Taobao opens up a "new route" to overseas markets, with some clothing sellers earning an extra 200,000 yuan a week

Taobao launched a global free shipping plan for clothing, opening up a "new route" for clothing sellers to go overseas. Many merchants have successfully expanded overseas through this plan, and overseas users can also enjoy a more convenient shopping experience.

"For me, it was just a matter of pressing a button, and I got an extra $200,000 in sales in one week."

Chen Qiaozhi, the manager of Shenlang Plus Size Women's Clothing, told Zhiwei that the button he mentioned refers to participating in Taobao's global free shipping plan for clothing. As one of the first merchants to participate in this plan, his store sold more than 200,000 yuan in overseas orders within 7 days of opening, and it is estimated that the first month's performance will exceed 1 million yuan.

After launching the global free shipping plan for clothing, Taobao also upgraded its clothing promotion event "New Power Week" to "Global New Power Week" last week. Chen Qiaozhi said that many merchants saw a gratifying increase in sales during this period. According to public reports, some merchants' overseas transactions doubled on the first day, and some merchants' overseas transactions accounted for more than 50%.

"New Power Week" is Taobao's most important apparel promotion every year. This year's upgrade to "Global New Power Week" is obviously meant to go global. It is reported that during the event, Singapore, Malaysia and other regions have been fully upgraded to free shipping for clothing products with a certain threshold.

At a time when the e-commerce apparel industry is plagued by high returns, high inventory, high costs, the prevalence of counterfeits, and price wars, this apparel promotion seems to have found a new way out for many businesses.

1. Dilemma and solution of the apparel industry

In fact, the e-commerce apparel sector has not had an easy time this year.

In addition to the "refund only" policy of some e-commerce platforms in the sinking market being abused by "wool parties", many people feel that refunds and returns and "orders returned in seconds" are also soaring. The theft of pictures, which has been a headache for the industry for a long time, has caused many merchants to have their products copied within a day or even a few hours even if they have a hit product, and they are robbed by counterfeit merchants, and their profits cannot even cover their inventory.

"You can actually see this if you look at the sales of counterfeit products of our brand on a certain e-commerce platform. Designer brands like ours are really troubled by prices and supply chains this year." A Taobao brand store owner told Zhiwei.

Now that domestic e-commerce traffic is reaching its peak, the "three highs phenomenon" is becoming more and more common among merchants.

Faced with the increasingly competitive situation, Taobao clothing director Kanshan pointed out that "many clothing sellers have turned their attention to overseas markets and actively sought growth."

According to the data from the "White Paper on the Development Trend of China's Export Cross-border E-commerce in 2024", the scale of the overseas retail e-commerce market is expected to reach 3 trillion US dollars in 2024. The huge size of the overseas market, low e-commerce penetration rate and high growth rate have made whether to go overseas a must-answer question for apparel merchants.

Taobao has also caught on to this trend and launched a global free shipping plan for clothing last month, allowing key merchants to expand overseas with just one click.

From a certain perspective, this is Taobao's clothing category seeking growth itself, and it is also looking for a new way out for ordinary clothing sellers.

2. Exporting apparel overseas is no longer just the domain of big players

The Zhiwei editorial department learned that within less than half a month after the plan was launched, hundreds of thousands of merchants have successfully expanded overseas through Taobao, and various players including merchants in the clothing industry, celebrity stores, and leading brands are all on the fast track.

Under the overseas expansion model (JIT model) of the global free shipping plan for large clothing companies, Taobao merchants do not need to open another store, make special settings for products, or invest additional marketing costs, and can directly go overseas to reach overseas customers.

This model is equivalent to "entrusting" the goods to Taobao, and will not encounter the pain points of domestic apparel e-commerce such as refunds, returns, and freight insurance. It is very friendly to small and medium-sized apparel merchants whose previous business base is in China.

As an effective supplement to the increasingly "volleyed" domestic clothing e-commerce market, many clothing merchants have found new business growth points overseas under Taobao's global market development.

"Last year, there was a lot of hype about going overseas, but I didn't know much about these new things and didn't dare to try them rashly." Chen Qiaozhi explained why he didn't go overseas before, "But this time, as soon as Taobao's global free shipping plan was launched, I signed up. I didn't need to open a new store, and the startup cost was extremely low."

In fact, most businesses know that going overseas is a bonus, but for them, finding a suitable entry point is the most important.

Huang Tao, co-founder of Zaoqi Studio, told Zhiwei that cross-border business is more like an exploratory experiment. "When Xiaoer first recommended overseas projects, I thought about giving it a try. After all, our scale has not reached the ceiling of the track, and we will still focus more on the domestic market."

However, what surprised Huang Tao was that, with almost no effort, Zaoqi Studio has already earned more than 400,000 yuan in additional sales in overseas markets since it started selling in early August. In comparison, Zaoqi Studio had tried its overseas business through the direct sales platform of agents, but the overseas revenue in one year was only about 300,000 yuan.

"The proportion of this incremental increase is not large, but the important thing is that it is easy and worry-free to get it." Huang Tao commented on the global free shipping plan.

In the past two years, with the rise of cross-border e-commerce, models such as full hosting and semi-hosting have gradually become known to everyone.

The full-hostage model directly bypasses traders and brings the factories of upstream suppliers to the cross-border e-commerce platform on a large scale; while the semi-hostage model utilizes the logistics and warehousing infrastructure that has been built by predecessors, seizes the sellers' demand for clearing inventory, and provides new channels with lower marketing costs.

