New outlet! Another platform is open to Chinese sellers

A two-way journey between cross-border e-commerce platforms and Chinese sellers!

At present, cross-border e-commerce platforms led by Amazon and eBay are full of Chinese people. These old platforms have a huge consumer group, large traffic and many orders, but they are also widely criticized because of fierce competition.

In line with the principle of "don't put all your eggs in one basket", a large number of Chinese sellers have begun to settle in e-commerce platforms other than Amazon and eBay. It seems that Chinese sellers actively seek to settle in, but in fact, there is a mutual attraction between Chinese sellers and e-commerce platforms. Some time ago, limango, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the German Otto Group, officially opened to Chinese third-party sellers. As early as 2020, Otto.de, one of the largest online retail e-commerce platforms in Germany, has already vigorously recruited Chinese sellers.

More and more cross-border e-commerce platforms have seen the potential of Chinese sellers and are opening up to them.

New outlet! Another e-commerce platform is open to Chinese sellers

In August this year , Fnac Darty held an official investment promotion conference in China, opening investment promotion to Chinese sellers and attracting a large number of sellers to join.

According to information, Fnac Darty Group is headquartered in France with business operations all over the world. It integrates offline traditional store sales and online e-commerce platforms, with monthly platform visits exceeding 44 million.

Fnac Darty Group includes Fnac and Darty platforms, both of which are full-category sales platforms, and each has its own advantageous categories. Fnac was founded in 1954 and is a long-established French book and audio-visual company. In 2009, Fnac officially opened its third-party seller market. Darty was founded in 1957 and is a famous French home appliance retailer. In 2014, Darty's third-party seller market was officially launched.

In 2016, Fnac and Darty officially merged to form the current Fnac Darty Group. With the strong combination of the two brands, Fnac Darty has become an important retailer platform in Europe. Data shows that Fnac Darty's business has now covered 13 countries including France, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal. The online platform has received 266 million global store visits and 45 million monthly clicks. In recent years, sales on the Fnac Darty e-commerce platform have been rising steadily, with strong revenue growth in 2021, with annual sales reaching 8.043 billion euros, a 7.4% increase in reported data compared to 2020 and an 8.2% increase compared to the estimated data for 2019.

It is worth noting that Fnac Darty has an exceptionally high position in the French market. It has become the second largest local e-commerce platform in France and the preferred platform for French people to purchase electronic high-tech products. There is little competition for related products, orders are placed quickly, and the average customer unit price is 50 euros, which is equivalent to China's JD.com. Observing the ranking list of "Top 10 Best-selling Categories in the French E-commerce Market in 2023", it can be found that Fnac Darty has achieved remarkable results in many categories, with sales of cultural products and toys/games accounting for 33.5% and 15.2% respectively, ranking second in sales, second only to the e-commerce giant Amazon.

The editor learned that as early as 2020, Fnac Darty Group held its first investment promotion conference in China, where its five major online shopping malls gathered together to attract Chinese sellers to settle in. Now Fnac Darty is taking more actions, holding official investment promotion conferences in China, and now not only provides a Chinese account manager team, but also launches various support policies, showing its attention to Chinese sellers.

Chinese sellers have become popular! Many platforms are recruiting Chinese sellers

Coincidentally, South Africa's leading online retail platform Takealot is also attracting Chinese sellers to join.

According to information, Takealot was founded in June 2011. Its predecessor was the South African online retailer Take2. At that time, Tiger Global Management successfully acquired the US e-commerce company Take2 and made significant investments in it. Now Takealot has grown into South Africa’s largest and most customer-centric online shopping destination, with a market share of more than 50%. It has long been ranked first in the South African e-commerce platform rankings. Among its more than 3 million active consumers, 95% are from South Africa.

The Takealot platform has nearly 50 million visits per month and mainly sells books, electronic products, gardening supplies, mother and baby products , etc. Like other platforms, it currently has two sales models: self-operated and third-party sellers.

