It is indeed a good business to go to the sea, but the premise is to do the direction of the right direction

Author ｜ Lu Yao

Edit ｜ Sang Mingqiang

In April 2020, many players who went to sea were trapped in the quagmire, but shein burst into orders. Nearly 2,000 employees worked for many days in a row, and the server even collapsed. It was that year. While 100 million dollars, while bringing anxiety to the global fast fashion industry, everyone also realized that domestic supply chain is actually a good business.

This made the sea at the edge of the wind suddenly become a manifestation. After all, the unicorns of 300 billion US dollars in the world, except SpaceX, Tiktok and Shein are Chinese companies. At the other end of the world, Southeast Asia went to sea to gold and gold, making Shopee a new black horse. In the event where Li Xiaodong attended the last two years, many people tried their best to squeeze in just to obtain information from only words to judge his next step. Expansion plan.

Combined with the APPSFLYER data, it has gone through the era of tool -based software -based mobile goes to the sea, and goes to developed countries to do cross -border, go to Southeast Asia to open up and start a business. Now it has evolved to a new stage of entertainment and e -commerce. Welcome to this kind of brand -oriented, new forces such as Mihayou, Hiread, Bilibili Comics have also begun to receive the attention of the public.

2019-2020 The total income change in China is drawn by the new eyes

At first, some of them were to compete with domestic Internet players misaligned, and some made foreign differences in labor bonuses. In fact, it is not easy to adapt to markets in different regions of the world, and the ending is often fell into the dilemma of engraving. A realistic problem in front of you, when the out -of -sea project is from 0 to 1, what needs to be considered is how to prepare for international large capital, because their preferences are completely different from the domestic first -level market.

Not long ago, after the SHEIN valuation shrinks by 30%, Shopee has also fallen into the altar, which also reflects the industry's hidden feelings: the overall dividend period of the cross -border e -commerce industry has begun to subscribe. In fact, not just Shein and Shopee, the growth of sales of many domestic players in China has also slowed down -it is no longer a blue ocean to go to the sea.

01

East school west, the supply chain is out of sea

In the first half of 2020, a very hot topic appeared: Will the supply chain be removed from China?

At that time, the two sides were arguing that the topic of the topic continued until June of that year. People discovered that when economists and analysts almost agreed that when the foreign trade industry would fall, the actual situation did not decline. In 2021, in 2021 The same is true. The data shows that at the end of last year, the export of goods trade in my country reached 21.73 trillion yuan, an increase of 21.2%over the previous year, creating a new high in ten years.

Li Feng, the founder of Fengrui Capital, who likes to invest in the sea project, once said in an exchange: "China's supply chain structure is characterized and complete." Among the 41 industrial categories and more than 300 sub -categories defined by the United Nations, China is the world as the world. The only country that has all industrial categories, allowing companies to obtain high -quality raw materials and equipment at low cost. In addition, the engineers have sufficient supply, and after the output, use large infrastructure to achieve high -speed and cheap transportation. The final export trade contributes more than 20%of GDP in 2021. The saying of "moving out" does not break.

In the past, the theme of many institutions raised funds was Long China, which means that they invested in the domestic market from foreign drainage. With the e -commerce platform represented by Shein, they became more and more fragrant overseas. Production capacity, transforming into the company's rapid response ability, to build and upgrade the back -end supply chain, to cooperate with the development of front -end overseas independent stations and mobile development, and finally output the domestic supply chain production capacity, which makes a wave of investors see more The opportunity of "Long Chinese".

Comparison of traditional supply chain and new retail supply chain is drawn by new eyes

Later, some people put forward such a logic: "SHEIN can sell women's clothing overseas by traffic and supply chain. Then, small appliances, cosmetics, and various clothing, food, housing, and transportation industries should be used in this way. Once again. "

Taking Patpat, a headquarters in Shenzhen, it does a maternal and infant business. The product attributes have both word -driven and SKU's many characteristics, which also determines the strategy of Patpat to do private domain and supply chain. On the supply chain, similar to Shein, Patpat has created a set of order management systems. The platform's production order is automatically allocated to factories with free production capacity, and can also obtain tracking information.

