SHEIN platform sellers set off a boom in this "Black Friday" and achieved a sharp increase in overseas sales

Since last week, the official "Black Friday" promotion of cross-border e-commerce has started one after another. The reporter learned that this year, many sellers who participated in the "Black Friday" promotion through the SHEIN platform achieved a sales increase of several percent month-on-month, and some sellers even achieved a 10-fold increase in sales.

Data from Adobe Analytics shows that this year's Black Friday online sales in the US market are expected to increase by 7.5% year-on-year to US$9.8 billion (about RMB 70 billion), setting a new record high. Data from the US Department of Commerce shows that US e-commerce sales are expected to reach US$1.1 trillion in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 7%.

In contrast, SHEIN and the overseas sellers on the SHEIN platform have achieved performance that exceeds industry expectations and the growth rate of the overall market in the US market alone, and have achieved varying degrees of sales growth in hundreds of other countries and regions, winning a bumper harvest. Domestic sellers have entered a new stage of global active development.

A "Black Friday" sales growth of 1225%, domestic sellers have a bumper harvest

It is understood that this year's SHEIN "Black Friday" covers nearly one million popular products from SHEIN's own brands and SHEIN platform sellers. Not only does it maintain the competitiveness of "good quality and good price", but it also provides hundreds of thousands of new products for promotion and discount. This year's "Black Friday" is both a hot selling season and a new product season, which has been widely praised by overseas consumers.

(The pictures are from domestic and foreign social media websites. Consumers from different countries and regions posted their purchases of products from the SHEIN website. One consumer said he ordered three boxes.)

Before the opening of Black Friday, Cheng Zesi, a tableware seller, was still communicating closely with SHEIN buyers to lock in popular elements of overseas Christmas, and developed more product combinations based on the original tableware. This idea also received "explosive support" from overseas consumers who are keen on stocking up for the holidays.

Cheng Zesi, a tableware seller, is a native of Chaoshan. In his words, "There is no boy in Chaoshan who doesn't want to be a boss." In 2010, he started his own household goods business, mainly selling stainless steel cutlery. He caught up with the wave of foreign trade and earned his "first pot of gold" with orders from overseas customers. In 2020, when the epidemic broke out and overseas orders dropped sharply, Cheng Zesi received a call from SHEIN and began to enter the world of cross-border e-commerce and truly face the overseas market.

"Although we have been supplying goods to foreign customers, we did not expect the overseas toC market to be so prosperous," Cheng Zesi said, adding that SHEIN has spread to more than 150 countries and regions overseas. By quickly testing and putting styles on the shelves, Cheng Zesi can quickly grasp and obtain consumption trends and popular elements in overseas markets, and take the initiative in opening styles.

In order to further enrich the product portfolio and give consumers a sufficient sense of ceremony, Cheng Zesi customized holiday gift boxes for tableware, combining the products in sets of 2, 4, and 6 and matching them with gift box packaging. "The original packaging was a plastic packaging bag, and after adding the color box packaging, consumers can feel the full sense of ceremony when they receive the goods!" To this end, Cheng Zesi installed a customized automatic packaging machine one month before Black Friday to ensure the efficiency of shipment and the excellence of packaging. With novel elements, exquisite packaging, and flexible combinations, Cheng Zesi's stainless steel tableware made a lot of money on this year's "Black Friday": before the end of November, the monthly sales reached nearly 350,000 US dollars, an increase of 100% over October.

Having been engaged in the production of plus-size women's clothing for nearly 10 years, Guangdong seller Wang Yongxin has gone through many "wrong roads", such as spending a lot of money to build an independent website and set up his own operation team, but ended up with nothing. It was not until he joined the SHEIN platform in September this year that Wang Yongxin lamented that he "caught up with the most prosperous time." Wang Yongxin does not need to build his own site, deal with overseas logistics and after-sales. By joining the SHEIN agency operation model, he only needs to output the original products stably to quickly start sales. Settled in September, stable operation in October, and catching up with the "Black Friday" peak season in November, Wang Yongxin's store sales were like a roller coaster, rising from a purchase amount of 150,000 to more than 2 million, with a growth rate of 1225%.

Wang Yongxin said: "After three months, SHEIN has accounted for more than 40% of our business volume. In the past, I always worried that I would not be able to finish the orders tomorrow, but now I don't have to worry anymore!"

As a novice seller, Wang Yongxin put in a lot of preparation to face Black Friday. He started stocking up in October and, based on the sales trend information provided by SHEIN, made three times the usual preparations. He also added staff in the warehouse and factory to ensure that he could meet the explosion of market demand.

