Before we start, we still want to emphasize that the strategy of independent websites for replica brands is completely different from that of ordinary goods. If there are friends who have transitioned from ordinary goods to imitation brands, they must abandon this habitual operational thinking. Otherwise, even if you claim to be a big boss of ordinary goods cross-border e-commerce, if you do not follow the unique strategy of counterfeit brands, this industry will make you feel very frustrated, very unsuccessful, and very doubtful about life.
Today, based on my own work experience, I will share with you how to use a simple, rough and efficient product selection method in the replica brand industry, and provide a way of thinking for reference by friends in the industry.
Keep it simple, avoid extravagance
In the cross-border e-commerce industry, 30% of e-commerce is operation and 70% is product selection. This statement is widely circulated in the cross-border e-commerce industry, which shows the importance of product selection, especially for the general goods industry. If the product selection is not good, everything is in vain. The reason is simple. There are too many SKUs for general goods. The number of any branch is very shocking.
The same principle applies to the independent website Shopify. With so many sellers from all over the world flocking to the ocean of general goods, how can we find a needle in the haystack and select the hot-selling product that belongs to our own store?
In the general goods market represented by Amazon and Shopify, many operating sellers will use some tools to select products. There are many such selection tools on the market, such as Shopify’s selection tool Commerce Inspector, Amazon’s selection tool junglescout, and various advertising SPY tools.
Regarding product selection ideas, a quick search will reveal a lot of information about cross-border e-commerce product selection on the Internet, such as “hands-on teaching of product selection”, “latest product selection strategies”, “how to quickly select products”, etc., which are all popular and “dry goods”: how to find product selling points, sources of inspiration for product selection, horizontal expansion product selection methods, vertical expansion product selection methods, how to find competitive niche market products, etc. To be honest, for sellers with certain operating experience, it is easy to identify that most of this information is theoretical but has no practical value. There is so much information, and it is so long-winded and logical that students who are slightly impatient will feel dizzy and find it difficult to capture the core landing value. Students who are very patient will find that many of them are just empty reasons, but it is actually difficult to find real hot products when they really land on the ground according to the so-called “dry goods tutorial”.
In reality, I have quite a few friends who are experts in selecting general goods. They receive thousands of orders per day for each product, but according to them, they don’t engage in any fancy tricks such as “horizontal expansion” or “vertical expansion”. They will appropriately use tools to look at data references, but more importantly, they use their own product vision and industry experience, manual screening, combined with the supply chain, to carefully select and dig out the real hot products that bring explosive sales.
I believe that complex problems should be simplified. Simplicity is the best way to achieve success.
Today, let’s talk about selecting counterfeit brand products. I think there is really no need to make it as fancy as Amazon and Shopify. Just keep it simple and rough!
Compared with common goods, replica brand products have three advantages: first, there are too few SKU data, which is completely not at the same level, which makes it difficult for us to choose “dazzled”; second, the product itself has traffic attributes, as long as the general direction of product selection is correct, there will generally be a certain amount of sales; third, it does not pursue order volume, and the profit itself is high. For others to sell one bag, you have to sell dozens or even hundreds of so-called “small and beautiful” common products. In the general direction of product selection, after operating the “manual fine screening method + appropriate tool method” process, the hot-selling products that can be locked in basically cannot escape.
Simple and crude product selection method
Below, based on my own industry experience, combined with manual selection and with the help of certain tools, I share several methods of selecting imitation brands for your reference:
① Suppliers
The supplier here refers to a truly powerful supply chain resource, whose supply price and average daily sales volume are very impressive.
A truly powerful supplier, because of its sales volume, has enough sample data to tell us which models are selling well, which models are easy to place orders at which time and in which market; and it is also because of its sales volume that it has the means to provide everyone with the most cost-effective and quality-assured supply chain resources.
There are many suppliers of counterfeit brands on the market, many of whom are middlemen or do one-time business, so everyone should be careful to identify them by themselves.
There is not much to say about suppliers. You can ask them to help recommend some hot products based on your own resources and relationship with them. This is the simplest and most direct way.
In addition, I also recommend some to my clients and friends, you can choose according to your preference.
It is important to choose a suitable supplier for yourself. It can provide you with a lot of valuable product selection information and save you a lot of wasted budget caused by wrong product selection.
