"It's much harder than ever to push a product, and the overall difficulty is doubled." Zhang Xiaojin, who has been a business in the field of cross-border e-commerce for 2 years, told the first financial reporter about this year's cross-border e-commerce market.

Optimistic about the cross-border e-commerce trend, in 2021, Zhang Xiaojin resigned from the cross-border e-commerce company to work alone, at that time, he and his partner formed a group, carried all the company's work, and almost lived in the company. Although the company is still very young, Zhang Xiaojin was able to adapt to changes in the market based on the accumulation and understanding of the industry in his early years, and his company also achieved a small goal of revenue of 2022 million yuan in 2000.

"The goal this year is to maintain. The cross-border e-commerce industry has changed a lot, and the logic of market play has changed compared with the previous two years. For the pre-judgment of the business, Zhang Xiaojin also revealed some worries in his optimism.

As a new format and new model of foreign trade, China's cross-border e-commerce has made rapid progress in the past five years - the import and export volume has increased from 2018 trillion yuan in 1 to 2022.2 trillion yuan in 11. At present, 165 cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones have been set up across the country, becoming an important carrier and platform for cross-border e-commerce development, covering 31 provinces and municipalities.

However, cross-border e-commerce is largely "watching the sky and eating". At present, global inflation is high and major economies are showing sluggish growth, which has caused a continuous impact on global trade. The WTO recently predicted that global trade in goods would be weak in the first quarter of this year, and is expected to grow by only 1% for the full year. International trade is facing challenges, how will cross-border e-commerce practitioners respond?

"The days are not as moist as before"

Tan Jiaxing, who has been doing cross-border e-commerce for 6 years, also feels the same way, and the days are not as moist as before.

Talking about the market changes during the start-up, Tan Jiaxing said that the company's rapid growth began during the epidemic, and in 2020, lighting products related to sterilization and disinfection were popular around the world; The main lamp products, he immediately and the team developed products that meet the market demand. Soon after entering the market, the sales reached 1500 million yuan in two months, setting a record for the company's history at that time. By the end of 2020, the cumulative sales of that year were about 9000 million yuan.

Immediately afterwards, the rules of major cross-border e-commerce platforms changed, the Amazon platform was blocked in 2021, overseas epidemic response measures were relaxed, external demand was relatively weak, and market competitors quickly poured in...

The industry is in turmoil. Tan Jiaxing said that sales in 2021 and 2022 will be basically flat, about 1 million yuan. "It is very satisfying to maintain these two years, and the situation this year will not be better, and the overall revenue has been similar in recent years." He said.

According to the national cross-border e-commerce import and export data in recent years, in the past five years, China's cross-border e-commerce import and export volume has doubled. But the growth rate of the past three years shows that the pace of industry climbing has slowed down.

According to public data from the General Administration of Customs, the import and export volume of cross-border e-commerce reached 2020.1 trillion yuan in 69, a year-on-year increase of 31.1%; In 2021, the import and export volume of cross-border e-commerce reached 1.92 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 18%; In 2022, this amount will reach 2.11 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of only single digits, 9.8%.

Zhang Zhouping, director and senior analyst of the B2B and cross-border e-commerce department of the e-commerce research center of NetEconomics, said in an interview with the first financial reporter that the cross-border e-commerce market will generally maintain a steady growth trend this year, but the growth rate will not be too fast, because the performance of the consumer side in the first quarter of the overseas market, especially the European and American markets, is not particularly strong, which is still under pressure for cross-border e-commerce focusing on the European and American markets, but in view of the long-term development space of the overseas market, This year, everyone still has some confidence in the expected performance of the market.

"Overall, I believe that the foreign trade environment is definitely not optimistic, but it depends on the actual market situation of their own products, after all, the demand is still there." No matter how bad the market is, some people laugh. Tan Jiaxing said.

The rising star Zhang Xiaojin will show a multiple increase in sales in 2022. In 2021, it was still a team of two people, and by 2022, Zhang Xiaojin's company already had eight employees, and its turnover reached 2000 million yuan last year.

Zhang Xiaojin said that from the perspective of the industry environment, this year is more difficult. "But because we're still in the early stages of entrepreneurship, the goal this year is still to double."

