To cross-border e-commerce: How to judge the current situation and impact under the epidemic (with suggestions)

The recent Wuhan pneumonia has touched everyone’s heart. Due to the impact of the epidemic, many seller friends and friends from other industries are still at home.

Everyone is confused. What will happen after the New Year and what impact will it have on cross-border e-commerce?

Today, I would like to share my views based on what I have seen and heard around me.

Yesterday, in order to attract attention, some WeChat accounts used some gossip and screenshots of group conversations to alarm people and tell them that the express delivery company had stopped and could no longer ship to the United States.

The editor would like to dispel the rumors here, these are all fake!

Please do not blindly believe those who use the national crisis to create anxiety. Although spreading this kind of news can attract fans to your account in the short term, it will cause long-term loss of your own credibility.

So what is the real situation?

First of all, we must believe that the haze will eventually pass, and when spring comes and flowers bloom, we will be able to bask in the sun happily like in previous years.

Think about it, if such an epidemic happened in other countries, would they have enough capacity to build hospitals for thousands of people in a few days? Would they be able to mobilize the grassroots to register the community every day and quarantine each community? Under the epidemic, so many staff members rushed to the front line of medical treatment, epidemic isolation, and traffic control without hesitation?

None of them can do it.

So we have to believe that we will win in the end. It is just that in the short term, it is impossible for us not to be affected . Today we will talk about the impact of the epidemic on our cross-border e-commerce sellers.

01Will measures such as trade bans be taken against China?

Cross-border e-commerce friends can rest assured that countries will basically not take trade restrictive measures on all goods from China unless the epidemic develops further to a point where it cannot be controlled.

But we believe that this will not happen, because under China's current system, as long as the Chinese government is determined to do something, its execution is super strong.

The whole country has launched a Level 1 response to major security incidents. The government has mobilized the whole country to win the war against the epidemic. The government has even mobilized military resources to fully assist Wuhan. Of course, in addition to the efforts of the government, it also requires everyone's cooperation and efforts to control the epidemic.

The judgment is based on the following:

At the end of March 2009, the H1N1 influenza hit the world.

The flu first broke out in Mexico and California and Texas in the United States, and then continued to spread, causing a total of 284,000 deaths worldwide. The World Health Organization also declared the flu an emergency public health event (PHEIC). And so far, the flu has not ended in the United States. From 2019 to 2020 alone, 19 million people were infected in the United States and more than 10,000 people died.

However, the world is basically unaware of this major public health emergency.

We may not even have heard of it until now. This is because the public health incident defined by the WHO is just a reminder to alert countries to the disease and take precautions in advance. It does not forcibly restrict the movement of people or prohibit the flow of goods. Second, the United States is so powerful that no one dares to take such measures privately.

02Out of stock, unable to ship

As we all know, factories in Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Jiangsu, where goods come from, have stopped working. When will they resume work? How long will it take? These are all unknowns.

It will take time to restore production capacity after resuming work. Moreover, many sellers are not in the source of goods, and it is unknown when the domestic logistics and express delivery will be restored.

Now many sellers don’t know what to do.

For those doing business on Amazon, the FBA inventory is about to be sold out and there is no way to replenish it, so the only option is to increase the price and reduce sales.

For those who do self-delivery on platforms such as eBay, Wish, and Shopee, the best-selling products are about to be sold out.

But the shortage problem is actually easy to solve. As we can see, on the highways and high-speed trains these days, many people are rushing back to Zhejiang and Guangdong without hesitation.

We Chinese are really a very hardworking and high-spirited nation. There are always some people who are eager for wealth and strive for it with all their might. With them, factory production and express logistics will be restored in no time.

03 Flight suspension and restrictions on personnel exchanges

Although the United States has temporarily reduced flights to China and restricted personnel exchanges in the short term, some of the United States' allies and followers have followed suit.

This can be said to be a warning from the United States to China, but it may be that they want to gain benefits from the Sino-US trade negotiations, such as allowing Boeing to resume flights.

In addition, some countries that are not particularly close to the United States have also taken restrictive measures. We believe that these countries will soon cancel or ease the intensity of the measures.

Because the Chinese government will intervene, these countries will weigh their options, and politics is essentially a game.

If they really impose restrictions on Chinese personnel and goods for a long time, their losses will not be less than ours. China is an important link in the global supply chain, and it will not work without China!

It is also impossible for them to fill the gap left by China in the short term. The most likely result of this incident is that when they see that the epidemic situation in China is improving, they will immediately find a way out and relax restrictions . This period may be around 14 days, and no longer than one month.

04Issues of international logistics

At present, many countries have completely stopped flights to China, and some other countries have also reduced flights to China. This is a big problem.

I don't know if you have carefully observed the route of the China Post parcels you sent. If you send parcels to countries such as Ethiopia and Eritrea, you will find a very interesting phenomenon. No matter you send a South China parcel or a Shanghai parcel, they will all be sent to Beijing after a circle, and then the shipping will be displayed.

The logic behind this is that many small packages are stuffed into passenger planes. There are many flights to remote countries that are only available in Beijing.

Therefore, in the short term, if you are selling on platforms like AliExpress and Wish, you’d better not send packages to countries like Africa and South America . There are no flights available, and the packages will have to pile up in the warehouse.

However, the impact on small packages to Russia, many Western European countries, and the United States is not that great, because the number of small packages has long been large enough to be transported by cargo charter flights. So you can see that we are actually racing against the epidemic. When the epidemic is under control, the logistics of these countries will gradually recover.

Therefore, the sooner the epidemic is controlled and reversed, everything will get better and better. The longer the epidemic drags on, the less confidence there will be both at home and abroad, and all kinds of anxieties will arise.

The editor believes that the most important things for cross-border sellers now are:

1. How to protect your account security

The resumption of work after the Chinese New Year will definitely be a peak period for replenishment. In addition, many factory employees may not arrive at work on time after the epidemic. How to ensure that their suppliers can provide sufficient supply in a timely manner is also a top priority.

2. How to protect the safety of your employees

If a new type of pneumonia breaks out in a company, the entire company will have to be quarantined, which will be a fatal blow to the company. We are not afraid of problems in the entire industry, but we are afraid that others are normal and we ourselves have problems.

3. After this incident, what measures do we need to take to prevent future emergencies?

4. Return to the essence of cross-border e-commerce and how to do cross-border e-commerce well

These are things that everyone has thought about in the past. In the past, we were too busy to calm down and think deeply about them. Now it is best to take this opportunity to think about them carefully instead of doing nothing.

Crisis always brings danger and opportunity, and opportunities always favor those who are prepared.

(Source: Official Account: Cross-border Sellers Teahouse)