Full record of cross-border e-commerce transformation in 2024

In 2024, the cross-border e-commerce industry is undergoing a dramatic change, with Chinese brands emerging in the global market. The import and export volume of new cross-border e-commerce formats will reach 2.63 trillion yuan, and the export proportion of independent brands will increase significantly. This article will review the transformation process of cross-border e-commerce in 2024, analyze the challenges and opportunities facing the industry, and explore the transformation from "low-price competition" to "high-quality service".

The "Chinese style" is blowing across the world.

The latest data from the General Administration of Customs shows that in 2024, the import and export of China's new cross-border e-commerce business will reach 2.63 trillion yuan, 1 trillion yuan more than in 2020. Domestic brands have attracted countless fans, accounting for 21.8% of my country's exports, an increase of 0.8 percentage points year-on-year. Domestic fashion brands have become popular all over the world.

Cross-border e-commerce markets are not only in China, but also in the world. They are in a period of rapid development. According to Statista, the total transaction volume of global cross-border e-commerce will reach 4.8 trillion US dollars in 2025. The huge overseas market provides good opportunities for Chinese sellers and e-commerce platforms to go overseas.

Of course, as the "cake" expands, the number of people sharing it also increases day by day. Whether it is merchants, platforms, or service providers, more and more players are joining the increasingly crowded cross-border e-commerce track.

Since 2024, the Chinese Internet strategy represented by "low prices", "subsidies" and "refunds only" has spread from domestic to overseas, and has also intensified the internal competition among cross-border merchants. Many merchants have reported that "profits are getting lower and lower."

However, Chinese cross-border e-commerce practitioners still showed tenacious vitality and amazing adaptability. Last year, most cross-border e-commerce platforms made great progress. For example, AliExpress ranked first in the European download list; SHEIN has always been at the top of the App Store shopping list in the Middle East; during the Double 12 shopping festival, TikTok Shop's overall GMV in Southeast Asia doubled.

Many businesses are also beginning to get tired of "low-price competition" and are trying to find a way out. Some companies focus on high-profit products and hedge cost pressures by optimizing supply chain management and improving production efficiency; some companies, after in-depth analysis of the relationship between product characteristics and market sales, have adopted a more robust strategy to seize more segmented demand and premium space; and some companies choose to diversify risks through a diversified layout, actively expand into different countries and regions, and enrich their product lines.

At the beginning of the new year, Xiaguangshe summarized several key words in the cross-border e-commerce industry in 2024, which not only sorted out and summarized 2024, but also tried to look forward to and predict the new 2025.

1. Content e-commerce is popular all over the world

What is "content e-commerce"? It refers to a form of e-commerce that arouses consumer interest and purchases through the dissemination of high-quality content. It is usually expressed in live broadcasts, short videos, and small videos.

Before the emergence of "content e-commerce", cross-border e-commerce adopted the simplest sales model, relying only on price wars to attract consumers, and relying on endless marketing advertisements to maintain attention. However, with the popularization of mobile Internet and smart phones, the number of users and transaction scale have grown rapidly, and the transformation of the industry model has made the trend of content e-commerce unstoppable.

In 2024, many brands have reaped rich rewards in the field of content e-commerce.

For example, the trendy toy brand Pop Mart achieved sales of $1.2 million in a single session through TikTok Shop live broadcast. The sportswear brand OQQ launched a challenge on TikTok, attracting more than 7,000 user videos and nearly 88 million views. The cross-border home textile company Bedsure had a peak daily sales of more than 3,000 pieces in November. The fitness brand Myrick locked in the promotion boom in advance through cooperation with influencers and self-broadcasting, and GMV soared 240% during Black Friday. The consumer electronics brand UGREEN achieved a sales explosion of about 3 times in the Southeast Asian promotions such as 9.9 and 10.10 last year. During the 11.11 promotion, the traffic and order volume of UGREEN stores increased fivefold.

