Chao News reporter Zhu Mei.
In the recent hit "Flowers", a pair of pearl earrings purchased by Linghong fell into a storm because of the false price of 26,000 yuan, which caused Miss Wang at No. 27 on the Bund to fall into a storm.
In the follow-up plot, it was written in the purchase list that the original price of pearl earrings was 200 yuan.
If it were left in modern times, the rhombus earrings would probably have been purchased from 1688.
As one of Alibaba's oldest businesses, 1688 used to be separated from consumers by a layer of procurement and wholesale business. In recent years, there have been more and more stores on the platform that support "one piece mixed batch", and a large number of young people have poured in.
In China, the supply of 1688 supports the sales and purchase of emerging channels such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin, while in overseas markets, many cross-border overseas platforms also use 1688 as the benchmark for factory supply prices.
Now, the former "e-commerce wholesale platform" has decided to end up in person.
01 Let the flat wind blow overseas.
Buy a pair of pants, which e-commerce app to open?
Many young people choose 1688.
Miss Wu found out one day that the pants with a price of more than 120 yuan on the C-class e-commerce platform, the same product picture, 1688 retail price 348 yuan, if it is greater than 200, ** is 29$9.
Soon, Miss Wu, who received the goods, helped her relatives and friends at home to purchase a few pairs of clothes and pants in this store.
It's not that the brand can't afford it, but the white label replacement is more cost-effective", in 2023, the popularity of 1688 has made it synonymous with "the choice of replacement", and it also reflects the trend of change: the fragmentation of business and orders is not only a change in the demand side, but also requires the source factory to make changes for this.
Screenshot of Xiaohongshu.
Judging from the platform buyer data, the fastest-growing groups are small B and big C.
Xiao B may be a seller, an anchor and talent of Douyin and Kuaishou, and sometimes an "unprofessional" buyer, such as a mother, a college student entrepreneur, or a "group leader" in the community, and a white-collar worker who does a part-time side job.
Big C is a bit of a consumer like Miss Wu, who buys alone, driving the purchasing demand of a dormitory, a class group or the whole family.
It's very unwise for you to still pick customers today. "1688 related people said that many big Cs are small Bs. During the day, she purchases for the company, and at night, she may have needs for her own use and household purchases. "It turns out that everyone likes to use the business of small and medium-sized enterprises as a supplement, and large customers as the main force, and today it should be done the other way around. ”
* At both ends, the shape of business is changing. In Yiwu, a massager factory used to mainly do export ODM orders, and the 4 production lines were all customized.
But since last year, the boss has noticed that more and more small cross-border buyers have come to consult, take out half of the production line for light customization, and take out 2 production lines for small batch orders. Over the course of a year, the factory's sales increased by 20 percent and profits increased by 30 percent.
The trend of substitution consumption is accelerating to the procurement side and the production side. Before the Apple 15 mobile phone came out, there were a group of Shenzhen merchants squatting there, and as soon as the model was unveiled, the factory immediately received a data adapter purchase order from Japan and other countries.
Some of the downstream platforms (app screenshots) displayed on the 1688 carefully selected page
For 1688, cross-border business didn't just start today. With the development of Amazon's marketplace business, third-party sellers have accelerated the influx of stores, and since 2014, there have been many B sellers who have taken goods through 1688. Now, it is the era of platforms going to sea.
At present, about a quarter of the overall sales of the 1688 platform come from cross-border business.
But in the past, to select goods and find factories in 1688, you needed to recruit Chinese to collect on your behalf, or set up an office in China. Now, 1688 has come to the front of the stage to create a cross-border source search, to break through the blockages, and to open up this business to do.
For merchants, it must be done together by new customers and old customers, inside and outside the station, and at home and abroad - inside 1688, so as to depict the blueprint for future business growth.
At present, 1688 cross-border has been opened to merchants. According to relevant sources in 1688, corresponding persons in charge have been set up to connect with different regional markets, and there are quantitative indicators for deepening cooperation in the market and verifying strategies.
Externally, 1688 emphasizes more on "being integrated". That is to say, it will not directly serve C-class buyers overseas, but provide a more competitive and attractive digital ** chain for ecological service providers, and all overseas platforms with traffic can integrate this part of their capabilities and import 1688 pallets through the interface.
