The layout has a half-year revenue of nearly 1.6 million, and the emerging market can also be very attractive!

Since the end of last year, cross-border e-commerce sellers have been increasingly eager to find emerging markets and emerging platforms, but where is the new gold mine? Some people say that Latin America may be the last blue ocean market in the cross-border e-commerce industry. When it comes to the topic of laying out new markets, many sellers also said that they can no longer compete in Europe and the United States, and plan to go to Latin America.

Yesterday, in order to let sellers know more about the Latin American e-commerce market, Ennet held a closed-door salon with the theme of "Winning in Latin America". The event was sponsored by Anjun Logistics, and invited relevant persons in charge of mainstream platforms such as Americanas, Meikeduo, Linio (Falabella), Shopee, as well as the CEO of a Shenzhen technology company and the overseas person in charge of Anjun Logistics to share their views on issues of concern to sellers, such as market conditions, product selection, entry, and logistics pain points.

Europe and the United States are struggling, while Latin America shows its charm

Een.com observed that most of the sellers who attended the closed-door meeting were from Europe and the United States, and there were also a small number of sellers from Southeast Asia and those who have already entered the Latin American market. This shows that the internal competition in Europe and the United States is still very serious, and sellers are looking for new opportunities to break out of the circle.

An Amazon seller complained to En.com: "It is really difficult to do business in the European and American markets now. I am still clearing out the inventory of a batch of goods I sent before the New Year. Even if the price is lower than the purchase price, it is still unsold. Now it is very difficult. I want to sell other goods, but the inventory is occupied. I have to pay for abandoning them."

Another seller who has been working in the cross-border e-commerce industry for nearly 10 years said that they are not having a good time either. Even though they have set up multiple cross-border e-commerce platforms in Europe and the United States, they are facing the dilemma of declining sales in the past two years. "It is a headache now, so we started to pay attention to some markets and platforms that are still in the bonus period last year."

In fact, some senior professionals in the industry have said that as early as the second half of 2019, the cross-border e-commerce industry had already shown signs of sluggish growth, but the outbreak of the new coronavirus at the end of the year shifted offline shopping to online, giving cross-border e-commerce another wave of dividends.

Data from eMarketer confirms this. Data analysis shows that the growth rate of global e-commerce market sales in 2020 has dropped from 28% three years ago to 19%, and is expected to drop to 14.9% in the next three years.

As market opportunities continue to shrink, it is very important for sellers to seize the remaining ones. Whether it is the unicorn SHEIN or the movements of multiple cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Shopee, they are all conveying a message: the next opportunity is in Latin America.

It is understood that Latin America has shown double-digit growth in the past five years and is expected to maintain a growth rate of more than 30% by 2025 .

Especially during the epidemic, global cross-border e-commerce has exploded, and its growth rate is far ahead. According to eMarketer data, Latin America topped the list in the global retail e-commerce sales growth ranking in 2020 and 2021, with a growth rate of 63.3% in 2020, far ahead of the second-place Central and Eastern Europe by nearly 20 points. Even in 2021, when the epidemic slowed down and demand declined, it still ranked first in the world with a growth rate of 25.6%.

Not only that, among the ten countries with the fastest growth in global cross-border e-commerce sales and buyers, many Latin American countries are on the list, including Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.

However, it is worth noting that Brazil and Mexico account for 70% of the Latin American e-commerce market share .

After half a year in business, the revenue was nearly 1.6 million yuan

From the perspective of market potential, Latin America's advantages are mainly concentrated in four aspects:

1. Light industry is underdeveloped, and electronic consumer products mainly rely on imports;

2. Internet coverage is greater than 72%, and the number of online shoppers exceeds 200 million;

3. Online retail accounts for less than 5% (China's online retail is >30%);

4. There are few sellers in China, market competition is small, and profits are high.

As the market potential emerges, the platform that links sellers and buyers has also become lively. Speaking of the Latin American market, the industry knows more about MercadoLibre. It is the largest e-commerce website in Latin America, with business covering more than a dozen countries in South America . In 2016, it already had 174.2 million users and was called the South American version of "Taobao of China".

But in recent years, Amazon, Shopee and other cross-border e-commerce platforms that have been successful in Europe, America or Southeast Asia have also expanded to Latin America. For example, Shopee has opened sites in Brazil and Mexico. Not long ago, documents leaked by Business Insider showed that Amazon hopes to expand its activities in South America. In addition to the existing national markets of Brazil and Mexico, Chile and Colombia will go online in the first quarter of 2023.

In addition, more local e-commerce platforms in Latin America have also extended olive branches to Chinese sellers, either starting to enter China to attract investment or increasing investment efforts. For example, Americanas, headquartered in Brazil, has more than 2,200 stores in more than 765 cities in Brazil, and its website has been visited more than 1 billion times . Currently, there are less than 1,000 Chinese sellers settled in .

There is also Linio, which is headquartered in Mexico. It covers eight countries including Mexico, Colombia, Peru, etc. Among them, five sites in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Panama have opened international business (that is, the platform is open to non-Latin American merchants) .

It can be said that the competition among e-commerce platforms in Latin America has already begun. Data shows that even the e-commerce giant Amazon only accounted for about 5% of the South American e-commerce market share in 2020. This proves that both platforms and sellers still have a very broad market space in Latin America.

For sellers, early planning can help them occupy the market early.

As a company that has just entered China to recruit investors, Aherke, the China recruitment manager of Americanas, shared two cases at a closed-door meeting: a multi-category seller who mainly sells hard drives, Bluetooth headsets and other products, has achieved sales of 1.57 million yuan from the activation of his account in December 2021 to May this year. Another multi-category seller who sells hard drives , game controllers and other products has also achieved sales of 1.18 million yuan from the activation of his account in January this year to May .

As a successful seller in Latin America, Zhang Weiming, CEO of a Shenzhen technology company, also recognizes the potential of the Latin American e-commerce market. He said that Chinese brands and Chinese sellers have business opportunities in Latin America. The main reasons include:

1. Huge market capacity and huge demographic dividend;

Second, there are few local brands;

3. The epidemic has accelerated the local people’s online shopping habits;

4. The gradual maturity of logistics has accelerated the development of cross-border e-commerce business.

But at the same time, he also made it clear that there would be some obstacles to sales in Latin America, including slow logistics, complicated tariffs, inability to recover returned goods, and sales restrictions for Chinese companies.

If there are sellers interested in the Latin American market, you can add WeChat: ennews2014 and join the group for communication.

Latin America

Cross-border e-commerce