The operator controls the unmanned excavator several kilometers away through the handle in front of the panel. After a series of operations, the unmanned excavator shovels the sand into the bucket and then dumps it out. The whole process is automatic and orderly. On the afternoon of July 27th, the two anchors broadcast this scene from the factory of Sunward Intelligent to all over the world via mobile phone live broadcast.
On the same day, the online industrial exhibition at Ali International Station was launched, covering machinery, metal raw materials, hardware tools, electrical engineering, security and other fields. Through B2B live broadcast, short video and other multimedia forms, global buyers directly hit China's machinery workshops.
Construction machinery is the largest category of China's foreign trade exports. In 2019, China's construction machinery exports amounted to US$24.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3%. Among them, the export value of crawler excavators ranked first, reaching US$2.1 billion.
A few days ago, Qi Jun, chairman of the China Construction Machinery Industry Association, disclosed at a meeting that in the first half of 2020, the sales volume of the 12 major construction machinery products included in the statistics increased by 14.4% year-on-year, and the export sales volume increased by 2.06% year-on-year.
Another latest statistical data from Ali International Station shows that in the first half of this year, the number of orders for cross-border e-commerce exports in China's construction machinery industry increased by an average of 119%. In terms of trends, countries along the “Belt and Road” are the main export destinations of my country's construction machinery, and Southeast Asia is the largest export market.
When the epidemic is sweeping the world and international trade faces unprecedented challenges, what drives the contrarian growth of the construction machinery industry?
Transfer online
Among construction machinery companies, online sales companies have performed more prominently. This is also a new hole opened up in the construction machinery industry during a special period.
In February of this year, in the face of the raging epidemic, He Qinghua, chairman of Sunward Intelligent Equipment Group, began to think about countermeasures. Seeing that "live delivery of goods" in all walks of life is in full swing, He Qinghua decided to try online marketing and initiate live broadcast activities.
On February 20th, He Qinghua took 400,000 netizens to "visit" Sunward Intelligent Industrial City in the live broadcast debut, and introduced the modern micro-digging assembly workshop, rotary digging assembly workshop and rotary digging debugging site. The 70-year-old chairman was also affectionately called by netizens the first person to "live delivery" of construction machinery.
According to reports, after the resumption of work in February, Sunward Intelligent had large-scale online domestic and foreign promotion activities almost every month. According to a senior executive responsible for marketing at Sunward Intelligence, in the first half of this year, the company's global online event sales exceeded 260 million yuan.
After tasting the sweetness of live broadcast, Sunward Intelligent also joined the ranks of the online industry exhibition this time. On July 27, the reporter saw in Sunward Intelligent Workshop that two anchors introduced new products to netizens around the world in fluent English. During the period, He Qinghua also appeared on the scene many times to participate in the interaction.
Is the construction machinery industry suitable for "live streaming with goods"?
In this regard, He Qinghua told reporters that there is a difference between marketing and sales, and what companies can do is to focus on brand building. Through a comprehensive display of the company's scale, manufacturing system, R&D personnel progress, etc., let the outside world understand the company and pave the way for the market. "If you evaluate the online effect, you must judge it according to different countries and different situations. We are a traditional economy, and we are grafting new things, and this process still has new feelings. This new model, we must imagine fast consumer To produce such a big breakthrough like this, we need to continue to do it, and at the same time, we must have some innovative methods." He Qinghua said.
In addition, data shows that in the first half of the year, the construction machinery industry merchants entering the Ali International Station platform increased by 30% year-on-year. Among the top 50 global construction machinery companies such as Zoomlion, Xugong Machinery, Sany Heavy Industry, Shandong Lingong, Sunward Intelligent, Liugong Group, Shantui Co., Ltd. are among them.
In the view of Dai Xianwen, director of large industrial operations at Alibaba International Station, for construction machinery products, online live broadcast is more meaningful than displaying goods. "Just like the factory inspection we said, we just put this link online now. Buyers understand the seller's R&D strength, design capability, process level, plant layout, etc. online."
The main product of Changsha Hollykell Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Holykell"), which started from foreign trade, is sensors, and its application scenarios mainly include exploration and detection of oil fields. Hu Kui, the general manager of his company, also had a general feeling about the above issues after experiencing several live broadcasts. "Our industrial products, the biggest problem encountered in foreign trade is how to prove to customers the qualifications, research and development capabilities, production technology level and other issues. Now there are more live broadcasts and video displays, which can give customers a very intuitive experience and let customers know clearly To what level we are in the supplier system, increase customer trust." Hu Kui said.
Find new customers
In the first half of this year, Hu Kui's Huoli Keer completed last year's sales, but he still often feels uneasy.
"Our growth is mainly in old customers, and new customers are lost." Although the performance in the first half of the year was good, Hu Kui was more worried about the future. Due to the particularity of the industry, a Holickel project may last for 3 or 4 years. This year is the end of some projects, so the sales of old customers have increased rapidly. But at the same time, affected by the epidemic, the company lost some orders, and some new orders that were originally to be signed were also delayed. The expansion of new customers will affect the development of Hollycore in the next two to three years.
