Anker and other 4 companies are selling well on the market and are also service providers! Are selling goods no longer popular?

Table of contents

1. Phenomenon: Identity boundaries are broken, when sellers start to operate as service providers.

2. Thinking: Anker and other four big sellers want to be “water sellers”, and the end of the big sellers is to be service providers?

3. In-depth investigation: Platform staff colluded with service providers to "grab" money, and industry insiders truly exposed the chaos of service providers.

Being both a "gold digger" and a "water seller"... more and more cross-border sellers are trying hard to get rid of the title of leeks!

Leek awakens: Sellers are also service providers

As cross-border e-commerce exports have grown from obscurity to become a well-known celebrity brand, cross-border sellers who have been quietly making a lot of money can no longer keep a low profile, and have also lost the skill of "picking up money just by bending down". The resulting situation is: the industry is becoming more and more inward-looking, the promotion cost is getting higher and higher, the product price is getting lower and lower, and the profit is getting thinner and thinner...

However, cross-border sellers, whose road ahead is increasingly difficult, are all full of "lucky husband" physique. From the moment they step into the cross-border e-commerce industry, they can make "a lot of money" for service providers who provide training and store openings; the losses and hardships they have suffered in the process of running a store are the "wealth" of various types of service providers such as complaints; every batch of goods shipped is the cornerstone for the survival of logistics service providers; even if a cross-border seller is heartbroken by the entire industry and wants to withdraw from the industry, he can still nourish a group of service providers who collect accounts and clear inventory in his "dying moments"... A cross-border seller is dedicating himself all the time from birth to death.

When the leeks wake up, or seize a glimmer of opportunity, these "gold diggers" will work hard to transition to "water sellers". Some logistics service providers, suppliers and even training institutions have their own cross-border stores. More and more small and medium-sized sellers have also started service provider businesses, such as part-time freight forwarding, part-time complaints, part-time order brushing, part-time photo editing, part-time training... "It's not known whether cross-border e-commerce sellers can make money, but selling services is really profitable." This view has become a common understanding in the industry.

This is true for both small and large sellers. Currently, the four known cross-border listed large sellers, Anker Innovations, Tongtuo Technology, Jihong Shares and Jiazhilian, have all entered the service provider field. The editor learned that Anker Innovations has already expanded its agency operation projects abroad, and Tongtuo Technology, which has started training, has also helped Huawei Honor brand to go overseas, helping its brand products to maintain its first place in the smart watch market in five European countries on Amazon . Jiazhilian's e-commerce service business has become an important source of income. Jihong Shares, a large independent seller in Southeast Asia, is also going to launch its own SaaS service platform!

The boundary between sellers and service providers has become increasingly blurred. Small sellers are trying hard to grow into big sellers, and big sellers who are already in high positions will eventually become service providers? Can well-known big sellers such as Anker enter the service provider industry and set an example for the agency operation and training industries whose reputations have been damaged?

When cross-border sellers start logistics and training businesses

It has long been a very common phenomenon in the industry for sellers to work as part-time service providers, with logistics and training being popular options.

It is reported that an Amazon seller has only started working as a training service provider in the past two years. The reason for working as a service provider part-time is that being a seller is too tiring, the risks are too high, and the threshold is too high. Once a mistake is made, the consequences are very serious. Although working as a service provider part-time does not make a lot of money, it is enough to support the rent.

Given the low entry threshold into the logistics industry, many sellers work as freight forwarders in their spare time, which not only allows them to meet their own shipping needs but also earn extra money.

In the process of sellers advancing to service providers, options such as fake orders, proxy registration, and complaints are also listed.

A Wish seller once said that his main business is selling goods on the Wish platform, but unfortunately he cannot support himself with his main business alone, so he also does some work in registering companies.

There was also a seller who had just started selling kitchen supplies on the Amazon platform. He invested more than 100,000 yuan but achieved little success. By chance, he worked part-time as a fake order service provider. Not only could he earn extra income, but he also had free fake order resources.