In fact, in addition to Fnac Darty, many overseas platforms are also recruiting Chinese sellers. Chinese products are of good quality, low price and rich variety, and have become a "hot commodity" in the eyes of foreign consumers. According to incomplete statistics, well-known Russian e-commerce platforms Wildberries and Yandex Market, Australian local online retailer Catch, British local e-commerce platform Fruugo, Turkey and Eastern Europe's largest e-commerce platform Hepsiburada, Southeast Europe's largest e-commerce platform eMAG, Walmart and other e-commerce platforms all recognize the appeal of Chinese products to foreign consumers.

In the past two years, the Russian e-commerce platform Wildberries has opened internal testing in China. Founded in 2004, Wildberries is the largest and most well-known e-commerce platform in Russia. Chinese sellers have entered this platform to make money, and the first batch of people who have tried it are making a fortune. It is reported that one seller has achieved sales of 500,000 in just three weeks.

In May this year , people familiar with the matter revealed that Wildberries is still in the internal testing stage and is currently mainly recruiting investors through the whitelist method. It will be fully open in a few months, and it will then be much easier for sellers to register.

In order to attract Chinese sellers, in April this year , Wildberries held a 12-day Wildberries China's first round of cross-border e-commerce series of exchanges in six cities including Ningbo, Jinhua, Yiwu, Hangzhou, Dezhou and Guangzhou .

Catch, a local e-commerce platform owned by Australia's WesFarmers, is also taking measures to expand the number of Chinese sellers and is reported to have set up a dedicated customer manager team in Shenzhen.

Founded in 2006, Catch is an Australian online retail giant and one of the largest online retailers in Australia, ranking second only to eBay and Amazon. In 2017, the platform opened a sales channel for third-party sellers, mainly selling home decoration, sportswear, health and daily necessities, consumer electronics, fashion, accessories, daily necessities and other products. The website has a very high traffic and is especially popular among female consumers. Data shows that more than half of the users are female, with an average age of around 35 years old.

It can be observed that Chinese sellers are looking forward to and welcoming new platforms. Nowadays, many sellers are operating multiple e-commerce platforms or entering multiple markets at the same time. "Competitors on platforms such as Temu and Walmart are all familiar old faces. Everyone has changed platforms and continues to be a rival..." said an industry insider.

In September this year , data from Marketplace Pulse showed that Walmart had added more than 50,000 active sellers in the past 12 months. As an old e-commerce platform, Walmart had a total of 50,000 active sellers as of 2022. This shows that the growth rate of Walmart's new sellers is very fast.

In the past two years, Walmart has begun to pay attention to Chinese sellers and enthusiastically attracted Chinese sellers to join. Chinese sellers have also responded with "enthusiasm". The significant increase in Walmart's active sellers is due to the Chinese seller group. Data shows that almost all of Walmart's international sellers are from China, and Chinese sellers now account for 35% of active sellers.

The multi-platform layout has a significant effect, with the revenue of the big seller on the Temu platform exceeding 90 million

What is the current traffic status of major cross-border e-commerce platforms? Recently, some netizens summarized that TK Store is the king of traffic, Temu and OZON are latecomers, Amazon, AliExpress, and Rakuten have a large base, Coupang, Shopee, and Walmart have a long history, SHEIN, OTTO, eBay, Meikeduo, and Lazada are developing steadily, and Wayfair, Allegro, cdiscount and other platforms are niche platforms.

The advantages of a multi-platform and multi-market layout are significant. Sellers not only disperse the huge risks brought by relying on a single platform, but also increase revenue channels. This can also be reflected in the revenue data of listed big sellers such as Anker and Huakai Yibai.

Huakai Yibai : In the first three quarters of this year , Huakai Yibai actively deployed Temu and Tik   Tok, WalMart and other popular overseas e-commerce platforms. Among them, Temu platform achieved operating income of 91.58 million yuan, Tik Tok platform achieved operating income of 109.27 million yuan, and WalMart platform achieved operating income of 100.74 million yuan. Since the third quarter of 2024 , Huakai Yibai's sales on emerging platforms have shown a rapid growth trend, and it is expected to usher in significant performance improvement in the future.

Anker Innovations : The company's sales revenue on third-party platforms is mainly from Amazon, but it is also constantly exploring new platform businesses and development opportunities, such as developing better cooperation with well-known e-commerce platforms such as JD.com, Tmall, AliExpress, eB ay , and Douyin. In the first half of this year, Anker Innovations' third-party platforms excluding Amazon achieved a total revenue of RMB 763 million, a year-on-year increase of 67.36%.

