Every year at the end of November, just after Thanksgiving, the traditional western festival, the annual "Black Friday" comes.
This shopping festival, known as the "Double 11" overseas, is a carnival for many consumers at home and abroad to "buy, buy, buy".
In the past few years, many consumers have discovered that more and more Chinese products are found during the "Black Five" period, and some Chinese brands have even gained a group of overseas fans on the "top list" e-commerce platform.
Behind the "Black Friday" gold rush by Chinese sellers is a vivid portrayal of foreign trade companies' continuous "going out" and taking root.
During the "Black Five" period this year, our reporter interviewed three foreign trade companies and listened to their stories about the "going overseas" of Chinese brands.
Tianke Intelligent Technology——
"Consumers' cognition of products in different countries determines our promotion strategy"
Not long after the domestic "Double 11" ended, Timke ushered in an overseas shopping festival.
Leng Ling, CEO of Timke Intelligent Technology, said: "This year is the fifth time we have participated in 'Black Friday'. Since it started earlier, the sales volume of the entire 'Black Friday' cycle has accounted for 17% of the whole year."
At the end of 2018, the Timco brand participated in the "Black Friday" promotion of Amazon in North America for the first time.
It was also that year that Timco began to deploy overseas markets.
This company, headquartered in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, mainly sells smart living appliances, and has a relatively mature level of research and development since its birth.
Different from some brands that win by price, when entering the overseas market, Timke aimed at the mid-to-high-end positioning.
However, the competing products that Timco faces are some old brands from western countries, and some companies have a history of hundreds of years.
This young brand will sell relatively expensive products as soon as it enters the market. Can consumers pay for it?
"In fact, when we participated in 'Black Friday' in the first year, we had a very good response to a vacuum cleaner, and it is still a bestseller in Wal-Mart." Research".
It turned out that Tim Ke focused on online channels at the beginning of its overseas expansion, and opened Amazon stores in the United States, Germany, France and other places.
In order to better understand overseas consumer groups, the team adopted the most primitive "stupid method": review Amazon store reviews one by one.
As the number of users and team experience continue to accumulate, the scope of Tianke's research has expanded from users' evaluation of the product's own functions to understanding of users: how many people are in the family, how often they clean their homes, whether they have pets, etc.
"Consumer demands and home living environments in different countries are different, and we will not simply push the same product to all markets." Leng Ling said, "For example, we found that consumers in southern Europe mainly use hard floors in their homes. Carpets are rarely used. In areas with low temperatures, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, they usually like to spread carpets in large areas. For the latter, we have specially developed a carpet cleaning machine, which can intelligently judge the carpets in consumers’ homes It will automatically adjust to the most suitable suction power and water output to ensure the cleaning effect."
Not only are there differences in the products launched by countries and regions, but even for the same product, according to the differences in culture and consumption habits in different regions, Timco's promotion strategies will also have different emphases.
In Germany, there will be different candies in Timco’s advertisements on Halloween than those in the United States; in France, the details of an advertisement for a washing machine seen by local consumers are also different from those in the United States. Wireless" description.
Brand intentions in exchange for consumer recognition.
During the "Black Friday" period in 2020, foreign offline stores were affected by the epidemic and were deserted, but Timke's overseas omni-channel sales exceeded 220 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 256%.
Among the washing machine categories on the Amazon platforms in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan, the sales volume of Timco's "Fuwan" series ranked first.
During last year's "Black Friday" and "Cyber One" and other mainstream shopping festivals, Timco also ranked first in the category of scrubbers in Germany and the United States.
On January 1 this year, the "Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement" (RCEP) came into effect. Preferential policies such as "zero tariffs" have given Chinese companies a greater cost advantage in importing and exporting goods.
Leng Ling said that this year Timco has opened two new brand flagship stores in Indonesia, one of the RCEP member countries.
They look forward to continuing to use "smart technology to create a dream life".
Orolay (Ou Ronglai)——
"5-day promotion, we are on the home page of the event every day"
During the "Black Five" period this year, Qiu Jiawei, the founder of the Ouronglai brand, decided to extend the event time from 1 day in previous years to 5 days.
He said: "The 5-day promotion, we are on the homepage of the event on the Amazon platform every day."
Qiu Jiawei is from Jiaxing, Zhejiang.
His hometown of Jiaxing, located between Shanghai and Hangzhou, is famous for its clothing industry: Haining has leather, Tongxiang has woolen sweaters, and Pinghu mainly produces down jackets.
Backed by the mature and complete down jacket industry chain in Pinghu, Qiu Jiawei founded Jiaxing Zichi Trading Co., Ltd., and Ouronglai is its down jacket brand.
As early as 2013, Ouronglai entered the Amazon platform, which is one of the first batch of cross-border e-commerce brands in China.
The explosion of the product is related to a report in New York magazine in 2018.
At that time, a fashion editor found that many people in the Upper East Side of New York were wearing this down jacket brand from China, so he published an article entitled "Improbable Story: This Down Jacket, which sold for $140 on Amazon, won the price of $140." Upper East Side article.
Since then, Ou Ronglai has quickly become popular in the local area.
In a sales event in 2019, the classic 092 down jacket once rushed to the top of the clothing category on the Amazon platform.
From the appearance point of view, this 092 down jacket is mid-length and has several pockets.
But even if the pockets are full of things, the clothes will not look bloated due to the shrinkage of down. This kind of design ingenuity allows most European and American consumers with large body shapes to fit well.
Moreover, compared with international brands that cost thousands of dollars, its price is only around $150.
