How else can cross-border e-commerce be rolled? Zhiyi old customers tell you...
2022-12-01
Zhiyi Technology
Rising sea freight prices, tax reform in Europe, Amazon store closures, workers' strikes, inflation in Europe and the United States...... In 2022, when the epidemic is repeated, black swan events have brought a series of chain reactions.Is the once promising cross-border e-commerce industry still a good business?？
"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked," Warren Buffett told at the 1994 shareholder meeting. As a result, in the battle between Shein, Pinduoduo Temu and other giants, as well as the bankruptcy of Global Tesco, the suspension of Amazon's account, and the freezing of PayPal, the cross-border e-commerce industry fell into involution.
Source: Internet
However, just when the market is in a downturn,One of China's largest cross-border e-commerce companies, Zibuyu Group (hereinafter referred to as "Zibuyu") was listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with a loud gong to announce their answer to the entire industry: cross-border e-commerce is still a good business.
Who is Zi Buyu? What did they do right in such an involuted environment? What is the business model? Why did it become the "first stock of cross-border footwear and clothing"?
In China, Zibuyu is a relatively mysterious and low-key existence, mainly through third-party e-commerce platforms to sell clothing and footwear products to make profits, of which clothing accounts for nearly 80%, is the largest source of income for Zibuyu. It is worth noting that as a high-tech enterprise committed to "AI to help the garment industry",Zhiyi Technology reached a strategic cooperation with Zibuyu in 2021。
Next, let's review the silent growth path together to see what inspiration we have.
In September 2008, Hua Bingru, the founder of Zibuyu, who was still in college, opened a Taobao women's clothing store, thus embarking on the road of e-commerce entrepreneurship. Three years later, Hua Bingru founded Zibuyu Group, and in a short period of time, it entered the top 10 of the Tmall women's clothing sales weekly trading volume, and soon the sales exceeded 100 million, with remarkable results.
However, in 2014, the second year of the "first year of the outbreak of China's mobile Internet", a large number of practitioners rushed into the e-commerce industry, making the entire e-commerce track more and more crowded, prompting Zibuyu to begin to turn around and transform into a cross-border company, and registered the first online store on Amazon.
With the sharp rise in orders in overseas markets,Zibuyu achieved sales of more than 100 million yuan in the first year of its transformation into cross-border e-commerce, and also became the head brand of women's clothing sales in the Brazilian market in 2017。
In the following time, Zibuyu specialized in the European and American markets with huge market potential, and the company's performance and scale grew rapidly, achieving the world's first AliExpress clothing in 2 years, the world's first Wish clothing in 3 years, and the first Amazon clothing in North America in the second 3 years......
In 2022, which is difficult and involuted, Zibuyu has increased by 100% while the sales of the entire cross-border industry have fallen by 20%-40%, becoming Amazon's No. 1 footwear and apparel seller in the world.
From its establishment in 2011 to its transfer to cross-border in 2014, and then to today's gong listing, Lizibu has completed the perfect transformation from an ordinary online store to the first stock of cross-border shoes and clothing for more than 10 years.The group also has 200 brands and 64 popular brands with annual sales of more than 10 million(As of 2021.12.31), it can be called the representative of China's cross-border e-commerce group.
What few people know is that behind the beautiful growth curve under difficult conditions is Zibuyu's extraordinary store opening strategy, which is beyond imagination:That is, to open brand stores with different positioning in large quantities, and decide whether to stay or go of relevant online stores according to the actual sales performance during the operation period。
Source:Zi is silent about financial reports
According to Zibuyu's financial report, from 2019 to 2021, the number of new online stores on third-party e-commerce platforms was 475, 265 and 192, respectively, and the number of terminated operations in the same year reached 370, 209 and 229 respectively. meanwhileAbout 18% of Zibuyu's existing stores have been in operation for less than a year。
Under the competitive mode of opening and closing, outsiders see the number of online stores that fluctuate drastically, but the reality is that Zibuyu's brands have to fall into the "survival game" of life and death.
The results of the volume are also remarkable, Zibuyu has successfully incubated a number of shoes and clothing brands, and the explosive models in various categories firmly occupy the top of the list:
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Launched in 2017, Runcati, a casual menswear brand that focuses on cotton and linen shirts, men's pajamas and sweatshirts, has sold 410,000 pieces as of June 30 this year.
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In 2019, it launched the women's clothing brand Cicy Bell, focusing on women's suits and women's tops, and the cumulative sales of the first women's clothing reached 470,000 pieces;
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In 2019, it launched the sports brand Aurgelmir, which specializes in yoga wear and ski wear, and its first ski wear was ranked in the top 5 of Amazon's best-selling products list in February 2021.
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sweater brand Imily bela, which sold more than 210,000 pieces in the first half of 2022 alone;
soThe stable, continuous, high-frequency and unlimited category of explosive output stems from Zibuyu's strong design ability and data application analysis ability。
As an enterprise with more than 90% of its products being independently original design, Zibuyu's clothing design attaches great importance to trends, collects and integrates market sales data, and on the other hand, based on the company's years of accumulated user preference information, patterns and other design element databases, uses data-driven design to give Zibuyu clothing a faster design speed, a deeper understanding of user needs, and more comprehensive market feedback.
