Is Purchasing A New Retail?

According to the world clothing shoes and hats net, two years, the purchasing industry appeared polarization phenomenon, small and irregular gradually phased out, and the larger scale is developing into purchasing agent, and form a strict distribution system.

At the same time, some enterprises providing supply chain services for purchasing agents also came into being.

Because the quantity of goods required for individual purchasing is not large, those supply chain service enterprises integrate the purchasing needs of many purchasing agents and purchasing agents, and then talk directly with manufacturers (or upstream channel providers) to get better purchasing prices.

"Aunt Auntie" is such a platform for purchasing businesses and individuals to provide supply chain services.

How to standardize the purchasing industry?

"In 2015, some friends were doing small purchasing business in Germany. Because the policy was tightened and the gray channels were gradually closed, the industry faced pformation. Many practitioners could not finish the whole chain themselves to a certain extent.

I discussed this with my foreign friends, and felt that we could make use of our contacts overseas and the technical strength in China to do some small scale purchasing, and we could not do anything about ourselves.

Aunt Yang Qinglin, general manager of overseas Chinese, recalled the original intention of starting a business.

It is reported that

The platform was formally launched in April 2016. It is positioned as "global purchasing service provider", which provides a comprehensive solution for purchasing agents.

Through the website and mobile phone App, integrate overseas small and medium-sized businesses.

Manufacturers and large integrated suppliers expand overseas Chinese overseas.

The domestic sea Amoy merchants, Amoy sellers and B2C business channel.

Yang Qinglin pointed out to reporters that the biggest pain point for purchasing industry is the stability of goods supply and the normalization of logistics clearance.

Therefore, facing the downstream purchasing businesses, the services provided by Aunt Auntie include overseas direct mining or the massive SKU source repository, warehousing and packaging, logistics clearance, interactive community and so on.

After the domestic consumers placed the order, the purchasing agent submitted the order to Aunt auntie, and then the overseas aunt was in charge of the whole cross-border direct mail process.

At present, there are more than 10 thousand shopping agencies on the platform of the auntie, with more than 200 upstream suppliers, including two suppliers, including Costco, DM, METRO and so on. There are 5 overseas warehouses in Germany, the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

"Many practitioners will not specifically claim to be a purchasing agent, because without standard orthodox service system support, the industry is not universally defined and cannot be universally accepted.

Most purchasing agents can not solve the problem of "three no" (no guarantees, no traceability, no surrounding services), and business only stays in the fixed crowd, and is passed on by relatives and friends.

Yang Qinglin said.

The value of being an aunt is to buy the underlying services to help these scattered practitioners "find organizations" to solve the problem of normalization and standardization of processes.

"Give him regular supplies, regular logistics services, formal reporting channels."

In addition, due to the continuous upgrading of the distribution of purchasing agents, the systematic distribution of purchasing agents has gradually become a stable sales channel, providing a channel basis for more small and medium-sized brands to enter the domestic market.

And the competition pattern of the channel will also evolve from the free competition of individual purchasing to the competition among purchasing agents, which will make the management of brand purchasing channel more convenient in the future.

Purchasing and cross-border electricity supplier symbiosis

However, a fact that can not be overlooked is that in the past two years, purchasing is facing the bottleneck of tightening policy, and on the other hand, it is also affected by cross-border electricity suppliers.

This industry seems to be on the decline.

So, how did the aunt choose to buy and buy this industry last year?

"Purchasing will not disappear for a long time in the future."

Yang Qinglin told reporters that with the increasing proportion of overseas goods in the domestic e-commerce platform and the increasing number of people doing cross-border electric business, some of the goods that domestic consumers could not buy and need to buy for generations could now be bought more conveniently.

But the users of cross-border electricity providers and users looking for purchasing and buying things are not the same as people imagine.

He said that the development of the electricity supplier to the present, Tmall, Jingdong, these highly credible platforms will also have many negative problems, including fake goods, so finding a trustworthy purchasing agent is a more direct way of shopping.

