There are more than 100 brands with revenue exceeding 100 million yuan! It’s the right time for DTC to go global

In the current environment, it has become a general trend for enterprises to go overseas. DTC (Direct to Consumer) has become the preferred path for many enterprises to go overseas due to its features such as direct access to consumers, efficient feedback loop, and strong brand building capabilities.

However, amid fierce international competition, most brands still face problems such as unclear positioning, single marketing strategy, and unclear consumer perception.

In order to help sellers solve these pain points, the "2024 DTC Brand Overseas Reshaping Growth Private Meeting" was officially held by E-EN.com and Huifu International together with Shopify and Meta, and it came to a perfect end in Nanshan, Shenzhen on September 20. At the event, many big names brought unique insights to everyone from their professional perspectives.

  At the beginning of the event, Zhou Ye, founder, chairman and CEO of Huifu Tianxia Co., Ltd., gave an opening speech. Then Felix Chen, senior partner manager of Shopify Greater China , shared the "Shopify plus brand overseas strategy " and introduced the key role of Shopify in the process of brand overseas expansion to the participants .

In his sharing, Felix Chen emphasized the key words that sellers need to know in 2024: Unified commerce, B2B, Automation/Customization and International Expansion.

Felix Chen said that "integrated commerce" is the future of the retail industry. Integrated commerce not only enables retailers to provide a warmer customer experience, but also optimizes operations and makes data-driven decisions; while increasing consumer repeat purchase rates and brand operating income, it can also improve brand customer retention rates and reduce brand order execution costs.

The sharing also mentioned that Shopify's current business has spread across 175 countries around the world, with millions of merchants; last year, Shopify's merchants' total sales reached US$236 billion, with more than 100 brands having revenue exceeding US$100 million; the platform's users have also exceeded 675 million.

After the sharing, Felix Chen and Keychron COO Tan Songyuan shared the " 3C Overseas Brand Seller Growth Story ", and analyzed the current market trends for sellers from the perspective of 3C overseas sellers. According to Similarweb data, as a brand focusing on mechanical keyboards, the average monthly visits to Keychron's independent site stabilized at around 2.2 million in 2023, of which the proportion of natural traffic can reach more than 90%.

Then, Hu Wenlong, Director of E-commerce for Greater China at Meta, brought everyone the " Market Potential and Growth Strategy of Cross-border E-commerce DTC Overseas Market ". He made an in-depth analysis of the current development opportunities and challenges of the industry from the two perspectives of market potential and growth strategy, and shared the "White Paper on Cross-border E-commerce DTC Full-Stage Growth Strategy" compiled by Meta in cooperation with Kantar Consulting Department.

The white paper mentioned: With outstanding advantages in consumer communication and mid- and long-term brand growth and construction, the merchant DTC direct sales model has grown rapidly in recent years; it is estimated that between 2020 and 2024, the compound annual growth rate of China's cross-border export e-commerce DTC scale will reach 12.7%.

Based on different stages, DTC merchants can be divided into P0 start-up period, P1 growth period and P2 mature period. The goals, core issues and growth strategies of different stages are also different. For merchants in the P0 start-up period, the growth strategy should focus on targeting the target market, achieving breakthroughs through independent website construction, focusing on core categories, creating star products to quickly enter and occupy the market, etc.

Gong Yi, Sales Director of International Card Acquiring at Huifu International , shared with sellers " A Must for Going Overseas: How to Choose the Best Payment Method ". He explained to sellers the importance of payment in the business from five aspects: the importance of payment to DTC brands, payment development trends in different markets, the current status of payment operations, how to enable payment to empower the business, and how to choose payment service providers.

Gong Yi believes that "the importance of payment gradually increases with the growth of business volume" and "payment should not be just a subordinate department, but should be a business-driven department to empower the business." Gong Yi said that sellers can add overseas local payment methods to independent sites to acquire new customers, and at the same time implement user loyalty programs through payment to promote user repurchase.

Afterwards, EN Media Facebook senior advertising optimizer Ma Hongyun brought everyone " Facebook advertising structure and practical case analysis ", and introduced Facebook's advertising structure in detail. After the guests answered questions for sellers, this event also came to a perfect end.

In the current overseas market, the DTC model has been increasingly recognized by many sellers due to its unique advantages, and the popularity of domestic and foreign DTC brands such as Keychron has also given many Chinese cross-border sellers new hope for "growth". As platform compliance becomes increasingly strict, DTC is a good direction for many sellers. While improving their strategic layout, it also makes their overseas market path more stable.

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