All aspects of overseas warehouse development under the background of epidemic situation

In 2020, the global epidemic spread, the online retail industry in major countries and regions entered a period of rapid growth, and the penetration rate of e-commerce in overseas consumer markets further increased. Driven by national policies, cross-border e-commerce platforms, leading cross-border e-commerce enterprises and logistics giants, the overseas warehouse industry has ushered in a window of development opportunities. According to the data released by the Ministry of Commerce of China, in 2020, the number of overseas warehouses in China has exceeded 1900, with a total area of more than 13.5 million m2. The business scope covers the world, of which the number of overseas warehouses in North America, Europe, Asia and other regions accounts for nearly 90%. In the current epidemic environment, overseas warehouses have become the key cornerstone and important carrier for the development of China's industrial chain supply chain. At the same time, the development of the Silk Road Economic Belt has given new opportunities for China EU, China Africa and China ASEAN cooperation. The rapid development of cross-border e-commerce and cross-border Logistics has directly promoted the efficient economic and trade cooperation in the "Silk Road e-commerce" region.

In 2021, the combination of international trade frictions, Amazon's "store closures", new EU VAT regulations, and soaring sea freight prices increased the uncertainty of the cross-border e-commerce market. Due to the impact of the outbreak of the epidemic, such as port congestion, container shortage, uncertain timing of final delivery and other issues, the height has been renewed. In the post epidemic era, the competitive situation of overseas warehouses has become prominent, and has begun to enter the era of scale, compliance, informatization and intelligence.

The epidemic economy in 2020 directly promoted the rapid development of overseas warehouses of cross-border e-commerce, and presented a new development trend.

"Overseas warehouse" under policy support

With the support of national and local policies, new formats and models such as overseas warehouses are becoming the key areas of policy support. The outline of the 14th five year plan clearly states that the construction of overseas warehouses should be encouraged to ensure the smooth operation of the supply chain of the foreign trade industry chain. The Ministry of commerce is also steadily promoting the special action work for the high-quality development of overseas warehouses, focusing on strengthening the cultivation of main bodies, improving the service network of overseas warehouses, promoting the digital development and the construction of overseas warehouse standards, and deepening international cooperation. In june2020, the General Administration of Customs issued the announcement on carrying out the pilot of cross-border e-commerce enterprise to enterprise export supervision, adding the customs supervision method code "9810" (full name "cross-border e-commerce export overseas warehouse"), providing a standardized declaration channel for domestic enterprises to deliver goods to overseas warehouses through cross-border logistics; On december29,2020, the Ministry of Commerce issued the letter on printing and distributing the first batch of excellent overseas warehouse practice cases, good experiences and good practices, which emphasized the need to support and promote the high-quality development of cross-border e-commerce overseas warehouses; In July, 2021, the State Council issued the opinions on accelerating the development of new forms and models of foreign trade, which clearly proposed to accelerate the construction of new foreign trade infrastructure, improve the overseas warehouse network covering the world, and strive to cultivate about 100 excellent overseas warehouse enterprises with outstanding performance in information construction, intelligent development, diversified services and localized operation by 2025.

Capital promotes the rapid development of overseas warehouse industry

The COVID-19 in 2020 has brought far-reaching changes to the cross-border e-commerce industry: Anker innovated to achieve independent IPO; Shein let the capital and industry see the blueprint of a 100 billion level cross-border enterprise; The spread of the epidemic, FBA restrictions on warehousing, a large number of airline outages and grounding and other factors have promoted the concentrated outbreak of overseas warehouse dividends. As a result, a large number of cross-border e-commerce enterprises and logistics providers have accelerated the process of building or expanding their positions, and capital has also smelled the opportunities. In 2020, zongteng group announced that it had obtained round C financing of RMB 500million; Fanding international obtained round a financing of RMB billion or more; Xingyun group completed round C financing of USD 200million, etc. The increased investment of capital has raised the entry threshold for heavy asset industries such as overseas warehouse, thus further enhancing the concentration of the entire cross-border logistics industry, and the development of the overseas warehouse industry has also jumped to a new level.

Strong demand in overseas warehouse market

In 2020, driven by the epidemic economy, the growth rate of online retail sales in mature markets represented by the United States and EU countries and emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East and South America was generally higher than 15%. The sharp increase in market demand has opened up huge incremental space for cross-border e-commerce export enterprises, and the market demand for third-party overseas warehouses has shown a geometric growth. As a result, the rapidly growing overseas warehouses have been quickly pushed into the spotlight and become a battleground for strategists. Domestic logistics providers, international freight forwarders, express companies, cross-border e-commerce giants and other players have accelerated the process of building or expanding overseas warehouses: in April 2020, Alibaba's express launched the "spring thunder action for overseas warehouses" in conjunction with novices, adding French, polish and Belgian warehouses; In the second half of 2020, di Sifang has set up more warehouses in the United States and other places, with an additional capacity expansion area of more than 100000 m2, and the layout of more than 500000 M2 will be realized in 2001; In 2021, the newly increased overseas warehouse area of the barn was 300000 m2, and the total area has exceeded 1million m2, becoming the first million level overseas Warehouse Enterprise in China; In 2021, China Post plans to expand its warehouse in the United States, France and other countries. At the same time, it will build new overseas warehouses around the countries along the "the Belt and Road". Domestic logistics giants JD, SF, Yunda and others have also stepped into the ranks of cross-border logistics.

