World Cup merchandise helping Zhejiang firm hit back of the net
It has been three weeks since the World Cup ended in Russia, allowing soccer fans worldwide to resume their daily routines.
But this is not the case for Hu Liyong and his colleagues, as they are still busy in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, working on a backlog of orders for World Cup souvenirs from around the world.
Orders began flooding in three months before the monthlong global sporting extravaganza kicked off on June 14, when Hu's company, Danyuan Information Technology, won the bid to be the sole Chinese agent for online sales of 2018 World Cup official souvenirs.
"Since the start of the World Cup, 30 percent of the 100 categories of certified products sold out within a week," said Hu, who founded the company and is a soccer fan himself.
"So far, we have received orders for World Cup-related products from more than 100 countries and regions, with those from the United States, Chile and Brazil comprising the main bulk," he said.
Hu is just one of the millions of entrepreneurs in China cashing in on burgeoning cross-border e-commerce.
Statistics from the General Administration of Customs show that cross-border e-commerce has become the main growth engine for the country's foreign trade, with a combined volume－both exports and imports－of 4.7 trillion yuan ($688 billion) last year, a year-on-year increase of about 77 percent.
Globally, cross-border shopping will comprise 20 percent of e-commerce by 2022, with sales of $627 billion. The Asia Pacific region, driven by China, will become the largest e-commerce cross-border region for both imports and exports, according to a report by research company Forrester.
Middle East focus
With the robust growth of the e-commerce export sector, more newcomers are tapping emerging and niche markets such as the Middle East and northern Europe, unlike traditional online marketplaces such as Alibaba and Global Sources.
Take Jollychic in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, for example. Founded in 2012 and now approaching consumers in Europe, the U.S. and the Middle East, its mobile shopping app has become the leading and most influential one in the Middle East, offering a full range of products based on big data analysis.
Jollychic mainly sells goods to countries and regions taking part in China's Belt and Road Initiative. By the end of last year, registered users of the app globally topped 35 million, with its revenue growing by more than 300 percent annually over the past five years. Mainly selling clothes, shoes, bags and home products to customers in the Middle East, it has offices in China, the U.S., Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The company acquired Marka VIP, a flash sales e-commerce platform in Jordan, last year and made this its second platform focusing on the Middle East.
"Right now we are still focusing on our mainstream Middle East market. We may also consider expanding into more countries taking part in the Belt and Road Initiative when conditions are ripe," Ding Wei, co-founder of Jollychic, told China Daily on the sidelines of the Third Global Cross-border E-commerce Summit in Hangzhou in June.
"Cross-border e-commerce, especially exports, involves many aspects, such as tariffs, after-sales and infrastructure. For us, over the next two years, the key task remains working on better localization, especially in after-sales in the Middle East market," Ding said.
He added that the company employs more than 1,000 staff members in the Middle East, and plans to add 3,000 new jobs.
"It is only through understanding local consumption and living habits that we can better integrate into the local market in terms of marketing, promotion, sales and logistics," he said.
Wang Xiaoyi, associate professor of marketing with the School of Management of Zhejiang University, said that with enhanced internet infrastructure, more businesses in countries taking part in the Belt and Road Initiative are keen to conduct cross-border trade online to lower their business risks.