These two modes are undoubtedly very convenient for overseas players who have bulk shipment needs, but more merchants still hope to be more flexible and convenient when selling their products overseas.

The Taobao JIT model ensures logistics and after-sales services under a fully managed model, while retaining the maximum degree of operational autonomy for merchants.

Under this model, the most complicated logistics and after-sales links in the cross-border e-commerce process are completed by the platform. Merchants own the goods and the pricing rights, and can open overseas markets with one click based on their existing Taobao Tmall stores. After receiving the order, they only need to send the goods to the domestic logistics warehouse. The arrival of the goods at the warehouse is equivalent to confirmation of receipt, and they can enjoy "0 returns, 0 refunds, and 0 freight insurance."

For this business to work, it is not enough to have a good model, but also needs the support of user traffic. Therefore, Taobao has also made corresponding actions on the C-end. In the just-concluded Global New Power Week, users in areas where the global free shipping plan is available can see the channel entrance of "Free Shipping for Clothing" on the homepage as long as they open the Taobao App.

During the New Power Week, consumers in overseas free shipping areas will also receive exclusive discounts. In addition to the "30 off for purchases over 300" that both domestic and overseas consumers can enjoy, the first batch of consumers in overseas free shipping areas can receive four additional coupons every day.

For the 100 million overseas Taobao users, this is more like opening up a rare opportunity for "reverse overseas shopping." A consumer in Hong Kong said on social media: "It seems that I have to start buying more and more."

In this way, merchants and overseas users are brought together by the platform to create a win-win situation. For a large number of overseas buyers, this means that when they buy clothes on Taobao in the future, they can also enjoy free shipping like in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, and from then on they can enjoy the "freedom to buy clothes" with the same quality, price and free shipping as domestic consumers.

For domestic merchants, this makes the cost of exploring new markets overseas extremely low. There is no need for new platforms or new stores. They can sell the same products domestically and overseas, and they don’t have to worry about logistics and overseas returns and exchanges.

3. Taobao, the “overt conspiracy” of the overseas market

Zhiwei learned that the project will initially cover Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and other Asian regions, and will gradually provide free shipping worldwide. In addition to being sold to overseas Taobao users through Taobao Overseas Edition, the products sold by merchants will also be sold to multiple markets around the world through AliExpress and Lazada.

This means that Alibaba’s internal cooperation connects Taobao and Tmall’s advantageous supply, represented by clothing, with Alibaba International’s overseas markets.

While the two giants SHEIN and TEMU have already rolled out their own characteristics and features in the overseas market, Taobao's advantage is its more abundant supply of goods, especially its considerable experience in clothing.

Taobao opens about 2 million new clothing stores every year, with over 100 million items on sale, attracting over 400 million users to buy clothes on Taobao, of which about 20 million users buy clothes on Taobao once a week on average. The iFashion module established by Taobao Fashion has largely led the Chinese clothing e-commerce market and even affected the entire upstream and downstream industry chain.

Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that Taobao is the best e-commerce company in China in selling clothing. It would be a pity if such experience is not used for overseas expansion.

In fact, many domestic brands on Taobao already have a large number of fans overseas and have a relatively good basic base. For example, Huashangge, which specializes in the intangible cultural heritage of Song Brocade, has not deliberately operated in overseas markets before, but has accumulated a group of overseas users by relying on the "hard power" of its products.

Huashangge founder Chen Yu had never thought that his products would be so popular overseas. Whenever the anchor was about to go off the air late at night, many active overseas Chinese fans would appear in the comment area, saying, "I watch your live broadcast for a while every day, why did you go off the air right after getting up?"

Before participating in Taobao's global free shipping plan for clothing, these users needed to purchase products through transit stations. "Sometimes it takes three months for pre-sale and freight, but because they really like the products, they are willing to wait."

In the case of free shipping on Taobao, taking Singapore as an example, the average logistics time from sea transportation to air transportation will be shortened from 20 days to 7 to 9 days.

Similarly, CHIC JOC, a high-end designer women's clothing brand that entered the women's clothing market with the positioning of "minimalist luxury", signed a contract with the global free shipping plan of Dafu Clothing to allow a group of overseas consumers to enjoy a more convenient shopping experience. "I don't expect explosive growth in the short term, but I think this model can solve real problems."

Its founder Lou Chen told Zhiwei that "(the global clothing free shipping plan) is efficient and clear. For example, merchants do not have many worries about after-sales returns, and there is no need to develop redundant applications, and merchants do not need to join special operations. More importantly, Taobao has also promoted it overseas and informed them of the free shipping policy, etc."

As the supply chain and logistics systems mature, it will become increasingly convenient for overseas users to purchase Chinese clothing. Taobao, the e-commerce platform that is best at selling clothing, will certainly be able to help many domestic brands gain a foothold in the vast overseas market.

Compared with the low-cost "exploratory overseas expansion" of small and medium-sized businesses, the overseas expansion of Chinese clothing brands has been given more significance. They hope to break the "low-price" label of Chinese products, go abroad as a brand, and try to sell quality clothing and original designs to the world.

This is a very sexy thing for all clothing sellers. As Lou Chen said, "I think this is one of the most successful decisions made by Taobao in the past few years."

Written by: He Bi Editor: Da Bing This article is written by the author of Operation Party [Zhi Wei], WeChat public account: [Zhi Wei], original/authorized to be published on Operation Party, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.