On the other side, Juno, who is a cosmetic standing station, and Guangdong manufacturers using fast shipment replenishment capabilities, are mass -produced in the country and places that need to be adjusted in the middle, use the characteristics of fast supply chain to quickly adjust, thereby shortening the production cycle, Juno, Juno, Juno In 2019, it also received financing of RMB 10 million in Fengrui Capital. At the same time, the market competes for the next Shein, which is also an independent station that is also a fast fashion women's clothing. In addition to the high price of DMONSTUDIO under the high price, the selection positioning and website style are highly similar to Shein.

Different from the grassroots of most cross -border players in the past, newcomers have entered the venue with large capital and first -class talent technology. As of June last year, the fast -fashioned cross -border e -commerce brand represented by CIDER and full speed has successively completed large financing. In addition to domestic IDG capital and Jade Capital, the former's investment list has DST GLOBAL and Silicon Valley legendary venture capital investment. Institution A16Z has a valuation of up to 1 billion, and the latter includes today's capital, Sequoia Capital, and IDG capital. The original Ali Nail CEO was created without recruitment. The business scope showed by Tianyanchang included the technical service, technical development, technical consultation, and technical exchanges of the license project. In the angel round financing alone, it is valued at 100 million US dollars. New players standing on the shoulders of the giants are endless, but the second shein is delayed.

The reasons behind it are thought -provoking. The moat on the supply chain can be solved without capital and technology. The flexible supply chain system is difficult and long. Organizational models, management methods, and IT systems are far from the needs of small orders.

At the same time, it means that players should set aside the previous things from 0, but the transformation process of the supply chain is slow, and there is a medium and long -term strategic plan. In addition If you want to change the quality, the difficulties are more difficult than the imagination.

02

Who is solving the problem of wasteland?

Before the establishment of Yalla Group, Yang Tao was the vanguard of ZTE's UAE branch. After working and living in the Middle East for nearly 7 years, he decided to create an Internet company.

"Yalla is the first company to make sound social in the Middle East. At that time, the development business was more important and urgent than seeking financing." Yang Tao talked about it in an exchange, but in fact, from the establishment to the listing, Yalla's four financing did not not be from the listing of the market. Successfully, I did n’t merge much money in the first three times. When the business was mature, there was no additional financing. However, considering the need to improve the shareholder structure after listing, it was decided to introduce the first -tier US dollar funds and reach a cooperation with Lanxin Asia and SIG.

In fact, going to sea is not optimistic enough by mainstream capital in China. It has always been followed. From the early foreign trade e -commerce company's pioneer Lanting, to the free tools for survival in the sea represent the cheetah, as well as all kinds of social, live broadcast, short video, finance, etc. Application does not cause phenomenon to go to sea to invest. It is as strong as Southeast Asian Tencent SEA. In the early days, it was not noticed by most Chinese entrepreneurs and investors, so that the last ate for the SEA dividend, except for Gao Yan, Tencent, Kaixuan Venture Capital and other institutions, most of the domestic venture capital investments When the reaction came, the wind was over.

Since 2000, under the intersection of the two Internet dividends, the domestic investment market is somewhat inertia. I feel that the domestic market is golden everywhere, and running overseas to develop is to avoid competition or speculative entrepreneurs? On the other hand, copying the mature model in China, whether the opposite has the ability to receive, also needs to call a question mark.

Because in the impression of most people, compared with Europe, the United States and Southeast Asia, the Middle East is not the first choice for people to go to the sea. For investors, due to large cultural differences, the demand and growth potential of domestic products and models in the Middle East is exactly How is it that they have always been concerned about, it is not difficult to explain why Yalla couldn't get money in the early days.

For example, Yalla products cannot be withdrawn. This is also the biggest feature that distinguishes other products in the market, because its positioning is social platform. In Yang Tao, "once there is a money relationship, it is not pure." This is not pure. "This is not pure." This is not pure. "This is not pure." The naive practice in the business farm is difficult to be understood by investors.

On the other hand, Yalla, who abandoned the video chat and live broadcast mode, does not seem to be a particularly profitable target for investors who are used to logic in Europe, America and Chinese social platforms. People have a special religious culture, and they do not like to show their faces.

Most of the contradictions in business cooperation comes from the incompetence of information, as well as the anti -consensus shown in the early stage of the project. For example, at the beginning of this project, this project was optimistic, but the market's success is not yet reached. This requires investors and enterprises to sort out the value of the standard and shorten the time cost of market acceptance.

Some investors believe that "the degree of localization is not enough, the English is not good, the local resources are not enough, and the Pitch is not good enough. These may be the main predicament of Chinese companies when they are financing overseas." Not only to tell the story well.

