General

"This year, the foreign trade environment is' not easy ', and the foreign trade people are' not easy '. Recently to the end of the year, people often ask: Will it be better next year?" At the final of the "Digital Foreign Trade Real Cow Award" held a few days ago, Zhang Kuao, president of Alibaba International Station, said, "The resilience of Chinese foreign trade people in the past year is our biggest confidence in the future."

Behind the 200 million yuan order

A single transaction is nearly 200 million yuan! This is the largest order received by Shenzhen Shuoteng Technology Co., Ltd. this year, and also the largest order received by this company in its history.

Speaking of this order, Luo Chang, the head of the enterprise, felt relieved. "Behind every big order for foreign trade, there are countless people who are working hard and paying in silence. To get this single order of nearly 200 million yuan, the team of Shuoteng Technology spent many years before and after to enrich their strength; to implement this order, the financial and logistics partners of Alibaba International Station worked together with Shuoteng for eight months."

In fact, this is not the first time that Shuoteng Technology has received a big order. As early as May 2020, Shuoteng Technology obtained the company's largest single overseas order at that time through Alibaba International Station - US $3.46 million, equivalent to more than 20 million yuan. More importantly, although the deal was negotiated, the two parties did not meet, and the other party paid directly.

On the same day, Luo Chang excitedly sent a circle of friends, saying, "The business cooperation of tens of millions of yuan has not been met by both parties, and even the factory has not come to the site to make the advance payment of millions of yuan. This kind of magic can only happen in today's e-commerce era."

In Luo Chang's view, in the absence of a meeting between the supply and demand sides, the support needed to complete a large order is invisible. Overseas customers require small and medium-sized enterprises in international trade to complete the construction of comprehensive capabilities in all aspects, including access, transformation, order, delivery, service, etc. The costs and expenses are huge. Through the Internet platform, customers can use 3D factory viewing, video conferencing and other digital high-tech products to try to approach the real situation and enhance mutual trust.

"At this time, it is particularly important for small and medium-sized enterprises in international trade to take advantage of cross-border e-commerce platforms to achieve their high-quality growth and build their own digital strength expression and delivery capabilities. This is also where the leaders of foreign trade manufacturing enterprises need to constantly think and innovate and learn," Luo Chang said.

Ancient and old people's e-commerce "dominating screen"

Zhang Fucai, the general manager of Shanghai Sixiu Composite Cloth Co., Ltd., who just celebrated his 70th birthday, has his own experience. Twenty years ago, after being laid off from state-owned enterprises for six years, Zhang Fucai, who knew his destiny, decided to start his own business. To this end, he raised 300000 yuan from his friends and sold the house in his hometown at a discount. Time flies. Zhang Fucai's company now has dozens of employees, with an annual sales volume of more than 100 million yuan. More than 90% of the company's export business comes from the Internet platform.

In 2007, Zhang Fucai registered Alibaba International Station. In 2011, his company gradually abandoned domestic sales channels and focused on foreign trade. Many customers have not met for more than 10 years, but have always insisted on cooperating with him on Alibaba International Station. This made Zhang Fucai feel incredible.

At first, Zhang Fucai had only one Alibaba International Store. But in the next five years, he opened six more in a row. Zhang Fucai attaches importance to reputation, so he has opened Jinpincheng Enterprise for every store.

Zhang Fucai doesn't know foreign languages. He recruited five operation managers and a dozen e-commerce international trade salesmen for seven stores, which mainly export clothing fabrics, bedding, pet supplies, etc. Others admired his courage. He smiled and replied, "I'm old. If I don't work hard, I won't have time."

Zhang Fucai always likes to use the words used by young people to describe himself: "Make it bigger, and dominate the screen." In order to make his product "dominate the screen" Alibaba International Station, he used almost all the promotion tools, "for example, the keyword of the through train is the fastest way to get traffic. The words I promote can accurately find the target audience. After all, most of the customers on the platform still rely on search to find the source of goods".

In recent years, Zhang Fucai has stepped up efforts to improve the weight and star rating of stores. "In addition, some of our stores are very old, which will leave a deep impression on customers. Under the normalization of the epidemic, most new customers are found from e-commerce".

Where does the new volume of foreign trade come from

This year, opportunities and challenges undoubtedly coexist for China's foreign trade businesses. As for the endless "black swans", China's foreign traders did not "lie flat", and the achievements did not come easily.

According to the data released by the General Administration of Customs, in the first 11 months of this year, China's total import and export value was 38.34 trillion yuan, an increase of 8.6% over the same period last year (the same below). Among them, exports reached 21.84 trillion yuan, up 11.9%; Import was 16.5 trillion yuan, up 4.6%; The trade surplus was 5.34 trillion yuan, up 42.8%.

In recent years, the news of "order grabbing" by enterprises from all over the country often appears in the pages of major media. In response, Zhang Kuo said that "increment" will again become the key word of China's foreign trade in 2023. "Helping small and medium-sized enterprises in international trade find new growth in the global market will be the core task of Alibaba International Station next year."

Zhang Kuao believes that China's foreign trade as a whole is expected to emerge from a "U-shaped" rebound trend curve in 2023. "'U-shaped rebound' instead of 'V-shaped linear rebound'. Recovery takes time, but recovery will come."

Zhang Kuao said that the recovery of overseas market demand is a high probability event that can be expected. According to recent data, inflation rates in Europe and the United States are falling from high levels, and the inflection point of overseas inventory will also appear next year, and overseas demand will recover next year. As a leading indicator in the field of foreign trade, the number of active visits and high-quality business opportunities of a series of cross-border e-commerce platforms represented by Alibaba International Station are continuously rising, which is a clear signal. The new volume does not mean returning to the era of "barbaric growth", but will largely come from the optimization of the industrial structure. In this process, the digitalization of foreign trade is still at the initial stage, and the digitalization of foreign trade will be the most definite increment.

"It can be expected that the increment space of digital foreign trade is huge, and it is also the most definite increment of foreign trade in the future." Zhang Kuao believes that under the epidemic situation, digitalization is originally the emergency means of many international trade enterprises, but after the epidemic situation has passed, the usage habits of digital foreign trade services will be irreversible, and this advantage will continue. Affected by this, the improvement of digital foreign trade service capability will become a powerful guarantee to seize the new increment.