In 8 months, ordinary canvas bags and leather bags were sold to more than 20 countries and regions such as the United States, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil, and achieved sales of nearly 200,000 US dollars. 1 year, made by Anqing Linwo Trading Co., Ltd. with only 2 employees.
A reporter from China Securities Journal recently investigated and found that despite the complex and ever-changing trade environment, cross-border e-commerce, a new form of trade, is still growing tenaciously. Power is also making contributions to stabilizing foreign trade, stabilizing the economy and stabilizing employment.
During the interview with the reporter, we learned that in the process of developing new trade formats and new forces, we are faced with problems such as insufficient brand power, rising logistics costs, "difficulty in returning returns", and inconvenient cross-border settlement.
Experts suggest that relevant policies should be formulated and refined in a targeted manner to help resolve the "growing pains" of cross-border e-commerce.
Small business deals across borders
"Last year, there were tens of millions of users registered with us, and the total service turnover exceeded 100 billion yuan." Speaking of the development of the platform, Feng Jianfeng, chairman of Dalong.com Group, was full of joy.
Dalong.com was established in March 2010. It is one of the first batch of cross-border e-commerce pilot enterprises in China, and it is currently the largest cross-border e-commerce industry service platform in China that focuses on helping Chinese manufacturing go global.
Most of the registered users of Dalong.com are cross-border e-commerce export enterprises, also known as "micro multinational enterprises" in the industry.
The survey of professional consulting institutions shows that the portraits of such groups are roughly as follows: typical small and micro enterprises, many of which are start-up enterprises; as few as one or two people, but they can do business in an average of more than three overseas markets; good Using the digital platform, it is possible to quickly complete complex business such as product selection, procurement, sales, logistics, customs declaration, payment collection, foreign exchange settlement and tax refund, etc. that can only be done by large enterprises in the past.
Anqing Linwo Trading Co., Ltd. in Anhui Province is one such enterprise.
"It was established in June 2021, just over a year ago. It is mainly engaged in the export of luggage, electronic products, and household goods. Counting myself, there are two employees in total." Zhu Huaqing, the head of the company, told a reporter from China Securities Journal that in October last year, through Settled in Amazon and AliExpress, the company sold its products to more than 20 countries and regions, including the United States, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and Brazil. In 8 months, the sales reached nearly 200,000 US dollars.
New Newton International Trade (Tianjin) Co., Ltd. is an enterprise mainly engaged in the export of logistics handling equipment.
In 2020, New Newton will accelerate the development of overseas markets through Alibaba International Station, and within two years, sell "Made in China" to more than 70 countries and regions including Canada, Mexico, Chile, Poland, and Italy.
Qiu Yibo, general manager of the company, said: "In the past two years, the company's new overseas customers have grown at a rate of 10% to 15% per year, and the annual sales have exceeded 50 million yuan, which is more than the previous annual sales of about 2 million yuan. Twenty times more."
In recent years, cross-border e-commerce companies like Linwo Trading and New Newton have sprung up, becoming a new force in the rise of the foreign trade industry.
According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, as of the end of the first quarter of this year, more than 46,000 companies have registered on the online comprehensive service platform of the cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone.
With the participation of more new players of small and medium size, the cross-border e-commerce market is changing from the participation of large enterprises to a pattern of large, medium and small enterprises flourishing.
With the help of modern sales, logistics and payment systems, a large number of small and micro subjects who "can't do, can't do, can't do" foreign trade not only can do it, but also can do it, and gradually grow into a "micro-business". Multinational enterprises”, playing an important participant and promoter of cross-border e-commerce, a new type of trade.
"In the past, it was unimaginable for a single small and micro enterprise to do multi-country export business." Zhang Jianping, deputy director of the Academic Committee of the Institute of International Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Commerce, said that cross-border e-commerce platforms can open up various links such as procurement, sales, and logistics. , providing a very good development platform for small, medium and micro enterprises and entrepreneurs to expand overseas markets and creating unprecedented new development opportunities.
Some small, medium and micro enterprises and entrepreneurs have seized the opportunity to become new players in the cross-border e-commerce field.
New business formats are favored by policies
The granary needs fertile soil to cultivate.
The new format of cross-border e-commerce and the rapid growth of a group of new players are inseparable from the support of policies.
The reporter learned that since 2015, my country has successively established 132 cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones in 6 batches, covering 30 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) across the country, and gradually formed the development of land and sea linkages and mutual assistance between east and west. pattern.
In July 2021, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Development of New Formats and New Models of Foreign Trade", clearly proposing to solidly promote the construction of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones.
