professional e-commerce training system in the industry, and provides professional cross-border e-commerce training and cross-border talent delivery services.

Adhering to the cooperation concept of "focusing on the first-class chain of cross-border e-commerce platform, industry transformation and upgrading, foreign trade orders are king, and cross-border e-commerce brand exports", the purpose is to systematize, three-dimensional and refine the first-class chain of product selection. The main mainstream platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and AliExpress are mainly based on resource docking, product development, customer service, procurement management, logistics management, technical support, and brand building, and the cross-border e-commerce network is set up as a system channel for the organization of the first chain structure.

**Chain involves**business: sales channel flow, traffic flow, information flow, capital flow, talent flow, etc., bringing together various **chain factories and brand design companies, opening cross-border e-commerce platform sales channel summary, industry huge, professional, ** chain, sales channel team, 12 colleges and universities of cooperative talents, more than 50 experts in cross-border e-commerce, more than 100 cross-border e-commerce elites, experts are well-known corporate executives, both deep resource channels, rich market experience, It can also accurately grasp the development trends of the cross-border e-commerce ** chain industry. The cross-border e-commerce alliance center has close cooperation with Amazon, recommending 1,000 + excellent brand factories, and hundreds of well-known cross-border e-commerce enterprises and well-known colleges and universities in the industry have reached strategic in-depth cooperation, creating an integrated and comprehensive cross-border e-commerce first-chain service sales platform for enterprises.