More than just selling goods, Anker and other four companies have the ambition to sell well after listing

It is said that small sellers are selection tools for big sellers, and big sellers are selection tools for platforms. In summary, both small sellers and big sellers are leeks, but there are differences between leeks. As a small seller, you are just a leek, while big sellers are the best among leeks , which means that if the platform changes its policy slightly, they may lose hundreds of millions. Small sellers who are prepared for danger in times of peace are still trying to save themselves and get rid of the insecurity brought by relying solely on the platform. Powerful big sellers are trying to get rid of the name of "leek" and transform from "gold diggers" to "water sellers". The ambitions of the four listed big sellers such as Anker are gradually revealed.

1. Anker’s agency operation helped increase brand search volume by 3750%.

This year, an investor asked Anker Innovations: What proportion did the agency operation business account for in the first quarter of this year?

Anker Innovations' secretary to the board responded: The company's agency operation business is still in its infancy and accounts for a small proportion.

Although Anker's answer was a bit "low-key" and there were very few references to agency operations in its financial report, Anker has quietly expanded its agency operations services overseas.

On oceanwing.com, the official website of Anker's operation incubation service brand , successful cooperation cases with some of the most popular brands in the industry are listed, such as Vital Proteins, Amore Pacific, DONGINBI, TCL, etc.

Anker said that in the process of cooperating with Vital Proteins, a brand that sells collagen products , it saved Vital Proteins more than $1 million in operating expenses, increased the brand's search volume by 3,750%, and ranked in the Top 1 category within one month, with sales doubling from the previous year.

At the same time, Anker also provided significant help to the successful overseas expansion of the domestic brand TCL. Anker said that in the first year of cooperation, TCL achieved sales of 4,391,681 US dollars through their optimization strategy, and the brand's products successfully entered the top 15 in the mobile phone category . TCL carried out BD activities and even won the Top Rank No. 6. "This is a historic moment for TCL, and also for a Chinese mobile phone brand." Anker said.

2. Tongtuo, a billion-dollar sales company, is also doing training.

In addition to Anker, cross-border seller Tongtuo Technology has also entered the service provider industry and started training services. When Tongtuo was caught up in the account suspension storm this year, it publicly stated that it has been quietly exploring and practicing in the field of cross-border practical talent training. The training method is to introduce Tongtuo's practical mentor team to provide talent training and teach cross-border win-win partners real practical skills. It has provided training services for more than 100 entrepreneurs and novice sellers , and has trained tens of thousands of professional practical cross-border e-commerce talents for the industry .

There was news that Tongtuo had cooperated with Huawei Honor to help Huawei Honor brand expand overseas, allowing its products to long-term rank first in the smart watch market on Amazon's five European countries.

It is reported that Tongtuo had quietly started practical training as early as 2018 when the company launched the "Ferry Plan". However, in the past, it was more in the form of customized training, providing customized practical training incubation services for those transforming manufacturers, overseas brand owners, and cross-border entrepreneurs who had practical training needs.

In addition to providing talent training, Tongtuo Cross-border E-Academy will also introduce Tongtuo's 17 years of accumulated experience and resources to provide team incubation, such as 300,000+ product supply chain sharing, 100 million+ professional marketing resource assistance, 500+ logistics and warehousing resource support, cross-border guidance, etc., to help it have a greater probability of doing well in cross-border e-commerce.

3. The revenue of Jiazhilian e-commerce services reached 15.03 million yuan .

Another cross-border seller , Jiazhilian, has now become a cross-border export e-commerce enterprise with "brand e-commerce + e-commerce software + e-commerce community" as its main business. It provides e-commerce sellers with all-round, one-stop services by selling e-commerce marketing services and management software to them. At the same time, through the e-commerce community, it provides e-commerce sellers with traffic aggregation and distribution, promotion and marketing services based on the SAAS system .

