Top of the Great Era

Zhou Buqi understood what Boss Ma meant.

Although the idea of ​​cross-border e-commerce is very good, it can solve the flow of small orders for some niche commodities.But from a practical point of view, too high operating costs will make it difficult for such a business to be sustainable.

In the end, it still has to fall into the big order.

For example, there is a cross-border e-commerce platform in China that ships to the United States.

If the order is only 1 item, then you have to bear the shipping fee of 100 US dollars; if the order is 100 items, after half a month or a month of accumulation, the 100 items are sent to the United States together, and the shipping fee is still 100 US dollars , the average shipping cost per item is only $1.

Therefore, if you want to do a good job in cross-border e-commerce business, you must focus on the flow of large orders for niche products.It is necessary to look for areas that traditional trade does not pay attention to, and to discover opportunities with relatively large market demand.

It's so hard.

Who has such a unique vision?
A niche product in the country is liked by many people on the other side of the ocean with huge cultural and language differences... There must be such a product, but where can I find it like a needle in a haystack?
Talking about the understanding of e-commerce, Zhou Buqi is of course far inferior to Lao Ma.

Boss Ma looked at him with a smile, "Are you so interested in cross-border e-commerce?"

Zhou Buqi said: "A friend of mine might want to do it."

Boss Ma said: "This is not easy. I suggest that it is better to wait and see the situation of this industry. If you make a move too hastily, it is easy to suffer big losses. It is best to wait for others to do it, and then learn from them. mode."

"Worry," Zhou Buqi shook his head, "Besides, why do you have to imitate others? How good is it to find your own way and let others imitate you?"

Boss Ma was slightly taken aback, "Who is this friend of yours? Isn't it a joke?"

Zhou Buqi said: "I don't want to be the big boss of a listed company with a market value of more than 100 billion Hong Kong dollars. I want to jump out and do something big. Do you think it can be a small thing? Doing e-commerce, there must be no chance in China. Now, Taobao and JD.com are all giants, anyway, I have no heart at all. Going abroad, Amazon can’t do anything. After much deliberation, there may be some opportunities in the field of cross-border e-commerce.”

Boss Ma's reaction was extremely fast, and he basically locked on Yuanwei Group, as well as the glamorous and amazing president Shi who is quite well-known in the industry, and said with a smile: "If you don't want to follow the trend, you want to guide this field of cross-border e-commerce... It’s not impossible. We have also discussed it internally.”

"Oh? How?"

"There are mainly two ways of thinking. The first is what I told you, large orders for niche products. For example, I know that domestic cross-border e-commerce exports are very popular product types, thermos cups."

"A thermos?"

Zhou Buqi was very curious.

Boss Ma said with a smile: "Insulation cups are quite common in China, because there is a tradition of drinking hot water in China, especially some girls. But abroad, they generally drink natural water and ice water. Especially ice water, go to In the United States, whether you drink water, drink coffee, people will ask you whether to add ice or not."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "Yes."

Boss Ma said: "Because you don't drink hot water, thermos cups hardly exist in the United States. But don't forget that the insulation function of thermos cups is not only to ensure heat, but also to ensure coldness. Put hot water in the thermos cup, It doesn’t need to be cold; put cold water in the thermos, it doesn’t need to be hot.”

Zhou Buqi just laughed, "This entry point is quite ingenious! You really have to do this when selecting products for cross-border e-commerce!"

Boss Ma went on to say: "There is also environmentalism. Both Europe and the United States are advocating the use of reusable water cups. There will be a market for thermos cups that can guarantee the temperature of cold water. Such products have become popular."

Zhou Buqi said: "It's not so easy to find such small business opportunities."

Boss Ma said: "Yes, this is the biggest difficulty of cross-border e-commerce. How can we find a product from our country and ensure that it can be shipped to other countries in large quantities. Other countries have not yet."

Zhou Buqi asked, "Have you figured out a way?"

Boss Ma smiled and said, "I don't know, but someone suggested an idea and said it's pretty good."

"What idea?"

"On-campus group buying."

"What?"

Zhou Buqi was immediately amused.

Boss Ma said: "Since last year, the group buying on Xiaonei.com seems to have started selling clothes? And they are looking for hot styles."

Zhou Buqi nodded and said, "Well, it seems to be."

Boss Ma said in amazement: "This idea is very good! We must first test the water, test the market reaction, and then promote it on a large scale, which can greatly reduce the cost of trial and error."

The types of commodities in group buying on campus have been continuously enriched, so as to provide college students with more high-quality and low-cost commodities.

Clothing is a very important category.

For this reason, the group buying team in the school chose to go to those clothing workshops in the south to make custom clothes, eliminating the middlemen.However, there are so many styles of clothes, which kind of clothes can be more favored by college students?
This is where the strategy of "testing the waters" can be adopted.

