A post-95s generation switched to cross-border business and achieved annual sales of tens of millions in two years!

There are always a group of people who are optimistic about the cross-border trend and quit their jobs to start their own businesses. They are eager to complete the transformation from "employees" to "big bosses". Compared with those entrepreneurs who only have ideas but have not taken that step, those who have already started their own businesses are undoubtedly ahead.

From working in a large factory to starting her own business, from a monthly income of 3K to 100,000+; from entering Amazon with a small category to successfully starting a business and achieving financial freedom, Yuexia Xiaoxun, the second generation of a factory owner, spent more than two years to increase the annual sales of her Amazon store to tens of millions, and has several stable small hit links. She herself will also achieve the goal of saving 1 million yuan, which may be more in line with the real situation of most entrepreneurs.

It took her two years to sell tens of millions of copies a year on Amazon

"When I was in middle school, I set a goal for myself: to make several million before I turned 30. Now I'm 27, and I'm almost at my goal," Yuexia Xiaoxun admitted. At the time, she had no concept of money. She only knew that achieving this goal would allow her to buy most of the things she liked.

When I was young, I had a dream of becoming a rich woman, and I started to act towards it when I grew up. I learned how to start a business by reselling small jewelry in college, and after graduation, I started to resell local specialties. After working for two years, I started Amazon. Yuexia Xiaoxun, who was described by her mother as someone who only thought about money, has now achieved financial freedom, with an income more than ten times that of her peers. Last month, she received more than 120,000 yuan in dividends.

On Amazon, Yuexia Xiaoxun started from the small kitchen category. This year's sales have reached tens of millions. The success rate of new products is 50%, half of which can achieve monthly sales of 300, and the remaining half can also break even and clear stocks. At the same time, it has successfully led its own factories to transform online and maintained good cooperation with many factories. At present, its store has 1 star product and 3 cash cow products. Although it is not as good as many big sellers, for a start-up, the income is considerable.

For Yuexia Xiaoxun, the idea of ​​switching careers and starting a business was not a sudden idea. Like most fresh graduates, she entered a large company for internship after graduation, facing repetitive and elaborate work every day, earning a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan, looking at a life that was about to end, and hearing that the salary of seniors who had worked for more than 5 years was not even 50,000 yuan. Yuexia Xiaoxun realized that the current salary was too far from reaching the goal she set.

Instead of thinking about quitting her job and starting a business every day, it is better to start a business directly. After deciding to start a business, Yuexia Xiaoxun began to learn operations from the top domestic bosses . "A set of e-commerce materials, 200+ classes, I finished reading it in a month and sorted out dozens of mind maps." At that time, Yuexia Xiaoxun spent almost all her time learning relevant knowledge about e-commerce operations.

However, entering the cross-border track and joining Amazon was an accident. At that time, she had been seeking advice from the top boss. Seeing that his cross-border friends were making a lot of money, he gave her advice and asked her to develop in the cross-border track. In addition, her family was also considering switching from physical stores to online stores. So she began her journey of upgrading and fighting monsters in the cross-border track.

With the help of its own factory as the first seesaw to enter the cross-border race , Yuexia Xiaoxun also faced the choice of deepening its platform. "International sites require a lot of investment, and the opponents are all powerful manufacturers, and they cannot compete without spending money on traffic; independent sites require solving problems such as traffic diversion and logistics by themselves; Amazon has a large amount of traffic and small initial investment, and small sellers continue to rise every year," Yuexia Xiaoxun said frankly. After comparing and analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of various platforms, I finally think that Amazon is more suitable for me.

After choosing the platform, she began to raise money with her partners to prepare for a big move.

