[Billion Power News] Southeast Asia's cross-border e-commerce battlefield never lacks pioneers.

01

Semi-self-supporting semi-open combination

FanMart is a new force in the cross-border e-commerce market in Southeast Asia. Initially, it positioned a semi-self-employed model similar to the combination of Tmall and JD.com's self-employed model. That is, the product pricing, return and exchange, after-sales service, logistics and other links are all determined by the platform. At the same time, the platform does not have stock or inventory, and it is a purchasing relationship with merchants, and it is a semi-open logic.

Based on the understanding of FanMart's founder Xiang Yong, future e-commerce including cross-border e-commerce must be a combination of platform and self-employed, while the three modes of open, self-operated, semi-open and semi-self-operated FanMart will operate simultaneously. .

For example, for categories that are more competitive in the country and have more SKUs such as fashion, they also need to tap supplier resources, and they are mainly open; some such as cosmetics and food are more sensitive, customs clearance is troublesome, and brand safety certification is required. Categories, localized, pure platform POP model; for explosive products, such as 3C products, pure self-employed procurement model; and footwear and other categories are semi-self-employed or open model.

In his opinion, the advantages of open platform models like Shopee and Lazada as cross-border e-commerce will not be as great as domestic Taobao:

I. When overseas consumers purchase Chinese products, they value the characteristics of cost-effectiveness, rich sku, and fast style updates. However, if the seller bears the return and exchange service and logistics, the cost will be greatly increased. This part of the money Was earned by middlemen;

Second, the language translation and communication of business products are very difficult, especially in the small languages of various countries in the Southeast Asian market. Without centralized processing, ordinary businesses cannot overcome.

At present, FanMart has always built its own segmented logistics, warehousing and customer service center. The purpose is to have its own control and play a synergistic effect. When the merchant's goods are sent to the platform warehouse, they will be shipped out from the platform in a centralized manner, occupying the logistics in the middle. Advantages of customs clearance. "Although this method is a bit heavier and slower in the early stages, it can build core competitiveness."

Because FanMart uses a unified account to collect goods in a centralized manner, the current delivery price in Singapore and Malaysia is lower than some merchants' fees on other Southeast Asian e-commerce platforms. At this time, if a merchant sells a dozen ringgit products in Malay, and the shipping cost is a few ringgit lower, these ringgits are the part that the merchant can earn more, and the FanMart platform gives this profit to the merchant, which is why A resource value that can be provided.

In addition, FanMart's semi-self-employed model allows merchants not to have advertising fees and can accurately place products, which greatly reduces seller promotion costs. Of course, platform traffic alone is not enough. What FanMart is currently doing is how to help sellers find traffic, increase investment in live broadcast and distribution, and activate live broadcast and social e-commerce sectors.

In addition, users in many Southeast Asian countries still prefer COD (cash on delivery) payment methods. The core of COD is that merchants can earn money if the sign-off rate is high, but merchants cannot get user data on the platform and do not have professional system help. Difficult to get a good sign. The platform is even less likely to pay for merchants. In fact, Lazada has started to gradually cancel COD. The main reason is not that there is no user demand but it is not good to balance the relationship between users and merchants.

It is understood that at present FanMart's purely self-operated factories are mainly domestic, and this year does not involve overseas self-employed purchases. This conclusion comes from the calculations made by Xiang Yong: that is, the first day's order is shipped from the country. In Southeast Asia, you can reach the local area on the second and third day at the latest. Compared to local products, the timeliness may be higher and the cost is much cheaper.

"The human cost of processing an order in China is much lower than that in Southeast Asia. Taking Malaysia as an example, the cost of packaging a product domestically is 1/3 of Malay, and it can only reach half of it. Therefore, FanMart chose to stock domestic products. . And the overseas supply chain is the long-term layout of FanMart. Because of the epidemic, the pace has been accelerated in advance. "

"In short, FanMart is a combination boxing model combining supply chain and user balance, website and app combination, self-employment and openness." Xiang Yong said that from user feedback, including user stickiness, the platform makes money without losing money. The results also verify the rationality of the platform model. And even in the current epidemic situation, FanMart has stopped promoting the operation for two months, and the platform order volume has not decreased.

02

Internal and external causes of rapid rise

According to official data, the FanMart platform app downloads currently rank first in the Singapore market and third in Malaysia. The newly entered Thai market also currently has 7, 8 downloads, which has increased by more than 100% every month. FanMart, which won this achievement and was founded in 2018, started its formal promotion and operation based on September 2019, and only started to operate on an operating profit basis around November and December 2019.

The main reasons for the rapid growth are Xiang Yong's point of view:

First, because of his technical and advertising background, FanMart not only understands traffic but also technology, is good at drainage, but also good at using technology to control the process;

2. Emphasizing user experience, ensuring that expensive prices are not sold, and that platform pricing cannot be set by people. Under the circumstances of relatively low prices and platforms that do not lose or make money, the current model will be adopted;

3. 15 years of experience in advertising services, with overseas traffic and resources of local companies, including relationships and resources of logistics, customs clearance, and delivery companies.

In the development of FanMart, Xiang Yong has always emphasized the three indicators of cash flow, inventory turnover, and per capita yield. Especially when the company has a small number of people, it means that it must have a strong systemic ability.

Therefore, after the establishment of FanMart, Xiang Yong set a four-year development goal: in 2018, build a team and find a direction; in 2019, the company focuses on the systematic operation of the company, the core is "accounting", that is, each employee, each SKU , Including activities, advertising, logistics costs plus whether to make money, all use its automatic pricing system model to calculate "clearly"; in 2020, the core is to do supply chain management; and next year, FanMart's core business is to do localization.