Yalla cuts into the Middle East from language chat, and uses chess and card games for user infiltration. In combination with the revenue data and active user growth data in the past 7 quarters, Yalla active users are still in positive growth. But it is not obvious, the ARPU value seems to be topped. Today, Yalla has deployed IM tools in the Middle East and wants to be the "social communication+game" path of Internet complex. It is very similar to Tencent, but at this time, there are Joyy that acquired IMO and Hago on the same track.

In 2020, Yalla was listed, and the stock height even exceeded 40 US dollars, which was equivalent to 5.5 times the price when IPO, but since then, it has continued to be around $ 4. The various difficulties and dangers brought by the uncertainty of the enterprise. Combined with the previous part, we found that although the past has changed the neglect of going out to the sea, it has been for a long time, and today the investment venue of the sea is present. There are many, and the management is more and more cautious; on the other hand, there are star projects with big capital. The result is unknown, but the threshold is not accessible by ordinary investors.

03

Columbus

According to the disclosure of "Late LatePost", under the huge needs, Jollychic cooperated with local logistics companies to push extensive goods in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In less than three years, Jollychic's GMV rose from 100 million to 5 billion yuan. After a financing that was led by Sequoia, Junlian Capital, Lanxin Asia, etc. in 2018, the valuation of more than $ 1 billion was valued. The founder Li Haiyan proposed Jollychic as the "Taobao+JD" of the Middle East. By 2019, GMV exceeded 10 billion. At that time, Amazon's Souq, the local e -commerce platform Noon was not enough to compete with it.

Based on an optimistic estimate of the future market, JollyChic has a huge capital expansion, set up 150,000 square meters of overseas warehouses, acquisitions peers, build payment, build logistics teams, starts a number of new businesses including express delivery, payment and wine travel, and attempt to try to try Entering new markets such as Egypt and the UAE. The excessive expansion did not match the market acceptance of the Middle East at that time. Jollychic also reported the news of bankruptcy many times, so that the SHEIN, which was eventually marched into the Middle East and Fordeal from Guangzhou, gradually eaten its share.

Coincidentally, when the new market for going to the sea is becoming a promise of Internet players, money and resources are smashed. Among the warriors who are successful, there are many big factories that are difficult to move forward. Before Baidu entered the Japanese search engine, but defeated in the confrontation with Google and Yahoo. Later, Ma Huateng regarded WeChat as the only opportunity for Tencent to go out. Mainly games and investment; of course, the most typical examples are Fu Sheng jumping out of disputes with 360 anti -virus software. After accelerating the tools of Cheetah movement goes out to sea, the scenery is no longer after experiencing organizational changes and business failures.

In 2016, Ali's $ 2 billion controlled Lazada, and then copied the domestic successful business model and management measures to Southeast Asia: through traffic, coupons, customer service IM ... Dissatisfied with the soil and water. From Pil Penglong to Peng Lei, to Pier Penglong, to Li Chun in 2020, even if the CEO was replaced four times, under the pressure of SHOPEE, Shein, Tiktok e -commerce, Lazada did not become Taobao in Southeast Asia. Essence

As competition in the international e -commerce market is becoming more and more intense, Ali has to confront foreign giants such as Amazon, but also eat cakes with various domestic players. As of the third quarter of fiscal year in 2022, the overall revenue of Ali 10%has reached the lowest year -on -year growth rate since listing. Zhang Yong emphasized in the internal letter that domestic demand, globalization and cloud computing are the three major strategies of Ali. So at the end of last year, at the end of last year The high -level adjustment is adjusted. Jiang Fan, who was originally responsible for the big Taobao, and Datshan's position in charge of the international business.

For a long time, Sun Zhengyi's time machine theory has been regarded as Gui to countless players. In the case of increasing competition in the domestic market, it will copy the dominant Internet products to the abroad to form a dimension -reduced blow. ... Golders are spreading all over the world, but in the process, most of the fantasies have become mirage.

Based on history, compared to smashing money to gather traffic, how to adapt to local customs, realize localization, integrate into the local market, and configuration team has become a problem that the team is more needed. Previously They are all imitating Shein, but they only know that they have burned money to copy the model, but they do n’t know how she has come step by step. "Time and place are different, and each step is different. From this point of view, time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time, time The theory of machine is not reality, but going to the sea will be a more complicated market than domestic.

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