This was a real entrepreneurial case of a female client of mine in Guangzhou, China, who has been working for 4 years.
In the past month, a female client who has been working in Guangzhou for 4 years has interacted with me frequently, showing and sharing with me her impressive foreign trade achievements over the past six months.
In the past two weeks, she has been busy receiving old customers from various European countries.
Many of these customers are her distributors and agents. She temporarily hired an English translator at a high price and took them to enjoy all kinds of food, play, entertain and check in in China.
These customers are her bread and butter, and she is afraid that failing to entertain them well will affect the next large wholesale order.
Let’s get back to the point, these European agents have strong market channels and distribution capabilities in their respective national markets. Some have stores in the local area, and some are fashion bloggers and internet celebrities on social platforms. They all have strong sales capabilities, and not only do they sell goods in their local countries, but many also sell globally.
We know that the global market for replica luxury goods is huge, because there are too many people in the world who are vain, love fashion, and love to show off. Therefore, spending the least money to buy the highest quality luxury goods has become the choice of most people.
Overseas, developed countries have strict policies to protect intellectual property rights, resulting in European and American countries not having the replicas and soil of Eastern countries. Therefore, Eastern countries have become the preferred source of these goods.
In Guangzhou, before the epidemic, the market was very rampant, and many foreign customers bought Rolex watches and designer bags in sacks;
In Putian, China, sports shoes are shipped out in truckloads. The huge foreign demand provides the market with a large number of wholesale opportunities at the place of origin.
This female client of mine, who was born in 1988 and lives in Guangzhou, contacted me in August 2020. I have some impression of her. As soon as I added WeChat, she sent me a lot of paragraphs of text, which made me feel a little dizzy. The general meaning was that she was in the offline store business. Her father and grandfather, two generations of hard work, opened several branches. Before the epidemic came, the business was booming. Now the epidemic has come, and the operating costs cannot be borne. The offline stores have closed one by one. In less than half a year, all of them have closed. She felt helpless, anxious, and confused. That period was the most difficult time for China’s real economy. The epidemic caused countless real people to breakout and lose their homes overnight.
Later, she inspected various projects, and communicated with relatives and friends. By chance, she contacted me and got an in-depth understanding of the Guangxi cross-border e-commerce project. Because she had always been doing traditional offline business, she had no knowledge of online Internet projects. However, with the mentality of “try everything possible”, she still entered the market.
In 2020, my online training customer plan was not yet very complete, and I only provided customers with references for ideas. Customers were not as lucky as they are today, who can practice and learn in the most refined way throughout the process, and can also provide remote support and diagnosis. The Putian project is certainly highly profitable. Four years ago, I only provided customers with full-site technical support, but the operation skills and traffic accumulation depended on the customers to explore on their own, which was much more difficult than it is now, and the success rate was much lower than it is now.
At that time, I roughly planned the operation direction for this female customer based on her situation. Considering that she had no cash flow at all but had time cost, I directly PASSED the direction of paid traffic and suggested that she focus on SNS social media and Reddit PIN POST, two almost completely free traffic directions, to target C-end customers in the short term and develop B-end wholesale customers in the long term.
Because the cross-industry was too big and the foundation was too weak, the progress was very unsmooth. She operated very unskilled and mechanically posted advertisements in Facebook timelines and groups all day long. This took more than three months and had almost no effect. Many times, some Indians and Pakistanis asked her “How much” or said “I will pay it” to herself, which made her feel like a roller coaster, ups and downs. The greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. At one point, she doubted her ability and life! In fact, many novices have no industry experience and go in the wrong direction. They go in the wrong direction from the beginning. If the direction is wrong, everything will be in vain.
Her confidence fell to the bottom. She told me that she and her father were under a lot of pressure in life. All their offline stores were closed and they couldn’t find a breakthrough. They were extremely confused. I suggested that she continue to persevere and take the light asset route, get an Instagram account to get some private chat orders, and move towards Reddit.