How to develop new customers has become a question that Hu Kui and his colleagues must consider. "We don't want to use our power offline, we can only use our power online, and we must focus on how to create more new traffic online."
After the outbreak began, the research department of Hollycool conducted a market research on the topic of "how to create more new traffic". During the research process, they tried to answer the question: Most companies work from home, but the client's projects still need to be run. How do they find service providers for these products?
"At this time, some foreign social platforms have entered our sight. Like Facebook, there are more than one billion online users worldwide. We realize that social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube and video sites are the traffic we will enter next. One of the channels." Hu Kui said.
Therefore, before participating in the live broadcast event, YouTube became the position of Hollycool to create new traffic. Judging from several months of trials, this search for new traffic is effective.
But investment has also become a problem that needs to be faced. "At present, we still don't know how the input-output ratio of Facebook is. This is also a difficult point in our strategy. But we know that there are traffic, groups, and customers."
As early as ten years ago, Holickel entered the Ali International Station. As time goes by, the competition in the same industry at the International Station has become increasingly fierce. "Last year and the last two years, the loss of new customers we counted was very large, mainly due to the diversion of some new Taoist merchants on the Alibaba platform. This problem is very serious. However, because we entered early, in terms of resources, There are still certain advantages in data accumulation." Hu Kui said.
Hunan Youzuan Engineering Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as: Youzuan Technology), a construction machinery company with drill pipe and casing as its core business, entered the Ali International Station in 2014. After several years of development, Youzuan Technology never paid much attention to the online business of the international station, did not switch to concentrate on research, and established reward mechanisms. Great changes have taken place.
In the past two years, Shen Deyi, the company's chairman, also has "flow anxiety." "If all the merchants on Tmall switch to international stations, it is estimated that a large number of our traditional trading companies will die. They are not on the same level at all, and our gameplay and investment with others are not on the same level. So in the future, we will rely on online It will be one of our priorities, and Ali International Station is the top priority."
Full link digitization
Hunan Zhonggu Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhonggu") is an enterprise with annual sales of one billion yuan. The company mainly produces vending machines. In 2015, Zhonggu set up a new retail outlet, began to build factories and grew rapidly. There are many types of vending machines, including commonly used spring models, face recognition vending machines, etc.
"Our foreign trade business has not declined this year but increased by 30% year-on-year. The products are selling well in Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia." On July 28, in the showroom of Zhonggu, Hunan Zhonggu Technology Co., Ltd. Yang Sanmei, general manager of the company, told reporters.
Yang Sanmei said: "This achievement has a lot to do with the product. During the epidemic, contactless purchases were advocated. During this special period, the value of our products was amplified. In addition, during the epidemic, we adjusted and innovated our products. , Launched mask vending machines and medicine vending machines."
Statistics show that 70% of Zhonggu's current foreign trade customers come from Alibaba International Station.
Zhang Kuo, general manager of Alibaba International Station, said in an interview with reporters that the new digital foreign trade is the future development trend of foreign trade, and in the process, Alibaba International Station has completed the redefinition of foreign trade links. Including display, transaction, payment, after-sales and other links.
Youzuan Technology's goal in the third quarter is to beat Samsung. "Now it's not that the quality of pictures and product operations cannot be achieved, but the credit guarantee amount has not yet been reached. Samsung's credit guarantee amount is probably about $150,000." Shen Deyi said.
According to Dai Xianwen, companies in the construction machinery industry used to follow the route of "online search, online conversation, offline transaction, and offline service", but this is actually not conducive to the accumulation of customer resources and data, and is not conducive to the trade ecology. The establishment of the system. Compared with traditional trade methods, digital foreign trade has precipitated data in every link of trade and has become a unique digital asset and financing credit for merchants.
As a result, Alibaba launched a credit protection service in cross-border business to establish a credit system similar to Taobao Star Diamond Crown for Chinese sellers. The "Credit Insurance System" can accumulate the amount of guarantee. The larger the export data, the larger the amount of guarantee provided by Alibaba for sellers. The higher the seller's credit limit, the higher the credit rating. "You can also use offline transaction methods such as wire transfers, but this way the store will not have data accumulation, monthly transactions and evaluation will be affected, which will also affect store operations to a certain extent. We will use credit insurance as a KPI from July The team must have credit guarantee every month, otherwise the performance will be deducted.” Shen Deyi said.
In the past, a large number of enterprises in the construction machinery industry, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, did not have the strength to build overseas after-sales outlets by themselves. The weak remote after-sales service is an important factor restricting the pace of internationalization of the industry. In order to solve this problem, Ali International Station incorporated after-sales service into the trading system and launched the "Machine Overseas Shared After-sales Platform". All construction machinery export companies that join the platform can get the label of "Local Service".
After-sales suppliers are selected through payment. After the seller confirms and the buyer makes an appointment, the dispatched engineer will come to the door within 14 days, and the local service will be shortened to 48 hours. "In the past, we used more of Sany's overseas sales channels, such as their overseas distributors, agents and service partners. We signed a service agreement with him, and we will have more choices in the future." Shen Deyi said .
