Recently, a piece of information inspired the whole cross-border circle - CCTV Finance and Economics reported that customs data showed that the import and export scale of China's cross-border e-commerce increased nearly 10 times in five years. Last year, the import and export scale of China's cross-border e-commerce reached 1.92 trillion, up 18.6% year on year!

Development context

China's cross-border e-commerce has sprouted since 1999, when Alibaba just realized connecting Chinese suppliers and overseas sellers with the Internet. However, at that time, it was more a foreign trade information service model of online display and offline transaction, which was also the early model of cross-border e-commerce 1.0.

In 2004, with the official launch of Dunhuang Online, the era of cross-border e-commerce 2.0 came. At this stage, the cross-border e-commerce platform gradually got rid of the display behavior of pure information yellow pages, but integrated offline transactions, payments, logistics and other links and made them electronic.

2013 is a key year for the important transformation of cross-border e-commerce. The whole industry chain of cross-border e-commerce has witnessed changes in business models - factory transformation, service providers joining, different B2B and B2C models, parallel platform stores and independent stations... The era of cross-border e-commerce 3.0 is coming when a hundred schools of thought contend and a hundred flowers bloom.

From the 1.0-3.0 era, the rapid development of the cross-border e-commerce industry has benefited from the high attention of the state. While the government vigorously promotes, industry norms and preferential policies have also been introduced, which ensures cross-border people to conduct business while standardizing the market.

The rapid development of mobile e-commerce, the more diversified payment methods, and the further improvement of the supply chain such as station building, traffic and logistics have further promoted the substantial growth of the industry scale. The convenient and fast cross-border e-commerce has also brought new business opportunities for more SMEs and individual sellers.

Current situation

From time to time, it is easy to see that cross-border e-commerce is actually the predecessor of traditional foreign trade. Since China joined the WTO in 2001, everything has entered a fast lane of development.

In the early days, foreign trade was a process in which exporters found manufacturers to purchase goods and then sold them to foreign importers. Because every link here had to earn profits, and there was a gap in information, the price was raised one by one, so the final selling price to consumers would become very high.

The rise of the Internet has allowed information to spread very quickly and the flow of information is amazing. It has broken all kinds of barriers between countries, enabling the initial cross-border e-commerce to develop in the middle of traditional foreign trade. The impact of the COVID-19 in 2020 has also enabled more European and American consumers to tilt their purchasing power online, further squeezing traditional foreign trade, and the export trade relying on the Internet has gradually become the mainstream model.

With the accelerated pace of people's lives, shopping consumption is often instantaneous and random, which requires fragmented and lightweight cross-border e-commerce orders. More and more manufacturers are aware of the changes and begin to accept a small amount of exports to adapt to the current foreign trade pattern.

Taking advantage of the shift of global consumer behavior from offline to online, China's current cross-border e-commerce is also growing rapidly. A variety of third-party e-commerce platforms, independent station building platforms, and cross-border e-commerce service providers have sprung up, greatly reducing the threshold. A large number of small and micro enterprises and even individual subjects that cannot and cannot afford to do have joined the industry and become operators of new types of trade.

Future trends

To sum up the current situation, we can make a rough judgment on the future development of cross-border e-commerce:

1. Rely on large-scale foreign trade e-commerce platform for development

With the rapid iteration of the Internet, it is inevitable that more cross-border e-commerce platforms will emerge, including Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, Shop and Walmart, and TikTok Shop and Pinduoduo Temu. Various functions will be further improved. Therefore, in the future, cross-border sellers can more easily choose stores that operate on multiple platforms at the same time to improve their market competitiveness.

2. Self built independent station oriented by brand effect

Shopify in North America has successfully run out and become the benchmark of e-commerce SaaS today. There are also excellent SaaS platforms such as shopkeepers that have sprung up in China. This year, they have received a huge financing of 150 million dollars, but they all make it easier to build a station. It is more appropriate to consider after accumulating some achievements on the platform before doing an independent station. With the brand effect, the long-term road will be smoother, so the independent station also has a "money" prospect.

3. Overseas entity cross-border e-commerce enterprises relying on offline physical stores or distribution channels

Although this may be an important form of cross-border e-commerce in the future, it requires a certain degree of popularity and a large amount of capital investment to do a good job in overseas physical cross-border e-commerce. Even SHEIN, which starts from an independent station, has swept most of the world's major cross-border e-commerce markets online like a tornado, and there are no physical stores offline. Occasionally, flash stores are only open for a few days, more to display goods and manufacturing topics.

In order to meet the fast, personalized and immediate consumption needs of overseas consumers, the above three forms need to cooperate with third-party efficient payment, logistics and other service providers to continue to operate for a long time.

Near term opportunities

The 2022 Qatar World Cup still has more than ten days to play. According to the report of the 2022 World Cup Shopping Forecast released by the Mexican Online Retail Association (AMVO), 3 out of 10 Mexican netizens are considering buying products or services during the World Cup. During the 2022 World Cup, the sales of online goods will increase significantly.

More than 30% of consumers have shopping desire, which is an opportunity that all cross-border people cannot miss. With the arrival of Q4, all cross-border people will enter the final sprint stage in 2022. The Double 11 Festival in China has been in full swing and is getting better. Major shopping festivals abroad, such as "Black Five", "Online One" and "Christmas", are also getting ready.

This year's "Black Five" and "World Cup" are full of collisions. The two "epic" super shopping nodes, both consumers and cross-border sellers, are in a higher mood. Cross border people can't miss the busy season of Buff.

On TikTok, # black friday tags have been played for 3.8 billion. On social software Facebook, there are more than 2.4 million posts about # black friday #. The topic of the World Cup is even more rampant on a large number of social media. After all, this is a necessary hot blooded event for many men.

For this reason, both domestic manufacturers and cross-border sellers are busy preparing goods and formulating marketing activities, so if you don't act quickly, you can't miss this gold rush opportunity!

To add another point, according to the survey of the aforementioned report, during the 2022 World Cup, Mexicans most want to use credit cards (73%) for payment. Contact AsiaBill to open a credit card to collect money, and revel with the fans!

The globalization of cross-border e-commerce is an unstoppable trend. It has a huge market, and there are also many risks and difficulties. But you should firmly believe that China's cross-border e-commerce can "fight"! As one of them, you are not alone, but together with thousands of cross-border people to overcome difficulties and seize opportunities!