However, most of the money she invested initially was used to make mistakes. The two investments of 100,000 yuan also made her realize the importance of products and markets. Yuexia Xiaoxun said: " Of the 100,000 yuan she invested the first time , 40,000 yuan was spent on training institutions alone, 20,000+ yuan was spent on trademarks, and the first batch of goods and shipping costs were only about 10,000 yuan . " In her opinion, the funds spent on starting a business are not much, and the money spent on training institutions can be completely omitted. Newbies should not expect to learn more in-depth operational skills in training institutions, and ordinary people do not need to spend tens of thousands of yuan on tuition fees to start a business.

"Regular items that look ordinary are more likely to become hits," Yuexia Xiaoxun summed up her own successful experience. At that time, not long after entering the training institution, the teacher helped me choose two products, one was A, which looked ordinary and not many customers placed large orders; the other was B, an old product from more than ten years ago. At that time, Yuexia Xiaoxun was still stuck in conventional theories and once believed that a hit should dazzle the audience. Thinking that A was too ordinary, she symbolically prepared 50 sets; B changed the navy blue to her favorite pink and purple, and prepared 400 sets.

It’s okay to be happy with yourself, but the market will teach you a lesson. Obviously, product B, which was very good, was unsalable. The evaluation given by the product selection teacher was: you changed the most popular color in this category to the color they disliked the most. Even though the teacher had pointed out the problem, Yuexia Xiaoxun still insisted on being optimistic about this product. After just a few orders, she thought product B was great and stocked it up. The final result was that after spending several months to clear the stock, there were still 400 sets of inventory left in the factory.

On the other hand, product A, which was originally mediocre and not optimistic, actually became popular after it arrived, and after two years of accumulation, it often won the small category AC mark. This also made her realize that products that were usually inconspicuous and even covered in dust in the factory may be popular in the market. The market is the market, and feelings are not important. Choosing products based on feelings may lead to big losses. What is more important is objective data.

The second 100,000 yuan was spent even faster. The two products that were put on the shelves earlier became a hit, which also made Yuexia Xiaoxun fall into a misunderstanding: the cross-border market can sell whatever products are put on the shelves, but reality taught her a lesson.

She took 100,000 yuan to purchase products from other factories. At that time, the supplier promised that the stock could be returned if it was not sold out. She was inexperienced and ordered 6,000 pieces at once. The payment for one link plus the shipping fee was 60,000 yuan. As a result, the products did not sell as well as expected. Many of them were unsalable. She wanted to return them but was rejected by the supplier. In the end, she could only quietly clear out the stock. It took her more than a year to clear out this batch of goods.

As the saying goes, every failure makes you wiser. Yuexia Xiaoxun constantly summed up her experience of failure, studied the objective data of the top-selling products in the market, and slowly began to reap some rewards.

The single product is sold out , she prefers to take steady steps

In her first year on Amazon, she spent almost all her time on familiarizing herself with the platform rules and shipping and restocking goods, but fortunately, she managed to create a small hit product and survived on Amazon temporarily. In the second year, there was good news again. The store sold a big hit product, and at that time, they had successfully recovered their investment. The profit generated afterwards was equivalent to pure profit, and they started to make money.

Compared with some sellers, Yuexia Xiaoxun's successful strategy is to take a steady approach rather than leverage. From only 10 orders on the first membership day, to 100 orders on the second membership day, and then to 1,300 orders this year, although the sales growth rate is slow, it has been growing.

Different from the rule that "30% depends on operation and 70% depends on product selection" in the cross-border circle , Yuexia Xiaoxun has always believed that 90% depends on product selection and 10% depends on operation. In July this year , her store had 6 links, one of which was the first in a small category, one of which was out of stock with a ranking of 20,000+ in a large category, one of which was out of stock with a weekly sales of 150, and another new product was the first in a small category, and the remaining three were not selling well and were being cleared.

Some sellers saw that other factories' products seemed good, so they rushed to place orders, which was a bit like spreading goods, but the result was not good. The final result of spreading goods was unsalable. Several links that "placed orders if they looked good" did not sell well in the end . She also realized that if she wanted to make a good product, the key was to see what the market needed and then find suppliers.

