A "special" young man born in 1998 started a cross-border e-commerce business, with over 7,000 orders a day!

A "special" young man born in 1998 started a cross-border e-commerce business, with over 7,000 orders a day!

How did Huang Tianxiang, who is only 24 years old, grow into the "king of explosive orders" with over 7,000 orders a day?

In March 2020, Huang Tianxiang was about to bid farewell to campus and start a new career. Coincidentally, he saw his friend doing very well on the Shopee platform, and he felt itchy, so he applied to join Shopee in April of the same year, and regarded the Vietnamese market as the first stop to "expand" in Southeast Asia.

Coming from a newbie with zero experience, he tasted the joy of explosive sales within just two months of joining the company. In the following two years, Huang Tianxiang went from working alone to having his own small team of four. His cross-border e-commerce business has developed steadily, and he is currently the leading seller in the luggage category. During the 2021 11.11 promotion, he successfully sold more than 7,000 orders a day.

Huang Tianxiang, who is only 24 years old, has achieved what he has today, but behind the scenes he has put in more hard work and sweat than ordinary people.

Since he was born with the chronic disease SMA, spinal muscular atrophy, his legs are currently unable to move and he can only sit in a wheelchair. This will undoubtedly have many adverse effects on his normal work and life, but such setbacks did not defeat him. He still used hard work and wisdom to gain his own wealth and wonderful life.

Now, let us walk into Huang Tianxiang’s world and listen to his inspirational life and experience in booming operations.

A "special" boy encountered cross-border e-commerce and grew up to be a "big order king" with 7,000 orders a day

Huang Tianxiang was born with the chronic disease SMA, spinal muscular atrophy. As he grew older, his limbs slowly lost strength. Therefore, the journey of elementary school, junior high school, high school and college, which is easy for ordinary people, was not smooth for him.

Due to his poor physical condition, Huang Tianxiang did not have much hope for his future at the beginning, but fortunately, he engaged in the cross-border e-commerce business , which opened a new chapter in his life.

As a native of Quanzhou, Huang Tianxiang has always been surrounded by a strong business atmosphere. His father is also engaged in business, running a shoe store. Under the influence of his father, he naturally had the idea of ​​starting a business. He believes that the nature of e-commerce work is a very good career choice for him.

“When I first entered the cross-border e-commerce industry, my goal was just to have a stable income. After I got to know the Shopee platform in depth, I found that it was better than I expected. I like this industry very much, I am dedicated to my work, I am very motivated, and my overall mental outlook is very good.” Now, Huang Tianxiang’s goal is no longer “just to have enough food and clothing”, but to slowly make the company bigger and stronger.

Huang Tianxiang said that he couldn’t have gotten to where he is today without the support of his family, especially his father. When he first started Shopee, he was closest to the logistics warehouse in Quanzhou, but it took an hour to drive back and forth. At that time, even if the store only had one order, his father would deliver the order to the warehouse even at midnight .

Behind success lies personal effort.

At the beginning of his business, considering that Vietnam's overall culture and geographical location are very close to China, and its shopping thinking is very similar to that of Chinese people , Huang Tianxiang chose the Vietnamese market as the first stop for his products to be exported. In order to better understand the Vietnamese market, he would browse the hot-selling products of various categories on the front desk over and over again, as late as two or three in the morning , and he never felt tired at all.

From product selection and operation to customer service, Huang Tianxiang, who was a "newbie" at the time, took on all the work by himself and groped his way forward.

It is reported that as a male entrepreneur, Huang Tianxiang did not consider women's bags at the beginning, but instead focused on digital products, mobile phone cases, household products, etc. However, after preliminary trials, he found that he was not suitable for operating these products.

After careful consideration, Huang Tianxiang decided to enter the luggage category.