02 From the volume to the ratio chain.
1688 made cross-border, based on two important changes.
First, growth and metabolism. In mid-December last year, the number of 1688 merchants exceeded 1 million, of which 600,000 were source factories, both of which were record highs.
In the base of 1 million, there is also a part of the new supply that has been upgraded and replaced. Some of them are the second generation of the factory, and some of them have been making cross-border orders for a long time.
Second, 1688 is among the "Four Little Dragons" of Alibaba's strategic innovation business. In November last year, at the quarterly financial report analyst meeting, Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba Group, announced the first batch of Alibaba's strategic-level innovative businesses - 1688, Xianyu, DingTalk, and Quark. Alibaba will continue to invest in these businesses on a 3-5 year cycle.
The selection criteria for innovative businesses also represent the commonality of the "Four Little Tigers": it has a large enough market space, has a unique market positioning, and is in line with the trend of user needs and the group's "AI-driven" strategy.
Source: Tongyi Wanxiang AI generation.
From an external point of view, the fragmentation of purchase orders and the shortening of the cycle of explosive products put forward higher requirements for the elasticity and circulation efficiency of the first chain.
These factors are the motives and timing of 1688's bet on cross-border business at this time.
From the perspective of customer groups, the buyer group of 1688 is mainly from first- and second-tier cities, with the largest number of people in the age group of 25-35 years old, serving the new middle class and Generation Z.
Consumers want to buy goods with texture, but they need to be relatively cheap. This consumer mindset has also been seen in Japan and proven commercially, such as Uniqlo and Muji.
The supply of 1688 has "stepped on" the needs of young people, allowing the platform to seize the rhythm on both the demand side and the supply side. Overseas demand for Chinese manufacturing, especially for flat supply, is still very large.
From the perspective of the whole **, the source factory is undoubtedly the biggest advantage of 1688 in person. The annual sales of 120 million to 120 million to one or two hundred million scale of industrial belt factories are the core supply of 1688 at present.
However, an obvious problem is that cross-border overseas platforms, including temu and shein, have occupied a place in some of the target markets of 1688 cross-border.
The border warehouses and origin warehouses that 1688 intends to do have also been matured by cross-border platforms through full custody and semi-custody models.
Latecomer "1688, how is it going to get a piece of the pie?"
On the **, 1688 proposed that "it will set prices together with merchants to leave profit margins for Chinese manufacturing factories".
The first half of the sentence attracted Wu Bohang, the person in charge of Yiwu Libang Stationery. This post-00 returned to China last year and officially took over the family's business, and in the B2C channel, the company has made domestic and foreign cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Shein, TikTok, Amazon, and independent stations.
At present, the best effect is shein and tiktok, what they have in common is full hosting, we only need to stock up and launch new products, and we don't need to invest additional manpower. Wu Bohang said, but the pricing power of the two platforms is on the platform side.
For example, if the two books of 18 yuan and 12 yuan are given to the platform, they may be sold in the pricing range of 6-7 US dollars, and he himself hopes that the two products can be sold in a misplaced manner.
Different channels, opportunities are also hierarchical and three-dimensional. On Amazon, Wu Bohang takes the high-end and exquisite route, and the pricing range of the products on the shelves is 10-20 US dollars.
Different markets and different platforms must be targeted to provide products. Different from the practice of his parents looking down at factory production, he said that he is trying to follow the idea of Europe, America, Japan and South Korea, these "old customers" of foreign trade, planning the theme and consumer group of book design and production, and plans to expand the enterprise design department within the year to open up emerging markets in South America and other places.
Source: Tongyi Wanxiang AI generation.
1688 responded to reporters that there are still many opportunities in the global market with low e-commerce penetration. Made in China itself has a better quality-price ratio to go out.
Focusing on interest e-commerce and content e-commerce, the global market continues to extend new opportunities. For example, one of the eco-service providers I was going to meet with was an overseas columnist who was selling in his own column to serve the elderly in the town. 1688 said that at present, the most important thing is to do a good job in entering the global market and carrying out the infrastructure of country-specific operations.
It is reported that 1688, which has become one of the "Four Little Dragons", will invest 6 times its resources in 2024 as much as in 2022, and these investments will be mainly invested in user growth, technology and strengthening the ** chain.
*Please indicate the source".