At this point, Yuexia Xiaoxun also turned from her initial self-entertainment to market demand, doing market research, looking at data, rather than listening to rumors, and learning from the advice of offline market predecessors. " When a foreign trade aunt decided to do Amazon, the first product she chose was the product she had been making offline for many years, but the result was that it was unsalable, " Yuexia Xiaoxun said frankly that offline products and ideas are not necessarily suitable for online. Some products have a large offline market , which means they can be easily bought offline. On the contrary, products with a small offline market or emerging categories are difficult to find offline , and online shopping is more convenient, so the online market is actually larger.

How do they create new products? They also have their own business experience. They sell at a base price of 20% profit (excluding advertising), do not violate regulations, and do not have wish lists or Vine reviews (usually second batch applications). In this case, products that cannot be sold will be eliminated, which will force the success rate of their product selection.

Only do in-site advertising, rely on products to conquer the world, and clear out the stock if there is no order from automatic advertising. Many sellers may have gone through the same process: " New products are put on the shelves and sell well - after a while, they are not doing well again - the price is adjusted and revived - turn off the advertising to restore the profit and the price is not selling again - continue to sell and place orders - after placing orders, clear out the stock" . This process takes at least two months, wasting time and energy.

The company has specially formulated standards for "clearance items" and "long-selling items": the inspection period for new products is generally three weeks, and they are sold at a profit price + advertising. If they sell well, they are classified as "long-selling items" and orders can be placed directly for replenishment. If they don't sell well, they are sold at cost price + advertising. If they sell well, they go back to the first step. If the sales volume is good, they are classified as "long-selling items". If they return to the profit price but cannot sell well, they are classified as "clearance items" and cleared quickly. The unsold goods are basically cleared out within three months. It is precisely because of this standard that the company currently has no backlog of inventory on Amazon.

"Generally speaking, each company should have a lot of links in its operations, and if it wants to manage every one of them, it may not have enough energy," said Yuexia Xiaoxun. Therefore, the company decided to only manage "good links" and set standards for "good" links to maximize efficiency and spend more energy on market research and product development. It is precisely this decision that has enabled the company to create more hits.

Yuexia Xiaoxun also has her own views on the development of hot products. She believes that the popular functions + popular appearance + popular accessories = new hot products. These three components can be combined from different hot products. The cube of the hot products can combine to form n hot products. In the market competition, the company will not compete with old rivals in terms of volume. It will mainly focus on small and beautiful categories , focusing on products with high profits (guaranteed income) and high investment-output ratio (guaranteed turnover) . After all, making money is the most important thing.

In today's cross-border market, some new sellers make money, but many sellers lose money. Many people follow the trend of the 3C, clothing and other red ocean markets, but end up leaving with nothing. This also shows the importance of choosing the right category. If ordinary people want to get a share of the cross-border track, they need to find some markets that are not favored by big sellers but are enough to support themselves. Since entering the small kitchen category, Yuexia Xiaoxun admits that she has not encountered many top companies competing.

"At that time , there were new dark horse products coming out every month in the markets I was working in . Seeing them catch up, I was more certain that there were still a lot of opportunities in this market , " said Yuexia Xiaoxun. The most important reason for entering the market and maintaining growth in the context of a sluggish entrepreneurial environment and cross-border market is to focus on products. As long as you can find the most popular products in the market, consumers will continue to pay for you.

However, the cross-border e-commerce market is also changing over time.

The growth rate of cross-border e-commerce has slowed down, and sellers are no longer living well?

"The days of cross-border e-commerce are no longer smooth," a seller lamented. Compared with previous years, the current cross-border e-commerce environment is not good at all, and it depends on the weather to a large extent. According to cross-border e-commerce import and export data, my country's cross-border e-commerce import and export volume has doubled in the past five years, but the growth rate has been slowing down in the past three years.