"My father is in the shoe business, and I also considered selling shoes at the time. However, the price of shoes in Quanzhou is relatively high, and there is no cost advantage. It is said that shoes and bags are inseparable. At this time, I naturally thought of bags. After some thought, I think women's bags are more suitable for me." In Huang Tianxiang's view, women relatively speaking like shopping and have greater consumption needs. At the same time, women prefer to share and comment, especially those around 20 years old. Evaluations are very important for products. For example, they can help products to be made faster. Based on these starting points, Huang Tianxiang positioned the customer group of bags as women around 20 years old.

Coincidentally, the user profile of the luggage category in the Vietnamese market highly overlaps with Huang Tianxiang’s judgment.

According to the platform's key market buyer portraits and style preference data for luggage, the main purchasing group for luggage in the Vietnamese market is 19 to 24 years old, with average purchasing power but high price sensitivity. They pursue small and beautiful Japanese and Korean styles, and like to shop at midnight before going to bed.

After switching to the luggage category, Huang Tianxiang immediately tasted the sweetness.

In May 2020, Huang Tianxiang had just entered the Vietnam station for about a month, and a cartoon-like cute canvas bag in the store performed well. Around the end of June, all the products in the store, including this product, ushered in a small surge in orders. This made Huang Tianxiang firmly believe in his determination to continue making bags .

Now, Huang Tianxiang's store has an average daily sales volume of over 1,000+, and when there is a big promotion, product sales increase exponentially.

Huang Tianxiang usually attaches great importance to the promotion and promotion activities of the platform, and basically participates in all activities that can be signed up. He believes that big promotions or promotions can not only bring a significant increase in orders on the same day, but also gradually increase the subsequent sales of products , bringing a lasting positive impact to the store.

With the help of the big promotion, the sales of Huang Tianxiang's store products have been rising steadily. In 2020, the number of orders on the 9.9 promotion day exceeded 2,000, the number of orders on the 11.11 promotion day exceeded 5,000, and the number of orders on the 12.12 promotion day reached more than 6,000! In just half a year, Huang Tianxiang has completed the leap from 0 orders to more than 6,000 orders per day!

On the day of the 11.11 promotion in 2021, Huang Tianxiang’s store sales hit a new record high, exceeding 7,000 orders.

From Vietnam to Southeast Asia, we have our own secrets to conquer consumers in various markets

Huang Tianxiang’s journey in cross-border e-commerce has not always been smooth sailing.

For a while, the number of orders at Huang Tianxiang's Vietnam store dropped sharply. This "frustration" gave him the idea of ​​opening other stores, because in addition to the Vietnamese market, luggage categories are also "hot" in other markets. According to reports, the fashion industry in the global e-commerce market is expected to grow to 1 trillion US dollars in 2025, making it the largest category in the global e-commerce market. Shopee's cross-border fashion category is popular all year round, and the luggage category is deeply loved by Southeast Asian and Latin American consumers for its novel styles and high-quality products.

Seeing the great prospects of luggage in the Southeast Asian market, Huang Tianxiang has opened sites throughout Southeast Asia so far, which has also brought a turning point in Huang Tianxiang's career.

Now, Huang Tianxiang is running a thriving business in all of Southeast Asia, and has signed three employees, one in operations and two in purchasing and packaging. He has gradually grown from working alone to having his own small team .

Due to different markets, consumers prefer different styles. Relevant data shows that the Malaysian and Vietnamese markets are large in size, consumers like cute cartoon Asian styles, and there is a strong demand for domestic products. The Philippine market is also large in size, and consumers prefer European and American styles and pay more attention to fashion. Thailand is a blue ocean market for branded domestic bags, and it is possible to simultaneously make a layout to dig gold. Specifically by market:

1. Malaysian market: User profile: 25 to 34 years old, strong purchasing power, keep up with the trend, highly social, value comments and sales data, and have high brand loyalty;

2. Thailand market: User profile: 23 to 29 years old, strong purchasing power, more discerning buyers, focus on store style, pursue Korean wave, love shopping, and take longer to make decisions;

3. Philippine market: User profile: 25 to 34 years old, strong purchasing power, high social attributes, high price sensitivity, extremely high repurchase rate, and high brand loyalty;

4. Brazilian market: User profile is 25 to 50 years old, with strong purchasing power, low requirements for store verticality, mostly orders based on searches, search result ranking is very important, and there are many wholesale buyers.