In order to fully apply market data to the design work,Zibuyu has even set up a design team of more than 200 people, 31.1% of whom have rich experience in digital operations, daily according to the summary of market data to predict and design potential "hot models".
Source:Internet
Based on this, in the big data intervention design process,Zibuyu can launch more than 10,000 different styles of clothing every yearIt also solves the problem of slow response speed troubled by the garment industry.The new model goes from sample production to the launch of the first products in just 7 days。
What's even more commendable is that due to the full reference to the popular market trend,The average life cycle of the popular models produced by Zibuyu has reached 4-5 years, only need to optimize and iterate these popular models every year to stabilize the market share, further reducing the marginal cost.
Fast speed, accurate demand, many styles, low cost, visibleData-driven design is the nirvana that Zi Buyu beats other companies and successfully goes public, it is also a real hole card that can roll out more than 200 brands.
He is also an advocate and practitioner of the concept of "data-driven design".Zhiyi Technology and Zibuyu Group coincided, and the two sides reached a cooperation in 2021Through the data intelligence SaaS products of the apparel industry, we will "roll" out the new speed of the industry with half the effort.
So how should "data-driven design" be applied to the process of clothing planning, design, and opening?
Step 1: Understand market trends
The so-called data analysis application is not as simple as "seeing what the competition store is doing", but should embed data into the design DNA of each garment.
The first step of "data-driven design" starts from the source of new product development and product planningBefore the development and optimization of each new model, we will understand the market demand through data in advance, from the category and silhouette to the collar type and sleeve length, so as to predict the market acceptance of the new model after it is launched.
Use[Market Analysis] of Zhiyi Productsfunction, we can see the global (including Europe, America and South America) market e-commerce data with one click, covering key information such as consumer group preferences, potential categories and clothing trends, commodity SKUs and price bands in different regions, and assist planning and quickly making decisions on the direction of the new season with the most comprehensive data.
As shown in the figure below, we can clearly observe the color trend of the skirt category in North America in the past 30 days, the market sales of black and earth colors are prominent, and the neutral color has a significant soaring trend, so this data can be used as an important reference basis when designing, opening and stocking.
When these huge market data that brings together colors, attributes, and prices are combined and corroborated with the company's historical order data, every clothing e-commerce company can benefit from itCreate your own clothing databaseIt is enough for the company to win at the starting line in the planning and design process, with more accurate insight into user needs and faster design speed, roll in the right direction, and seize the market one step ahead.
Step 2: Analyze the top sellers
For every business engaged in clothing sales,Inventory tail goods are eternal enemies。 Because these out-of-season and outdated garments are difficult to leave the warehouse once they are unsalable, they are very likely to become negative assets and even bring down a company.
Therefore, in the face of the clothing industry, where the priority of market sales is overwhelming, understanding consumer demand by analyzing the hot sales in the market is the top priority that all clothing e-commerce companies must implement throughout.
PassZhiyi products [hot list]We can intuitively see the sales overview of the latest hot-selling styles in overseas regions, including sales, evaluation, SKU analysis and similar products.Simply and efficiently understand the recent trends and design elements of the target market as a reference。
As in【List Analysis】, market data shows that women's tops/shirts/T-shirts are the categories with the most number of listings, and the corresponding TOP100 products are also on display, with other analysis dimensions such as price, color, and region.Maximize the use of data to increase market acceptance and avoid inventory crises。
Step 3: Summarize the causes of the explosion
Most clothing e-commerce companies are just a means to find money, and creating their own popular style is the ultimate goal.
But in the face of the huge overseas market, there are not only business opportunities, but also confusion that cannot see the way forward, such as what styles do overseas consumers like? How do you plan your style's pricing, launch and promotion? After all, not all companies' teams have backgrounds in large companies such as Oracle and Amazon, and are good at data analysis or explosive operations.
SoAnalyze and compare the samples of popular models with outstanding sales performanceMining deeper, more comprehensive and more real applicable data can be regarded as the easiest, most effective and most direct way for ordinary cross-border clothing e-commerce to create explosive models.
With the help of Zhiyi products, we can see the sales data of any target store and style in overseas markets, as well as SKU analysis, marketing dynamics, etc., which is convenient for us to split and interpret from various dimensions such as clothing design, market operation, and user feedback.
When we compare a large number of popular models in the target market, it is not difficult to summarize a popular law, and use the objective data verified by the market to quickly build a database of popular models in various regional markets and categories, so as to facilitate their later realization of large-scale, efficient and high-frequency design and production.It is not difficult to make the involution of cross-border clothing e-commerce twice the result with half the effort。
As the traffic dividend of domestic e-commerce is gradually exhausted, cross-border e-commerce seems to be one of the blue ocean industries with the fastest development speed and the greatest potential.
Zibuyu's successful listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange is mainly due to its outstanding and excellent performance growth. In an uncertain market environment, everyone wants a relatively certain answer sheet to avoid risks.
The same is true of the cooperation between Zhiyi Technology and Zibuyu.Through data-empowered design, we aim at the opportunity to break the "volume", predict the market and avoid risks。
Cross-border e-commerce, which is forced to roll in, may bring more possibilities in the future, butZibuyu's "data-driven design" to achieve a deterministic story of breaking the book is more likely to be your story。