This content-driven e-commerce model not only allows brands to gain more exposure, but also provides users with an interesting and practical shopping experience. The integration of "seeking and conversion" makes the path from seeing products to placing orders more efficient than ever before.

The popularity of live streaming has prompted e-commerce platforms to make plans. Shopee, Lazada, Amazon and other platforms that were originally mainly shelf e-commerce have begun to vigorously develop live shopping functions within their applications after seeing the powerful "explosive" effect of live streaming. On traditional social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, users will be "planted" in the live streaming rooms of influencers, and then "pull out the grass" through e-commerce platforms.

The new format has also attracted more consumers to the live broadcast room. A new study on live shopping trends released by VTEX shows that 61% of European and American respondents have browsed or shopped on social video live shopping channels, while 45% of American consumers have participated in live shopping activities in the past year. Milieu Insight's research report shows that in Southeast Asia, 82% of respondents have entered the live broadcast room, 48% of users visit the live broadcast room at least once a week, and 63% have bought things in the live broadcast room.

2. Encirclement and suppression leads to overseas production capacity

After "low price" became a powerful weapon for Chinese e-commerce to go overseas, countries have built trade barriers one after another, and the siege against "low-price e-commerce" has quietly begun.

According to public information, in October 2024, the Indonesian Ministry of Communications and Information decided to block Temu on the grounds of protecting local micro and small businesses, and asked Google and Apple to remove the app. On December 5, the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade ordered Temu to suspend its business operations in Vietnam because Temu failed to complete the required business registration procedures before the November 30 deadline. At the same time, SHEIN also announced that its Vietnamese shopping platform was temporarily unavailable.

TikTok Shop has experienced many twists and turns. In October 2023, the Indonesian government banned social media as a platform for selling goods on the grounds of protecting small and medium-sized enterprises, resulting in TikTok Shop being banned in Indonesia for more than two months, and its business was hit hard. On January 31, 2024, Indonesian technology giant GoTo issued a statement saying that TikTok had spent US$840 million to acquire 75.01% of the shares of Tokopedia, a subsidiary of GoTo. Through this transaction, TikTok Shop finally exchanged for the recovery of its e-commerce business in Indonesia.

At the same time, in 2024, many countries and regions in the United States, the European Union, Southeast Asia, and Latin America will set up tariff barriers and trade barriers, causing China's cross-border goods to lose their price advantage, and localized production will become the ultimate solution for e-commerce platforms.

China’s global expansion has now taken root in many countries in the Global South, such as Vietnam, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Argentina and Serbia.

Roland Berger mentioned in its latest "Foreseeing 2025: China Industry Trends Report" that "as the traditional export model faces challenges, China needs to find a new globalization model. In many cases, this means building production and logistics bases abroad to serve overseas markets." Roland Berger cited data saying that in 2023, China's overseas greenfield investment amount tripled from the previous year to US$160 billion, accounting for 11.6% of the global total that year.

The company believes that in the face of increasingly tense geopolitical relations, greenfield investment can ease trade conflicts by creating local jobs and promoting local economic growth.

3. Transform from Absolute Low Price to Optimal Service

In 2024, the cross-border e-commerce industry is gradually shifting from "absolute low prices" to "better services", and consumers' experience has been significantly improved.

In terms of payment experience, Temu supports a variety of payment options such as credit cards, debit cards and multiple digital wallets, allowing users to conduct transactions conveniently and quickly. SHEIN has partnered with Mexican fintech company Stori to launch a branded credit card, providing Mexican consumers with interest-free installment payment options and rewarding users with loyalty points, allowing consumers to shop more flexibly.

