"Shipped on the first day of the new year; Delivery on the second day of the first month; Shipped on the third day of the new year. You go on vacation, give me all the traffic! ”
In the first week of the Year of the Dragon, many AliExpress merchants posted their spring orders, some people shipped goods every day during the Spring Festival, some people stocked 10,000 pieces in the end, and some people were ready to open another warehouse for AliExpress.
Figure: After the Spring Festival, AliExpress merchants have posted screenshots of explosive orders, some people secretly deliver goods, and some people make a fortune in a muffled voice.
The recently released Q3 results of AliExpress's 2024 fiscal year show that AliExpress orders increased by 60% this quarter, and Ali's international e-commerce revenue increased by 44%, exceeding market expectations for 6 consecutive quarters!
Many people have noticed: Choice orders composed of full custody and semi-custody have accounted for half of AliExpress's total order volume, and after four months of trial operation, AliExpress's semi-managed model has begun to drive significant business growth.
Ali International responded:Choice is the first priority to drive growth, and there will be a large-scale investment in choice for the next period of time.
Since 2023, the model innovation of the cross-border e-commerce industry has never stopped, and in the past year, the "Four Tigers Going to Sea" represented by AliExpress, Temu, Shein, and TikTok have developed rapidly through full custody, and many people in the industry are also paying attention: After full custody, what will be the next industry "tipping point"?
At the beginning of 2024, many people have gradually seen the answer to the industry trend:Semi-managed
This year's AliExpress platform's "Spring Festival does not close" promotion is the first small test of semi-hosting.
On the eve of the Spring Festival, AliExpress issued a number of announcements in a row, and real gold ** subsidized semi-managed Spring Festival orders, including on-time delivery subsidies, early loans for warehouse preparation, free warehouse rent operation fees, etc., which prepared enough ammunition for the outbreak during the Spring Festival. Some sellers analyzed the competitive situation of cross-border e-commerce this year and decided to actively stock up during the Chinese New Year to achieve corner overtaking.
AliExpress merchant Ge Jinzhong recalled the details of joining semi-custody last year, and AliExpress's junior two warmly invited us at that time, telling us that the platform would help cross-border merchants upgrade their logistics services in a more flexible way.
Figure: Since last year, AliExpress has been semi-managed by the Merchants Association, and there are often so many sellers on site that they can't sit down.
Thinking that many sellers are concerned about the speed of logistics, the logistics upgrade attracted Ge Jinzhong, and soon after joining, he found that semi-custody may be the future.
Semi-managed orders come very quickly! Within a week, we saw results, Mr. Ge said.
On the eve of the Spring Festival, in the face of the increase brought by semi-custody nearly twice as much, after analyzing the situation, Ge Jinzhong began to focus on the large-scale investment cost of semi-custody and decided to give priority to the allocation of inventory to AliExpress during the Spring Festival.
In order to cooperate with the new delivery model of semi-escrow, he asked the team to add a new 500-square-meter warehouse dedicated to AliExpress goods, on the other hand, Ge Jinzhong also actively prepared for warehouse delivery with the team, and received a large number of Spring Festival orders through active preparations.
Figure: Before the Spring Festival this year, Ge Jinzhong specially opened a warehouse for AliExpress semi-custody to increase the amount of stocking.
During the Spring Festival, there are also some sellers who have encountered the "sweet burden" of semi-custodianship.
I didn't expect to prepare more than 10,000 pieces and sell them out quickly! Xiao Xia, a post-95 seller from Fujian, complained.
Xiao Xia is a household department store merchant on AliExpress, and he trusts the platform trends and Xiao Er's suggestions very much, in order to help the growth of new stores, as early as last year, Xiao Xia became the first batch of people who "eat crabs" on semi-managed books.
During the Spring Festival this year, Xiao Xia and the team also began to stock up early, but even so, they still underestimated the outbreak of semi-hosting, "We prepared more than 10,000 goods for the Spring Festival, and all of them were sold out. ”
The development of full custody in 2023 has created a group of sellers who have tasted dividends, and many sellers who did not join at that time, seeing the development of their peers, hope to find a business model suitable for their own enterprises.
Yan Guanghui, who joined AliExpress in 16 years, is such an AliExpress seller, and in 2023, the full custody will be on fire, and the mechanical tools operated by Yan Guanghui have missed a wave of traffic dividends brought by full custody because of some personalized requirements for consumers.
So in 2024, when he heard that AliExpress would launch a semi-hosting that was more in line with his business model, Yan Guanghui decisively chose to join.
Yan Guanghui analyzed: "This year, my idea was to join quickly, because I hesitated when I was asked to join before. There are really a lot of merchants who have seized the tuyere of full support, and I don't want to miss this semi-hosting. ”
Sellers with the same idea also have Chen Mingshun, co-founder of Tentacle Technology, as the first batch of merchants who joined during the trial run of AliExpress's semi-custody, after hearing that the platform pushed the semi-custody model in September last year, Chen Mingshun arranged for the company to join on the same day, and after the permission was opened, it really did "order on the shelf".
At that time, I directly called the ** to the director of operations and said that the goods would be all in semi-custody immediately! Our products are not cheap, and we sold 400 orders on the first day they hit the shelves! In the view of Chen Mingshun of Tentacle Technology, the new model of any e-commerce platform has a window period of several months to be known by the outside world, and this opportunity is for merchants who act quickly, the faster they act, the faster the order will come.
In addition to sellers, major cross-border e-commerce platforms are also actively voting for semi-custodial.
After four months of trial operation, AliExpress has fully launched a semi-managed service. Subsequently, Ali International Station also launched a cross-border B2B semi-custody model, and the national investment promotion conference has been opened to the fifth session so far, and the venue is full. Since then, Temu, a cross-border e-commerce platform under Pinduoduo, has also been revealed to be preparing for semi-custody and is scheduled to be launched in March.
At the beginning of 2024, the entire cross-border e-commerce industry will form a situation of "semi-managed three kingdoms".
Source: Interface News.
At present, judging from the comparison chart, AliExpress's "semi-hosting" is to expand logistics services to POP merchants, allowing sellers to set prices and sell independently, and the platform is to provide logistics warehousing and marketing activities to enhance the competitiveness of merchants' own services.
Ali International Station is the first semi-managed in the cross-border B2B field, which is suitable for B2B sellers, factories and domestic trade merchants who want to go to sea with spot capabilities.
Temu is open to cross-border sellers who have their own overseas warehouses and logistics partners and can complete the delivery and fulfillment by themselves.
At present, it can be seen that AliExpress and temu's upcoming semi-hosting are speeding up in terms of "logistics", AliExpress seller Yan Guanghui believes that this is always a big pain point for traditional cross-border merchants, but specific to each merchant, which semi-custody to choose depends on their own conditions.
AliExpress, which took the lead in launching semi-custodial, has begun to press the "accelerator button" for semi-custodianship.
At the financial report analyst meeting, Ali International said: AliExpress choice (full custody and semi-custody model) business is in the early stage, and it needs to be large-scale, and then pursue the convergence of long-term losses. The next period of time will be a period of large-scale investment by Ali International. "The choice business, in particular, will be the number one priority for growth. ”
The situation is gradually becoming clear, and many people in the industry believe that with the launch of the semi-managed model, some businesses can no longer participate in the competition only through a single way of the first war, but can win the market with their own product or service advantages.
Some sellers bluntly said to Hugo Cross-border: "In recent years, the 'volume' is the reality of the industry, and we accept it;."But we want to use our own advantages to 'roll', and for us, this year AliExpress semi-hosting is a brand new opportunity. ”