②、Youtube
In my client’s large flow data, KOL is one of the only two “horses” that can go hand in hand with investment flow. Clients who do well in KOL can bring dozens of high-quality bag orders in one night. Because of the endorsement of the influencer effect, the average order value is more impressive.
YouTube is the child of Google. Its search weight is self-evident. It brings the most accurate and high-quality buyers and customers. So, on such an important platform, how do we dig out hot products?
Enter the keywords and according to the playback volume, several major influencers are listed at a glance.
Those with a high number of views are usually not imitations, but mostly second-hand genuine products (of course, there are also many foreign Internet celebrities who pass off fakes as genuine products). The products they display basically represent those that are relatively popular in the recent period.
Like the LV big flower watch above, the sales volume in recent years is needless to say, and the market is still buying it; including some classic models,
In fact, no matter how many times the three old brands (LV, Gucci and Chanel) are sold, their classic styles will always be timeless.
Please note that what is shown to us on Youtube is just an initial impression of the product style. We also need to go through the landing page provided by the influencer to check the relevant sales data.
Or interactive data,
Through these good interaction data, we can further consolidate our product selection decisions.
Always remember: peers are the best teachers, and their sales data are worthy of our reference to a large extent.
③、DHgate
If you directly enter the brand word to search for products on DHgate.com, the platform will naturally not be able to search for results in order to avoid suspicion.
But we can use some industry terms to retrieve a large number of such products. In fact, for such products in Dunhuang, if you have “paid protection fees”, they are allowed to exist by default, but the prices in Dunhuang are extremely low. In addition, there is almost no traffic, and once the volume starts, the links will definitely be removed, which enriches the platform and kills the sellers. This is a fact!
Through these sales, we can easily capture which products are hot-selling.
And it is hot selling recently.
The question is, can your supply chain meet her price? Sometimes, the real hot-selling products may not be suitable for you, because their prices are not suitable for you. Choosing the hot-selling products that are suitable for you is the most important thing.
④. Adspy product selection
Friends who are doing traffic investment should be familiar with this tool. It is really easy to use. It can not only provide us with references for advertising copy materials and audiences, but also provide us with references for product selection.
For example, the Blue Balloon series above, look at its comments,
It truly demonstrates that classics never go out of style.
Adspy’s product selection idea is very simple. You can locate the market through its built-in screening tools.
For example, by filtering popular ads by country, gender, age, date, etc.
Combined with the advertisement release time, it is very easy for us to filter out some popular post product data.
The official tool ADSPY is a bit expensive, costing $149 a month. This puts a lot of pressure on many entrepreneurial friends. You can look for API-like methods to call it, which costs less than $25 a month and can meet the needs of most friends.
⑤. Facebook Ad Library
All the ads data from facebook.com/ads/library,
For example, the ADSPY tool mentioned above,
One difference from various SPY tools is that the official library does not provide a sorting function, such as: by the number of likes, by release time, etc. Most of the time, the official library can only serve as a reference for product selection and its role is limited.
6. AI Tools
For example, the famous chatgpt, you can also try it.
The free version is not perfect. More powerful functions need to be upgraded to their chatgpt 4.0, but it is still difficult to refine to specific models.
Nowadays, AI tools are very popular. They can not only be used for product selection, but also for generating advertising copy, product information, etc. Using AI well can achieve twice the result with half the effort.
Long Tail Effect
Friends who carefully choose products will find that many of the popular imitation brand products are old classic models. Although these models have been launched for many years, they are timeless. The later products are only slightly upgraded on the basis of the original ones, which truly interprets: classics never go out of style!
The long-term hot-selling products will inevitably lead to a large number of sellers choosing them and price involution. At this time, we have to think about it: Can your supply chain meet her beautiful price? ! Others will not ship the products if they are not in the right version. Is this model suitable for you? ! If you can’t do it, why must you focus on the old three brands? ! Aren’t Fendi, Saint Laurent, Valentino, etc., the SKUs with relatively less competition also good? !
Using the long-tail effect product selection method, sometimes even just a difference in product selection direction can give you unexpected surprises. Otherwise, why would so many people go to the third- and fourth-tier niche brands to sink into the market? !