The gameplay changes

Nevertheless, cross-border e-commerce is still an important pole driving the growth of China's foreign trade, and the growth rate is still much faster than the overall level of foreign trade imports and exports. Many insiders believe that the current development environment of cross-border e-commerce is also relatively friendly, from the construction of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone to the optimization of customs declaration procedures, although the current international trade environment is not good, but the growth momentum of such new foreign trade forms is expected to continue.

For the observation of market play, Tan Jiaxing added that many companies used to shop in a large area, but now what has done well in the market in the past two years is nothing more than brands and boutiques, and the mall type of shop mode has become a thing of the past, and the research and development of a single boutique is particularly important.

Tan Jiaxing believes that in the past, as long as there was a strong cash flow, it was possible to make money by constantly laying people and goods, even if the per capita output was not high, because the market competition was not so fierce and inclusive at that time. But since the beginning of the two years, the competition has become increasingly fierce, the international market environment is not as good as before, trade barriers have increased, and if you still "go volume" to do a lot of products, the quality cannot be guaranteed, and it is difficult to produce high-quality products. As the inclusiveness of the industry declines, the involution becomes more and more serious, and the probability of success will be much greater by concentrating on a single boutique method. In the harsh environment, you can also kill the encirclement, in the final analysis, you must still have a certain core competitiveness.

As for the reasons for the company's substantial growth in business, Zhang Xiaojin said, "The reason why we are developing so fast is because we already have our own product selection logic. In addition to doing cross-border e-commerce ourselves, we are now also starting to supply other sellers with similar models. In addition, it is also continuing to build its own supply chain, from the early stage of finding goods to the current cooperation with factories, the overall supply chain is more perfect. According to him, in more than a year, the company has more than ten stores on the cross-border e-commerce platform, and the domestic 1688 platform also has related stores.

"Many friends around me who started businesses at the same time have similar models, but the direction and methods are different. Many friends can't say that they haven't done it, they can only say that they have hardly made money in the past two years. Zhang Xiaojin told First Financial Reporter.

For how to respond to the contrarian trend, Zhang Zhouping told the first financial reporter that the current game of cross-border e-commerce is mainly to develop more to the path of refined operation and branding. To maintain profitability in the contrarian trend, one is to increase the scale of performance, and the other is to control costs and reduce expenditure. He believes that traditional brand enterprises have increased their efforts to go overseas, thereby expanding the overall market scale and development space of cross-border e-commerce. At the same time, in addition to the mainstream markets in Europe and the United States, the cross-border e-commerce market in Southeast Asia is developing rapidly, which also brings more development and imagination space to cross-border e-commerce enterprises.

Recently, policies conducive to the development of new formats and new models have also been introduced.

On March 3, at a series of themed press conferences on "The Beginning of Authoritative Departments", Sun Yuning, deputy director of the General Administration of Customs, said that at present, 20 cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zones have been set up across the country, which have become an important carrier and platform for cross-border e-commerce development, and have covered 165 provinces and municipalities. In addition, as of the end of February, the number of cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouse enterprises registered with the customs has reached 31,2.

In the next stage, on the one hand, the customs must "work hard" on strong supervision. On the other hand, it is necessary to "make real moves" in excellent services: support cross-border e-commerce enterprises to pay taxes electronically; Promote the "inspection before loading" of export LCL goods; Enhance data analysis services; Optimize the overseas warehouse declaration process; Continue to improve import and export return measures, etc.

Yu Jianhua, director of the General Administration of Customs, said that in view of the pain points and difficulties of enterprises, the Customs will also study new policy measures in terms of smoothing import and export logistics, optimizing the business environment at ports, reducing enterprise costs, and supporting the development of new business formats, such as promoting the construction of smart customs and helping enterprises make good use of RCEP and other free trade treaty tariff preferences.

Recently, the Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Customs and the State Administration of Taxation jointly issued the "Announcement on the Tax Policy of Cross-border E-commerce Export and Return Commodities". Introduce a tax policy for cross-border e-commerce export and return goods, and propose to exempt goods that meet relevant conditions from import tariffs and import value-added tax and consumption tax to reduce the cost of export return for cross-border e-commerce enterprises. (Zhang Xiaojin is a pseudonym)

(Yicai Author: Huang Qiong)