The editor learned that the software AMZTracker, Vipon, CashCowPro, Unicorn Smasher Pro, and Tracker M developed by Jiazhilian are all targeted at Amazon sellers. In the first half of this year, Jiazhilian's e -commerce service revenue reached 15.03 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.54%, accounting for 8% of the total business sales in the first half of the year.

4. Jihong shares are selling well in Southeast Asia, and we also want to promote the SaaS service platform.

There is also a well-known independent website that sells Jihong shares and is about to launch its own platform.

It is reported that Jihong Co., Ltd. established "Jimiao Cloud" in the second half of 2020, committed to exporting the mature process links, business systems and application modules of cross-border e-commerce business in the form of products, and building a cross-border e-commerce SaaS service platform for Southeast Asia and other small language countries .

Jimiaoyun is a full-link ecological platform focusing on cross-border e-commerce, aiming to help domestic merchants and foreign Internet celebrities and bloggers quickly explore new "sales" paths and create a new marketing front. It mainly provides one-stop services including product selection, website building, marketing, warehousing, logistics, and customer management for demand parties, helping more small and medium-sized merchants, brand merchants and Internet celebrities and bloggers to quickly develop cross-border e-commerce businesses and achieve independent operation. Even a novice with zero basics can use the Jimiaoyun platform to open a store and sell goods without development and at zero cost.

In May 2021, Jimiao Cloud, a SaaS service platform that took several months to build, started internal testing. It is expected to complete product packaging and start market promotion by the end of 2021.

It is known that there are already 4 billion-level sellers competing to become service providers. In unknown corners, there may be even more big sellers "making a fuss"!

The end point of big sales is not listing, but becoming a service provider?

In the past, when people mentioned cross-border e-commerce platforms represented by Amazon, many people would say that this was a hot spot. Now, when people mention Amazon, Wish, independent websites and other platforms, many people would say that this is a deep pit, and if you enter it, you will die! The change in the rhetoric, on the one hand, reflects the reality that cross-border e-commerce exports are not as easy as before, and on the other hand, it actually reflects the psychological changes of sellers after being beaten by society.

When the leeks wake up, those who can no longer play will leave, and those who can continue will naturally gather where there is more money. It can be said that this is also the fundamental reason why big sellers such as Anker are competing to become service providers. "The end point of big sellers is not service providers, but money."

In fact, not only platform sellers, but also cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Wish are playing the role of service providers. "Amazon is really a sophisticated and self-interested businessman. It will intervene in any project that makes money. It has FBA for logistics and its own payment collection service. It can also provide loans to sellers with financial difficulties and take care of the aftermath of sellers who are not selling their goods..." An Amazon seller once complained.

An Alibaba seller once used the following joke to "ridicule" the platform's thoughtful service:

I remember the first time I met the account manager, she drove a Mazda to greet me warmly and told me ↓↓↓

I would be at a disadvantage if I didn’t use credit insurance, so my account manager told me to use credit insurance.

I went to Credit Insurance and the account manager asked me to swipe P4P, so I swipe P4P .

The account manager got me to 1 star, and I reached 2 stars .

The account manager said that only Samsung could get more traffic, so I reached Samsung and bought a Jinpin Chengqi.

The account manager asked me to buy a wireless top display. After I bought two fixed displays, there were not many inquiries in September .

I asked the account manager what to do, and the account manager drove a Porsche and said: It is not easy to do business in Alibaba right now.

Wish sellers provide their own Wish mail, which is even more inconvenient...

Platform staff and service providers collude to "rob" sellers of their money. How deep is the shady dealings in the service industry?

An industry insider said, who would complain about having too much money? The key is whether you have a conscience in the process of making money.

Taking Anker's entry into the agency operation market as an example, the problem is not that the agency operation model is wrong, but that the personnel and teams in the agency operation market are of varying quality. There are too many fakes pretending to be real people, which leads to people shaking their heads when they mention the agency operation model. If the entry of big sellers such as Anker can improve the reputation of agency operation, this will also be a contribution to the cross-border e-commerce industry.

People from the same group mess with each other and cheat each other. Among the service providers, although most people make money in a "proper way", there will also be some people who break the rules and use "tricks" to exchange for more money.

