In 2021, despite the more complicated international situation, with the spillover of China's manufacturing capabilities and comprehensive national strength, the scale of my country's cross-border e-commerce will reach 1.98 trillion yuan, out of a high growth rate of 15%, and usher in a historical dividend period. Among them, the foreign trade of the machinery industry performed well, with the total import and export volume of the year reaching 1.04 trillion US dollars, breaking the 1 trillion US dollar mark for the first time.
Jiang Chaoxiang from Jining, Shandong has nearly 10 years of experience in selling machinery on the international station. For the rapid growth of cross-border e-commerce and machinery industry in recent years, Jiang Chaoxiang is fortunate to be a witness and participant.
Beginning in 2020, their monthly inquiries on the international site exceeded 10,000, and the turnover increased by 300% for two consecutive years. Last year's sales exceeded 100 million directly. He set up his own factory and registered his own brand.
At the beginning of 2017, Jiang Chaoxiang quit his job for nearly 4 years because of different customer service concepts. He devoted himself to Shandong Hightop Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Hightop Machinery). At that time, his idea was to do it himself instead of spending energy to persuade the former company to transform.
"At that time, my three partners had been working at Hightop Machinery for two years. One person, one computer, one desk, and they talked about their own business. Rather than a company, it was better to pool money to open a business. An international station. The company has no concept of management, no business strategy, or even division of labor." Jiang Chaoxiang recalled the situation when he just returned to the company.
In order to quickly turn the situation around, Jiang Chaoxiang put a large number of industrial products and machinery into the store at the international station. Because the store is too cluttered, he doesn't know much about the products. The buyer asks him a few more questions, and he gets stuck. He asks more and buys less.
At the former company, the factories were their own, and production was customized and scheduled around their needs. Today, a screw has to be purchased. The factory saw that he had just entered the business, and the order volume was not large, so he did not want to chat with him at all. Jiang Chaoxiang still vividly remembers the scene of being hanged in the factory for several hours.
In 2017, they lost more than 300,000 yuan. Jiang Chaoxiang brought the three partners together to discuss whether to continue. The four of them borrowed 100,000 yuan to start over.
They are aware of their own problems: the store has no main products, the products are too messy, and the operators do not know enough about the products; the upstream supply chain cannot keep up with the needs of customers, and they do not understand the rules of the international station. To use the most popular words these days, they do not have an advantage in the field of people and goods.
At the meeting, Jiang Chao decided to set spraying machines as his main product, and introduced excavators and other high-unit price and profitable products, focusing on following up with customers in Europe and the United States.
Jiang Chaoxiang and everyone in the team said that the payment for goods is recovered through credit guarantees, which reduces buyers' distrust of trading companies, and accumulates data on stores in the international station to increase the weight of stores.
In order to liberate employees from inefficient work, Jiang Chaoxiang asked employees to ship goods through the cross-border supply chain of the international station. Jiang Chaoxiang, who had been in contact with Yidatong in the last company, still remembers the convenience of Yidatong for making customs declaration materials and the service of paying tax refunds in the fastest 3 days.
At the same time, everyone in the team is required to study the platform's ranking rules and gameplay, and they are required to have a full understanding of their peers. At that time, they pulled out and studied the popular mechanical products on the international station one by one.
Team OUTING
Do the best you can. In February 2018, Jiang Chaoxiang signed up for the New Trade Festival at the International Station, and was elected as the captain of Jining by local friends. The performance of their legion became the champion of the northern region. Looking at the revenue of the month, he and the team felt the joy of victory for the first time. Today, the winner's certificate is still hanging in Jiang Chaoxiang's office.
At the end of 2018, Jiang Chaoxiang took a loan of 100,000 yuan from Ali Finance and opened his first gold shop. With the blessing of the two stores, their sales exceeded 6 million yuan that year.
In 2021, Jiang Chao related a crazy thing. When the whole company was busy with product selection and delivery, he registered his own factory and announced that he would develop his own brand of excavators.
mini excavator
In recent years, although excavators have become the main product of their store, they know nothing about the technology and production of excavators, and several partners have zero factory experience. After I finally made some money, I rashly started a factory, can I do it?
"I have already figured out the foreign demand in this industry, the capabilities and prices of domestic factories." Jiang Chaoxiang shared his original intention to set up a factory, "When communicating with buyers, those big dealers often Looking at my photos, I know that we didn't make it, and I don't want to talk to me any more, and I lost the opportunity for cooperation in vain."
After the factory was registered, Jiang Chaoxiang paid a lot of money to invite a master to help. In order to hurry up, he spent the whole night with the master to read the drawings and assemble the production line. In less than half a year, he abruptly turned himself from a layman to a technical master. The company has 20 excavator patents.
Excavator patent
From assembling the production line to developing new products, it took others half a year, but he sent the first batch of goods, more than 200 excavators, on a cargo ship to the United States in two months.
In the past two years, in order to get more orders, some peers have continued to cut prices and sell themselves. In order to control costs, the configuration can only be reduced. This foreign trade person who has his own perseverance in his heart does not agree with this method of taking orders by reducing configuration and affecting customer experience and industry reputation.
On the one hand, he purchased steel plates as accessories to reduce the cost of existing models and benefit customers. At the same time, he is full of firepower to develop new brands and models, and the configuration of new models is constantly improving. He hopes to retain customers with word of mouth.
Jiang Chaoxiang delivered most of the accessories and spraying machines through the international station, especially under the trend of epidemic situation and industry inversion, he could choose cost-effective shifts in the background of the store in real time to reduce shipping costs. At the same time, the backstage of the international station can check the logistics track at any time, which greatly increases the certainty of arrival.
On March 17 this year, the international station released a new international station logistics service. Seeing the service guarantee and price of the international station shipping service, Jiang Chaoxiang began to try to use the international station shipping FCL service again. Jiang Chaoxiang was deeply impressed by the shipping service guarantee at the international station.
On April 18, Xinhua announced that in the first quarter of this year, China's total import and export of goods increased by 13.3% year-on-year. In the past first quarter, he and the team basically completed their goals. For this year's goal of 280 million, Jiang Chao is full of confidence.
Hightop Machinery Factory
When asked about the secret of going from an annual loss of more than 300,000 yuan to an annual sales of over 100 million yuan, Jiang Chaoxiang summed it up as long-termism, in-depth research on people, goods, and patterns.
1. Long-termism: Open a store offline, and you can see customers coming in when you open the door. If you don’t make a deal, or leave immediately, it will be effective in the short term. Novices come in and are easy to fall into. If you don’t see benefits in 3-5 months, you will lose confidence. To do foreign trade, customers, data, and products all need to be precipitated, which is a long-term and systematic process.
2. Thoroughly research the people and goods market: Take the international station as a traffic channel, one person with one computer, waiting for customers to inquire, which is the current situation of many foreign trade people. What is the demand for your product? How to get the goods and the price? Is your people management keeping up? Have you figured out the platform's scene and traffic play? If you don't know this, how can you push yourself abroad?
3. Entrepreneur pattern, do you want to be big or small: our salary is quite high now, the employee said I want 3000, I may give 5000, I will tell him clearly, I will train him to that point . But you have to think about it, work for money or work for life. Talking about social contribution is a bit false, you have to do it, and you have to bring your employees to do it. Let everyone make money together, and let employees have a higher social status and higher family value. No one wants to be with you.