Whig Metals has been a commercial cook in Ningbo for nearly 30 years.
Good luck in the early years: as long as the product is ready, customers will come naturally.
But around 2018, things didn't go well.

😟 Raw materials have risen, exchange rates have changed, and tariffs have been added, but the factory is unable to raise prices. The growth of offline channels peaked, and even began to shrink.
Of course, what really alerted the founder Ho Seon-joo was a stark contrast:
Downstream partners used Whig products for e-commerce. In two years, they went from being an ordinary customer to Whig's biggest customer.
📝 The product hasn't changed; what has changed is the channel.

In order to cultivate the second growth curve of enterprises, the business structure is more balanced and resilient to risks.
In 2022, Whig entered Amazon and began to transform into a cross-border business.

People are the first hurdle in the transformation of many factories.
Whig also initially took a detour: let foreign trade salesmen switch to operations.
It soon became apparent that the two things were not the same thing at all. Foreign trade relies on interpersonal communication and empirical judgment; e-commerce relies on logical thinking and data analysis.
What is even more troublesome is that the factory is in the suburbs and cannot recruit young people.

💡 Whig's solution is straightforward:
Move the e-commerce team to the city center. Rent a site in the CBD and set up an independent operation center.
Salaries are 20%-30% higher than local salaries. Supporting growth channels and incentive mechanisms.
Positions are gradually being professionalized. Operations, product development, logistics, and vision all carry out their duties.
After two years, a professional cross-border team of nearly 20 people was formed, and the retention rate of management trainees was 90%.

The team is set up, and a new problem has arisen.
At the initial stage, the number of orders was small, and there was either too much backlog or insufficient inventory was out of stock. Logistics is constantly trampling into holes. Naturally, new businesses don't rank well within the company, and production always gives priority to taking care of old customers.
Operation alone is not enough to drive.

💡 Whig's approach is to set the tone from senior management:
General manager claps: Priority scheduling of cross-border orders and opening a green channel.
Positioning cross-border e-commerce as the core business of an enterprise in the future is not a short-term test.
Resources are skewed towards the cross-border side, opening up cross-departmental collaboration from product design to production planning.

The biggest challenge in cross-border e-commerce is uncertainty.
Fluctuations in sales volume, shipping variables, and policy adjustments put pressure on capital if careless.

💡 Whig's approach is to use refinement to calculate risk in advance.
You must fill out the “Full Life Cycle Cost Estimate Form” before applying for a new update. Production costs, first-run freight, FBA expenses, advertising investment, and slow sales reserves are all calculated to clarify the break-even point.
Only 100-200 units will be tested, and the goods will be replenished on a rolling basis based on sales data, without betting.
Weekly review, month to month alignment. Set aside 15% to 20% of the contingency budget for each project.
“Validate business assumptions at minimal cost, manage risk while achieving steady growth. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

✅ Results: Customer unit price tripled, daily sales of 300,000 US dollars

Now on Amazon, the customer unit price for Whig has increased from 50-60 US dollars to 160 to 180 US dollars.
There was a big promotion at the end of June last year. The German site took first place in the category, followed by the US site. Daily sales surged from the usual 100,000 US dollars to 250,000 US dollars to 300,000 US dollars.

Ho Seon-joo's advice to his factory colleagues was straightforward:
Transform early, invest early. The sooner you start, the more you can enjoy the dividends of cross-border e-commerce.