[On-site report] Detailed discussion of the pitfalls and opportunities of brands going overseas

Since the Amazon cocktail party last September, many fans have been asking us to hold another sharing and exchange meeting.

After our recent intensive preparations and publicity, the second sharing session - "Detailed Discussion on the Pitfalls and Opportunities of Brands Going Global" was finally successfully held in Hangzhou on the 19th!

Although the number of people attending the exchange meeting this time has about doubled compared to last year's cocktail party, there are still fans who were unable to attend the event. I will replay the situation on site for everyone!

Our staff arrived at the site early in the morning to arrange and prepare. There were many participants this time, so we also arranged other professionals to assist.

Since the sharing time is in the afternoon, we have prepared afternoon tea for everyone at the sign-in area, including cakes, biscuits and other snacks made by professional pastry chefs.

The check-in time for the event is 1:30 p.m., but many fans still arrived half an hour or even an hour in advance to check in.

▲Students who arrived early greeted teacher Alice

The entire background wall became a drawing board for everyone to test their daily signing skills. Fans signed on it and took photos as souvenirs.

After 1 o'clock, the number of fans who came to the scene to sign in increased significantly. Fans who wanted to leave their names on the background wall had to wait in line, and the flow of people at the entrance gradually became crowded.

As we were about to start sharing our content, most of the fans had already arrived. The venue was packed with people, and even the stairs at the back of the venue were being used reasonably.

After all, the lineup of guests for this sharing session is very luxurious, and the practical content also covers all aspects that small and medium-sized sellers are concerned about. Everyone is looking forward to the sharing session that is about to begin.

For fans who were not present, we also set up an interview session after each guest finished sharing to summarize and further interpret the content of the guests' sharing.

The first person to share was Teacher Alice, who brought everyone the pitfalls and opportunities of Prime Day . This topic is very relevant. The upcoming Prime Day in July is the first sprint point for sellers to increase sales this year. Many small and medium-sized sellers will be concerned about what points to pay attention to in this event.

After the sharing, we interviewed Teacher Alice.

Many small and medium-sized sellers think that Prime Day is a festival for big sellers and it is useless for them to participate. Alice said that as Amazon's biggest promotional festival in the year, the only event that really belongs to big sellers during Prime Day is DOTD.

This event has a large exposure and a good display position, but at the same time, the inventory requirements are also very daunting. It takes hundreds of thousands of US dollars in goods to barely reach the participation threshold.

However, for normal discount activities, BD and LD are recommended for everyone to try. After doing a good job in product preparation, ranking keyword optimization and other advance preparations, it is not difficult to have a big order on Prime Day.

Even sellers who are just starting out and cannot participate in platform activities can make good use of the huge traffic during the Primeday event by setting up appropriate promotions for their products.

The second guest speaker was Mr. Song Shixin, the East China Business Development Director of YDH. He shared with us the recently popular content on logistics - "Cross-border Logistics Bubble Algorithm and Cost Control Techniques"

The bubble splitting algorithm is actually a point that is worth studying in depth when sellers are cooperating with freight forwarders. Many sellers have little knowledge of this and do not know how to calculate the bubble splitting in the most beneficial way for themselves, thus suffering losses in their cooperation with freight forwarders.

In his sharing, Mr. Song introduced the meaning of bubbles and how sellers should calculate bubbles. In our subsequent interview, he said that when choosing a freight forwarder, people should pay more attention to the accumulation of the freight forwarding company instead of simply looking at the price.

Companies with more than ten years of relevant freight forwarding operation experience not only have a more mature logistics system, but are also more experienced than new freight forwarding companies when facing emergencies, and even have a complete set of response plans.

The third guest speaker was our operations manager, Miss Vivian. With her rich experience in leading teams and training newcomers, she shared with me: "Misunderstandings and missed opportunities for junior sellers"

For teacher Vivian, who has just led a batch of new sellers in the incubation camp, this topic is very handy. She introduced many opportunities that novice sellers easily miss from many different stages, such as product selection, listing, and advertising optimization.

During the interview, we asked Teacher Vivian to help us explain in detail what misunderstandings novice sellers have regarding product selection, which is the aspect that novice sellers are most concerned about.

It is easy for novice sellers to have wrong inertial thinking in product selection.

I sell whatever is popular/unpopular. Although these are two extreme ways of thinking, they are actually the same misunderstanding.

Categories that are too popular (fierce competition makes them unsuitable for novices) or too unpopular (no one cares and novices die faster) are not suitable for novices. Novice sellers also have a low level of operation and need to rely more on the popularity of the product itself.

Therefore, for beginners, the best category to start with is a slightly smaller category within a popular large category. As long as you do a good job of vertical segmentation and identify the needs of target customers, you can give it a try.

The next guest speaker is Ms. Wang Min, Sales Director of LianLian Pay, a long-established third-party payment platform.