An industry insider in the cross-border business said that he had mainly worked on Amazon before, but he was in a gray area while working on Amazon and did not learn much operational skills. In the past two years, Amazon has become increasingly difficult to do business, and he could no longer survive on the Amazon platform, so he switched to the international site.

"There is no skill in operating Amazon, it's just brushing, and the main products sold are infringing products - Apple earphones with 3.5mm interface, which can be purchased in Huaqiangbei for 10 yuan, and sold on Amazon for 14.99 US dollars." The editor learned that although the money made by this seller when selling infringing products can be described as making a fortune, it was all in vain and he lost it all in the end.

As he had to file complaints so many times while working for Amazon, this seller has become very skilled at making complaints. So, in addition to working on the international site, he also does Amazon complaints part-time.

After getting involved in the appeal business, I found out that there is a lot of water behind it. "Some appeal service providers charge very high fees, and a large part of the money actually flows into the pockets of Amazon's internal employees." To put it bluntly, the service providers rely on their relationship with Amazon's internal employees. During the appeal process, they use part of the money given by Amazon sellers to "honor" Amazon's internal employees. After receiving the money, Amazon's internal employees "open the back door", and the service providers help sellers submit appeals, and naturally every time they submit an appeal, it is successful.

"There is a real example. A friend of mine had his link maliciously attacked and accused of infringement, and then his product was removed from the shelves. At this time, my friend wrote a letter of appeal, but when he submitted it himself, Amazon refused to approve it. In desperation, he gave the same letter of appeal to his account manager and asked the account manager to submit it. As a result, the appeal was successful in seconds," said the industry insider. Why did the account manager succeed? It was because my friend paid "protection money."

The editor learned in detail that this seller started selling on Amazon at the end of 2016. During his time on Amazon, every time his store was blocked, he would receive calls from service providers. These service providers could accurately tell the balance in the backend of their stores, and then they would start asking for exorbitant prices.

Not only himself, but his friends also had similar experiences. "After my friend's store was caught for double-swiping, he received a call from the appeal service provider. The service provider said that he had internal channels and asked for a five-digit fee to guarantee the unblocking of the account ." The service provider asked for five digits for the appeal, probably because he knew that my friend's account still had a balance of nearly five digits in US dollars, so he asked for such a high price.

The shady issues at Amazon mentioned by this industry insider have surfaced more than once before.

Yien.com recently reported that Kadimisetty, an employee who had resigned from Amazon , used his personal connections to engage in shady activities with colleagues during his time at Amazon to help sellers increase sales and attack their competitors. In addition, Kadimisetty also admitted to paying Amazon employees to disable other sellers' listings in order to direct shoppers to Kadimisetty's customers' listings, thereby increasing sellers' sales.

Final Thoughts

The cross-border e-commerce industry is a place where interests gather. Whether it is the seller group or the group that serves sellers, it is full of "intrigues", which are essentially for the purpose of obtaining more money. Especially in recent years, when the cross-border e-commerce industry has been pushed to the forefront and cannot be brought down, groups of scammers are also flocking to it, under the name of serving sellers, "selling beauty without limit" to make money . Their behavior has damaged the interests of sellers and the reputation of service providers.

To eradicate the "cancer" in the industry , not only do service providers need to abide by business bottom lines, but sellers are also required to abide by platform rules and keep their eyes open and not be fooled. At the same time, the industry needs a "leader" to clean up the atmosphere.

Some time ago, an American seller tweeted his real name to express his love for Anker's operation incubation service brand Oceanwing, saying that Chinese brands have performed so well on Amazon that Anker and other Chinese brands can now provide services to Americans. In the comment section of this Twitter content, an American seller also praised Anker highly: Anker is the best in history ...

The service provider status of big sellers such as Anker can bring more positive energy to the cross-border e-commerce industry and make Chinese products famous overseas. Perhaps this is the greatest significance of big sellers also serving as service providers.

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