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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 products. But from a practical point of view, excessive operating costs will make it difficult for such a business to be sustainable.

In the end, it still has to come down to the big order.

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

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

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

This is too difficult.

Who has such a unique vision?

A niche product of the country is liked by many people on the other side of the ocean where there are huge cultural and language differences... There must be such a product, but where can you find it like looking for a needle in a haystack?

When it comes to understanding 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 it is best to wait and see the situation of this industry. If you act too hastily, you will easily suffer big losses. It is best to wait for others to do it and then learn from them. model."

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

Boss Ma was slightly startled, "Who is this friend of yours? Isn't this a small fight?"

Zhou Buqi said: "I no longer want to be the big boss of a listed company with a market value of more than 10 billion Hong Kong dollars. I want to jump out and do something big. Do you think it can be a small business? There is definitely no chance for e-commerce in China." Taobao and JD.com are giants. Anyway, I have no ambition at all. If I go abroad, I can’t do anything like Amazon. After thinking about it, there may be some opportunities in the field of cross-border e-commerce.”

Boss Ma reacted very quickly, basically locking in the Yuanwei Group and the stunningly beautiful President Shi, who is well-known in the industry. He said with a smile: "If you don't want to follow the trend, you want to lead the field of cross-border e-commerce... It’s not that there is no way. We have also discussed it internally.”

"Oh? How?"

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

"Thermos cup?"

Zhou Buqi is very curious.

Boss Ma said with a smile: "Thermos cups are quite common in China, because there is a tradition of drinking hot water in China, especially for some girls. But abroad, they usually drink natural water or ice water. Especially ice water, go for it In the United States, whether you drink water or coffee, people always ask you if you want to add ice."

Zhou Buqi nodded, "Yes."

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

Zhou Buqi laughed and said, "This is a very clever entry point! You really need to do this when selecting products for cross-border e-commerce!"

Boss Ma continued: "There is also environmentalism. Europe and the United States are advocating the use of reusable water cups. Insulated cups that can ensure the temperature of cold water will be very popular. Such products have become popular."

Zhou Buqi said: "It is not easy to discover business opportunities in this small category."

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

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

Boss Ma smiled and said: "I don't know, but someone came up with an idea and said it is quite good."

"What idea?"

"Group buying on campus."

"What?"

Zhou Buqi was immediately amused.

Boss Ma said: "It seems that the group buying on Xiaonei.com has started selling clothes since last year? And they are looking for hot items."

Zhou Buqi nodded and said, "Well, it seems so."

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

The types of products available for on-campus group buying are constantly being enriched, thereby providing college students with more high-quality and low-priced products.

Clothes are a very important category.

For this reason, the on-campus group buying team chose to go to the clothing workshops in the south to customize the clothes, eliminating the middlemen. However, there are so many styles of clothes, which one is more popular among college students?

This allows you to adopt the strategy of “testing the waters”.

First, we will launch many categories to test the water on campus group buying on a small scale, allowing college students to choose. Through the order volume, we can determine which clothing category is more popular in the market.

This allows you to filter out “hot-selling” clothes.

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

Xiaonei.com sells clothes to college students. It has no intention of making money. It just wants to give back to college students. The cost of clothes is extremely low, and the prices when buying them in shopping malls are generally very high. They are considered a very important demand point for college students.

However, the semester recently ended on campus.

Zhou Buqi took a look at the data on the campus network this semester and made a rather shocking discovery. Xiaonei.com actually made 140 million by selling clothes... this semester!

He was quite unhappy at the time and felt that he should not be so ruthless in making money from college students.

Later, when I asked, I found out that this was the profit of the school’s e-commerce department, not the school’s group buying department. I don’t know when, Xiaonei.com actually established a new “e-commerce department”.

If you ask more carefully, you will be more surprised.

Of the 140 million net profits of the e-commerce department, 120 million were created by Taobao and were created by selling clothes on Taobao.

The general logic is that Xiaonei Network will go south to cooperate with those clothing workshops.

Then, through on-campus group buying, we rely on the help of college students to select hot-selling clothes that are in line with current market trends. After selecting the popular models, we began to place large-scale production orders with clothing workshops.

On-campus group buying is only for university campuses, is limited in scale, and cannot violate the purpose of the campus network to serve college students, and the price cannot be too high.

Therefore, after the team at Xiaonei.com selected popular clothes, they listed them on other popular e-commerce websites, especially Taobao.

Then it exploded.

It is said that Xiaonei.com’s e-commerce department has registered a total of 12 clothing accounts on Taobao. In the past six months, the total sales reached 2.7 yuan, of which the profit reached 120 million yuan.

Such an operational strategy was planned by a woman named Qin He who was applying for the on-campus group buying director position at the time.

Unexpectedly, she actually did it!

With such a great contribution, Qin He was naturally promoted and is now the senior vice president of Xiaonei.com, in charge of the group purchasing department and e-commerce department.

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

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

In fact, a similar water-testing strategy can also be adopted.

The only shortcoming is that Ziweixing International does not have a platform that can serve as a testing ground like Xiaonei.com.

However, this idea has been proven to be feasible through practice.

Boss Ma’s words are authoritative enough.

You can explore this way.

Boss Ma continued: "The second point is that it is too difficult to complete large orders. It is not impossible to achieve sustainable long-term development of cross-border e-commerce through small orders."

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

Boss Ma said: "This requires this product to be more niche, even more niche than a thermos cup, and there is a certain production threshold. Americans can also make thermos cups, and once American companies start mass-producing thermos cups, cup, it is difficult for thermos cups to be a popular category for cross-border e-commerce. However, some products may not be produced in the United States. For example, JDZ’s ceramics.”

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

Boss Ma was startled for a moment, then reacted and said with a smile: "Yes, it can be summed up this way, it is to collect IQ tax. Small orders can also be cross-border, which requires that the profit of a single product must be high, very, very high. JDZ's The wholesale price of those small cups may only be a few cents each, and they can be sold for dozens of yuan on Taobao. If you do cross-border e-commerce, the price is 99 US dollars, which can also scare many foreigners into placing orders. What other Chinese paintings, Framed calligraphy, embroidery, bracelets, etc., single items all have extremely high profits. Even if they cannot be sold in large orders, there will still be high profits."

"That's right!"

This routine is all too familiar to Zhou Buqi.

Not to mention it’s only 2012, this routine will still be popular around the world 10 years from now. Not to mention trying to fool foreigners who have no appreciation for ceramic products, even in China, consumers can be fooled into a daze.

For example, when delivering goods live, live broadcast the unboxing of “ceramic bowls”.

This also adds some blind box properties, which makes it even more attractive.

After opening the box, if it is a defective product, smash it on the spot.

Full of gimmicks.

On the one hand, it will make the audience feel pity. On the other hand, it will make the audience feel the merchant's "keep improving" attitude. On the other hand, they will prefer to see the scene of high-quality products coming out of the blind box.

After a bowl-smashing performance, a very exquisite porcelain bowl was finally opened.

The merchant has asked for a price, it’s not expensive or not!

Only selling for 199 yuan or 299 yuan!

Many viewers will be moved and feel that this bowl is so beautiful and the best among the best, and 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, it only costs a few dollars.

If you sell one order, you can make hundreds of dollars.