When it comes to foreign trade, aliexpress is often said to be a cross-border e-commerce platform, especially in Russia. Don't know at first it is more like inadvertently inserted willow.


"The financial crisis in 2008 caused a lot of problems. We saw a lot of inquiries from buyers on alibaba.com. We saw a lot of inquiries from buyers saying can we buy a few thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars and send them by express." When the demand of such buyers accumulated to a certain extent, we thought we could build a platform for online operation of cross-border small wholesale, and aliexpress platform was founded in 2010. From 2010 to 2013, I have been engaged in small wholesale business." Li xiang, the head of aliexpress's 3C industry, recalled to China trade news.


Although the initial demand can support the platform business, what is the reason behind the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce business represented by aliexpress? Wang mingqiang, general manager of aliexpress, tried to explain. Cross-border B2C platform before the rise, the majority of cross-border trade through B2B way, middle level passes through several wholesalers price, logistics and warehousing costs, speed to sell through the cross-border B2C mode, is China's most competitive ability of supply chain and overseas terminal consumers directly connected, many of the same commodity price is relatively cheap. "In the traditional B2B trading model, because middlemen buy in bulk, store in bulk and sell in bulk, generally only a few items are available overseas. Because the B2B model generally must have a certain amount of sales to be able to ship the goods abroad. Long-tail products are hard to sell in the traditional B2B way." 'we now use cross-border B2C to retail Chinese goods directly to overseas end consumers, so that overseas consumers can buy more Chinese goods,' Mr. Wang said.


"Over the past decade, aliexpress has gone through three phases. In the first phase, from 2010 to 2013, we did a lot of infrastructure work, including improving payment methods, logistics channels and so on." "In the second phase, starting in 2013 and 2014, we started to make deep localized investment in some key countries overseas," Mr. Wang said.

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"We had a promotion in Russia in 2013. When speed express already had a large number of users in Russia, we found that parcels were stuck in the Russian customs. After that, we decided to make deep localized investment in some key countries. We have had some deep cooperation with Russian post office and customs, local logistics companies and Internet companies, and have helped Russian post office and customs upgrade their systems with alibaba's advanced technology. This has greatly enhanced our logistics, payment and infrastructure capabilities in Russia." For example, in some big cities like Moscow and st. Petersburg, we have overseas warehouses there, which can be delivered the next day.


"From the beginning of the third phase in 2017 to the present, aliexpress has diversified its business. We are increasingly using alibaba group's big data and product technology capabilities to meet the needs of users in different countries." "Now aliexpress is not a simple cross-border B2C sales model, and we are increasingly developing overseas warehouses," wang said.


'we are now a full-category e-commerce platform,' Mr. Wang said. 'almost all consumer goods are sold on our platform.


Making return and exchange more convenient has always been an urgent problem for the development of cross-border e-commerce. Ming-qiang wang said, "we have several security methods, one is we took part in the seller to our commission dedicated to return service, overseas consumers if its credit is good, we will give her money to consumers first, give priority to protect consumer experience, and then a period of time, have a larger value of the goods will come back. Second, if the value of the goods is small, it may actually cost more to return the goods than the value of the goods. We use some basic consumer protection funds to cover the cost and return the money to the consumer, but we will also compensate the seller, so that he will not have a big loss. Three is that speed sell tong now carried out in some main countries of the third party insurance business, the seller can buy insurance, when the dispute to return abroad, through the insurance give money back to the buyer, but the goods don't have to return to China, directly through the insurance institutions in the local find a third-party agency, secondary processing on the goods.


How cross-border e-commerce platforms can solve the barriers caused by different languages in different countries is also a question that people are curious about. "Aliexpress has introduced a lot of translation technology solutions," li said. "we offer translation services in nearly 20 languages, which is basically free of charge for businesses to translate product descriptions into a variety of languages."