In February 2022, the State Council issued the "Reply on Approving the Establishment of Comprehensive Pilot Zones for Cross-border E-commerce in 27 Cities and Regions including Ordos", marking the continuous expansion of the scale of pilot fields for cross-border e-commerce.
In May, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Promoting the Stability and Quality Improvement of Foreign Trade", which further proposed to promote the accelerated development of cross-border e-commerce to improve quality and efficiency.
In recent years, in the face of the complex and changeable trade environment, cross-border e-commerce has grown against the trend, and has increasingly become an important force to stabilize foreign trade and promote the high-quality development of foreign trade.
"Cross-border e-commerce has made a significant contribution to the high-quality development of foreign trade and has acted as a new engine for foreign trade growth." Zeng Jinhui, director of the e-commerce department of Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Commerce, said recently that since the 2020 epidemic, the global online consumer market has continued to grow , the cross-border e-commerce developed and expanded significantly.
According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, in 2021, my country's cross-border e-commerce import and export volume will reach 1.92 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 18.6%.
Among them, exports were 1.39 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.3%.
In the first quarter of 2022, my country's cross-border e-commerce import and export volume was 434.5 billion yuan, and the proportion of cross-border e-commerce exports in foreign trade exports has increased from less than 1% in 2015 to 4.6% at the end of the first quarter of 2022.
From a market perspective, my country's exports to traditional markets such as the United States and Australia continued to maintain rapid growth.
Data under the customs supervision code shows that in the first quarter of 2022, my country's exports to the United States and Australia increased by 97.9% and 1.4 times, respectively.
At the same time, emerging markets are developing rapidly, and cross-border e-commerce exports to ASEAN countries and countries along the “Belt and Road” have increased by 98.5% and 92.7% respectively.
From the perspective of commodities, the types of export commodities are more abundant, and they are gradually upgrading from labor-intensive products such as clothing and accessories to technology-intensive products such as 3C digital and smart homes, and the added value of products has increased significantly.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce, in the first quarter of this year, cross-border e-commerce exports such as semiconductors and integrated circuits increased by 95.4% and 1.8 times respectively.
"Cross-border e-commerce has expanded the development space of foreign trade, opened up markets that cannot be reached under the general trade form, and formed a new growth point of foreign trade. Through policy innovation, some commodities that are difficult to 'go abroad' can go abroad conveniently and efficiently." Zhang Guanbin, deputy director of the Department of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Commerce, said recently.
Experiencing "Growing Pains"
"Cross-border e-commerce is now widely welcomed by consumers from all over the world, and it is in the window of innovation and development. However, it should also be noted that with the changes in the epidemic prevention and control situation in various countries, the rapid growth of new business formats such as cross-border e-commerce is driven. Factors are also changing." Recently, Li Xingqian, director of the Department of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Commerce, reminded.
The low brand value has become a prominent shortcoming recognized in the industry.
A recent report released by Yiou Think Tank shows that many domestic cross-border e-commerce enterprises have begun to take shape, benefiting from the continuous policy support of the country and the continuous improvement of the level of digitalization, but the low brand value and pressure on profits are becoming constraints for some enterprises. obstacles to further development.
According to the report, Chinese cross-border e-commerce brands tend to focus more on product-level effect marketing, while ignoring "meaningful" spiritual-level marketing, such as environmental protection concepts and health concepts, making it difficult to establish emotional connections with overseas consumers.
"How to establish the core competitiveness of products and brands is a problem that the platform is particularly concerned about." Feng Jianfeng said, "We found that there are many good specialty products in some places, such as potatoes from Kaizhou, which are of excellent quality, but when companies sell to the market, they will Often the focus is on price, not how good potatoes are. We are considering starting from quality standards, helping guide companies to tell the story of their products and brands, and helping local industries with financial empowerment at the back end Build up barriers, that is, the core competitiveness of products and brands. In this way, even if the market environment changes in the future, these featured products can rely on their own established brand influence to achieve sustainable development.”
Supply chain pressure and rising logistics costs are also "pain points" faced by many companies.
The global spread of the new crown pneumonia epidemic has affected both sea, land and air transportation, supply and demand are tight, and freight rates are rising.
According to a report by Huachuang Securities, freight rates from Asia to North America and Europe in 2021 will more than triple from the beginning of the year, and will peak in mid-2021.
The Baltic Dry Index has remained high despite a drop in freight rates since the end of 2021.
"The pressure of shipping and the repeated tariffs have caused China's cross-border e-commerce to face a 'double kill'." said Qin Yichao, an analyst in the home appliance industry of Huachuang Securities.
