Another cross-border e-commerce platform has been shut down, and many management members have resigned!

Another cross-border e-commerce platform has been shut down, and many management members have resigned!

The Internet giant's dream seems to have been shattered.

In sharp contrast to the increasingly saturated domestic e-commerce market, the potential of the cross-border e-commerce market seems to have been under development, and domestic Internet giants have also extended their tentacles to this field and made investments in advance. However, the results of the cross-border market are obviously polarized. Some people make a splash, while others disappear after a ripple.

As a big player in the domestic e-commerce industry, JD.com has always had ambitions to expand overseas, but the road has been quite bumpy. Joybuy, a cross-border e-commerce platform under JD.com, has suspended operations again, and another giant, ByteDance, has also had a bumpy road in cross-border e-commerce, with its If Yooou seeming to have already stopped operating.

JD.com's cross-border e-commerce platform Joybuy suspends operations again

It seems that it has been less than a year since Joybuy was shut down and upgraded. At that time, JD.com announced the suspension of the operation of joybuy.com and joybuy.ru, and announced that it would be upgraded to a cross-border B2B transaction and service platform. It was not until June this year, when JD.com Global Trade was launched, that Joybuy was reopened as a B2B transaction and service platform.

Now, it is shut down again, which makes people sigh. It is reported that on November 4, JD International officially issued a notice to inform consumers that the platform would suspend operations for upgrading, and urged suppliers to strive to deliver within 3 days, and consumers could return and refund within 30 days. This undoubtedly announced the failure of the platform's transformation from B2C to B2B.

According to the platform data, although Joybuy has a large number of SKUs, its traffic is not outstanding, with a total visit volume of only 193.0K. In terms of price, it also has no advantage. The pricing of the same type of platform TEMU has impacted Joybuy. An industry insider also broke the news: "The vice president of JD International has resigned, and many middle-level managers of his team have also resigned one after another."

In fact, as early as the end of October, there was news that JD.com's international business would be greatly adjusted, and the most affected would be the European and Southeast Asian businesses. Among them, the European business would most likely be cancelled, and the Southeast Asian business would also be reduced. Although JD.com's public relations department responded that the report was untrue at the time, its employees were still uneasy.

" The overall profitability of the international business is low . In the current economic environment, the company does not have the strength or willingness to burn money, so it will definitely have to shrink its business. " A JD insider said that layoffs are naturally inevitable.

A closer look reveals JD.com’s ambition to expand overseas, from investing in Wish, Farfetch and other platforms, to building its own logistics to enter the Southeast Asian market, to developing a cross-border e-commerce platform, but all these efforts have yielded little results. Looking at JD.com’s overseas operations, we can see that its overseas business seems to have been tepid.

Ochama, a full-category retail supermarket opened in the Netherlands, was complained by users: "The preferential policies are complicated and the threshold is high." Although Tiki and JD Central, joint ventures in the Southeast Asian market , have achieved some success in their home countries , they lag behind Shopee and Lazada in their respective market shares . The Russian and English sites were closed one after another, and the road to transformation was also full of difficulties. In contrast to its own leading projects, JD.com has achieved great success in the stores built by strategic partners, such as JD.com Walmart Store, eBay JD.com Store, Shopee JD.com Store, etc.

During the eight years that JD.com has been exploring overseas markets , personnel changes have been common. Its head has been replaced five times, and some key personnel have also left one after another. However, the cost of personnel switching and withdrawal is a considerable expense. It can also be seen from the side that JD.com has not yet formed a complete methodology for its overseas journey, and it still has a long way to go if it wants to take root overseas.

Joining JD.com in conquering overseas markets is ByteDance, which has a huge traffic pool. However, the cross-border e-commerce project that was highly anticipated did not bring much surprise to ByteDance, but instead suffered a disastrous failure.

Bytedance's cross-border independent website If Yooou has already been shut down?

"Byte gave up on If Yooou a long time ago." An industry insider said that it had been shut down as early as August this year.

As ByteDance's third attempt in the cross-border fast fashion field, If Yooou was launched in March this year, mainly selling affordable women's clothing and other categories, covering mainstream European markets such as the UK, France and Italy. But industry insiders said that it was suspended in August? What is going on?

According to SimilarWeb data, the platform 's visits in June and July were relatively stable, at 351,000 and 436,000 respectively. However, since August, the platform's traffic has dropped drastically, with visits in August and September at 177,000 and 45,000 respectively, and even falling to more than 5,000 in October.

Among them, the paid website traffic was 137,000 in July, 8,700 in August, and zero in September. The return of paid traffic to zero is equivalent to the platform stopping traffic delivery, and stopping traffic delivery in the fast fashion track is equivalent to stopping operations. After all, it is too difficult to generate natural traffic.

In addition, there is also multiple information to prove that If Yooou has ceased operations.

The latest official Facebook post was posted on August 15, and previously the social media updated posts once a day; the latest Instagram post was on August 17. Opening the If Yooou website, we can find that most of the categories displayed on the platform's homepage are summer clothing , but Europe is now gradually entering winter.

Judging from ByteDance's layout, the progress of its cross-border e-commerce business has not been smooth sailing. Dmonstudio, which competes with SHEIN, was shut down after a few months of operation, and Fanno, known as the "overseas version of Pinduoduo", also encountered many obstacles. TikTok's overseas live e-commerce business was not well adapted to the local environment and was forced to abandon its expansion plan for live e-commerce business in the United States and Europe.

The failure of cross-border fast fashion projects has just confirmed the words of its chairman: cut the fat and gain the lean. In his opinion, ByteDance currently has too many projects, which have squeezed out too many existing resources. It must cut some projects with low value and strengthen the importance of its main business.

However, industry insiders have different opinions on ByteDance's cross-border fast fashion projects. Whether it is Dmonstudio or If Yooou, they are just one of ByteDance's internal cross-border e-commerce projects. The launch of such platforms is just for positioning, not for the basic base.

They believe that ByteDance only focuses on traffic, not supply chain, and such a platform will only be short-lived . For sellers who want to conquer the clothing category, they need to invest not only huge manpower, material resources, time and energy, but also improve their own supply chain, logistics, warehousing and other deficiencies.

As for ByteDance, although it excels in content and traffic, traffic does not play a decisive role in the e-commerce field, especially for the apparel industry, where the source of products and the efficiency of the supply chain are crucial.

In addition, for cross-border e-commerce companies, if they want to go further, they must not only improve themselves, but also focus on the core needs that consumers care about. Although the independent station model is worth learning from for sellers, overall, it is more suitable for companies with a certain size or scale. More small and medium-sized enterprises still need to make layouts based on their actual conditions.

If Yooou

JOYBUY

JD.com