The scale of cross-border e-commerce trade has increased by over 10 times! This ＂warehouse＂ is unusual
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, June 14thQuestion: The scale of cross-border e-commerce trade has increased by over 10 times! This "warehouse" is unusual
Xinhua News Agency reporter Xie Xiyao
Click on the shopping website, and "Made in China" will arrive at home a few days later. People all over the world are enjoying a fast and convenient shopping experience.
How fast is the development of cross-border e-commerce in China? In the past five years, the scale of cross-border e-commerce trade in China has increased by more than 10 times. According to preliminary statistics of various places, the number of cross-border e-commerce entities in China has exceeded 120,000, and more than 2,500 overseas warehouses have been built, covering an area of over 30 million square meters.
In order to further support the development of cross-border e-commerce, the Ministry of Commerce and other nine departments recently issued the Opinions on Expanding Cross-border E-commerce Exports and Promoting the Construction of Overseas Warehouses, and put forward a number of measures to promote the high-quality development of cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses. Combing a series of policies and measures to support the development of foreign trade in recent years, "cross-border e-commerce" and "overseas warehouse" are key words.
What is an overseas warehouse?
Overseas warehouse is a digital intelligent storage facility operated by self-built or leased overseas, which helps to open up the "last mile" of cross-border trade.
The insiders calculated an account for the reporter: ordinary cross-border logistics, after overseas buyers place orders, domestic sellers need to deliver through international logistics, involving customs declaration, customs clearance and other procedures, which generally takes at least 5 to 10 days. Goods shipped directly from overseas warehouses will generally be received by customers in 1 to 3 days.
If your impression of this "warehouse" still stays in the "residence" of goods overseas, then the role played by overseas warehouses now will surprise you.
Make the whole process of goods ordering, delivery, transportation and distribution visible, provide consumer portraits and customized data analysis reports … Overseas warehouses based on digital management integrate logistics, warehousing, finance, distribution and other resources to help cross-border e-commerce form a new format in technology, mode and supply chain.
"It not only improves the transportation timeliness, but also guarantees the user experience." Ye Hanmei, sales director of Shenzhen Baosen Santong Logistics Co., Ltd. said that since 2020, the company has established three overseas warehouses in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.
As an important new infrastructure to serve cross-border e-commerce, overseas warehouses have directly narrowed the distance between sellers in China and foreign customers, simplified the customs clearance process, accelerated the trade turnover, helped to solve the pain points of after-sales service such as refund and return, and effectively enhanced the global competitiveness of China manufacturing.
In the era of globalization, internet plus and big data, new forms of foreign trade development are becoming more and more diverse. How to speed up the construction of overseas warehouses?
It should be noted that overseas warehouses are not as simple as renting and building a warehouse overseas, which requires service providers to have sufficient financial strength and operational experience, as well as the ability to cope with uncertain risks such as local political, cultural and regulatory differences.
The opinions released a few days ago put forward 15 specific measures such as "strengthening the construction of industry organizations and personnel training", "unblocking financing channels for cross-border e-commerce enterprises" and "improving cross-border data management and service level".
In order to promote the experience of overseas warehouse construction, the Ministry of Commerce issued a number of practical cases: some overseas warehouses intelligently control millions of goods, and the data accuracy rate reached 99%; Some overseas warehouses formulate exclusive marketing strategies according to the characteristics of the local market; Some overseas warehouses set up overseas legal, financial and tax teams to help customers avoid violations such as intellectual property rights infringement and avoid various tax risks …
Looking ahead, how broad is the development space of overseas warehouses?
From the policy point of view, from the state to the local governments, we have increased efforts to support the construction of overseas warehouses, and used this as a starting point to tap new kinetic energy of foreign trade.
From the demand side, the global e-commerce market is growing rapidly, the cross-border e-commerce industry is in the ascendant, and there is considerable room for overseas warehouses to grow upwards.
Pinduoduo’s cross-border e-commerce platform Temu recently launched its Brazil site, which is the 70th national site opened by Temu and an important step in the South American market layout.
AliExpress, a cross-border platform operated by Alibaba Group, had about 8.58 million members in Korea in April 2024, double the number in April 2023.
According to the latest research report of Roy Morgan, an Australian market research company, more than 2 million Australians shop on China’s cross-border e-commerce platforms SHEIN and Temu online platforms every month. According to the German Business Daily, exclusive data show that a quarter of Germans have already bought things on the e-commerce platform in China.
Cross-border e-commerce has become the new engine of China’s foreign trade development with the advantages of reducing trade intermediate links, breaking time and space restrictions and improving logistics technology and system.
In the first quarter of this year, the import and export of cross-border e-commerce nationwide was 577.6 billion yuan, up by 9.6%, of which exports were 448 billion yuan, up by 14%, accounting for 7.8% of the total exports, which boosted the export growth by over 1 percentage point.
Make global shopping more convenient. With the further implementation of various support policies, the construction of overseas warehouses will boost the development of cross-border e-commerce, and more China brands will go global, and more global goodies will enter China.