UGREEN : Currently, sales revenue from online channels mainly comes from Amazon, Tmall and JD.com, and new platform businesses such as AliExpress, Shopee, Lazada, Pinduoduo and Douyin have also maintained good growth.

Data shows that in the first half of this year, UGREEN's revenue on the AliExpress platform reached 70.5395 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 34.7%; UGREEN's revenue on the Shopee platform reached 73.5307 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 27.95%; UGREEN's revenue on the Lazada platform reached 48.0998 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.45%.

It is worth noting that UGREEN has achieved significant growth in new domestic platforms such as Douyin and Pinduoduo. At the same time, the company's overseas independent sites such as UGREEN Mall, SHEIN platform, TikTok, etc. are also growing rapidly.

Savi Times : Savi Times has been paying close attention to various emerging platforms with rapid growth, and has continued to study and test platform rules and traffic conditions. In the first half of 2024, the company increased its investment in platforms such as Temu and TikTok, and its sales performance and growth were good. Among them, the revenue on the Temu platform was 60.6285 million yuan, the revenue on the WalMart platform was 156.031 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 92.46%, and the revenue on the TikTok platform was 23.7407 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10,700.20%.

Taotao Vehicle Industry : Taotao Vehicle Industry focuses on intelligent electric low-speed vehicles and special vehicles. Its main products include intelligent electric low-speed vehicles, electric scooters, electric bicycles, electric golf carts, etc. The total operating income in the first half of this year was 1.391 billion yuan, achieving a two-year consecutive increase, up 77.23% year-on-year. The net profit attributable to the parent company was 182 million yuan, ranking third among the disclosed peers, an increase of 47.5384 million yuan over the same reporting period last year, achieving a two-year consecutive increase, up 35.36% year-on-year.

Taotao Bicycle is also a leader in multi-platform layout. During the reporting period, the company's electric balance bike sales ranked top three in the category on Amazon US, and won the title of Best Seller many times; in the WALMART channel, the company's electric balance bike ranked on the homepage of WALMART's annual product recommendation list for three consecutive years, and became the annual sales champion of the category for two consecutive years.

Sales of many electric scooters on the Amazon platform are among the best of their kind; on the self-built website gotrax.com, the GX series of high-end electric scooters and the mid-range G5 commuter models, priced at up to US$1,999, are precisely positioned in the target market and have achieved good sales results; in the WALMART channel, electric scooters have participated in three consecutive large-scale seasonal promotions, and RIVAL products have ranked among the top in sales among their peers in the first half of the year due to their best-selling status.

Santai Co., Ltd .: Santai Co., Ltd.'s cross-border e-commerce export retail business is mainly sold in a B2C model through more than 30 major overseas third-party e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, Shopee, etc., covering consumers in more than 200 countries including Europe, America, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

In the first half of this year, San Tai's cross-border e-commerce retail revenue reached 587 million yuan, with revenue from hobbies reaching 219 million yuan, home life reaching 183 million yuan, and tool accessories reaching over 90 million yuan. Although San Tai did not disclose the revenue from major e-commerce platforms in detail, it can be speculated that it has steadily supported its current sales volume by relying on more than 800,000 SKUs in nearly 100 subcategories on more than 30 platforms.

With the platform opening up new markets, Chinese products are sold well around the world

Chinese sellers are actively entering new platforms and exploring new markets. It can be said that both mature markets such as the United States, Europe, and Japan, as well as emerging blue ocean markets such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and South Africa, seem to be crowded with Chinese sellers.

A study in June this year showed that in the past year, Chinese e-commerce platforms Temu and SHEIN have set off a shopping boom in Australia. It is estimated that consumers spent a total of US$3 billion on these two platforms last year, most of whom are repeat customers, and 42% of SHEIN consumers have purchased 4 times or more. The number of shoppers is also growing at an astonishing rate . The number of people shopping on Temu per month has increased by 32%, from 1.26 million in the October-December quarter of 2023 to 1.66 million in the April-June quarter of 2024 (3.8 million in 12 months).

