It is both an opportunity and a challenge for those Chinese brands involving in the trend of competing on overseas markets. Since Ubeator, a Chinese hairdresser brand, participated in Lazada, it has become Top 1 of LazMall's hairdressers and a well known Chinese brand in Southeast Asia in less than one year.
How do Chinese brands gain followers in Southeast Asia? How to make hot sales in a very short time? How to receive 1W+ orders in one month? To answer the questions, there are three steps following Ubeator!
A few years ago, few thought that hairdressers had gradually become a household essential like blowers. The rise of Otaku Economy during COVID-19 pandemic led to a sharp increase in demand for hairdressers. According to Winnie, the operating director of Ubeator in Southeast Asia, many residents in Southeast Asia were unable to go out for hairdressing during the pandemic, but hairdressing was the daily demand of most men. In addition, as there were more and more online hairdressing video tutoring courses coming out, the trend of DIY hairdressing has made hairdressers a hot sale. Although many barber shops are gradually going back to work as the pandemic eases, most people have become used to cutting hair by themselves. As a result, there is still a great demand for hairdressers on the market.
After the hot sale of hairdressers in 2020, the orders received by Ubeator's shops in the first half of this year have increased significantly compared with that in the second half of last year, reaching a new high with a monthly average sales of 1W+ sets.
Unlike Chinese consumers, the consumers in Southeast Asia have higher personalized requirements for hair types in terms of basic cutting functions. They prefer the hairdressers with personalized functions such as oil head shaving, fine carving and edge trimming. Ubeator uses these consumption preferences in its product design, and the miniature hairdressers with noise reduction and fine steel cutter made in China also meet these consumption demands. This has enabled Ubeator to become Top 1 of this category in a short period of time.
On the other hand, Winnie also suggested that the Long Tail Effect in a special period should be paid attention to. In addition to hairdressers, she also noticed the popularity of DIY hairdressing videos on social media these days. Therefore, Ubeator quickly expanded its shop's original product lines with hair straighteners and hair curlers, which not only include automatic and semi-automatic operation modes, but also covers basically all types of personalized products commonly seen on the market, meeting various application scenarios. This action not only expanded the original hairdressing matrix, but also successfully improved the price per customer transaction. "Many mamas wanted to buy hairdressers, but were attracted by the full-automatic hair curlers when they were in the shop. So they bought them all, "Wennie said.
Therefore, when creating hot sales, merchants should not only consider their own features, but also pay attention to the overall market environment in a timely manner. They should follow the trend to select products, and pay more attention to the long tail effect of niche needs in structuring hot-sale products.
Ubeator classifies their products as traffic attracting ones and profit generating ones based on product styles and market competitiveness. The traffic attracting ones are usually the basics with a narrow or even no margin for increasing sales volume and attracting traffic. The main traffic attracting methods include Zhitongche advertising, live streaming, and brand flash sales, which are used to drive a large amount of import and promote conversion of the overall traffic of the shop. Winnie said: "The platform traffic is the basis for product promotion. The diversified marketing tools of Lazada have a significant traffic attracting effect. Participation in flash sales activities may attract more than ten times of traffic on average, laying a foundation for us to create hot sales."
Most of the profit generating ones are star products with brand patents. Generally, brands use all traffic channels and the platform's resources for Mega to promote the profit generating ones to quickly become the hot sales according to the industry categories of the existing major products, considering the consumer preferences of in Southeast Asia and the accumulation of the platform's big data.
Wennie believes: "Being good at marketing and integrating traffic on and off the site is a must-to for overseas hot sales! Holidays and Megas are also good opportunities for brands to make breakthroughs. Merchants must learn to promote their products through holiday marketing." On this Father's Day, Ubeator achieved another peak in sales volume via the joint promotions on and off the site. While adding Facebook and Instragm advertisements off the site, the atmosphere of Father's Day is created through the store-themed posters on the site. Activities such as feed lotteries and hot sales and flash sales discounts are organized so as to assimilate the surging traffic. The increase of sales volume also drives the concurrent rise of the shop's weighting, evaluation and ranking.
When asked how to create hot sales, Winnie generously shared the testing idea of Ubeator: "The high logistics efficiency of the products after entering the overseas warehouse have a natural attraction to the consumers and, supported by the exclusive traffic of the overseas warehouse, is able to attract traffic for the testing products to the greatest extent." Shortening the trading cycle of products while expanding the traffic exposure, creates a unique and sound environment for testing products, allowing Ubeator to quickly test the potential of an expected hot-sale product, shorten the cycle for creating hot sales, respond to the market demand very quickly, and earn the first pot of gold of Blue Ocean.
In addition, in order to help merchants reduce costs and improve efficiency in overseas marketing, Lazada has launched a series of favorable policies, such as the full opening of Global Fufillment Center (GFC) and Fulfilled by Lazada (FBL), and the system of reducing the handling costs for warehouse delivery incentive policy, so that merchants may better upgrading and promoting their products with the saved costs, thus creating a snowball effect.
How do cross-border merchants seize the business opportunities in the Blue Ocean market in the "post-pandemic era"? The transition from domestic to cross-border is the only way to expand the market and promote growth. It is also an inevitable choice for brands to reach a larger new Blue Ocean. There are many channels and a big stage. Lazada, as the first choice for brands to compete in Southeast Asia, has established a full-chain business service system to offer assistance to numerous small and medium-sized merchants and brand merchants with the technology, logistics and traffic empowerment, helping them reduce costs and improve efficiency in their journey to the overseas markets. Don't hesitate if you operate household appliances! Scan the QR code below with DingTalk to join Lazada's merchant group of household appliances (please indicate your company name + main business category). Lazada helps you garner the largest orders!
