From 0 to 3 million in 3 months, Yiwu sellers quickly break through on Shopee

"Self-pleasure consumption" continues to heat up, driving the rapid development of the fashion accessories industry. According to data from Maximize Market Research, a market research and business consulting company in Chicago, the global fashion accessories market has shown sustained growth. In 2023, the market was valued at US$143.62 billion and is expected to reach US$3707.31 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.56%.

As an important jewelry producer and exporter in the world, China plays a pivotal role in the field of fashion jewelry. Among them, Yiwu is the domestic fashion jewelry R&D center, manufacturing center and sales center. Over the years, it has nurtured and produced many top cross-border e-commerce sellers. Customs data show that in 2023, Yiwu's total export value exceeded 500 billion yuan for the first time, reaching 500.57 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.0%.

Domestic jewelry is sold overseas in large quantities, and the products are popular in Southeast Asia

Over the past decade, Aimeng E-Commerce (hereinafter referred to as "Aimeng") has been deeply rooted in the Yiwu industrial belt and sold fashion accessories to domestic consumers. In 2019, the average daily order volume of its domestic e-commerce platform reached 50,000 to 70,000 orders.

With unique industry advantages and rich experience accumulated in China, Ai Meng decided to explore a larger market in 2012. The European and American e-commerce markets started early and have a high level of online shopping consumption, but at the same time, they are also full of fierce competition and pressure.

After the outbreak of the epidemic in 2019, freight rates in Europe and the United States soared, and Ai Meng's business was under great pressure. "Crisis" is "opportunity". At the end of the same year, Shopee's investment promotion team came to Yiwu for research. After contact and understanding, they found that Ai Meng was very compatible with the Southeast Asian market, so they recommended it to join the platform.

After careful consideration, Ai Meng also believed that the Southeast Asian market, which is close to China, has great development potential, so she joined Shopee and shifted from Europe and the United States to Southeast Asia.

The Southeast Asian market is geographically closer to China, culturally similar, and has similar living habits. It is becoming an important growth pole for the e-commerce industry. According to the Statista eCommerce - Southeast Asia report, the number of e-commerce users and penetration rate in Southeast Asia are increasing, and it is expected that the number of e-commerce users in Southeast Asia will reach 486 million by 2027. It was this attempt that made Ai Meng famous in the overseas market.

With the advantages of a mature domestic e-commerce team and ready-made goods, Ai Meng achieved great results as soon as it entered the market. With the help of the big promotion, sales increased from 0 to 3 million yuan in just over three months. The 8.8 big promotion attracted 60,000 to 70,000 orders, and the 9.9 big promotion directly exceeded 130,000 orders. Speaking of the reasons for the victory in the first battle, Rock, the person in charge of Ai Meng, said that in general, we reused most of our domestic experience in the Southeast Asian market.

In the following years, Aimeng's business in Southeast Asia has skyrocketed, and it has achieved many impressive results. For example, in August last year, at the Thailand site, one of its products set a new best record in the five years since it entered the platform, with an average of more than 20,000 orders per day and continued sales of more than 100,000 orders, pushing the monthly sales of a single store to over 3 million yuan.

Small accessories leverage the big market, the "method" is all here

According to Statista data, the Southeast Asian accessories market is expected to grow by 10.27% (2024-2029), and the market size will reach US$7.63 billion by 2029. Obviously, Ai Meng is prying this big pie.

Many people who saw Ai Meng's achievements couldn't help but ask: "What is the secret of its success?"

In the era of going global, the role of supply chain is becoming more and more important. "I think the main reason for the good sales is that we are an integrated manufacturer and trader in terms of products, which is our biggest moat," said Rock.

Since its inception in 2008, Ai Meng has been an integrated industrial and trade seller. The advantages of its model have enabled it to defeat 99% of its domestic peers and become the leader in the jewelry industry.

This model also played an important role when it entered the Southeast Asian market. After all, by organizing production by itself, the products save many intermediate links, greatly saving transaction fees and circulation costs, while also better ensuring quality.

Another important point is that Ai Meng has a strong ability to launch new products, developing as many as 200 to 300 new products every month, which greatly boosts sales. Fashion accessories are non-standard products, and the characteristic of non-standard products is that their life cycle is short. For example, some standard products of the same style can be sold for five or even ten years, but fashion accessories need to be updated every two to three months, which forces sellers to constantly launch new products, and it is easy to fall behind if you are not careful.

