The escrow wind is still blowing towards traditional cross-border sellers
In 2023, the "fully managed" model has become the hottest topic in the cross-border e-commerce industry.
The Four Tigers (SHEIN, Temu, Aliexpress, and TikTok Shop) have successively launched their own full custody models, backed by strong support from the ** chain, leading industry innovation.
For industry and trade manufacturers, although their profits are not high, they are better than the simple process and can win by quantity, which is one of the shortcuts to go to sea.
However, with the continuous implementation of full custody, the shortcomings behind it have gradually been exposed - low logistics timeliness, unreasonable platform nuclear prices, lack of autonomy of sellers, and incompatibility with some categories.
At the beginning of 2024, the three platforms have launched "semi-custodian" respectively, providing traditional cross-border sellers with a new choice in the "escrow" era.
AliExpress, aliexpres
AliExpress has launched a semi-managed trial run on a small scale in August last year, upgrading the logistics of POP sellers to the platform to be responsible for achieving faster fulfillment timeliness, and the first batch of internal test sellers has achieved significant growth in just a few months.
In the first week of 24 years, AliExpress fully launched semi-custodianship, from a targeted invitation to all sellers can apply, and a series of subsidy benefits are provided:
It's not hard to see,The core of AliExpress's semi-managed service is to help merchants manage the "logistics fulfillment" link to improve the timeliness and certainty of fulfillmentAt the same time, it retains the unique goods and operational advantages of self-operators, which is more suitable for merchants with product research and development capabilities, brand operation needs, or non-standard categories (such as clothing, auto parts, etc.).
Cainiao, as a logistics supporter of AliExpress, has given it a lot of confidence, they claimed: "According to estimates, at the same cost, by upgrading surface mail to standard and priority express products, the cross-border logistics speed of merchants will increase by about 9 days on average." ”
Under the superposition of many favorable factors, AliExpress has won the favor of a large number of sellers. Since the launch of semi-custodianship, a large number of cross-border merchants have doubled their stocking. Some merchants said that at present, semi-managed accounts for 80% of orders.
The data shows that in the past month, the number of inquiries about semi-custody has increased five-fold month-on-month.
Ali International Station
In addition to AliExpress, Ali's earliest business, Ali International Station, has also launched a semi-managed business.
The difference is that the customer base of the international station is more of the B-end overseas retailers and large buyers, while AliExpress focuses on the 2C-end.
Merchants only need to be responsible for sending products, pricing, sales, and booking delivery, and the rest of the orders are in the second half of the process, which means that complex links such as logistics, capital, and after-sales can be hosted to the platform. Merchants can join as long as they have the ability to make stock.
temu
It is reported that after AliExpress and Ali International Station, Temu will also launch a "semi-managed" model, which is expected to be launched in the United States on March 15 and further expanded to European sites at the end of the month.
Different from temu's own full-custody model, the semi-managed mode is delivered and fulfilled by the merchant itself, without sending samples and reviewing versions, and the merchant has a certain pricing power for the product, but it cannot exceed Amazon.
Compared with AliExpress and Ali International Station,This "half" of temu "semi-hosted" is clearly different:
In the extremely important process of logistics fulfillment services, Temu chooses to leave it to sellers to handle by themselves, which is also to attract Amazon and independent station sellers who have warehousing and last-mile delivery capabilities overseas - they can use Temu as an important channel for handling inventory through this model.
For temu, most of the seller's goods in overseas warehouses belong to long-term standard products, with relatively higher value, and some large items are categories that are missing on temu, which can well optimize the existing category structure.
Another reason, actually, is becauseIn terms of logistics fulfillment, Temu has been criticized
Although Temu's platform traffic is very high, the user's transaction rate is still far from Amazon's, and the problem is that Temu's first journey and shipping are still subject to third-party service providers, and Temu, which is expanding rapidly, does not seem to have enough energy to make up for this shortcoming. At this stage, temu's logistics time is still about 7 to 15 days, and Amazon can achieve next-day delivery in many places.
At this time, it is also a very smart decision to hand over the right of logistics fulfillment to the seller. Some excellent overseas warehouse service providers now have a lower ** than Amazon logistics, and a very good delivery time.