Opportunities for AliExpress, a local cross-border platform: Sellers choose to deploy on multiple platforms

"Multi-platform decentralized operation" has become a consensus among many sellers in the cross-border e-commerce circle.

Since last year, overseas cross-border platforms have seen a "store closure wave", inventory restrictions, and a sharp increase in shipping prices... Waves of "huge waves" have come one after another, coupled with the impact of the epidemic, leading to increased uncertainty in the cross-border e-commerce market and sellers' profits being squeezed. Under this situation of internal and external troubles, many sellers have already taken multi-platform layout as a strategic direction for long-term development.

But for these sellers, the primary issue this year is which platform to focus on and which industry categories to develop in order to have more "certainty".

01More and more cross-border “big sellers” begin to pay attention to AliExpress

It is worth taking a look at how the "big sellers" in the circle are deployed on multiple platforms? It is understood that Yishi Innovation, which is committed to the research and development, production and sales of smart devices such as panoramic cameras and sports cameras, achieved rapid growth in performance in 2021. It is expected that its operating income will be 1.251 billion to 1.35 billion, and its net profit will be 255 million to 296 million, doubling its profit over the same period last year.

The success of Arashi Innovation is inseparable from its multi-platform layout strategy. In addition to deploying overseas cross-border platforms such as Amazon, Arashi Innovation also quickly expanded new markets with AliExpress in 2021, and successively captured blue ocean markets such as Brazil, South Korea, and Spain. Relying on AliExpress's overseas warehouses, policy support and other resources, Arashi Innovation has not only expanded emerging potential markets, but also achieved further growth in overseas performance.

In addition, Dreame Technology, a Chinese smart cleaning brand that has won numerous German Red Dot Design Awards , is also an example of a multi-platform layout. Despite the impact of the epidemic in the industry, Dreame Technology's performance in overseas markets has not been affected, and it is still growing against the trend, and has achieved double success on AliExpress and Amazon.

According to the data, in June 2021, Dreame vacuum cleaners topped the sales of vacuum cleaners above 300 euros on AliExpress Europe , and the sweeper D9 swept the Amazon charts in France, Italy, and Spain. In addition, in the first half of 2021, the shipment volume of Dreame handheld vacuum cleaners in the German market was three times that of the full year of 2020, and won the first place in sales of vacuum cleaners exported from China.

In the past, many cross-border sellers were highly dependent on a single platform. However, it was precisely this dependence that caused many single-platform sellers to suffer a heavy blow during last year's "store closure wave", and their overall development was in danger, and they even had to cut off their arms to survive. This also made many domestic sellers begin to realize the importance of multi-platform layout. In order to get rid of the dependence on a single platform, most cross-border sellers have begun to layout and develop potential platforms since 2021.

02 “Putting eggs in multiple baskets” has become the consensus of the industry on “big sales”

At present, some big sellers have gradually gotten rid of the single-platform layout, and multi-platform initiatives have also begun to show results.

Among them, Youkeshu, which suffered a net loss of more than 1.8 billion yuan in the affected year , reaped great rewards after choosing to deploy on other platforms. The 2021 annual report shows that other platforms deployed by Youkeshu are all growing. In addition, Tongtuo's parent company Huading Co., Ltd. also stated that it is carrying out a multi-platform layout and will increase the sales share of other e-commerce platforms such as AliExpress and Walmart to achieve the purpose of risk diversification.

All these signs confirm one fact: multi-platform layout has become a general trend. Finding a potential and powerful e-commerce platform is the primary problem currently faced by many sellers. AliExpress, as a global cross-border e-commerce platform, has attracted the attention of many sellers in this situation.

The editor learned that at the "2022 AliExpress Global Annual Summit" held by AliExpress on April 19, Zhang Kaifu, Vice President of Alibaba Group and General Manager of AliExpress Global, said: In 2022, the AliExpress platform will accelerate the high-quality growth of high-quality merchants, accelerate the improvement of global logistics fulfillment capabilities, and continuously optimize platform mechanisms and merchant ecosystems. Three core strategies that benefit domestic merchants will be fully utilized to help the majority of cross-border merchants go overseas.

In fact, AliExpress has been committed to improving the basic capabilities of its platform to promote more high-quality Chinese-made products to go abroad and help more Chinese sellers expand new tracks and business opportunities. At present, AliExpress has opened 18 language sites, covering more than 200 countries and regions, and the cumulative number of buyers worldwide exceeds 150 million. In addition, in 2021, the number of merchants with annual sales of more than 1 million US dollars on the AliExpress platform increased by 43%.

There is no doubt that AliExpress's own development speed and potential for expanding the blue ocean market are attracting high-quality sellers to join. In the new year, AliExpress will also follow the trend of globalization and multi-platform layout, and help Chinese merchants cope with the challenges of the cross-border e-commerce market through three major directions.

1. Accelerate the high-quality growth of high-quality merchants, launch the gold and silver medal system, and launch a new track AE Mall;

2. Accelerate the improvement of global logistics fulfillment capabilities, encourage merchants with good warehouse fulfillment and fast delivery, and achieve a 72-hour online rate of >90%;

3. Optimize the platform mechanism and merchant ecology, provide more compliance and other ecological services, lower the operating threshold, and support the supply of high-quality merchants.