In terms of logistics experience, Temu cooperated with Vietnamese logistics companies Ninja Van and Best Express to shorten the delivery time to 4-7 days. At the same time, Temu plans to build a new warehouse in the eastern and western United States to further improve the efficiency of logistics and distribution. SHEIN cooperates with Flexport to allow sellers to integrate their SHEIN stores with Flexport's seller portal, greatly improving logistics efficiency. Shopee announced that it will open six new logistics centers in Minas Gerais and Bahia, Brazil, to improve the last mile delivery problem in the Brazilian market. AliExpress's "Global 5-Day Delivery" service has expanded to 14 countries, including Italy, Poland, Japan, etc., further accelerating coverage of the three continents of Europe, America and Asia.

It is foreseeable that in the future, consumers will pay more and more attention to shopping experience, and low prices alone will no longer be enough to meet their needs. Only by focusing on payment convenience, logistics timeliness, after-sales response speed, and improving service quality can we seize the initiative in the competition.

4. Merchants’ multi-channel layout becomes the key

The transition from "Made in China" to "Chinese Seller" is also a consensus among many merchants in 2024.

In the past year, the cross-border e-commerce industry has seen market uncertainties, changing policies, and increasingly fierce competition. These factors have made overseas brands gradually realize the importance of seeking stability. As a result, multi-channel layout has become a key way to ensure stable development.

In addition to global mainstream e-commerce giants such as Amazon and eBay, third-party platforms such as Temu, SHEIN, TikTok Shop, various emerging platforms and regional e-commerce platforms have also become the focus of sellers. For example, Coupang in South Korea, ozon in Russia, OTTO in Germany, Worten in Portugal, and Allegro in Central and Eastern Europe have all become popular sites for entry in the past year.

In addition, expanding offline channels has also become one of the important strategies for cross-border enterprises. Many overseas brands have realized that offline channels still occupy an important overseas market share, and by cooperating with local retailers and distributors to promote products to the offline market, they can gain greater growth.

Anker Innovations is a typical example. Initially, Anker Innovations only operated its own store on Amazon, but later gradually entered well-known e-commerce platforms such as eBay and Walmart, further expanding its online market coverage. On different platforms, Anker Innovations has formulated corresponding marketing strategies and product combinations based on the characteristics of each platform and user needs to meet the needs of different consumer groups.

At the same time, Anker Innovations actively expanded its offline channels and cooperated with large supermarket chains such as Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and Costco in North America to put its products on the shelves of these supermarkets. In addition, Anker Innovations has also established cooperative relationships with electronic product stores in various places, such as Best Buy Mobile in the United States and Carphone Warehouse in the United Kingdom. These stores focus on the sales of electronic products and can provide more professional display and sales services for Anker Innovations' products, which helps to improve the sales conversion rate of products.

5. Book-to-book becomes a trend

Nowadays, "local production and local delivery" (local production and local delivery) is becoming a significant trend in the cross-border e-commerce field.

Considering logistics costs, fulfillment time, policy requirements and other aspects, it is the future trend to layout the "business to business" in a market that can radiate to sufficient demand and has a production base.

In the "bank-to-bank" model, locally purchased goods need to be stored efficiently, which has prompted overseas warehouses to continuously upgrade their storage facilities, such as adding smart shelves and optimizing warehouse layout to improve space utilization and cargo management efficiency. At the same time, in order to meet local fast delivery needs, overseas warehouses have deeply optimized the logistics and distribution links. They cooperate with more local high-quality logistics companies to build a denser distribution network, shorten delivery time, and achieve fast delivery.

Taking Lechuang Holdings as an example, as of early December 2024, Lechuang Holdings has invested in and built 22 self-operated overseas warehouses around the world, with a total storage area of ​​more than 810,000 square meters, distributed in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada and other countries. Lechuang Holdings said that expanding and strengthening the public overseas warehouse business is an important strategy of the company - "will continue to promote the construction of overseas warehouses, optimize the layout of overseas warehouses, and further improve the company's cross-border logistics system" to achieve the purpose of "improving the core competitiveness of the company's public overseas warehouses, improving the company's performance, and enhancing profitability".