Of course, the most important thing is that Xiang Yong believes that FanMart is "poor". Since the establishment of the company, it was destined to not burn money, forcing himself to find a way to live. Therefore, his philosophy is to strive to spend every fund invested by the company on the blade, not to lose money, and burn the funds only for technology, system investment and localization. At the same time, make money while investing.

At the same time, he also attributed the rapid growth of FanMart to this “educated” e-commerce market soil: Southeast Asia's infrastructure has been built to a certain degree, logistics costs have been decreasing year by year, and logistics distribution coverage has become wider and wider, and also No user education costs.

According to Xiang Yong's estimation, by expanding national sites and traffic channels, compared to last year, it will bring FanMart an overall 10 to 20 times growth. At present, in addition to the Thai site, FanMart will gradually expand the Vietnamese and Chinese Taiwan markets this year, but Indonesia will not enter in the short term.

The reason why he did not enter the current Indonesian market in the short term, Xiang Yong said that it was mainly based on several considerations:

First, due to the influx of capital into Indonesia, FanMart's competitiveness is insufficient in the short term, and it can gradually enter other markets after operating well. That is to say, each of Indonesia is still in the stage of burning money. At this time, start-up companies have entered too early.

2. The core advantage of Chinese cross-border e-commerce competition in Indonesia is the Chinese supply chain. However, due to the high customs clearance cost of Indonesia, which leads to an increase in the unit price of products and products, Indonesian user acceptance is relatively low.

3. Indonesia's tariff policy is unstable, and now the tariff threshold for users is significantly lowered (75 dollars directly reduced to 3 dollars, which means that most orders require additional high tax costs), resulting in some categories such as clothing may be Online is more expensive than offline.

03

Differentiated play, accumulate sustainable competitiveness

From Xiang Yong's point of view, if you want to maintain continued competitiveness in the Southeast Asian market in the future, you must achieve certain differentiation, and do things that the giants will not do, look down on, and are unwilling to do in the short term. Face the competition from giants.

"Compared with those big platforms such as Shopee and Lazada, we don't have much money, and we can't compete with each other in terms of resources and talents, so we can't replicate those pure platform models, we can only take the road they can't."

Secondly, FanMart's platform logic has both advantages and disadvantages, that is, GMV cannot reach a high level in the short term. This is because FanMart's self-support model is just like the early JD. It will develop slowly.

Because the Southeast Asian e-commerce market has directly entered the characteristics of the mobile era, and its development speed is actually much faster than China. Under the development trend of the market's main C2C model, direct sales model, and social e-commerce model, Xiang Yong believes that platforms for the C2C model, in addition to some already "stable" companies such as Lazada and Shopee, The chance of a newly emerged platform is very low.

Therefore, next, the opportunities for the development of new platforms in Southeast Asia will be between the second and third models, and the opportunities for the combination of the two models will be greater. At the same time, Xiang Yong also said that factors such as the current cost of finding users will increase significantly year by year, and other factors, making it difficult for emerging platforms to rise rapidly in today's Southeast Asian market.

In its view, the essence of being an e-commerce company in the Southeast Asian market is to use the price difference of the Chinese supply chain to sell to local consumers. If you do not touch the Chinese supply chain, the seller will become a Taobao customer with a reverse flow, and will not have an advantage in Southeast Asia. ; And this model that only does social e-commerce, but does not touch the goods, will not have great prospects; in turn, only B2C can survive, but does not rely on social, live e-commerce and other emerging channels, The results will also be more passive.

Therefore, FanMart's current line is a self-employed and social e-commerce model. Xiang Yong said that FanMart's model has other advantages in drainage and other aspects:

First, when doing Facebook, Google, etc., FanMart can accurately place ads, adopt ROI orientation, as long as it makes money, it will continue to place users. "Because we don't have complex accounting models like platforms like shopee, FanMart calculates the order profit very deadly and can systematically run the volume."

Because the pricing power is in the hands of the platform, and the platform's pricing is all automatically determined by the system, the advantages in doing operations and activities will be obvious. For example, a 20% discount on the entire site, some platforms will be a lot of trouble for unified business opinions, but FanMart can master it by itself, and the pricing standard is uniform, which can give merchants a benefit. These are the advantages of users after introduction.

Second, increase the diversion of live broadcast and social. At present, in terms of social sharing, FanMart has made a simple version. After sharing the product, users can get a rebate on their account balance, which can be used to purchase anything. This year, FanMart will increase research and development and operations in this area.

Third, FanMart also does freight forwarding business, so for goods returned to the platform, the activity will be drained at a low price. At the same time, the platform can provide uniform service standards, including uniform packaging bags, logos, return and exchange, etc., to ensure user experience and reduce users' perception of differences in platform products.

Third, the package shipping to increase the customer unit price, through the system to calculate the location of the goods, etc., FanMart will be the user's goods within a time period, automatically pack multiple goods and then unified transportation, but only charge once (when the order Free shipping after reaching a certain amount). Improve user experience and reduce logistics costs to benefit users.

Fourth, FanMart is a platform that has both a website and an app version, and the combined drainage gameplay has matured, which makes up for the shortcomings of poor conversion rate or poor retention of a single version.

"Afterwards, after the completion of FanMart's social e-commerce distribution system, it will access a market that users are good at and like distribution, and integrate live broadcast with social networking. This is also a major adjustment and change that FanMart will make this year." Xiang Yong said.