03Bonus is coming frequently! In 2022, AliExpress aims to be the platform that understands Chinese merchants best

At this conference, AliExpress also sent a clear signal: as a cross-border e-commerce platform native to China, AliExpress will take a series of support measures to become the platform that understands Chinese merchants best.

1) Launch new channels and reduce logistics costs and speed up logistics through large-scale layout.

First, let's focus on cross-border logistics. Due to the repeated global epidemic, cross-border logistics is facing problems such as tight supply, insufficient transportation capacity, and high costs. Especially since last year, there have been problems such as lack of containers and containers for sea freight, high air freight prices, hot sales and shortage of inventory, and frequent incidents of long delivery time and easy loss. Logistics transportation prices, timeliness, and safety issues have caused headaches for many sellers.

In order to solve the problems of sellers in a targeted manner, relevant departments have launched a number of measures, including increasing investment in international logistics, vigorously encouraging the construction of overseas warehouses, and injecting new impetus into the steady growth of foreign trade. In the face of this trend, AliExpress has also responded positively.

First, by increasing the construction of logistics infrastructure in Spain, France, Brazil, South Korea, the United States and other regions, we will improve our own cargo handling capabilities and logistics efficiency while helping sellers reduce logistics costs.

Secondly, we actively encourage "warehouse entry" and increase investment in the construction of basic logistics facilities such as preferred warehouses and overseas warehouses. While providing clear transparent support and traffic support to merchants entering the warehouses, we also increase the certainty of domestic merchants' fulfillment of contracts.

The last one is "combined orders". This year, AliExpress will increase its support for "combined orders" and strive to help merchants reduce costs and increase speed, while improving consumer experience.

2) Focusing on new markets, exploring the Americas and expanding into South Korea is AliExpress’ second move.

During last year's Double 11, AliExpress received good news from many countries and regions. Among them, the Brazilian market in South America set off the Brazilian e-commerce market by achieving the transaction volume of two days and two nights of the previous year in just 20 hours after the opening, while apparel fashion, digital electronics, and life interests were hot-selling categories; Korean consumers followed closely behind, exceeding the sales volume of 2020 in just 7 hours and 58 minutes, and AliExpress Weihai Preferred Warehouse benefited from the explosion of the Korean market and achieved a 43-fold increase in daily sales.

Compared with other platforms, it can be said that AliExpress, as a local cross-border e-commerce platform in China, understands the hearts of Chinese sellers better. When the e-commerce market is booming, AliExpress is not only constantly exploring and developing new emerging markets and regions such as the Americas and South Korea, but is also increasing its investment in manpower, capital and infrastructure to help more Chinese sellers and categories break through.

3) Support for new tracks: Accelerating the growth of high-quality merchants is the third measure.

At present, the rapid development and compliance of cross-border e-commerce have become the common demands of major domestic and foreign platforms and high-quality merchants. The traditional violent repeated distribution and script-based store group strategy are no longer applicable to the existing industry environment and the important requirements of the current environment for "industrial upgrading".

A large number of outstanding cross-border e-commerce people are re-examining their development models and trying to transform towards a compliant and refined development path.

Based on this trend, AliExpress has also launched a new track system for merchants at all levels to guide merchants to grow healthily and in compliance with regulations on the platform. In this track, AliExpress has increased its support for high-quality brands and launched new policies including the gold and silver medal system and more accurate search matching, providing more traffic entrances for high-quality merchants. In addition, for merchants who meet the rules and can provide high-quality supply, the platform has also launched a new track AE Mall.

It is reported that merchants entering AE Mall will receive a clear logo, which consumers can see when browsing the core purchase page of the AliExpress APP. In addition, merchants can also enjoy a series of support policies such as one-to-one exclusive customer service, more traffic guarantees, and commission incentives.

The launch of the new track is a clear signal sent by AliExpress in 2022: this year AliExpress will very clearly cultivate high-quality merchants to accelerate their growth on the platform. At the same time, we also welcome "high-quality supply" merchants in the industry belt to actively choose AliExpress.

Li Hongxia, founder of Dongguan Yuanmanfeng Garment Co., Ltd., said after watching the summit: After listening to the sharing of the conference, this year we will focus on AliExpress's AE Mall. For the majority of small and medium-sized cross-border sellers, only with a benchmark can we have a direction to work hard! It is reported that Dongguan Yuanmanfeng Garment Co., Ltd. is also a "multi-platform" integrated industrial and trade clothing export company. After entering AliExpress in May 2021, it seized the opportunity to achieve rapid growth.

In 2022, the global e-commerce market still has huge potential, but the accompanying market competition is also becoming more and more fierce. In the context of the urgent need for industrial upgrading of "Made in China", if sellers want to win a place in such an e-commerce market, the first thing they need to do is to choose a high-quality e-commerce platform. The local platform AliExpress, which is in full swing in 2022, is undoubtedly a reliable choice for domestic sellers in addition to overseas single platforms.

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