Behind the precise portrait of consumers is the team's in-depth research time after time.
Qiu Jiawei and his team have flown to New York and other places many times. They would find a coffee shop on the street, observe the brands and styles of down jackets worn by passers-by, and record them with the word "positive" in their notebooks.
Knowing what brands the locals like to wear, you can get a general idea of the consumption level of the target users.
As a Chinese company, the reason why Ou Ronglai can gain a firm foothold in New York, the fashion capital, is attributed to several reasons by Qiu Jiawei: On the one hand, the clothing industry in China is still a labor-intensive industry, and the labor and office costs are relatively low .
In addition, enterprises can enjoy related policies such as export tax rebates, which reduces related costs and allows more profits to be passed on to consumers.
On the other hand, although Ouronglai's products are cheap, the team's quality requirements are not low, and the production standard is even higher than that of first- and second-tier overseas brands, realizing "affordable luxury".
"More importantly, we have identified the positioning of the product and created a 'down jacket for shuttling in the city' with outdoor performance, fashion sense and warmth. Naturally, the acceptance of overseas consumers will be higher." Qiu Jiawei said.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, due to concerns about the backlog of inventory, Ouronglai has been more cautious in stocking up, but it is still difficult to avoid "crash" of domestic and foreign orders, and there is a gap in production capacity.
In order to ensure supply, Qiu Jiawei's team decided to build their own supply chain.
After some inspections, Ouronglai finally completed a down jacket factory in Shandong.
In New Jersey and other places, Ou Ronglai has also built its own overseas warehouses to respond to overseas market needs more quickly.
Qiu Jiawei said that more and more Chinese brands have "goed out" in recent years, and it is obvious that the market competition has become more intense.
But he also believes that competition in the industry can inspire more outstanding companies to survive and grow.
Shadowstone Insta360——
"On the first day I decided to make smart hardware, I made up my mind to go global"
"Black Friday" is an important discount season of the year.
However, this year's Insta360's "playstyle" is a bit special: the new flagship camera X3 is not discounted.
"We have enough confidence in our products, so we took this somewhat risky measure this year. As a result, this camera is still a 'popular' seller, ranking first in overseas official shopping malls. This shows that users recognize our brand and flagship products Knowledge has improved." Qiao An, director of e-commerce at Insta360, said.
In the eyes of many consumers who love outdoor sports, the name Shadowstone Insta360 is no stranger.
This smart imaging brand based on panoramic technology has a share of 41% in the global panoramic camera market last year, ranking first in the industry; in the field of sports cameras, it has broken the monopoly of European, American and Japanese brands, and its market share Ranked second in the world.
What many people don't know is that this brand, which is loved by many consumers at home and abroad, was born from an entrepreneurial team born in the 1990s.
In 2015, when the domestic VR (virtual reality) industry started, Liu Jingkang, who graduated from university for more than a year, set his sights on the field of VR panoramic cameras.
In the same year, he and his team founded Insta360 in Shenzhen, focusing on smart imaging equipment and other related products.
"On the first day we decided to make smart hardware, we made up our minds to go global and become a world-class smart imaging brand, so we have already begun to deploy overseas markets in the early days of our establishment." Liu Jingkang said.
In foreign countries, there are many "enthusiasts" of extreme sports such as skiing, skydiving, and surfing, which has created demand for technical products such as sports cameras and panoramic cameras.
Long before Shadowstone entered the market, brands such as GoPro and Ricoh had become popular overseas.
How to get a share in the fierce market competition?
It is extremely critical to do a good job in the "going to sea" strategy.
In order to eliminate the differences in consumption habits and consumer markets at home and abroad, Shadowstone has established overseas offices since its inception, and the team is mostly locals or Chinese with experience in studying abroad.
In order to do a good job in marketing, the brand is also very active on overseas mainstream social platforms, and the official account often shares sports videos shot by consumers using the brand's cameras.
On Instagram, the "Insta360" official account has accumulated more than 1.2 million fans.
Many overseas consumers commented that the Insta360 Insta360 panoramic camera has interesting creative effects such as the invisible selfie stick and motion time-lapse, “I really like this kind of young and creative content.”
As a technology company, the most important thing for a brand is technological innovation.
In the past, panoramic shooting was mostly to stitch photos together, mainly for 2D imaging.
The Shadowstone Insta360 innovatively uses the panoramic stereo stitching algorithm to precisely calculate and synthesize the fisheye video captured by multiple lenses into a 3D stereo panoramic image to enhance the user's sense of immersion and experience.
This pioneering panoramic technology once attracted a technical cooperation invitation from Japanese panoramic camera manufacturer Ricoh.
"Although affected by the epidemic in recent years, the company as a whole has maintained growth against the trend, mainly because we have always regarded technological innovation as our core competitiveness." Liu Jingkang said, "We attach great importance to the research and development of panoramic technology and intelligent imaging equipment. Investment. In the past three years, the average annual R&D expenditure has exceeded 100 million yuan, and R&D personnel account for nearly half of the company.”
Last year, Shadowstone Insta360 was rated as a national-level specialized and new "Little Giant" enterprise.
As a high-tech enterprise, the company's product exports can enjoy a series of preferential tax policies. This year, it has enjoyed corporate income tax and value-added tax rebates exceeding 10 million yuan.
Today, the products of Insta360 have covered more than 200 countries and regions around the world.
And Liu Jingkang's team is still trying to innovate in technology. He said: "We hope that our product technology can meet the needs of more people to share images in real time and connect with each other."
Our reporter Liao Ruiling (Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition)