Demystifying the business history of WOOK: After ten years of dormancy, it has finally become the "leading enterprise" of the cross-border B2B e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia

On June 16, WOOK, a cross-border B2B e-commerce company in Southeast Asia, announced the completion of the C round of financing of several hundred million yuan, led by ELIAN Capital, and the new financing co-invested by Tiange Interactive will be used for local warehouse infrastructure construction, category expansion, and acceleration Deploy new markets, explore new models in new scenarios, and other links.

In recent years, cross-border e-commerce has achieved rapid development, and overseas online shopping users are also increasing. According to data from iiMedia Research (iiMedia Consulting), in 2021, over 40% of users said that their purchasing power has increased, and 65.3% of users believe that their frequency of using cross-border e-commerce platforms has increased. As a multi-brand and multi-platform cross-border e-commerce business, WOOK not only includes self-built 3C digital brands, B2B and B2C businesses, but also has footprints in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia.

Under the influence of the epidemic in 2020, WOOK still maintained a 50% increase in revenue and an 80% increase in net profit. At present, there are more than 50,000 registered stores on the WOOK APP, more than 1,000 offline push teams, and branches covering all provinces/regions in Indonesia.

Then how did WOOK upgrade step by step to a cross-border B2B mobile e-commerce platform and walk out of its own path to become the "leading enterprise" of the cross-border B2B e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia?

1. Mainly focus on brand building of digital accessories and launch B2B e-commerce model

As early as 2011, Xu Longhua, the founder of WOOK, aimed at the Southeast Asian market and established two 3C digital accessories brands "VIVAN" and "ROBOT" in Indonesia. Relying on the rise of smartphones and China's strong supply chain, it has developed rapidly in the Indonesian 3C digital accessories market. It took three years to quickly achieve the first market share and become one of the leading companies in the digital industry in Indonesia.

In 2015, WOOK upgraded its business model and launched a B2B e-commerce platform. On the one hand, it integrated high-quality brand owners and manufacturing resources in China, and on the other hand, it established a local promotion business team in Indonesia, so that local offline stores can use the WOOK APP one stop. type order. This model greatly compresses the traditional export path of "factory-brand-national agent-regional agent-wholesaler-retailer", and WOOK has also quickly become a partner of many Chinese brands such as VIVO and Hikvision going overseas to Indonesia. After several years of construction, this model of WOOK has become quite large in Indonesia.

At present, there are more than 50,000 registered stores on the WOOK APP, more than 1,000 offline push teams, and branches covering all provinces and regions in Indonesia. In 2019, WOOK entered Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and other regions, and continued to replicate this model.

2. Digital marketing layout and establishment of industry barriers

In 2019, WOOK began to try new categories other than 3C digital products. Products such as home building materials, small household appliances, game peripherals, beauty cosmetics and daily chemicals have been introduced to the market one after another. In other countries in Southeast Asia, in Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines , Malaysia successively established branch offices. And set up a B2C e-commerce department to operate brand flagship stores on the leading e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia such as shopee, lazada, JD, and tokopedia, and directly carry out online retail business.

At the same time, WOOK started the digital marketing layout and built a professional digital marketing team. With its rich category and brand advantages, WOOK has become the first batch of brands to test live e-commerce in Shopee and Tiktok, and has its own live broadcast room and its own anchor.

WOOK builds a complete business service system, including localization services, localized marketing services, localized brand promotion services, and localized after-sales services. Integrate China's best products and brands, and successfully establish their own industry barriers.

3. Improve Indonesia's local infrastructure and improve operational capabilities in many aspects

Indonesia has many islands, poor infrastructure and high logistics costs. WOOK's self-built modern general warehouse of more than 20,000 square meters in Indonesia, several regional central warehouses, and dozens of provincial distribution warehouses have been put into use in 2021. The freight can cover the entire Java Island within two days and the whole of Indonesia within five days.

WOOK has improved its operation and management capabilities in a variety of ways. In terms of retailer community services, it provides precise services for cooperative retailers to realize community management, share excellent peer experience and strengthen the interaction between WOOK and retailers. In terms of IT operation, WOOK has established a completely self-developed operation platform, and realized the IT management of data through the ERP system, higher efficiency and more accurate data. In terms of pre-sale and group purchase models, the pre-sale model realizes precise procurement and reduces risk inventory; the group purchase model realizes large-scale procurement and reduces procurement costs.

4. open up the local market and improve the supply chain system

For the new cross-border e-commerce model, the supply chain is the key to success in the entire e-commerce process, and it also has a great impact on efficiency improvement.

On the whole, the inventory, in-transit, and distribution information in WOOK's entire supply chain process are all online models, and WAPP is connected to the ERP system, including the IT system of the merchants. On this basis, WOOK established and opened up an IT whole-process system to share inventory, sales information, etc. to suppliers and brand owners in a timely manner, so that suppliers and brand owners can control the node where goods arrive anytime, anywhere, and operate orders. .

In addition to the ITization of supply chain processes, WOOK has a professional team in China, including product managers, business, quality control, etc. For its own brand supply chain, it is more strictly controlled. Whether it is management control, product selection, quality control or even IT design, a dedicated product team is set up to connect with the brand supply chain.

WOOK adheres to the idea of "product is king" and chooses high-quality suppliers. For each category of products, WOOK will set up a product manager to be responsible for the whole process, and arrange dozens of product managers to be responsible for subdividing modules. For example, in the 3C digital category, WOOK is the same as those domestic supply chains that do cross-border e-commerce to top European and American brands. The upstream selects the same manufacturers, and the standards are basically based on European and American standards.

There is no one model in the world that can take everything in the world. What are the advantages of giants? Where are the advantages and opportunities of vertical platform startups? Xu Longhua said that taking a differentiated path, doing deeper services to build barriers and ensure product quality, This is the path WOOK is currently taking.

(Source: It's a radish, not a panda, platform source: Hugo Cross-border)