Some cross-border sellers who mainly sell overseas holiday decorations have recently reaped many "unexpected gains". Li Feng's recently launched new products for Halloween and Christmas have shown strong growth momentum. A new product he launched has more than 1,000 consumers placing orders every day in the SHEIN store, which greatly exceeded expectations. So the company had to adjust its production capacity and increase production. The media learned that this desktop hot-selling ornament, which combines pumpkins, trees, and colorful gems in appearance, was launched by Li Feng in advance to test the popularity of Halloween consumption after noticing the holiday marketing node reminder on the SHEIN platform.

As one of the biggest carnivals in the second half of the year, traditional consumption related to Halloween has been played more and more cool overseas - not only do you have to dress strangely, but you also have to dress your home cool , keep up with the trend, and be the most handsome. In addition, in recent years, many foreigners have started to prepare supplies for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and other festivals as soon as summer comes to an end . A market research data shows that the proportion of consumers who like to buy holiday products more than one month in advance has exceeded 34% , and their purchasing power is considerable.

The ever-lengthening "festival economy" and a more relaxed cross-border peak season

Starting from October , the international consumer market is about to enter a fast-paced carnival stage : a series of festivals are coming, from the pumpkin lanterns of Halloween to the turkey feast and grand tableware of Thanksgiving, from the all-category shopping spree on Black Friday to the online shopping on Cyber ​​Monday, until the arrival of elk and gifts at Christmas. Each festival is a key node that is enough to make foreign consumers' eyes shine and their purchasing power burst out.

At the same time, an interesting business trend is also emerging: influenced by market demand, the commercial launch of holiday shopping is becoming more and more advanced. Some industry insiders believe that longer promotion periods will give sellers more time to attract customers and increase sales. From an industry perspective, extended promotions can also reduce the pressure during the peak period of international logistics and distribution, allowing international consumers to calmly place orders and purchase a wide variety of Chinese-made products, enjoying a more pleasant experience.

Take Halloween this year as an example. Many SHEIN sellers are planning new products specifically for the holiday in advance , hoping to attract consumers' budgets earlier . This trend is not just a short-term market phenomenon, but also shows the obvious changes in global consumer habits and market business strategies .

Granularity, an artificial intelligence data prediction platform that focuses on social media and search engine data, predicts data that supports the above trend: the extension of Halloween consumption is not just a hunch. Scholars at Warrington Business School also believe that some retailers rely on the holiday season to account for 30% of annual sales, which has prompted retailers to further extend sales time. "I think retailers are looking for these opportunities, and they are trying to promote and create consumer holidays." He also said, "(Retailers) They hope to be able to extend sales to more time of the year."

On the SHEIN website, new Halloween products are now available earlier . Sales and searches for many products have been rising since late July and early August . This year, a newer " holiday " was born : Summer Halloween . " Summer Halloween " is considered to be a fusion of summer celebrations and Halloween. Judging from the overseas people's enthusiastic demand for festivals, a once-a-year lively and funny festival can no longer satisfy their appetite. On some social media, the media even found that some netizens had celebrated "Summer Halloween" early , which means that many people could not help celebrating and enjoying a shopping spree .

According to the consumer habits learned by the media from SHEIN sellers , many overseas shopaholics will start to choose holiday items in July and August , and the peak order period is in September and October. In terms of the types of products purchased, most of the consumers' budget is spent on clothing and home decoration, followed by various products that can create a strong holiday atmosphere, such as some dressing props, wigs, nail art, etc.

Even though some sellers have already put a lot of new Halloween products on their online stores , some buyers still complain that the new products are late . "I 've already bought a Halloween cape, which is far from enough . " A consumer from the Ile-de-France region of France said online , "And pumpkin earrings . There are some things I didn't buy last year, and now I'm planning how to work hard to find them, hoping to complete this year's shopping list! "

Driven by booming demand, it is crucial for cross-border sellers to grasp the timing of product development and the rhythm of new product launches during the peak season. Before the peak season with certain sales arrives, it is necessary to plan the rhythm of new product launches and testing in advance. After preliminary market testing , more accurate stocking suggestions and trend forecasts can be obtained. Only then can hot products be frequently launched when the peak season arrives, and the coding and stocking are continuously maintained to steadily receive the influx of users and orders.

Wang Yunfeng, a SHEIN seller, had a very representative sales performance during Halloween . He launched a Halloween lighting product on July 8 last year, and averaged more than 10 orders per day in the first week of the launch. Sales began to rise rapidly in early August, with daily sales reaching more than 2,200 orders. During Halloween, sales of the hit product reached more than 60,000 orders. The emergence of the hit also boosted the sales of Wang Yunfeng's entire store , with a growth rate of nearly 300 times from the initial volume to the explosive growth .