As the business becomes wider and larger, the problem of "difficulty in returning goods" has caused many cross-border e-commerce export enterprises to face difficulties.
Due to the inconvenience and high cost of returning goods, some companies have to deal with returned goods in the form of discounts and promotions or even "refund without return".
During the interview, a number of companies expressed their desire to introduce a cross-border e-commerce export return policy as soon as possible.
In addition, cross-border settlement is also an inevitable topic for the development of cross-border e-commerce enterprises.
Yu Weiqing, deputy general manager of Qiuyuan International Group (Khorgos) Co., Ltd., told the China Securities Journal that due to different cross-border settlement methods and currencies in different countries, the current platform for cross-border settlement of foreign exchange purchases and settlements has not yet been facilitated.
It is hoped that the global e-commerce infrastructure layout such as payment and data will be improved, and the industrial chain and supply chain policies related to cross-border settlement will be introduced.
Efforts to solve the problem of "blocking pain and difficulty"
The Ministry of Commerce recently made it clear that it will focus on industry pain points and solve common problems in the development of cross-border e-commerce.
In response to the problem of "difficulty in returning goods", Li Xingqian said that the Ministry of Commerce will start with improving support policies and introduce policies and measures to facilitate the return and exchange of cross-border e-commerce exports as soon as possible.
In response to the issue of improving brand competitiveness, Zhang Guanbin said that this year, the Ministry of Commerce will continue to carry out special actions such as cross-border e-commerce "ten million", rules and standards building, brand cultivation and high-quality development of overseas warehouses, focusing on cultivating and building a A batch of enterprises, a batch of brands and a batch of standards.
In response to the problems of supply chain and logistics and transportation, experts said that overseas warehouses, as a new type of foreign trade infrastructure, have increasingly become a service complex integrating warehousing, logistics, customs clearance, return and exchange, processing and maintenance, packaging, distribution, and financial insurance.
It is recommended to speed up the layout of overseas warehouses, improve the global service network, make up for the shortcomings of cross-border logistics such as cargo aviation, and strengthen rapid response capabilities and emergency support capabilities.
According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, my country's overseas warehouse area has exceeded 16 million square meters, 90% of which are located in North America, Europe and Asia.
To speed up the layout of overseas warehouses, on the one hand, based on its own advantages, it can actively expand after-sales maintenance services and improve after-sales support capabilities for export products.
For example, Beijing Cyberport E-Commerce Co., Ltd. realizes the secondary sale of some products by providing after-sales maintenance services, reducing losses to sellers due to returns.
According to statistics, the proportion of secondary saleable products after maintenance reaches 72%.
Among them, 44% can be sold as new products, and 28% can be sold as open-box products.
"The perfect after-sales guarantee measures not only improve the online shopping experience of overseas consumers, but also establish a good brand image for Chinese enterprises and products." Liang Ming, director of the Foreign Trade Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce Research Institute, said.
On the other hand, by stocking goods in advance to overseas warehouses, enterprises can effectively avoid sudden risks such as transportation interruption, and greatly shorten the logistics distribution cycle, which can also reduce the logistics cost of enterprises.
In response to the issue of cross-border settlement, the "14th Five-Year Plan for E-commerce Development" jointly issued by the Ministry of Commerce and other departments in October last year proposed to support the use of RMB for settlement in new trade formats such as cross-border e-commerce.
The "Notice on Supporting Cross-border Renminbi Settlement in New Formats of Foreign Trade" recently issued by the People's Bank of China proposes to improve policies related to cross-border renminbi business in new forms of foreign trade such as cross-border e-commerce; Expanded to current items, etc.
The People's Bank of China stated that it will provide good supporting financial services for market players of new forms of foreign trade, support and guide the healthy and sustainable innovation and development of new forms and models of foreign trade, and help stabilize the macroeconomic market.
"The e-commerce platform is an important support for promoting the development of cross-border e-commerce. It is an efficient and convenient way for traditional manufacturing enterprises to realize their brands overseas, and it is also an important support for small, medium and micro enterprises to open up the international market." Lv, deputy director of the Foreign Economic Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council Gang suggested that efforts should be made to improve the capabilities and levels of my country's cross-border e-commerce platform enterprises, and to solve the prominent problems faced by their development in a targeted manner.
For example, scientifically define the platform's regulatory responsibility for merchants, realize the platform's data sharing with regulatory authorities in terms of customer credit, customs declaration, export tax rebates, foreign exchange settlement, etc., and better encourage cross-border e-commerce platform companies to participate in international competition.
(Ni Mingya)