On December 3 last year, LEGAUGE announced that the board of directors approved the investment in the construction of the "Apple Valley Overseas Warehouse Project in California, USA", with an estimated construction cost of RMB 700 million. Its wholly-owned subsidiary 6075Lance LLC intends to be the main investor in this investment. It is reported that LEGAUGE has purchased about 5,000 acres of land around the core ports of the United States in the early stage, which can build an overseas warehouse of about 1.5 million square meters.

6. Technology drives a new round of change

The development of new technologies is driving a new round of changes in cross-border e-commerce with an unstoppable momentum.

Big data analysis technology, by collecting and organizing massive amounts of consumer data, can accurately gain insights into the preferences, purchasing habits and demand trends of consumers in different regions around the world, providing a basis for "planting grass". Smart assistants can give more suitable suggestions based on user preferences. For example, Amazon's smart shopping assistant Rufus will be officially available to users across the United States in mid-July 2024.

AI customer service is also playing an important role. It can respond to global customer inquiries in seconds, answer product questions, and handle after-sales issues all year round, greatly improving customer satisfaction. Digital anchors can transcend time zone and language barriers and achieve "never going offline."

In addition, blockchain technology brings transparency and security to the cross-border e-commerce supply chain. From the purchase of raw materials, production and processing to transportation and sales, the information of each link is encrypted and recorded on the blockchain. Consumers can scan the QR code of the product to view complete and reliable traceability information, which enhances their trust in product quality.

The integrated application of these technologies is reshaping the cross-border e-commerce landscape and pushing it to new heights.

7. Grasp the market trends of popular categories

In 2024, home appliances, sports and outdoor products, pet supplies, gardening products, beauty and personal care products and other fields maintained a high level of popularity and also contributed a large number of transaction orders to cross-border e-commerce.

Some market research organizations have made predictions on the hot-selling categories of cross-border e-commerce in 2025 based on a comprehensive analysis of market trends, consumer demand and platform data, which may help everyone better grasp the future development trends and directions of the industry.

The predicted categories mainly include smart home devices, health and fitness products, pet products, food, and beauty and personal care products.

Source: "2025 Global E-commerce Consumption Trends and Product Selection Insights Report" Taking smart home devices as an example, in the era of emotional economy, the development of AI is in line with consumers' expectations for their own emotions to be perceived. 65% of consumers in Europe and the United States are willing to increase additional budget for purchasing smart homes.

The demand for related products that integrate AI intelligence, such as smart home cameras, driving recorders, remote monitoring devices, portable speakers, kitchen sink faucets, window accessories, and power-assisted bicycles, may be even greater.

8. It’s the right time to expand overseas with branding

The BrandZ China Global Brands 2024 released by Google and Kantar shows that the overall strength of Chinese brands has greatly improved, with brand power increasing by 17%. Among them, smart device and automobile brands performed particularly well, increasing by 61% and 51% respectively.

Even facing the challenge of slowing global economic growth, the brand power of China's top 50 global brands still achieved a 17% growth, which is more than twice the average growth rate over the years.

In 2025, the trend of "branding" will undoubtedly become more obvious. More and more Chinese companies have realized that it is difficult to gain a foothold in the international market by simply relying on low-price strategies, and building influential brands is the way to long-term development.

From Huawei and Xiaomi in the technology field to Bosideng and Li Ning in the fashion industry, many brands are actively expanding in overseas markets, improving brand awareness and reputation through high-quality products, innovative design and precision marketing.

However, the road to branding overseas is not smooth sailing. Cultural differences have become a major problem facing companies. Cultural traditions, values ​​and aesthetics vary greatly from country to country. How to effectively integrate brand culture with local culture is a question that companies must consider.

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that the only constant in the world is change itself.

With the profound changes in the market environment, the cross-border e-commerce industry is also full of unknowns. Embrace change first, then meet challenges, just like the Jewish proverb says, start first and then adjust your breathing, take off first and then adjust your posture.

Author | Tang Fei Editor | Li Xiaotian