Tmall Opened An Overseas Direct Store. Will Other Businesses Be Out?

At the global business communication conference held earlier this month, Ali official said that this year's big import strategy will be upgraded in an all-round way. It will explore and upgrade strategic cooperation with global businesses through global direct supply, overseas direct operation, and full channel distribution system under the general trade import mode.

And recently, a name "

The "overseas direct camp" shop quietly registered on Tmall platform in March 18th.

At present, Tmall and Tmall international homepage have not found any promotion or access to "Tmall overseas direct battalion", but find it through search.

It is parallel to other businesses on the platform as a Tmall store.

At present, there are only three categories of mother and baby, food and personal care, and the products are very limited.

There are 16 SKU in the mother and baby area, including the diapers of the three brands of Wang, Wang, and Yi Jia, and the wet towel of Pigeon in Japan.

There are 24 SKU in the gourmet area, including 6 overseas brands, such as Tom farm, Orion, Schneider, private farm, Dante, etc.

The personal care area is only one of the 29 products of lion brand.

It can be seen that the products sold by the shop are almost two years old.

And fire up

Commodities, the so-called standard goods and explosive funds.

According to the introduction of the web page, we can see that all the goods in the shop are overseas direct mining, that is, general trade imports.

Therefore, unlike the defect that cross border imports can not be returned, Tmall overseas outlets can provide 7 days' no reason to return service.

For the concept of "direct camp", the customer service was informed that the store was fully responsible for the "Hangzhou Tmall Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd.", including commodity control, operation, customer service and after sales.

A Tmall businessman pointed out that the store's mode should be similar to Tmall supermarket, that is, Tmall does not directly touch goods, but is responsible for all operations.

The selected merchants (brand dealers or distributors) send products to Tmall designated warehouses. After ordering, Tmall's Overseas Direct stores are responsible for shipping and all after-sales services.

As for how Tmall's overseas outlets are profitable, the above businessmen pointed out that, if Tmall supermarket is adopted, the prices of the products they sell are determined by the merchants, rather than the self operated mode that the operators buy the goods and earn the difference.

"Tmall supermarkets receive commission from suppliers of different categories according to different categories. This may also be true for Tmall overseas outlets."

"In this mode, merchants are willing to cooperate with him. His autonomy is greater than that of pure suppliers, and he can get support from Tmall."

The businessman talked.

Another importing businessman said Tmall's overseas outlets are attractive to cooperative businesses.

"On the one hand, there is Tmall backing, and traffic and sales volume naturally do not worry; on the other hand, this greatly reduces the risk of early introduction of goods. Ordering risk, pportation risk, marketing cost, exchange rate risk and policy change risk can be borne by Tmall."

However, who can become "lucky" by Tmall overseas direct shop has become the problem we most care about.

"Tmall will naturally choose the best according to the data of the supplier's supply capability, price system, commodity structure and so on.

The competition among similar businesses is inevitable. After all, the number of merchants selected by each category is very limited.

For Tmall, it must be more willing to cooperate directly with the branding, followed by the big dealers. "

The merchants pointed out.

However, what worries the businessmen is that Tmall's overseas outlets are competing with other businesses that sell the same products and other businesses that do not cooperate with each other. Can they compete fairly on the same platform?

"After all, Tmall's overseas outlets are hung with Tmall signboards and big backers. Although they are just starting up, they still can't see Tmall's tendency to support this shop, but it will not necessarily happen later.

In the future, like Tmall supermarket and Tmall international, it is not impossible to put Tmall overseas directly into the home entrance and give priority recommendations.

An importing mother and baby category merchants expressed their concern to the billion state power network.

In addition to competing with Tmall platform importing products (general trade imports), Tmall's overseas outlets and Tmall international businesses do not seem so "peaceful".

Insiders pointed out that the products sold by Tmall overseas outlets are almost all cross-border e-commerce exploding products, but also the drainage and hot selling products of Tmall international merchants. That is to say, Tmall's Overseas Direct stores are directly competitive with Tmall International's cross-border businesses.

"From the price point of view, the general trade import advantage is less than that of cross-border imports, but Tmall's Overseas Direct stores are run by Tmall and are responsible for after sales. Products and services may be more easily trusted by consumers than ordinary businesses.

If Tmall subsidize Overseas Direct stores and give some important resources, a small number of small and medium-sized businesses of Tmall international will not be able to afford it, and other international brands, overseas flagship stores and powerful big businesses, are bound to compete with them.

Those insiders say that this internal game is the key to see who Tmall wants to push.

In fact, Tmall has already made plans for dealing with the relationship between general trade import and cross-border import.

Liu Peng, general manager of Tmall international, has previously said that Ali will provide full link services to businesses through cross-border import and general trade import dual access in 2016.

Tmall international will explore innovative solutions such as global direct supply, overseas direct sales and all channel distribution through the four new channels, which are "expanding trade, brand building, developing distribution, and buying the official website".

In this way, Tmall's overseas direct store is a step forward by Ali to seek breakthroughs in general trade imports.

As to how large and how high the investment it will be in this direct store, it can only wait for it to change.

"In fact, Tmall's exploration of general trade import and cross border dual access is also what Jingdong has been doing."

A cross-border e-commerce operator said to the billion state power network, "Jingdong's global purchase continues to use Jingdong's" self operated + open platform "mode, of which the self part is also a general trade import + cross-border import dual channel.

He said: "in this way, the competition between the two giants in the import sector is becoming more and more intense.

Tmall has been trying overseas outlets or other models, on the one hand, to explain its determination to import its business, on the other hand, there may be some reasons why Tmall international open platform has been laborious.

Alexa data can explain some problems: Tmall international main station in the past three months, the average daily IP traffic is only 1 million 310 thousand, and 34.9% of the traffic is jumped from Taobao network.

"Compared with the Jingdong, the mode of self run + open platform has a long history. It should be said that it is easier to handle.

At least in the self run aspect, Jingdong still has some first mover advantages, such as warehousing, logistics and distribution, organization of upstream supply, supply chain control, etc.

Of course, Tmall is not self-supporting, not directly touting goods, but trying new models.

The industry commented, "what is Tmall's big move in importing this piece? Let's wait and see."