Around 2021, she started to interact with me more frequently. I still remember when she got her first order, she was so happy in her WeChat voice that she almost danced with joy like a child… I can understand that entrepreneurs who have not generated income for a long time need to use achievements to encourage themselves to continue. From not knowing how to purchase and ship the first order, to asking more and more “valuable” questions one after another, I know that this girl born in 1988 in Guangzhou is constantly moving forward and making progress.
In 2021, I went to Guangzhou to visit the supply chain right after returning from Beijing. I had a cup of Starbucks with her and got to know this entrepreneur face to face. During our first offline meeting, I discovered that she actually had many advantages that were rare among entrepreneurs: strong execution, good persistence, and never giving up was her biggest shining point! At that time, she had already fully realized that she could support herself with this business.
I told her about my work experience, the strange clients I met, and some operational insights. When I got to the key points, I saw that she wrote them down in her notebook. She was very attentive.
Because there were so many customers, I didn’t “care” about her for a long time after I came back from Guangzhou. Her business was actually getting better and better, and she was getting busier and busier. She hardly communicated with me anymore, so much so that for a while, I almost forgot about this customer.
Until last May Day, two years later, she suddenly asked me if there was an absolutely reliable double-clearance channel for super-large shipments. I asked her why she was shipping so many, and she said she had a large wholesale order of 1,000 packages to ship. 1,000 packages! OMG, this is a big order! The average order value is estimated to exceed 100W.
She said that she is now fully engaged in distribution, starting with the drop shipping and direct flight delivery that I taught her, and accumulating agents.
She had not had much luck in the past two years, but she had always treated her customers sincerely, and she had won several very high-quality customers. These customers had strong agency sales capabilities and excellent back-end fission capabilities, which brought her a large number of wholesale orders.
She said that she posted her needs on Reddit and some overseas forums, did PIN POST, sent samples, actively communicated with the demanders, and used Google Translate when she didn’t understand the European language. Her prices may not be cheaper than others, but her quality is definitely better than others. She is sincere and attentive in everything, which has won her the continued trust of customers.
When she said, “It’s because of your good teaching, teacher,” it was not a compliment, but words from the bottom of her heart, which were evident in her words. But I know that this was the result of her own hard work.
She didn’t say how much she earns a year, and I don’t know either, but I know that her annual revenue is no less than seven figures. She hired several employees and maintained a high ROI with the lowest operating cost.
I have been in this industry for many years. In fact, because there are so many clients, I have forgotten who many of them are after a while. But I know that there are many such unknown clients. In addition, due to the nature of the industry, many people are very low-key and make their fortunes quietly. How much they earn is their own wealth secret and they will not tell it, and others have no way of knowing.
I never ask about their annual profits, but I will hear from individual customers about their achievements from time to time. Many of them are running a wealth business empire belonging to their own generation under the powerful model of distribution and wholesale.
In fact, from the C-end to the B-end, being able to develop into a distributor or agent is the highest level of private domain e-commerce and the best result. The ultimate destination of e-commerce is in the private domain, in repurchases, continuous transactions and value.
In fact, from the C-end to the B-end, being able to develop into a distributor or agent is the highest level of private domain e-commerce and the best result. The ultimate destination of e-commerce is in the private domain, in repurchases, continuous transactions and value.
Why I always convey to my clients the importance of distribution and agency is because during the years that I have been in the industry, I have captured a large number of transactions and value from this model.
When I was operating and selling products myself, I developed a high-end private distribution customer in the city of Luogo TAZA, who repurchased from me in large quantities on a regular basis, regardless of cost or price, and only asked for the highest version and best quality watches every time.
This client brought me at least 300W net profit in two years. Later, he introduced his brother’s wife to me to buy bags (we also had a meal together at Shanghai Wang Baohe International Hotel). She is also a high-end private domain client of the same quality.
Just these two customers have brought me a lot of money. What if there are two, three, or five such distributors? What else do I need to do to promote by myself?!
The day before yesterday, I made a joke to a female client who was born in Guangzhou in 1988: “Now that there is no epidemic, the catering business is booming. When will your father’s many branches reopen?”
She said: “I don’t want to do that anymore. When I think about the profit margin of physical stores, I really have no motivation or energy to open another store. My dad is helping me pack and ship…”