A technical guy switched to a cross-border seller and sold 4,000 orders in a month!

In the past two years, under the dual influence of the epidemic and the international situation, the stay-at-home economy ignited market purchasing power, the demand of overseas online consumers increased sharply, and many sellers frequently received news of explosive orders. Among them, there are many sellers who switched to cross-border e-commerce. They embraced cross-border e-commerce platforms and went overseas, which has become a "new wave".

As a technical guy who once worked in an OEM business factory, Kenny started from scratch and entered the cross-border e-commerce coffee machine field. Initially, he mainly sold coffee machines including single-serving K-cup coffee machines, espresso machines, portable mini blenders, etc. to the Middle East, Europe and the United States through the B2B model . After experiencing sluggish growth in traditional B2B, he chose to transform into the B2C track. What kind of results will a technical guy with 15 years of product development experience achieve when he transforms into a C-end seller?

HiBREW is attacking the C-end market due to internal and external pressures

"I didn't think of creating such a brand at first. I wanted to stay on the B-side," Kenny admitted. In the first few years when the company was deeply engaged in B2B business, it received many large orders one after another. From working alone to slowly expanding the R&D and operation teams, and then to setting up its own factory, Kenny's B2B path became clearer and clearer.

But all this has slowly changed under the bottleneck of reality.

First, under the background of the Sino-US trade war, the United States announced a 25% tariff increase , which significantly reduced the price competitiveness of coffee machines with a tax amount of more than 30%; secondly, China’s labor dividend has disappeared, and the cost of raw materials has increased . At the same time, most of the company’s main B-end customers are middlemen. In order to ensure their own profits, they will keep the unit price to the factory very low, so that their own company’s profits will be sharply reduced; finally, the traditional foreign trade methods are no longer appropriate , such as the traditional foreign trade transaction collection, order fragmentation and transaction timeliness.

At the same time, the demand for coffee machines from some OEM small and medium-sized customers is only around three or four hundred units. Obviously, this does not meet the minimum packing quantity requirement. The resulting order loss problem needs to be solved urgently.

Under the pressure of multiple internal and external situations, the company's in-depth development of the B-end has been limited, and it also needs to make some changes to retain customers and improve performance. At this time, Kenny came up with the idea of ​​registering the brand HiBREW and switching to the C-end.  

Since 2017, HiBREW has tested the waters in the domestic C-end with some of its products; in July 2019, the company began to conquer the overseas C-end market, and chose AliExpress as its first stop to put its products on the shelves. In November of the same year, the store products generated some sales , but the company did not take it seriously at the time; in the later period, it basically maintained a status of placing orders every day, and later on, the orders increased.

"Consumers in North America prefer coffee without oil. Some Southeast Asian customers like Italian coffee, while others prefer French coffee. Middle Eastern buyers mainly drink Italian and Turkish coffee. Southern Europeans prefer Italian coffee, while Northern Europeans prefer Italian and American coffee..." Kenny talked freely about the preferences of people around the world for coffee flavors.

As for the coffee consumer group, they are mainly men aged 35-45 . In terms of regions, European consumers do not have too many requirements on prices, but have high requirements on product quality . Local consumers will compare products with some internationally renowned brands, such as Philips and Nestle. If the products are not good, they will be returned, and the return rate is relatively high. On the other hand, it is relatively easy to communicate with consumers in the Middle East. If they want to return the products, they can also solve the problem by giving gifts.

HiBREW is very popular among consumers overseas, which can be seen not only from its sales volume but also from its fans’ attention. On TikTok, although the HiBREW account is not operated, one of its coffee machine videos has been read about 280,000 times.

HiBREW enters the Middle East market, selling 4,000 coffee machines in January

It is reported that after deciding to create his own brand, Kenny assigned some operations staff to research and operate the C-end platform. However, many things were not mature at that time, such as low picture pixels, details page and logistics.

However, due to the excellent product quality and its own R&D characteristics, HiBREW quickly stood out in the coffee machine market and was listed as a key support target by the platform's storekeeper. For example, regarding the logistics issue that cross-border merchants are most concerned about, HiBREW said that previously, the delivery time of goods shipped from China basically took about one or two months, and the price was expensive and there were also tariff issues. Under the platform's recommendation, HiBREW joined the overseas warehouse, which not only reduced the freight by 30%, but also shortened the delivery time to 3-5 days.

HiBREW has a well-deserved say in terms of data from overseas warehouses on the platform . Comparing the data before and after HiBREW entered the overseas warehouses in the Middle East market, we can see that its sales have at least doubled , and currently more than 60% of the orders on its platform are from the Middle East market.

Products can reach customers within 3-5 days, and the warehouse-to-ship ratio is more than 2.5 times the industry average. The platform also provides it with more high-quality resources. With the help of the store manager and the support of the platform, HiBREW quickly grew into a gold medal seller after 7 months on AliExpress.

During the Double Eleven shopping festival in 2021, HiBREW sold more than 4,000 coffee machines that month. Although HiBREW's main markets are Europe and the United States, its products have also captured a large number of Middle Eastern consumers, especially after serving the C-end market. Kenny found that many customers are from the Middle Eastern market.

Regarding the company's future development focus, Kenny emphasized the following points:

1. In the future, we will strengthen our work on private domain traffic and increase the number of staff. On the one hand, through cooperation with Internet celebrities, we will send ten machines every month to Internet celebrities for evaluation, because they will provide a relatively fair evaluation data. We do not ask for how much conversion can be brought, but only want to expand the private domain traffic pool of the Internet celebrity group.

2. Focus on overseas warehouses in the United States. On the one hand, online consumption of American consumers has not been fully stimulated, and the trend of the US dollar is relatively strong, so the development momentum is expected to be strong; on the other hand, the US market is also a new market that the platform will focus on this year.

3. As for products, the company will focus on building them in the future and will also increase investment in research and development. Due to its own technical background, it will add more things to the products. Every year, it will launch about ten coffee machines, such as professional and capsule coffee machines.

As a new cross-border brand that grew up on AliExpress, HiBREW has become one of the first high-quality merchants to enter AE Mall. AE Mall is a new growth track opened up for high-quality merchants. Kenny is very much looking forward to this new field: "It is necessary to join. In the past, we were often disturbed by some small sellers. AE Mall can help us improve the business environment and bring in more high-quality customers."

"Did you know? 80% of the world's coffee machines are produced in China." Kenny said that this is undoubtedly a huge opportunity for the Chinese. When the blue ocean market collides with more cross-border people, it will undoubtedly produce a special spark.

As cross-border e-commerce is transforming from a barbaric era to intensive cultivation, the influence of Chinese manufacturing is also expanding. The cross-border e-commerce track is experiencing the fastest growth. We can also see that more Chinese companies are moving in the direction of branding , and are also going abroad through cross-border e-commerce platforms to create a new world for themselves.  

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