Pinduoduo is focusing on cross-border e-commerce, and some employees have already received offers!

The rapid development of cross-border e-commerce has attracted a number of domestic top e-commerce sellers to enter the overseas e-commerce market. Now, after domestic e-commerce giants such as ByteDance, JD.com, and Alibaba have successively entered the cross-border e-commerce market, Pinduoduo also plans to launch a cross-border e-commerce platform.

In preparation for new overseas projects, Pinduoduo has been intensively contacting South China’s largest sellers

Looking at the domestic market, there are many big sellers that have deployed cross-border e-commerce. In the past, there was Alibaba's AliExpress, in the middle was ByteDance's TikTok, and later there was JD.com's entry into Amazon. Now Pinduoduo is also going to launch a cross-border e-commerce platform. These deployments seem to confirm the gold rush in the cross-border track.

Recently, an industry insider revealed that Pinduoduo is secretly preparing a new overseas project , which has been in the works for three months. For this purpose, a special overseas project team has been established, which is directly led by a vice president-level executive. It is likely to be a cross-border e-commerce platform.

At present, the rumor in the circle is that " Pinduoduo is intensively contacting big sellers in South China ", and this news seems to have been confirmed.

A person in charge of a cross-border e-commerce seller said: " We have had preliminary contact with Pinduoduo staff . They said they want to do a cross-border project and hope to reach a cooperation, but the details have not been discussed yet. " It seems that Pinduoduo is in close contact with big sellers, most likely to use the power of mature sellers to lay a certain foundation for the initial launch of the platform. Some insiders also revealed that earlier, a business manager who claimed to be the official of Pinduoduo's new overseas project was looking for customers in the WeChat group .

Not only that, Pinduoduo is also intensively connecting with logistics companies, and Jitu Express is one of them. A person who has cooperated with Jitu Express said: " Pinduoduo is connecting with Jitu , and its overseas business may also cooperate with Jitu. " As we all know, Jitu Express's express delivery network covers 13 countries. In this way, its overseas market is very likely to choose Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and other areas covered by Jitu Express.

"Given Pinduoduo's positioning in China, its cross-border e-commerce platform will most likely still focus on low prices and cover all product categories, " speculated an industry insider.

In terms of talent reserves, Pinduoduo is also recruiting on a large scale. " Pinduoduo has already poached employees from SHEIN. Not only will the interviews go through 4-5 rounds, but they will also ask very detailed questions about the work details within SHEIN," an independent website seller revealed, and another independent website big seller said he had already received an offer.

All the above signs indicate that Pinduoduo is implementing its overseas expansion plan.

In fact, Pinduoduo has always had a strong intention to expand overseas. Although Pinduoduo has been denying it, many industry insiders believe that Vova, which ran away last year, has some special connection with Pinduoduo. There are even reports that Vova is actually a cross-border e-commerce platform created by Pinduoduo.

As a platform that focuses on limited-time, low-price flash sales, Vova has similarities with Pinduoduo. Not only are the front-end pages of the APP similar, but their headquarters are also located in the same building. In addition, when the platform collapsed last year and a large number of sellers lost all their money and went to collect their debts, the sellers found that Vova's office location, senior executives and other aspects seemed to have a close relationship with Pinduoduo.

Under such circumstances, many people in the industry are even more worried about Pinduoduo's overseas expansion.

Domestic giants are flocking to go overseas, what are their chances of success?

The cross-border e-commerce market is developing rapidly due to the popularity of cross-border e-commerce platforms, consumption upgrades in emerging market countries, and the increase in overseas e-commerce penetration. According to the latest report from the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, the scale of China's cross-border e-commerce B2B market will reach 13.9 trillion yuan by 2025.

With the huge market share, domestic giants all want to get a piece of the pie, which has led to a situation of flocking to overseas markets. While the opportunities in the sinking market are being divided up by more participants, whether they can take root in overseas markets is also a big problem.

As one of the earliest companies involved in cross-border e-commerce, Alibaba holds three trump cards: Alibaba International Station, AliExpress, and Lazada . It launched the fast fashion online retail platform AllyLikes overseas in October 2021. Of course, Alibaba is not the only one that has been deeply involved in the cross-border e-commerce track. Shopee invested by Tencent, Fanno and TikTok of ByteDance, and JD.com have successively launched cross-border e-commerce platforms, and are also competing for the market share of the cross-border e-commerce track.  

However, as early as the early days of their overseas business, these e-commerce platforms had encountered many setbacks.

Initially, ByteDance's Fanno was also popular when it went online at low prices, which was very similar to Pinduoduo's 10 billion subsidies . However, the platform's sellers believed that selling goods at low prices and with small orders would make almost no profit, and even though the platform paid for part of the subsidies, it was still unsustainable.

In addition, some platform sellers pointed out that the reason for the closure of the platform was that ByteDance was only good at traffic and was relatively unfamiliar with the supporting service system for e-commerce, especially the multiple aspects of logistics, warehousing, and payment that are closely linked to cross-border e-commerce, so that the platform was shut down shortly after it went online.

JD.com also announced the closure of its e-commerce platforms www.joybuy.com and www.jd.ru , stopped the operation of its existing business, and terminated its cooperation with the website in accordance with the agreement with the sellers. It will later upgrade it to a cross-border B2B transaction and service platform, and claimed that it will not affect the sales of merchants on third-party e-commerce platforms.

In comparison with Pinduoduo, which is well versed in the three key principles of low price, algorithm and sharing in China , and through its strong technical capabilities and superb operational capabilities, it has made Pinduoduo users addicted to consumption and has formed a strong user stickiness.

Nowadays, Pinduoduo has laid out a cross-border e-commerce platform, which can improve the domestic strategy and apply it overseas. Compared with Fanno, Pinduoduo can be said to have a strong e-commerce gene. After years of deep cultivation in domestic e-commerce, Pinduoduo has not only accumulated China's high-quality supply chain, but also has rich experience in logistics, warehousing, payment and other aspects.

However, many industry insiders pointed out that Pinduoduo's strategy may not work overseas. China's cross-border e-commerce overseas is not mature yet and needs more time to settle. If Pinduoduo wants to gain a foothold overseas, traffic is also a key link. Judging from the overseas data of many large companies in the past, its initial traffic was not only pitiful, but also very expensive. In addition, countries led by the United States do not recognize large platforms as highly as the domestic market. They prefer to buy and consume on independent sites.

The cross-border e-commerce track is in a gold rush, and no one wants to miss out on this big cake. Each party is using its own advantages to capture cities and territories. We still need to wait and see whether Pinduoduo can successfully break through in this track.

Pinduoduo

Cross-border e-commerce

SHEIN