In the process of expanding the entire Southeast Asian market, Huang Tianxiang adopted the expansion principle of first gaining a foothold in a single site and then slowly planning the next site in view of the differentiated characteristics of the market. Every time he came to a new market, he had to conduct comprehensive learning. At this time, the various learning resources provided by the official provided a lot of help. "I usually browse articles on WeChat official accounts every week, watch Shopee open classes, and actively learn in the Shopee Seller Learning Center... The knowledge in these channels is very comprehensive. As a novice with no basics, I learned a lot of practical knowledge from them, which laid a good foundation for store operations and market expansion."

In addition to making good use of the data provided by the platform, Huang Tianxiang will also better understand the luggage consumption demand in each market through the launch of new products, and judge the sales performance of the products in the local area to formulate subsequent operation strategies. It is reported that Huang Tianxiang adopts a refined operation model. After careful selection, the store will put about 30 to 50 products on the market every month, and then stand from the perspective of buyers to see what buyers need, observe and summarize the characteristics of hot-selling products, and then select and optimize products.

In Huang Tianxiang's view, maintaining customer relationships and proactively communicating with consumers is very important. It is reported that the response rate of Huang Tianxiang's store chats is as high as 99%. He said frankly: "Even if I just started running a store alone and was busy with shipping and packaging, I would basically stay online every hour."

In the process of communicating with consumers, Huang Tianxiang can better understand the local market demand and screen products. It is reported that one of the consumers of Huang Tianxiang's store is a college student in Vietnam, who is also opening an offline store. During the chat, this consumer often shares the local popular products with Huang Tianxiang, broadening his inspiration and ideas for product selection. "Once this consumer told me that daisies are popular in Vietnam recently. I quickly found the manufacturer to order a batch of daisy-style bags. The market response was enthusiastic and they were sold out as soon as they were launched."

At the same time, communication with consumers can also increase product sales. Huang Tianxiang attaches great importance to consumer feedback on popular products in the store. For example, he improves the fabrics of subsequent products and the length of shoulder straps based on consumer suggestions. It can be said that consumer feedback has better helped Huang Tianxiang to improve the localization of products and promote product sales growth.

Consumers have many more surprises for Huang Tianxiang.

"Once, a Vietnamese consumer bought something in my store, but she didn't receive the goods because of the courier. After she told me the feedback, I immediately resent the product to her for free. To my surprise, this consumer publicly praised me on Facebook and disclosed the name of my store . Because of this incident, the number of fans of my store suddenly skyrocketed, from only a few hundred fans at the beginning to thousands of fans. " It happened that that period of time was the eve of a big sale, and the number of orders in Huang Tianxiang's store also increased very rapidly, which made him feel that actively communicating with consumers was a very important thing.

In addition, supply chain layout is also an important link ! Huang Tianxiang believes that high-quality logistics services can provide consumers with a good shopping experience and ensure that the store starts the growth flywheel.

Therefore, in March 2022, after hearing the news that the platform had added a warehouse in Nanning, China, Huang Tianxiang followed the platform's pace and immediately became one of the first settlers. "Before the opening of the Nanning warehouse, our warehouse had been packing and shipping by ourselves, and then sending it to the transit warehouse. The goods went to the Southeast Asian market through the transit route, which would definitely take a lot of time. With the Nanning warehouse, our costs are lower and the speed is faster. The logistics time efficiency has increased by at least 20-30%. This is the best of both worlds." It is reported that cross-border sellers using Nanning warehouse services can enjoy preferential rates while maintaining flexible domestic holdings. Specifically, they can ship goods from the Chinese border and enjoy minute-level customs clearance services, with a total time efficiency optimized by 1 to 2 days; sellers can save up to 70% on the first-leg storage price and enjoy the same preferential rates as overseas warehouses; they can also enjoy flexible warehousing and return policies, with 1 inventory directly connected to the two markets of Thailand and Vietnam.

