A Bottle'S Way Of "Turning The Dish Against The Wind"

"In June last year, our revenue exceeded the total revenue of the whole year of 2019, and completed the performance of the previous year in half a year." On the afternoon after the annual meeting, Shi Rongjun, general manager of Guangzhou Jiaxing glass products Co., Ltd., told the 21st century economic reporter.

This is a gratifying achievement. It's not easy to get there.

At the beginning of 2020, the epidemic will bring a heavy blow to the foreign trade industry. Until April, Jiaxing, which mainly engaged in the export and wholesale business of glass sets for cosmetics, still could not receive orders for the original products, losing nearly 2 million yuan of orders.

In such a crisis, many enterprises began to transform to save themselves, Jiaxing is no exception. With the help of cross-border e-commerce, Jiaxing has achieved a beautiful reversal. From May to July, 2020, Jiaxing glass has obtained more than 30 million yuan of plastic bottle orders for killing products in just three months.

How to turn danger into opportunity? It starts with a bottle. Along with the bottles across the sea to reach the other side of the ocean, Jiaxing also opened the door of wealth in the transformation.

From glass bottle to plastic bottle

With the New Year approaching, Shi Rongjun will still recall one day in March 2020, which was a day full of meetings. Shi Rongjun's team held a warm and long internal discussion on the direction of self-help in the transformation of foreign trade. On that day, Shi Rongjun, who had planned to return to his hometown Shijiazhuang to visit relatives, did not expect that the discussion lasted more than ten hours.

At the beginning of the outbreak, many foreign trade enterprises were forced to press the "pause" button, and the production line was at a standstill. "At first, the foreign trade factory could not return to work, and there was no way to receive orders. Domestic factories have improved a little, while foreign factories have problems. They can't produce or import them. " Shi Rongjun recalled to reporters.

Jiaxing has been engaged in the production and wholesale of cosmetic glass bottles for a long time, but at that time, it seemed that there was no market for making cosmetic glass bottles. "What new products will be operated next" is the main topic of the meeting.

Affected by the epidemic situation, masks were popular products at that time, and many factories opened new mask production lines at that time. During the meeting, some employees proposed to transform to make masks.

Indeed, looking back at the early stage of the outbreak of new coronal pneumonia, masks once became a scarce product, and the sales price rose sharply, even without market. This also means that the demand for masks is increasing, and the market space for masks is unprecedented, and businesses are entering the market to take a share.

However, for Jiaxing, which is engaged in the production of packaging materials, masks may not be a suitable choice. Shi Rongjun told reporters that the demand for masks is great, but the company lacks resources in this respect. Moreover, the gap between the mask and the original product is very large, which is not in line with the company's future development direction. "We want to choose products with low risk and quality control. For us, it is difficult to control the quality of mask production."

Shi Rongjun insisted on the production of packaging materials. After some trade-offs, the team decided to transform into packaging materials for disinfection and anti-virus products, such as plastic bottles and pump heads for disinfectant, alcohol and hand sanitizer. What remains unchanged is that we still do the foreign trade business of bottles and export them to countries and regions such as the United States, Europe and South Korea, but we have changed from cosmetics to killing products, from glass bottles to plastic bottles.

After the outbreak, like masks, the demand for disinfectants surged. Take hand sanitizer as an example, the sales volume of Suning disinfectant hand sanitizer has soared 2315%; since January 19, 2020, affected by the epidemic situation, the sales volume of Taobao hand sanitizer has soared, with an increase of more than 10 times that of a year ago.

After deciding to make plastic bottles for killing products, Shi Rongjun began to actively contact suppliers and increase investment in the operation and promotion of Alibaba international station, a cross-border e-commerce platform. It is worth mentioning that Jiaxing's stores on Alibaba international station have a good foundation. Half a month later, Jiaxing's killing products packaging materials will be put on the front page of the platform to get large-scale promotion, and then get a lot of orders.

