Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1207
“LatePost” learned that TikTok e-commerce is preparing to launch a warehousing plan called “Aquaman” in the UK market in the near future. TikTok e-commerce companies will follow Amazon’s FBA warehouse model and store some products with stable sales in UK local warehouses in advance to shorten cross-border logistics time.
“Sea King, that is, the ‘king of the sea’.” said a person close to TikTok.
While promoting overseas stocking warehouses, TikTok e-commerce companies are also building warehousing centers in China, which will save merchants the time from delivery to cross-border transshipment points. TikTok officials recommend that merchants choose products with an order volume of more than 200 pieces in the past month, a unit price of over $2, and a strong seasonality that can quickly turn around.
TikTok’s UK e-commerce business has been in operation for more than a year, and 50% of GMV (gross transaction) comes from cross-border e-commerce business, which also means that a large number of goods need to be sent from China to the UK.
The transportation of goods for TikTok e-commerce is completed by multiple logistics companies. The domestic collection is handed over to Wanse Express, which focuses on domestic warehousing and collection; the cross-border link is carried by Yuntu Logistics, a subsidiary of Zongteng Group. The former is the invested company of ByteDance; the overseas warehouse of the barn provides Warehousing services at home and abroad.
It is understood that the logistics time for TikTok e-commerce to ship from China to the UK takes at least 10-15 days, and more than a month. According to internal calculations, the Sea King program can reduce the average performance time to 3-5 days.
TikTok is not the first e-commerce platform to learn Amazon’s FBA warehouse model.
Shopee, which mainly focuses on the Southeast Asian market, established its own cross-border logistics system SLS (Shopee Logistics Service) in 2017. Like TikTok, cross-border merchants only need to send the goods to the domestic transshipment warehouse nearby, and the subsequent customs clearance, cross-border transportation and local delivery are handed over to the official logistics. The difference between the two is that Shopee will bear the cost of cross-border logistics, while TikTok requires merchants to pay the logistics costs of domestic to transit warehouses and transit warehouses to overseas.
When the volume of e-commerce is small, it is difficult to predict which products are easy to sell and which products are difficult to sell, and there are certain risks in stocking up in advance.
Taking the UK market as an example, the best sellers of TikTok e-commerce here are crystal stones, which makes it almost impossible to stock up in advance. A TikTok e-commerce service provider said that many people in the UK believe in crystal and think it can bring luck, so they generally ask the anchor to scoop a spoonful on the spot in the live broadcast room in China, package it and then send it out-similar to a A lottery ceremony.
A TikTok e-commerce source told LatePost that the current best-sellers on TikTok e-commerce are still low-cost daily commodities such as “magic haberdashery” and “Yiwu Xiaowei goods”. Despite their variety, the demand for each item is small. The anchors also tend not to stock up, but to sell as much as possible to reduce the risk of investment.
According to data from the data platform Tichoo, as of the end of 2021, TikTok’s British e-commerce company has achieved an average unit price of only US$11.5 in the early days of subsidizing a large number of Apple products. In contrast, Shopee’s average unit price in the Southeast Asian market is $10, and it reached $17 in 2019. Among Chinese e-commerce platforms, Pinduoduo, which has the lowest average unit price, also has 40 yuan.
However, at present, the Sea King plan can only be regarded as a small patch in the infrastructure construction of TikTok e-commerce. It took Amazon 30 years and tens of billions of dollars to build a truly efficient logistics system. Through Amazon’s Prime membership service, the vast majority of consumers in Europe and the United States can get the logistics experience of next-day delivery of goods. TikTok, which was originally relatively difficult to supply goods, needs to optimize each link one by one, and there is no shortcut to take.
TikTok e-commerce has been launched in the UK and six Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore). “LatePost” has reported that TikTok’s e-commerce sales in Indonesia have exceeded 100 million US dollars a month. Average daily sales in the UK market in June were only around $300,000.
This article is reproduced from: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1207
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.