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Alibaba International Station: How to do cross-border e-commerce

Recently, we have launched a new important course, "Ali International Station: How to Do Cross-border E-commerce", which is a course jointly produced by us and Alibaba International Station. It is also the first time that Alibaba International Station has publicly shared their accumulated overseas experience.

When talking about Alibaba, the first thing that comes to your mind may be Tmall and Taobao, which we often use. In fact, the International Station was the first business segment established by Alibaba that year. What they do is to help China's small and medium-sized enterprises do "cross-border e-commerce".
"Cross-border e-commerce" has been a hot word at the two sessions for several consecutive years. Zhang Kuo, president of Alibaba International Station and the instructor of this course, once said that for China's small and medium-sized enterprises, now is the best time to engage in cross-border e-commerce.

Next, let’s listen to why Teacher Zhang Kuo said this.

Okay, I’m Zhang Kuo. Let me briefly introduce myself. I am the vice president of Alibaba Group and have been in charge of Alibaba International Station for more than 4 years.

When it comes to Alibaba, I guess you first think of the commonly used Taobao and Tmall, but you may not know that the International Station (alibaba.com) was the first business segment of Alibaba when it was founded in 1999. Our core business is to use B2B methods to help China's small and medium-sized enterprises achieve digital expansion and deliver goods around the world.

By 2021, the International Station will have been established for 22 years. This platform has accumulated more than 200,000 Chinese merchants and tens of millions of corporate buyers from more than 200 different countries and regions, spanning almost all industries.

Of course, there are many platforms that can help small and medium-sized enterprises go overseas. If you ask me which platform is the best, I would definitely say Alibaba International Station. But in this course, I am not here to tell you which platform is the best, but to help you discover opportunities.

Alibaba International Station: How to do cross-border e-commerce

This opportunity is digital expansion overseas, that is, the opportunity to engage in cross-border e-commerce. "Cross-border e-commerce" has been a hot word at the two sessions for three consecutive years. According to statistics, the term "cross-border e-commerce" appeared 21 times in the "14th Five-Year Plan for E-Commerce Development" released in October 2021. To use the words of our Alibaba, “If not now, when? If not me, who?” At this moment, it must be me. It’s the right time to engage in cross-border e-commerce.

The reasons behind this include macro factors such as the support of my country's foreign trade policies and overseas market dividends. But in the editorial, let’s not talk about anything too abstract. I will share with you my own personal experience.

1 For example, the policy supports this one. I started serving the international site in 2017. From the day I took office, I visited clients across the country and even around the world to listen to them talk about the difficulties they encountered in doing cross-border business and what suggestions they had.
The thing I was most worried about when I went to Shenzhen was that something unexpected might happen in the warehouse where we stored the documents. At that time, we had a warehouse of one thousand square meters, which was filled with paper documents such as contracts between us and our customers, customs declarations, etc. Why do this? Mainly due to the tax bureau's tax refund requirements, an export business requires about a dozen of these paper documents. Merchants usually do not pay attention to these documents and always lose them. Once they encounter regulatory inspections, merchants cannot provide them and may lose money. We thought, don’t make the merchants work so hard, since the orders are generated on the platform, just hand over the documents to us for safekeeping. Just think about it, if the warehouse is full of these paper documents and there is a fire, what should we do? But now when you go out to sea, you don’t have to worry about this anymore. With the support of the country's "sunshine and digitalization" policy and the paperless customs clearance policy launched by the customs, we use AI technology to realize the intelligent identification and recording function, allowing you to complete the customs declaration and clearance processes on the digital platform in 1 second without the need for paper customs declaration forms. That warehouse is gradually no longer needed. We only need a small room of ten square meters to keep the necessary documents, and everything else is digitized on the platform. In addition to policy support, going overseas is now in a bonus period in overseas markets. You may say, the world is now in the midst of an epidemic and many factories have shut down, so how can it be a bonus period? I won’t preach any big theories, I’ll just talk about what I saw. In June 2020, many merchants told me that because of the epidemic, their offline business had hardly started, but their online business was already almost as good as the sales volume for the whole year of 2019. There are now many "micro multinational companies" on the international station platform. For example, there is a startup company in Shenzhen that makes 3D printers, called "Zongwei Cube", which had about 4 people when it started its business in 2015. In 2020 alone, they exported more than 500,000 3D printers to more than 200 countries and regions. These companies may not have a strong offline sales network and do not have an advantage in terms of talent scale, but they can go overseas with low barriers on digital platforms. This is the opportunity I want to help you seize.

2In my opinion, there are several types of people who must take this course. Let me explain in detail and see if you are one of them.
You may be a traditional offline B2B foreign trade merchant. Now due to the epidemic, offline customer acquisition channels have almost disappeared, and you urgently need to transform online. Then you may have questions like: What should I pay attention to when doing foreign trade online? I want to choose a digital platform to go overseas. Which platform should I choose? I will answer these questions for you in the course. If you have never done overseas business, but have a foundation in trade or retail in China, and you may have encountered a bottleneck in your domestic development, or want to further expand your business, then going overseas is a good choice. I can tell you a piece of data. From 2020 to now, 40% of the new merchants added to the international site started out as domestic trade businesses. They took advantage of the epidemic to directly transform into foreign trade. But I guess you might be a little scared. Different countries have different market demands, different cultures, and different policies. You might be afraid that you won’t be able to cope with a completely unfamiliar environment. Then please join the course, and I will analyze with you one by one how to solve these overseas problems. Of course, I know many more people who have no business experience. You may be looking for potential entrepreneurial opportunities, or you may be interested in business and want to learn about the booming field of "cross-border trade". Then I would also like to invite you to join the course. Doing B-side business often presents different challenges from the C-side business we usually deal with, and “cross-border” further amplifies these challenges. For example, B-end customers are more professional than C-end customers. They will not only pay attention to the quality of your products, but also the production capacity of your factory, your patent qualifications, the services you can provide, and so on. You and your client may be at opposite ends of the earth. How can you make him believe that you have the strength to do business with him? I will also answer these questions in the course.

3 I often say that the International Station is a platform to help Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises go overseas. In this course, this platform also helps me to teach you well.
This platform has accumulated a large amount of data and experience of excellent merchants. In the course, I am a porter of experience. I will break down the topic of "cross-border e-commerce" into specific challenges and choices, and then deliver the reusable solutions accumulated on the platform to you to avoid detours. Our course also has a special module, which is the final best practices module. I have selected a series of excellent merchants from among the many merchants on the international station platform, and asked them to restore for you the real difficulties and solutions they encountered at the time. Everyone encounters different difficulties, so we will keep this module open. When I find a merchant who can solve the problem excellently, I will continue to add cases to this module. Please continue to pay attention. We always say that opportunities favor only the prepared mind. But I particularly agree with what Professor Wan Weigang said, which is that in the real world, there are too many prepared minds but too few opportunities. Now, you and I have such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity before us, please seize it with me.