Recently Lengow attended the annual Cross-Border E-Commerce (Export) Conference & Exhibition in China and won an award for Best Cross-Border E-commerce Solution. We know that China is a fast growing ecommerce territory and asked Lengow to tell us more about their visit:
Since last summer Lengow has been interested in the Asian market and forging relationships with ecommerce players such as Alibaba Group, who are prominent in China.
China is a challenging market for Europeans not only due to language and cultural differences, but especially their different work ethic. Understanding these differences and the Chinese way of doing business is essential for a successful collaboration. The Cross-Border E-Commerce Conference and Exhibition was a great opportunity for us to find out more about these issues first hand and meet with different players of the Chinese ecommerce ecosystem. Among those present at the event was the Cross Border E-commerce Community, a strategic organisation that aims to support online merchants expanding internationally. Their co-founder, Rolf Visser, was part of the jury which awarded Lengow as Best Cross-Border E-commerce Solution at the event.
The conference was held over two days, the first day was dedicated to inbound commerce for international merchants wanting to sell in China, and the second day to outbound commerce for Chinese merchants interested in exporting their products cross-border. Lengow’s co-founder, Jeremie Peiro, presented a keynote on how to seize European ecommerce market opportunities, discussing how to choose the right mix of online distribution channels, the most successful European marketplaces and how to increase product visibility and ROI on an international scale.
There are a lot of differences that international retailers need to be aware of when selling online on Chinese marketplaces: more detailed product pages, more images, the need to have a fully localised catalogue, etc. Extra services such as a 24/7 online chat to support sales are also recommended.
When it comes to selling cross-border in Europe, the Chinese are mostly familiar only with eBay, Amazon and Adwords, and are quite unaware of the complex ecommerce distribution system existing in the different countries. For this reason Lengow can be highly useful for Chinese retailers wanting to sell in Europe, as the solution enables retailers to quickly and easily distribute, optimise and manage their product catalogue on a choice of over 1500 channels across 18 countries: marketplaces, price comparison sites, affiliation platfoms, retargeting, RTB, etc.
The conference helped us make some great contacts and get more information on the market to help us eventually integrate Chinese marketplaces into our solution, as well as work with Chinese retailers wanting to sell in Europe.