Ms. Wang Min provides a professional perspective on the increasingly intense process of tax and payment compliance in the global market - "Competitive Landscape of Compliance"

As governments around the world conduct compliance reviews on e-commerce platforms and continuously improve relevant regulations and policies, more and more gray operations involving cross-border sellers and service providers have been invalidated or even settled later.

Novice sellers entering the cross-border industry lack the skills to identify and select service providers, so they are more likely to be attracted by simple low-price policies of service providers who lack relevant qualifications and licenses.

This is especially true for the payment industry, because it directly involves the ultimate interests of sellers and is most likely to be reviewed by compliance policies and subsequently reshuffled by policies.

Therefore, sellers need to learn more about which payment licenses are recognized by the country and which countries and governments will conduct compliance reviews in the future. Only payment institutions that can withstand the compliance reviews of local governments are worthy of entrusting funds.

The next guest to share his experience is also a well-known technical expert among fans - Frank. He has been active in our seller communication group for many years and provides everyone with answers to various product selection and auxiliary software.

This time, Frank will share with you a software topic that these new sellers will be very interested in - "The technical pitfalls in the account operation process"

Because of Amazon’s account association issues, many sellers, especially new sellers, will look for ways to deal with it when they are preparing to open a store.

However, faced with a wide variety of VPS, cloud services and other solutions, novice sellers often fall into big traps due to lack of in-depth understanding, and pay a lot of extra costs in vain.

Many novice sellers, without a deep understanding of the entire Amazon operating system, are often dazzled by the hype of software service providers and purchase unnecessary services.

Although software can be helpful to a certain extent, we must choose software based on our actual needs.

For example, if Keepa changes from free to paid, we can use some of the free features provided by Keepa and some other free features of H10 (Helium 10) to achieve all the functions of the paid Keepa.

Then, Mr. Liao Jun, the global store account director of Amazon, shared with us the latest developments of Amazon - "Indian e-commerce, the hot spot for the next decade"

Why has Amazon always regarded India as the next growth point for its overall business? In his sharing and subsequent interviews, Mr. Liao Jun analyzed Amazon's internal views in detail from the perspectives of population, policies, consumer habits, etc.

Mr. Liao Jun also brought up two actions that Amazon will take in India.

The first is to improve the logistics facilities and systems in India. Not only FBA sellers, but also self-shipping sellers will be provided with a mature logistics tracking system.

Second, before this year’s Prime Day, Amazon will launch additional traffic and support plans for sellers on the Indian site. Sellers can continue to pay attention to Amazon’s recent actions in India.

The last guest to come on stage was Mr. Benny, a local seller from the United States. He shared with everyone a novel way for American sellers to play - "How American local sellers play crowdfunding - collect money first and then produce"

Crowdfunding is still a relatively new way of playing in China, but it is more popular and accepted by consumers in the United States. The model of collecting money first and then producing can significantly reduce the seller's cost of preparing goods, while also avoiding the situations that e-commerce sellers fear the most, such as unsold goods and inventory backlogs.

At the same time, as a partner of Amway Overseas Warehouse, Mr. Benny also gave advice to small and medium-sized sellers on the field of overseas warehouses during our interview.

The overseas warehouse operation is more suitable for large sellers who want to build their own logistics system and break away from FBA. For small and medium-sized sellers, FBA is already a mature logistics solution. Apart from the need to change the label, it is not recommended to spend too much energy on this.

As part of the exchange meeting, everyone shared their experiences and exchanged resources. We arranged seven guests to answer questions and interact with fans on site.

At the same time, in order to allow more sellers to interact, we also added a guest signing and lottery session at the end. All sellers who have interacted with the guests can ask the guests to sign for them. If they collect the signatures of two guests, they can participate in the final lottery.

▲Teacher Vivian signs for the seller

After the 100 lottery number plates were distributed, the lottery began, and the guests came on stage to draw the lucky number plates. The sellers with the selected numbers in their hands will receive the prizes.

Finally, Teacher Alice gave away a free offline salon spot worth RMB 4,999 that we provided.

The end of the lucky draw session also marks the successful conclusion of this offline exchange meeting, but the Amazon career of the participating sellers is far from over.

In East China, the cross-border e-commerce industry is still in its infancy. Neither the communication atmosphere nor the supporting industries can compare with the South China sellers in Shenzhen.

However, with the decline of black technology, the distribution, fast turnover, and edge ball models that sellers in South China are proud of are no longer effective. However, sellers in East China have shown a trend of overtaking others by relying on the atmosphere of refined operations.

Be willing to learn and try, while also maintaining your persistence and research on the product itself. This is the future path of refined operations for Amazon sellers, and on the 19th, the sellers here have firmly taken the first step.

Sellers who are unable to attend the event do not need to regret it. In addition to making an appointment with me for the next offline meeting (date to be determined), I also have a collection of tips for refined operations for everyone. Just scan the QR code below to contact me to receive it.

PS. If you want to join the seller discussion group, you can also private message me to let me add you to the group

Source: Cross-border Business School

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