In order to ensure that new sellers can also land on the SHEIN platform steadily, SHEIN platform employees have visited Wang Yongxin's clothing factory many times. As a fashion clothing company, SHEIN also brought new ideas to Wang Yongxin in clothing manufacturing. Wang Yongxin said: "SHEIN's quality inspection staff came specially to tell us how to transport and inspect large-size clothes during the promotion to ensure that they are qualified. Many small details that we didn't pay attention to were optimized for us, so that we can reduce returns and customer complaints even when sales are booming."

Mastering overseas marketing, cross-border platforms help traditional foreign trade companies transform

Seller Qin Sen registered his new products and long-standing styles for the "flash sale" and "direct discount" activities on the SHEIN website. The massive influx of consumers during the "Black Friday" promotion not only helped him identify the success rate of new models, but also boosted the sales of old models. Since November, sales have reached one million US dollars, an increase of nearly 100% over normal days.

Speaking of the cooperation with SHEIN platform, Qin Sen feels that it is not only a sales window, but also a "painless" path to help him achieve transformation. "We used to run a wholesale stall, and we didn't have so many requirements for quality and efficiency. People were lazy and the team was inert. After the cooperation, I feel that we have become a mature enterprise with steady growth."

The entrepreneurial history of Qin Sen, a seller of festive goods, is a typical example of Yiwu's small commodities moving from traditional foreign trade to cross-border e-commerce. More than ten years ago, Qin Sen started selling all kinds of red, green and colorful festive goods overseas with a small stall in Yiwu Trade City. Later, the offline store in the Trade City could not be opened, but he heard that the demand for cost-effective products in the overseas market was increasing instead of decreasing, so he began to look for a new way out for the small items he produced.

Since joining SHEIN, Qin Sen's biggest feeling is "speed": he needs to react quickly to new and hot-selling products and follow up quickly to market demand. He said: "SHEIN's model is very different from the platforms we have cooperated with in the past. It has higher production capacity and control over high-quality products. It also has a keener market sense and stronger team execution."

Qin Sen's most popular products on the SHEIN platform are home textile accessories such as table runners and placemats. As a "sense of atmosphere" artifact for home decoration, durable and fashionable textile home decoration has been widely loved by consumers in recent years, especially around overseas festivals. Consumers' high enthusiasm for home decoration and gatherings will bring considerable demand growth to sellers. This year's "Black Friday" Qin Sen's main Christmas element products have been widely praised: "Previously, Christmas styles were more traditional, so I enriched and iterated the colors and patterns so that consumers can tell at a glance that it is something new. In addition, with the platform's support for traffic on "Black Friday", this year's sales are 6 to 7 times that of last year."

Many cross-border sellers use "dare to be the first, be innovative" to describe their mentality in dealing with "Black Friday". The SHEIN platform will also help sellers keep an eye on product sales and analyze product life cycles. On the SHEIN platform, after new models are put on the shelves, you can use the "high-selling new model reminder" and "new model return order guide" tools to prepare stocks, closely monitor the sales changes of new models, and prepare stocks for potential models in a timely manner. Some sellers said that the victory in the Black Friday campaign also made me more confident and more certain to run my business and expand my overseas market share.

The SHEIN brand's own flexible supply chain advantages were also fully demonstrated during the year-end promotion. It is understood that this year's SHEIN "Black Friday" has continued to improve in many aspects such as new product power, price power, logistics and warehousing, and through some innovative theme activities, it has enhanced the attraction and retention of overseas consumers. SHEIN has also prepared corresponding plans to ensure this year's "Black Friday" promotion. If the popular or potential new models are out of stock, rapid production will be started to ensure smooth and uninterrupted supply to overseas consumers. With the flexible response capabilities of SHEIN's flexible supply chain and the mechanism of the promotion, the supply volume of some supplier factories has increased by 30 times .

Data.ai's latest data on global shopping app downloads for the first three quarters of 2023 shows that SHEIN surpasses Amazon to rank first in the world. In the domestic "China Cross-border E-commerce Brand Influence List (2023/10)", SHEIN still tops the list. According to the latest survey conducted by financial services agency Piper Sandler in the fall of 2023, SHEIN has won the second place in Piper Sandler's most popular shopping website for young people in the United States.

Industry insiders believe that SHEIN is one of the companies with the best growth rate among the "Four Little Dragons" going overseas, judging from the growth rate, revenue scale, profit and other indicators in recent years. This can also well drive the competitiveness and voice of cross-border sellers on SHEIN in the global market. As local governments actively promote the high-quality development of cross-border e-commerce and continuously increase support policies, China will no longer be just a "world factory". More and more brands, high-quality merchants and industrial belts are going abroad to participate in international competition, and China's international status as one of the "global supply chain centers" continues to be stable.

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