Seller Jiang Yun has recently launched the final stage of the "stocking sprint" around Halloween, which she has been thinking about for a long time. The reason for Jiang Yun's positive attitude is simple. In 2023, she reaped a wave of dividends from the sales of Halloween decorative lights on SHEIN , but unfortunately she was not well prepared and had too few products on the shelves, which resulted in the failure to keep up with the inventory at the critical moment, and the big profit turned into a small profit, which she felt regretful about. So since March this year, Jiang Yun has been communicating with SHEIN employees every once in a while about the rhythm of new releases and product selection directions for festive lighting, vowing to fully reap the dividends during this year's peak season .

The purchasing passion of overseas "impatient" consumers and the enthusiasm of SHEIN sellers to launch new products are running in both directions . For the former , instead of waiting until the temperature drops to carve pumpkins, collect corn candy, and consider dressing up, it is better to put those treasures that are both attractive and playable into their shopping lists now .

SHEIN sellers urgently recruit e-commerce employees to prepare for Halloween

Therefore, whether or not to keenly capture and make good use of festival sales trends is crucial for cross-border sellers to seize the peak season. Especially for cross-border e-commerce companies that mainly sell festival products, the sales performance in the peak season in the second half of the year is often the main source of their annual revenue. The profitability of the whole year depends largely on the market performance in just four months.

As a styling assistant for Halloween cosplay, tattoo sticker seller Guo Feng started to sell Halloween products related to special makeup early. They also hired models to match various personalized makeup to show the playability of the products as much as possible. Guo Feng said: "We will plan the annual product line in advance, what type of products to put on each festival or season, and then supplement them according to the development suggestions of the SHEIN team to ensure that consumers can find new models that will make them shine in time ."

Zheng Yuanyang is also good at doing business well during the year-end festive peak season . His company specializes in fabric festive dolls and owns 11 factories (mainly in Zhejiang and Guangdong). Its SHEIN stores have maintained a growth rate of more than 70% for three consecutive years. It also once produced a festive fabric doll that was popular overseas. At its peak, the monthly sales of a single model exceeded 1 million.

When the media contacted Zheng Yuanyang recently, he had just finished an internal meeting with the operations and procurement departments, confirming that the second batch of Halloween products for overseas markets had been put into the warehouse. He required that the products put on the shelves for this year's Halloween must be new, and that strong design elements should be highlighted and more combination sets should be launched, encouraging the team to win the sales battle between Halloween and Christmas this year.

When talking about how to plan the company's development, Zheng Yuanyang revealed that he had almost no hesitation in switching from a purely domestic wholesale company to a cross-border e-commerce company: operating on traditional domestic wholesale websites has a very life-threatening problem, which is that the inventory is particularly consumed. According to Zheng Yuanyang's description, for example, in the past, for every sales of about 10 million, the corresponding inventory was usually more than 2 million, especially for seasonal products. Once the quantity and account are not calculated well , the large amount of inventory generated will basically have to be kept for another year, and it is very likely that it will not be sold in the second year.

"But after doing cross-border e-commerce through SHEIN, all my business decisions are based on a series of sales relationships. The accounts are very clear and the business figures are very transparent. According to the experience of the past few years, the sales volume of SHEIN products will continue to grow during the new product period, and then begin to stabilize at a certain point. So I can roughly calculate the inventory, and after each new product is launched, I will first produce 100 to 200 pieces and then gradually increase the number, so that there is no time to return the order.

The innovative model of " small orders and quick response " that SHEIN 's own brand is good at is also empowering more sellers and industrial belts through the platform model . In Zheng Yuanyang's factory , "small orders and quick response" has become easy to practice . He believes that one of SHEIN's advantages is the on-demand production guidance and digital empowerment for production-oriented sellers. Not only are the tools complete, but the trends and hot-selling elements provided by the platform are also very helpful for sellers' operational planning and capacity management . " And compared with other platforms , the operation logic and sales data of the seller backend page provided by SHEIN are clearer . "

Halloween is coming at the beginning of next month , and Zheng Yuanyang's company is about to sprint to the sales peak of this year. He expects this year's Halloween sales to exceed 15 million, and the annual sales to exceed 80 million . To this end , the company is "recruiting" to expand professional e-commerce personnel. It is understood that Zheng Yuanyang's company started to enter the cross-border e-commerce with a scale of 20 people . The company already has more than 100 employees. Now it has decided to continue to recruit 30 more people to meet the needs of the company in the fourth quarter and subsequent long-term development.

For some companies that are new to cross-border e-commerce, the construction of cross-border supply chains, overseas marketing, after-sales services, etc. all require a large amount of capital investment. When they lack experience, it is easy to lead to higher overseas costs. In addition, understanding the risks and costs of the market and overseas compliance are important parts of cross-border sales that cannot be ignored . Going overseas through the SHEIN platform is undoubtedly a good choice for many sellers who want to enter the " fast lane " .

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