Moreover, cross border electricity providers can do the goods, purchasing can do, but purchasing goods that can be done, cross-border electricity providers may not be able to do.

At present, most of the cross-border electricity suppliers still do the standard, and it is difficult to make personalized, long tail products, such as clothing, shoes and hats, accessories, cosmetics and other non mainstream brands, and purchasing can make up for this piece.

In addition, there is another obvious advantage of purchasing electricity over cross-border electricity suppliers, which is that the reaction to the market is faster.

"Cross-border electricity suppliers find overseas sources of goods, then collect goods and pport them to the domestic bonded areas, and then do front-end sales. The whole chain is very long. From the beginning of the selection to the consumer, the order can take about 2 months.

And because people are overseas, consumers need to do real time procurement, and then return to China by air pportation. The process of feedback to user needs is about 2 weeks or even faster.

Yang Qinglin pointed out that purchasing together with cross-border electricity providers only accounted for a small part of the entire Chinese import market. In this small share, we can see two sub sectors.

Cross border electricity providers may take part in the business of purchasing, but the purchasing industry is not trying to get it back, but looking for opportunities in a larger market.

According to Yang Qinglin, the first month in April (last April), the first shopping agent on the top of the platform was placed 40 thousand yuan, and the highest monthly order is now worth $10000.

A year ago, most of the purchase orders on the platform were 1-2 yuan, and now the 10 thousand purchase orders have more than 50 thousand of the monthly orders.

"A lot of purchasing agencies say they can focus on sales and development customers now, and profit margins and sales have improved significantly.

So, at least from the point of view of the purchase of our contacts, business is not so bad, but rising.

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The way forward is a new retail business.

Whether it is the original "meat purchase" or the current selling agent, the essence is to help users buy foreign goods he wants.

Because of the distribution of diversified consumption terminals, it is inevitable to pursue lower cost market distribution efficiency.

"The average turnover period of the overseas warehouse market is the 1/3 of the domestic warehouse turnover period, which brings about 30 times the sales volume."

Yang Qinglin told reporters that the key is how to use the lowest possible cost and the shortest possible chain to sell overseas goods to China.

However, in the current market mainstream "big supply chain explosive products +B2C" mode, overseas merchandise entry channel is single, brand promotion cost is high, precise user channel acquisition cost is high, also can not achieve personalized demand matching products.

"Purchasing is like a micro business. It becomes a new entrance for every person's merchandise.

This is also a new retail and new channel.

It is no longer the original centralization mode. It needs consumers to go shopping in a shopping mall, but it is scattered among many small groups, and then dispersed by small individuals.

Permeability and efficiency are much higher than those of centralization.

Yang Qinglin said.

Because of the gradual distribution and socialization of purchasing agents, its penetration has expanded again.

For example, although there are only more than 10 thousand purchasing agencies in the auntie platform, the terminal consumers are all over the country, including the relatively remote provinces of Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.

"Because the people who are engaged in purchasing industry and the Chinese living overseas are from all over the country, the people they touch are also in different parts of the country, and there will be scattered leaves."

In Yang Qinglin's view, this is the traditional network retail mode (one to many) that can not solve the problem of market depth.

In addition, Yang Qinglin also illustrated the market driving force of the purchasing industry with a case of "explosive products".

"A few weeks ago, our American warehouse chose a children's water cup brand named contigo, which sells many electronic business platforms, but it never stays warm.

After talking about a good source of goods, we push through the purchasing channels to minimize profits and prepare sufficient quantity.

A week later, the product was basically out of stock in the US market.

This is not what we sell out, we only sold a very small part (more than 3000 sets a day), it has a certain impact on the domestic market, there is a large e-commerce platform and cross-border supply chain merchants to spend high prices abroad 'sweep' goods. "

He pointed out that such a "purchasing agency" is the source behind the explosion, and those big platforms are the follower of the explosion.

"In this case, purchasing can be profitable.

The cost of the original thing is relatively low. After they get the goods, the market price is raised, and the profit margins will rise when the cost of obtaining goods from cross-border businesses increases.

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