Some sellers feel more deeply that the ability of cross-border e-commerce to attract money is not as good as before, but this does not deny that import and export trade is still growing, nor does it reduce the enthusiasm of sellers to rush to the cross-border track. According to Chinese customs data, China's import and export trade exceeded the 40 trillion mark for the first time in 2022. In the first eight months of this year, China's total import and export value was 27.08 trillion yuan, of which exports were 15.47 trillion yuan, an increase of 0.8%.

As of the first half of this year, nearly half of the Chinese sellers on Amazon have conducted business in two or more international sites; among them, the number of Chinese sellers online at sites other than the US site has increased by 45% in the past 12 months. The United States is still the main battlefield for sellers to deepen their roots, and new markets such as the Middle East and Latin America are also favored by Chinese sellers.

Even though the global cross-border e-commerce market is highly competitive, it is far from reaching its development limit. Outside of Europe and the United States, there are some emerging markets with great potential and relatively less competition, including Africa and the Middle East, which are more worthy of exploration by sellers. Yuexia Xiaoxun also mentioned that a senior with 8 years of overseas experience suggested that she open other sites outside the United States. Even if the daily profit is only half of that of the US site, it is still a considerable income , which is enough to prove the potential of the market outside the United States.

In the two years when Amazon was frantically slaughtering illegal sellers, many old sellers chose to operate on multiple platforms to spread the risk. At that time, Chinese sellers accounted for 40% of Amazon, but this year it has gradually returned to 45%. As time enters 2023, sellers find that the capacity and traffic of other platforms are limited, and the orders that can be generated and the opportunities provided are very small. Amazon's traffic and capacity still rank first. Many people have turned around and returned to Amazon.

In terms of gameplay, the current cross-border e-commerce market is more about products being king. Originally, many cross-border companies were in a large-scale distribution model, which also created a situation: even if the per capita output was not high, it was still possible to make money. However, in the long run, many small and medium-sized sellers are deeply trapped in the distribution swamp, and it is difficult to build their own business barriers. When encountering a little trouble, they have no choice.

The Amazon account bans and multiple changes in the international market in the past two years have affected sellers, making the distribution model a thing of the past. The model of focusing on single boutique products has become the mainstream. In the first half of this year, the sales of boutique products led by Anker Innovations have increased both revenue and profits, which is also a side example.

If we carefully observe the big sellers such as Anker and Aok, it is not difficult to find that they are also adjusting their own logic in line with the changes in the cross-border e-commerce market. These changes can be reflected in various aspects such as self-operated channels, branding and service upgrades.

The demands and habits of overseas consumers are changing. In the past, most sellers in the industry were competing to achieve the best price-performance ratio and meet the basic needs of consumers, but now this phenomenon has changed and evolved into a competition for comprehensive consumer experience such as quality, brand and service.

A seller once revealed that a small boutique seller in the industry mainly deals in the gardening decoration category. Its hot-selling product is the lawn marker flag , a very simple thing that can be made with just a steel wire and a PVC fabric. The seller has made the product of good quality, which is tear-proof and rust-proof, and is highly favored by the market. In addition, the cost of making this product is very low and the profit is high. The seller made a lot of money in a peak season.

It is understood that the seller's product hit was launched in 2021, and in about a year, it has reached the top 40 of BSR; the store Feedback has increased by 30 in the past 30 days, with a total of 1039. The most important point is that the store's traffic is also mainly concentrated in natural search + free association + advertising, among which advertising investment accounts for 30%, and the proportion of natural orders is much higher than that of advertising orders.

It can be said that although the cross-border e-commerce market is highly competitive, there are still opportunities. There is a lot of room for improvement not only in the selection of emerging markets, but also in the creation of products. Large sellers rely on a lot of funds to expand channels, improve supply chains, and build their own brand barriers. Small and medium-sized sellers can focus on a niche track in a vertical field, just like Yuexia Xiaoxun mentioned above, and take root there until it is revitalized.

(Part of the material in this article comes from Yuexia Xiaoxun)

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