AliExpress invests heavily in apparel category, Cainiao's "cross-border apparel line" provides protection

On February 29, Cainiao announced the launch of the "Cross-border Clothing Line", focusing on clothing industry belts such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Yiwu, and Dongguan, creating a digital cross-border clothing solution to escort AliExpress clothing sellers and factories and other merchants to go overseas. As a result, clothing products produced in the above five cities can be delivered to European consumers in as fast as five days.

Previously, some media reported on the recent cross-border clothing investment promotion launched by AliExpress. AliExpress launched a series of intensive actions targeting the clothing industry belt, which was interpreted as "the clothing supply reconstruction with the largest investment and greatest determination in the cross-border e-commerce industry at the beginning of the year."

To this end, AliExpress has added a women's clothing channel, Viva, to its homepage, and has released a series of exclusive services to merchants, including large subsidies directly from the platform, additional promotion of exclusive channel resources, support for internal and external traffic, the highest increase in investment in history, and 1-on-1 docking with store assistants. In addition, AliExpress has also held a number of investment promotion meetings specifically for clothing sellers and source factories in industrial belts in cities such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and Yiwu.

In the places closest to these clothing merchants, Cainiao's "cross-border clothing special line" can prepare goods in advance to the "clothing warehouse" near 5 cities through semi-trusteeship. Through logistics technologies such as cross-warehouse intelligent remittance, clothing packages from different merchants are collected in the Cainiao warehouse and automatically packaged into one package, reducing logistics costs. At the same time, they also enjoy the "X-day delivery" worry-free standard logistics service, greatly improving the delivery time of goods. Especially for countries such as the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands that have opened the "Global 5-Day Delivery", consumers can receive clothing products from China in as fast as 5 days.

It is understood that, unlike other commodity categories, clothing categories have strong seasonal requirements, and SKU inventory and types need to be adjusted dynamically according to the season, resulting in high inventory pressure and difficulty in tallying. How to efficiently go overseas has always been a core difficulty for cross-border clothing companies.

It is worth mentioning that semi-managed clothing merchants can also use Cainiao JIT (Just in Time) logistics to flexibly manage and adjust inventory, which helps merchants build a flexible supply chain for on-demand production. It is reported that Cainiao JIT can provide merchants with a smooth logistics experience of door-to-door collection and 24-hour delivery. In Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Yiwu and Dongguan, JIT door-to-door collection service can be completed in as fast as 13 hours.

In order to reduce costs and improve efficiency for clothing merchants who are new to cross-border e-commerce, Cainiao's self-developed Tianji measuring instrument can accurately measure the volume, weight and shape of clothing packages within 2 seconds, and upload it to the system with one click, without manual measurement. The person in charge of Cainiao's JIT solution said that for irregular-shaped clothing products, Cainiao can accurately calculate the volume of goods and the corresponding logistics costs by increasing new investment in digital equipment. Reducing costs from the source of logistics can improve the price competitiveness of clothing products for merchants.

It is understood that as the world's largest cross-border e-commerce logistics company, Cainiao's global smart logistics network covers more than 200 countries and regions. In fiscal year 2023, Cainiao handled more than 1.5 billion cross-border parcels, serving 133 million cross-border consumers and more than 100,000 merchants and brands.

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Cross-border clothing line