First test the many categories on the campus group buying on a small scale, and let college students choose.Use the order volume to judge which category of clothes is more popular in the market.

This can filter out the "hot style" clothes.

Zhou Buqi didn't really care much about this business.

Xiaonei.com sells clothes to college students. It has no intention of making money, but to give back to college students.The cost of clothes is extremely low, and the price in shopping malls is generally extremely high, which is an important demand point for college students.

Recently, though, the semester ended on campus.

Zhou Buqi just looked at a piece of data on the Xiaonei website for this semester, and made a rather shocking discovery.By selling clothes on Xiaonei... this semester, it actually made 1.4 million!
At that time, he was quite unhappy and felt that he shouldn't be so ruthless in making money from college students.

After asking, I found out that this is the profit of the e-commerce department of the school network, not the profit of the group buying department of the school.At some point, Xiaonei set up a new "e-commerce department".

If you ask again, you will be more surprised.

Of the 1.4 million net profit of the e-commerce department, 1.2 million was created by Taobao, which was created by selling clothes on Taobao.

Probably the logic is that Xiaonei goes south to cooperate with those garment workshops.

Then, through group buying on campus, relying on the help of college students to select popular clothes that meet the current market trend.After the popular models are selected, they start to place large quantities of orders to the garment workshops for production.

On-campus group buying is only available on university campuses, with a limited scale, and it cannot violate the purpose of serving college students on the school intranet, and the price should not be too high.

Therefore, after the Xiaonei team screened out popular clothes, they hung them on other popular e-commerce websites, especially Taobao.

Then it exploded.

It is said that the e-commerce department of Xiaonei.com has registered a total of 12 clothing accounts on Taobao. The total sales in the past six months reached 2.7 yuan, of which the profit reached 1.2 million yuan.

Such an operation strategy was planned by a lady named Qin He who was applying for the director of group buying on campus at that time.

Unexpectedly, she really made it!

With so much credit, Qin He was promoted as a matter of course, and is now the senior vice president of Xiaonei, in charge of the group buying department and the e-commerce department.

The exploration of Xiaonei.com in the field of e-commerce has also provided a new idea for many e-commerce platforms including Ali, including cross-border e-commerce.

How to choose products for cross-border e-commerce?

In fact, a similar strategy of testing the waters can also be adopted.

The only shortcoming is that Ziweixing International does not have a platform like Xiaonei that has the function of a test field.

However, this idea has been proved by practice to be feasible.

Boss Ma's words are authoritative enough.

You can explore along this path.

Boss Ma went on to say: "There is the second point. It is too difficult to complete a large order. It is not impossible to make cross-border e-commerce develop sustainably for a long time through small orders."

Zhou Buqi laughed and said, "Okay, I'll listen to your advice!"

Boss Ma said: "This requires this product to be more niche, even smaller than thermos cups, and there is a certain production threshold. Americans can also make thermos cups. Once American companies also go to mass-produce thermos cups Cups, thermos cups are hardly a popular category in cross-border e-commerce. However, some products may not be able to be produced by Laomei. For example, ceramics from JDZ.”

"I'll go!" Zhou Buqi suddenly realized, "IQ tax!"

Boss Ma was slightly taken aback, then reacted, and said with a smile: "Yes, it can be summed up in this way, that is, IQ tax is charged. Small orders can also cross borders, which requires that the profit of a single product must be high, very, very high. JDZ The wholesale price of those small cups may only be a few cents each, but they can be sold for tens of dollars on Taobao. If you do cross-border e-commerce, the price is 99 US dollars, which can also scare many foreigners into ordering. What else are Chinese paintings, Framed calligraphy, embroidery, bracelets, etc., all have extremely high profits. Even if they cannot be sold in large orders, they will still have high profits.”

"That's right!"

This routine is too familiar.

Not to mention that it is only 2012 now, this routine will still be popular all over the world 10 years later.Not to mention fooling foreigners who have no appreciation for ceramic products, even in China, consumers can be fooled for a moment.

For example, when the goods are delivered live, the unboxing of the "ceramic bowl" is broadcast live.

This also adds a bit of blind box attributes, which is even more attractive.

After unpacking, once it is a defective product, it will be smashed on the spot.

Gimmick.

On the one hand, it will make the audience feel a pity, on the other hand, it will make the audience feel the merchant's "keep improving" attitude, and on the other hand, they prefer to see the scene of opening high-quality goods from blind boxes.

After a performance of smashing bowls, a very beautiful porcelain bowl was finally opened.

The merchant has asked the price, it is not expensive or expensive!

Only sell for 199 yuan or 299 yuan!
Many viewers will be moved, thinking that this bowl is too beautiful, it is the best of the best, so they will place an order to buy it.

In fact, the individual cost of these blind boxes is only a few cents.

Even if you smash dozens of them in a row, it's a matter of a few dollars.

Sell ​​a single order, you can earn hundreds of dollars.