Multiple impacts of the "store closure tide"

Since April, 2021, Amazon has frozen many Chinese merchant accounts on its platform by using the standard terms on illegal and false comments in the seller's code of conduct. According to the survey data of marketplace pulse, since the "store closure tide" at the end of April, the number of Chinese businesses that have been closed has expanded to about 300. The biggest problem brought about by the "store closure tide" is that after the account funds are frozen, the seller's supply chain and capital flow are broken, and a series of impacts will spread to every link of the cross-border e-commerce supply chain, in which the cross-border logistics providers bear the brunt. The seller's inventory is overstocked, and the unsalable products increase the risk of abandonment. Some sellers cut prices to clear their inventory, which greatly affects their cash flow. The shortage of funds caused by the "closure tide" makes it difficult for the seller to pay the overseas warehouse management fees, which is likely to cause bad debt risk for the overseas warehouse service enterprises. On the other hand, the event of "store closure tide" also suggests that China's cross-border e-commerce enterprises must pay attention to the compliance management when expanding overseas markets, abide by the platform rules, carry out business activities under the premise of the laws of the countries where the target markets are located, carefully study the external factors such as laws, culture and business habits of various countries, and strengthen the compliance management of cross-border e-commerce enterprises.

Amazon's "store closure tide" event makes more and more enterprises attach importance to multi-channel, diversified and multi platform operation, rely on independent stations and cross-border e-commerce platforms in emerging markets such as lazada and shopee to develop overseas markets, build their own international logistics network system with the help of third-party overseas warehouse resources, and enhance the capacity of intermodal transport, transshipment and distribution of overseas logistics nodes.

Overseas warehouse becomes the overseas operation center of "brand going to sea"

At present, with the rise of DTC (direct to customer) mode, cross-border e-commerce has entered the era of "brand going to sea" from "product going to sea". By integrating the domestic supply chain and overseas terminal channel resources, and relying on the warehouse distribution integration function of overseas warehouses, the whole process of digitalization from the factory to the overseas warehouse, such as receipt and shipment information, inventory dynamic information, warehouse distribution integration information, and final delivery information, is realized. As an important overseas fulcrum of "made in China", overseas warehouse is a key link in the overseas layout of Chinese enterprises, as well as a new infrastructure and important cornerstone for building a "brand going to sea" cross-border supply chain.

Overseas warehouse is not only a physical place to provide overseas storage and distribution, but also a "bridgehead" to assist customers in overseas localization operation and compliance. With the continuous change of overseas market demand, higher requirements are put forward for overseas warehouses in terms of information construction, intelligent development, diversified services, localized management, etc. Overseas warehouse enterprises should not only provide end-to-end services from head-on, international logistics to final distribution, but also help sellers do a good job in commodity management and inventory monitoring services, mainly including: refined inventory management, shelf time, outbound time, final delivery time, inventory pre alarm, return shelf time and other data analysis services, as well as overseas distribution, commodity display, digital marketing Brand promotion, supply chain finance and other services. Therefore, from this perspective, overseas warehouse is also an overseas operation center for Chinese enterprises to expand the global market with the help of cross-border e-commerce.

Development trend of overseas warehouse

After more than 10 years of development, the overseas warehouse industry has moved from a price war to a stage of competing to provide high-quality services and performance timeliness. The whole industry has shown a large-scale, intelligent and compliant development trend.

Overseas warehouse service providers rely on cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test zones and bonded areas to build a "front warehouse + global center warehouse + overseas warehouse" mode, forming a linkage pattern of "two-way overseas warehouse" for cross-border e-commerce import and export. By building an advanced overseas warehouse information management system, it can be seamlessly connected with the business systems of cross-border e-commerce enterprises to realize the "four flows in one" of overseas warehouse logistics, order flow, information flow and capital flow. At the same time, it conducts timely and effective analysis on the data generated by the system, provides customers with data support services in terms of inventory turnover, inventory aging, overseas market demand analysis, etc., improves the efficiency of data resources, helps cross-border e-commerce enterprises improve their operation efficiency, and optimizes the management level of cross-border supply chain.

Intelligence is an important measure for overseas warehouse enterprises to improve service energy efficiency. The explosive growth of global e-commerce business driven by the epidemic and the blowout demand in the overseas warehouse market force overseas warehouse enterprises to use new logistics technologies to improve the informatization and operation management efficiency of overseas warehouses. By configuring intelligent equipment such as robots and automatic transmission and sorting lines, the efficiency and quality of order delivery are improved, the warehouse allocation efficiency is improved, and the labor cost is reduced. The data information of the overseas warehouse system is analyzed from time to time to realize intelligent warehouse separation, which can effectively reduce the cost of the final delivery.

In the current market, overseas warehouse enterprises mainly include domestic logistics giants, international logistics enterprises, cross-border e-commerce platforms and leading cross-border e-commerce enterprises. In 2021, with the help of capital, the overseas warehouse industry will still maintain rapid development, but the competitive situation has emerged: on the one hand, the stronger the stronger, the Matthew effect is prominent, and small and medium-sized overseas warehouses are facing marginalization; On the other hand, industry compliance will also be greatly improved. With the increasingly fierce competition among overseas warehouse enterprises, more and more overseas warehouse service providers are focusing on the vertical field, paying attention to the refined operation and management of warehouses, and providing more extended services in combination with their own advantages, in order to obtain more core advantages in the future competition.