With the help of Nanning Warehouse, Huang Tianxiang's product prices are more competitive than other sellers, and his product sales have increased significantly soon after he settled in. At present, Huang Tianxiang has become the top seller in the luggage category of Nanning Warehouse .

Relying on the Baigou luggage industry belt, we will create differentiated product competition!

When it comes to cross-border e-commerce, competition from peers is an unavoidable topic. In the two years since he entered the industry, Huang Tianxiang has always known the importance of product differentiation, which is one of the secrets that allows him to stand out among many sellers.

As the "king of order volume" in luggage, women's bags lead in cross-border orders and still maintain high growth. Although the overall competitive environment for women's bags is not particularly fierce, if women's bags want to successfully carve out a niche in the Southeast Asian market, their products must have differentiated advantages and create styles or series that are not available on the market.

At the beginning of his business, Huang Tianxiang observed that most sellers in the Vietnamese market were selling leather women's bags, but no sellers were selling canvas bags . After discovering the gap in the market, Huang Tianxiang thought this was a great opportunity. He immediately made up his mind to sell canvas bags to fill the gap in the Vietnamese market. With his unique products, Huang Tianxiang successfully gained a foothold in the Vietnamese market.

After the product sales performance is good, it will inevitably be "imitated" by peers, but Huang Tianxiang is not worried that this will affect sales. In his opinion, bags belong to the fashion category, which also means that bag products do not have a long life cycle . By the time peers react, the orders they can get are actually very small. As long as they keep up with the times and update their products frequently, they can continue to maintain their competitiveness.

It is reported that in terms of product procurement channels, more than 90 % of Huang Tianxiang's orders come from Baigou. It can be said that the success of his career is inseparable from the Baigou luggage industry belt.

Baigou, known as the "Luggage Capital of China", is a small city under the jurisdiction of Baoding City, Hebei Province. It has now formed a regional characteristic industrial cluster with more than 1 million employees and has developed into the country's largest luggage production and sales base, with an annual output of 800 million luggage and its products are sold well in 174 countries and regions .

"By purchasing goods from the Baigou luggage industry belt, I can not only save my time and no longer have to look for sources everywhere, but also save store operating costs, which brings great convenience to my work." Huang Tianxiang believes that compared with other channels, the Baigou luggage industry belt has great advantages. First , there are more product styles in the industry belt, which can narrow the selection range and save time ; secondly, because of the industrial concentration, the purchase price is also more advantageous , which can reduce product costs and make the products more competitive in the Southeast Asian market.

Future development plan: Focus on women's bags and make our products more attractive to overseas consumers

Summarizing Huang Tianxiang's explosive sales strategy and operation methods, we will find that he mainly did the following work:

1. Understand the target market and target population needs, and make localized improvements to the products;

2. Differentiate from competitors, select differentiated products, and maintain innovation to maintain core competitiveness;

3. Relying on the platform to seize opportunities to deploy overseas warehouses and Nanning warehouses to improve logistics efficiency;

4. Adhere to refined operation strategies to maximize the benefits of investment.

However, Huang Tianxiang, who has achieved good results, is not satisfied with the status quo. He believes that there is still a lot of room for development in the women's bag market, and he is willing to continue to delve into the market.

"The bag category itself is very large. The women's bags we are currently making can only be said to be a very small part of the women's bags category, so there are still many areas in the women's bag category that are worth expanding . " In the future, Huang Tianxiang plans to focus on women's bags and expand the category of women's bags on the basis of consolidating the current products on sale. At the same time, further expand the materials and design styles of women's bags , so that the store's products can eventually conquer more overseas consumers .

Like Huang Tianxiang, there are currently many Chinese sellers who are riding the wave of cross-border e-commerce and selling high-quality products from their hometowns to various parts of Southeast Asia through cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Shopee , and have achieved their own wonderful lives in the wonderful journey of sailing .

Shopee Platform