Yiwu e-commerce is not working anymore?

In Yiwu, Zhejiang, where "per capita bosses" are located, the millionth market operating entity was born last month. On August 16th, a foreign-invested enterprise was awarded a business license in Yiwu. Since then, the number of operating entities in the Yiwu market has reached the threshold of one million. It is worth mentioning that more than half of Yiwu's bosses are engaged in e-commerce business. As of now, the number of e-commerce operators in Yiwu city has reached 556900. Besides its reputation as the world's capital of small commodities, Yiwu is truly the capital of e-commerce. However, in the 2023 first half online sales ranking released by the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Commerce in July this year, Yiwu was surpassed by Yuhang District in Hangzhou and ranked second on the county list. According to data from the Department of Commerce of Zhejiang Province, Yuhang District achieved an online retail sales volume of 104.375 billion yuan in the first half of this year, while Yiwu ranked second was 103.249 billion yuan, which is also quite impressive. However, compared to the year-on-year growth rate of 30.5% in Yuhang District, the difference in growth rate of 8.7% in Yiwu is significant.

In March of this year, the Yiwu Domestic Trade E-commerce Association was officially established. In the view of Tong Yuanzhi, the president of the association, it is not surprising that the title of semi champion of online sales in the province has been overlooked: "On the one hand, there are statistical factors that are directly under the jurisdiction, and on the other hand, the e-commerce industry in Yuhang District is indeed strong, which is beyond doubt." The strength of Yuhang's e-commerce industry can be roughly understood by a glance at the list of local e-commerce enterprises. According to statistics, Yuhang has more than 50000 e-commerce business entities. It not only has several leading MCN institutions such as Yuanwang Technology and Mosquito Club, but also has a group of e-commerce unicorn enterprises such as Dashuche, Lingban Technology, and Adopting a Cow. More importantly, Yuhang is not only the location of Alibaba's global headquarters, but also the headquarters of Tiktok and Kwai. The gathering of e-commerce giants makes Yuhang's "strength" reasonable. Now, it's time to test whether the boss of Yiwu can step on the right rhythm. Tong Yuanzhi stated that the cost of domestic e-commerce traffic is high, and the proportion of paid traffic on various platforms is constantly increasing. At the same time, the trend of fragmented traffic is becoming increasingly apparent. With the rise of emerging e-commerce platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Dewu, as well as the efforts of Alibaba and JD.com to lower the market and compete with Pinduoduo, traffic is further dispersing. As the platform continues to shift operating costs to e-commerce sellers, the pressure faced by Yiwu's originally small volume e-commerce sellers is self-evident. "The dividend period cannot exist forever." Tong Yuanzhi believes that the era of wild growth in the e-commerce industry is coming to an end, and the small days of "peaceful times" for Yiwu bosses have also come to an end. The core competitiveness of e-commerce sellers needs to be built by strengthening product strength, brand strength, supply chain capability, etc. The new situation is constantly forcing e-commerce to expand its own size and improve the efficiency of various links to adapt to the new market environment. Domestic e-commerce is at the forefront, while cross-border e-commerce faces more external pressure brought by the overall environment. Xu Yan, President of the Yiwu Cross border E-commerce Association, stated that the overall development momentum of Yiwu Cross border E-commerce is good. Under the pressure of high inflation, the consumption power of the European and American markets is no longer as strong as before, and it is a fact that foreign trade is not as easy as before. How to turn crisis into opportunity is a major issue for cross-border e-commerce in Yiwu. According to official statistics released by Yiwu, the cross-border e-commerce transaction volume in Yiwu reached 64.65 billion yuan in the first half of this year, a year-on-year increase of 12.92%. At the same time, mainstream cross-border e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Shopee, Lazada, and AliExpress have successively landed in Yiwu. Alibaba International Station has also launched the "Yiwu Small Commodity Industry Belt Zone" in response to the characteristics of the Yiwu Industrial Belt. Amazon's global logistics team, Yiwu Service Center, has established the first domestic industrial belt cargo collection and operation center in Yiwu. In addition, Shopee and AliExpress Yiwu Operation Center have also achieved normalized operation and established a docking mechanism of "store opening global". Xu Yan believes that overseas consumers are becoming unprecedentedly sensitive to cost-effectiveness. This trend can be fully reflected on the platform side. The most active e-commerce platforms in Yiwu this year are Shein and TEMU, which focus on low prices. Among them, TEMU, a subsidiary of Pinduoduo, has held at least 20 investment promotion activities in Yiwu every month in the past six months. "In the cont