Is the cross-border industry ushering in a new trend? Top domestic platforms are reported to be entering the cross-border industry

Recently, a new big opportunity is coming to the cross-border industry. Pinduoduo, the e-commerce platform with the largest domestic market share, is revealed to be planning to develop cross-border e-commerce!

Pinduoduo is thriving in China, even dethroning its big brother Taobao. It has been considering overseas business for a long time. Previously, Pinduoduo's overseas business has always been reported directly to CEO Chen Lei, which shows the status of overseas business in Pinduoduo's current strategic layout.

The current media reports are that Pinduoduo has already contacted many large sellers in South China, hoping to make them the first batch of seed sellers for its overseas platform. However, according to some large sellers who have been in contact, Pinduoduo's current cross-border e-commerce project is still in its infancy, and little information has been disclosed to the public. When contacting, it did not even mention the name and policy of the overseas platform, as well as the target market and positioning.

However, some other information has also been revealed. In addition to sellers, Pinduoduo is also actively connecting with various surrounding industries such as logistics companies. Among them, Jitu Express, which has in-depth cooperation with Pinduoduo, has also received news recently. It is very likely that in the upcoming overseas business, Pinduoduo and Jitu will be deeply bound.

Jitu Logistics has a wide range of business, but if we really want to talk about markets with a relatively large local influence, they are basically China, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa. In developed markets such as the United States and Europe, although it has been involved, the share is very small, and it is difficult to become a boost for Pinduoduo in the local market. If Pinduoduo is determined to deeply bind Jitu, then it is likely that the center of this new cross-border platform will be placed in Southeast Asia.

However, ByteDance has already tried to determine whether Pinduoduo's subsidy + viral marketing model can be successful overseas.

Previously, ByteDance launched its own overseas cross-border platform Fanno in a high-profile manner, entering developed countries such as France and Italy. When the platform was launched, it adopted a high-platform subsidy strategy similar to Pinduoduo.

The price is extremely low, with basically no profit and even a loss. An internal supplier revealed that Fanno does have subsidies for merchants, so it can offer such a low price, but because there is a limit on the amount, even with the subsidies, most merchants still make very little profit.

It stands to reason that Fanno should be very popular with its ultra-low price subsidies and the natural traffic black hole of ByteDance. However, its best result was the third most popular French shopping platform app, and then it went downhill. The most serious problem was that the logistics timeliness could not be guaranteed. A large number of sellers complained about slow delivery and even cancelled orders without reason. Perhaps because the price was too low and there was not much profit, Fanno had no say in the logistics link and could only make do with it. Therefore, the logistics problem has not been improved and eventually became a mountain that crushed Fanno. At the end of last year, it was revealed that the entire Fanno team was laid off and the project was on the verge of being closed.

Compared with ByteDance, which entered the industry halfway, Pinduoduo can be said to be the ancestor of this low-price subsidy routine. Moreover, it is also an e-commerce platform, and its control over e-commerce business and logistics is not comparable to ByteDance. Therefore, our cross-border sellers should pay more attention to this new trend. Maybe Pinduoduo can successfully move the low-price subsidy and viral marketing model to overseas markets, which will be another gold mine.