As the saying goes, "Good wine needs a bush." ​​No matter how good the product is or how attractive the price is, it is useless if it cannot be seen by others. In addition to entering Shopee, the most visited e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, Ai Meng is also very "generous" in advertising. Rock believes that the most important thing about Shopee is product selection and paid advertising. "We like to do paid advertising. As long as it can meet expectations, there is no upper limit on investment."

However, the fact that there is no upper limit does not mean blind investment. There are skills in paid advertising. "We will test multiple main pictures at the same time, and then bid for traffic, and then look at the ROI of conversion. For example, for the Philippines site, our input-output ratio can reach 8 to 10, or even more than 10."

In addition, in the fashion accessories category, the search weight has a crucial impact on the exposure and click-through rate of advertisements. Ads with higher weights can often stimulate consumers' stronger willingness to buy, thereby facilitating more transactions. Ai Meng carefully maintains a detailed vocabulary table, which includes key information such as bidding terms, competitiveness evaluation, and advertisement ranking calculation formulas.

Users who enter the platform through keyword search usually have a clearer and stronger desire to buy, because they have clearly defined their needs. This kind of targeted search behavior often makes the conversion rate and input-output ratio of advertising more impressive.

"In the process of optimizing search ads, we must focus on improving search weight, accurately matching user needs, and improving customer experience. Only then can we effectively enhance the conversion effect of ads and improve the overall input-output ratio," said Rock.

After the advertisement plays a role in conversion, it will definitely drive the growth of orders. At this time, ensuring sufficient inventory is the key, so Ai Meng has always attached great importance to the stocking process. At the beginning, due to lack of experience, the inventory was seriously insufficient. He was worried that he could not ship in time and his store would be closed. Rock tried every means to obtain goods from multiple channels such as trade cities, small commodity markets and his own factories. As long as he could get the goods, he would even spare no cost.

After years of hard work and improvement, Ai Meng's warehousing and delivery capabilities have reached a new level. Rock is very proud of this. He said: "Now, we use the sales data of 7 days, 15 days, 30 days and 60 days to make accurate predictions. To ensure that there is no mistake, we will increase the inventory appropriately. Whether the order volume is 100,000 or 200,000, we can handle it efficiently within one day!"

In the field of e-commerce, details often play a crucial role, and Ai Meng's control in this regard can be described as extremely strict. In essence, the core competitiveness of e-commerce lies in the eye-catching promotional pictures. To this end, Ai Meng has invested a lot of energy in visual presentation, and the visual team alone has more than 40 employees. Rock further explained: "Most of the consumer groups of our pallets are young people aged 15-35. This group of people likes cool elements, so the threshold for visuals is also relatively high. Models and scenes are indispensable, so that the products can be better presented to consumers."

Familiar with local consumption habits, strengthening layout and creating new opportunities

This year marks the sixth year that Aimen has been planning for the Southeast Asian market. Having dealt with local consumers for many years, it has a thorough understanding of their consumption habits and characteristics.

Each country in Southeast Asia has different demographics, cultural customs and religious beliefs, which leads to different consumption habits. For example, the jewelry consumption in the Philippines may be more inclined to European and American styles, while Vietnam and Thailand may prefer Korean styles.

In view of this feature, Aimeng's main strategy is to select markets based on pallets, focus on products with high market relevance, and ensure that pallets can meet the needs of the entire market.

Specifically in the fashion accessories industry, Rock analyzed based on his long-term experience that Southeast Asia is also very popular with TV drama peripheral products. When Japanese and Korean dramas are popular, products related to the dramas, as well as popular elements in China, will also become popular in Southeast Asia, but the consumption trend will lag behind that in China by three to five months. "Our products that have been hot-selling in China may have just emerged in the Southeast Asian market."

Overall, the Southeast Asian market is still in the early stages of rapid development. There is still a big gap between its e-commerce penetration rate and that in China, and there is still a lot of room for growth, which is worth continuing to explore.

In the overall plan for 2024, Ai Meng also expressed its determination to continue to deepen its layout in Southeast Asia. It is reported that its development direction in the new year will focus on two aspects: one is to expand products and increase investment in products. The second is to expand the team, expand the team size, and plan to build a new Shopee team. In addition, Rock also mentioned that the company is actively trying to do localized fulfillment, and is currently doing some related docking in Hanoi, Vietnam, Bangkok, Thailand, and Manila, Philippines.