" I can't think of any other retailer that has grown its customer base by more than 30% in such a short period of time , especially in the current environment, except for Amazon , " said an industry insider.

Chinese e-commerce platforms are also developing rapidly in Switzerland. According to survey data in November, three Chinese e-commerce platforms, SHEIN, Temu and AliExpress, have jointly entered the list of the top 10 most popular online shopping platforms in Switzerland. Temu has become the fourth most popular shopping platform in Switzerland with its rapid development , ranking only after Amazon (market share 10.5% ), Swiss local e-commerce platform Galaxus (market share 9.0%) and German e-commerce platform Zalando (market share 8.4%).

Australia and Switzerland are just a microcosm of the global rise of Chinese e-commerce platforms. Whether it is SHEIN, Temu or AliExpress, most of them are Chinese sellers. Chinese sellers are using major cross-border e-commerce platforms as carriers to surge overseas and continue to attract consumers around the world to shop and place orders.

The result of the rise of platforms such as Temu is that they not only snatched Amazon's customer base, but also snatched Amazon's sellers. According to reports, 60% of Amazon sellers have settled in Temu . According to two people familiar with the matter, Temu has added more than 60% of major Chinese Amazon sellers, covering multiple categories such as bedding and vacuum cleaners, and is recruiting American merchants.

"If you can't beat them, join them!" Amazon sellers actively seek new traffic after their traffic is taken away by other platforms. This is one of the main reasons why they have multi-platform e-commerce layout. "Amazon platform is too competitive" further encourages sellers to take the initiative to go abroad.

A study by US analysis company Jungle Scout shows that 70% of products on Amazon are made in China, far ahead of other countries.

The study requires companies selling on the Amazon platform to list the top three countries of origin of their products, so the total share of the products exceeds 100%. However, this does not affect the leading position of Chinese manufacturing. The study shows that among the products sold on Amazon, Chinese-made products rank first with a share of 71%, far exceeding the second place of the United States (30%). India (14%) and Germany (6%) rank third and fourth respectively.

Influenced by platforms such as Temu , Amazon has fought back against these platforms on a global scale . For example, it proactively reduced the commission for clothing categories and launched a low-price mall to compete with Temu . From observation, the prices of most products are even higher than those of Temu .

In addition, Amazon is also constantly expanding its business territory and has opened multiple sites around the world, including Brazil, South Africa, and Australia. Every time Amazon opens a new market, Chinese sellers will actively respond and move in.

In the Middle East, as of June 2023, the number of Chinese sellers on Amazon Middle East has increased by more than 40% compared with the same period last year. Cross-border sellers such as Anker Innovations and UGREEN have already settled in and achieved impressive results. In Australia, Amazon launched the Australian market in December 2017. In just one year, the number of products on Amazon has increased from 7.5 million to nearly 100 million. The number of third-party sellers has also increased rapidly from 2,000 to 25,000. Marketplace Pulse research data shows that 40% of the sellers are local Australians, and the remaining 60% are mainly from China.

In South Africa, Amazon officially launched its South African site on May 7 this year, engaging in a head-on battle with e-commerce platforms such as Takealot, bidorbuy, Zando, Temu and Shein in this battlefield. The established e-commerce giant has become a new player in South Africa, and is currently attracting local consumers to place orders through high-quality services such as free delivery and worry-free returns. The effectiveness remains to be tested by time. However, Chinese products have taken the lead through platforms other than Amazon and continue to "capture" the hearts of South African consumers.

According to the latest survey by DHL eCommerce, as many as 74% of South African e-commerce shoppers buy goods from online retailers in other countries, which is higher than the global average of 55%. The survey report said that 72% of people buy at least once a month, 75% buy from China, 49% buy from the United States, and 34% buy from the United Kingdom. In terms of e-commerce platform selection, 95% of online shoppers prefer Takealot, 68% prefer SHEIN, and 26% prefer Temu.

Multi-platform operation has become a general trend in the cross-border circle. Chinese sellers continue to enter new platforms and look for new opportunities in major markets. It is foreseeable that many sellers may suffer losses as a result, but many sellers will also successfully find a second spring in their career development.