As a result, after ensuring that the upstream supply chain keeps up, the follow-up production will be carried out in an orderly manner. In the following three months of May, June and July, Jiaxing successively achieved sales performance of 8 million yuan, 12 million yuan and 12 million yuan, with an average monthly revenue of more than 10 million yuan.

At that time, Shi Rongjun's foreign trade team had more than 30 people, including more than 20 foreign trade business personnel and 10 cross-border e-commerce operators. Today, the size of the office has grown, and the team has expanded to more than 50 people. There are not many companies in the industry with teams of this size. "The epidemic has tempered our team." Shi Rongjun said.

Choice after tuyere

In August 2020, the explosive demand of Xiaosha packaging materials will gradually ease, and Jiaxing will start the second round of product line transformation. "After the epidemic economy is over, plastic bottles of disinfectants are almost sold. Then we will consider making new products." Shi Rongjun told reporters.

This time, Jiaxing chose to do the wholesale production of skin care products and personal care products at the same time. Skin care products, such as eye cream, lotion, and other cosmetics packaging materials before the same, made of glass bottles. Personal care products, such as shower gel and shampoo, are made of plastic bottles just like disinfectant packaging materials.

Although both glass bottles and plastic bottles are bottles, they are totally different products: different suppliers, different customers, different production technologies, etc. It is understood that high density polyethylene bottles (HDPE bottles) are mostly used in daily necessities such as shampoo and shower gel. Compared with glass bottles, plastic bottles are not easy to be broken, and their cost and price are lower, so they are suitable for the packaging of consumer goods at home.

From August 2020 until now, two factories, two completely different production lines, are running side by side. What remains unchanged is that Jiaxing still obtains customers mainly through cross-border e-commerce platforms. For foreign trade enterprises, there are two major directions for the transformation under the epidemic situation: one is to transfer foreign trade to domestic sales; the other is to join the cross-border e-commerce platform. Jiaxing chose the latter. It is worth mentioning that a person from a glass consumer goods manufacturer in Guangzhou once told reporters that the company also has plans to open online sales channels in the future.

After the outbreak of the epidemic, the operation mode of all walks of life began to shift from offline to online, online teaching, online shopping, online exhibition, etc. To a certain extent, the epidemic has accelerated the digital transformation of all walks of life, and some changes have taken place in the foreign trade industry.

For ordinary foreign trade enterprises, the main traditional way to win customers is to participate in the exhibition. However, due to the international epidemic, many exhibitions have changed from offline to online. In 2020, as a comprehensive international trade exhibition with the largest scale, the most complete variety of goods and the best transaction effect, the Canton Fair will also be changed from offline to completely online for the first time, with an exhibition period of 10 days.

Shi Rongjun revealed that from 2016 to 2018, he participated in about 10 overseas exhibitions every year, and almost every month he had to travel to the local area. The total expenditure of participating in an exhibition is about 100000 yuan. In a year, the total expenditure for the exhibition is about 1 million yuan.

Shi Rongjun believes that the investment in attracting visitors through the exhibition is relatively large, and the conversion effect is not as good as expected. "We usually send two or three people to the exhibition. The exhibition only lasts for three days, but jet lag and heavy traffic actually consume a lot."

At the same time, the cross-border e-commerce platform attracted more and more foreign trade businesses to settle in, and the transaction volume of the platform increased steadily. According to the annual report of the year 2020 released by Alibaba international station, the transaction volume of the platform is priced in US dollars, with a year-on-year increase of 101% and the number of orders doubled.

During the epidemic period, Jiaxing accelerated the pace of digital transformation and focused on online sales channels. At first, Jiaxing opened only 2 stores in Alibaba international station, then 4 stores, and then 6 stores. Now it has 8 stores. In addition, Jiaxing has encountered "stimulation" that traditional foreign trade has not experienced. Inquiry less than an hour, someone placed an order, deposit to the account. Under normal circumstances, it usually takes 2-3 months from inquiry to deposit, which includes 5-6 steps.

Shi Rongjun predicts that Jiaxing's revenue this year will double that of last year, and will expand its foreign trade team in the future.