Faced with a changing environment, traditional offline retail is under pressure, and many physical brands have been deeply impacted. Mousse, a well-known Chinese brand that has been deeply involved in the field of healthy sleep for many years, has resolutely settled — stepped up cross-border e-commerce and broke through.
Compared with domestic peers, Mousse is more steady on the cross-border e-commerce board. Since entering Amazon at the end of 2022, this “junior” has established a foothold on many European, American, and Japanese sites in just over two years, and has achieved breakthroughs in word of mouth and sales.

What kind of strategic planning and e-commerce operation mentality is hidden behind this beautiful latecomer victory?Today, we are honored to invite Wu Yanzhao, general manager of Mousse's cross-border e-commerce business department, to share Mousse's successful overseas experience.

Seller profile
Company: Mousse Group
Main categories: household category
Entry time: end of 2022
Registered sites: US site, European site, Japan site
Competitor's performance: In less than a year, the Japanese market surpassed 16 million yuan in sales. Two products entered the top 100 of the BSR category, and one product remained in the top 20
Wu Yanzhao Ryan: General Manager of Mousse Cross-border E-commerce Business Department

As the leading brand of upholstered furniture, Mousse has long occupied a leading position in China, and is also starting to set up overseas offline markets at the same time, steadily opening stores in many countries and regions. However, by the end of 2022, the general market environment ushered in dramatic changes. Due to the uncertainty brought about by the complexity of the global political and business environment, offline retail of global home furnishings became cold. Are you waiting for recovery, or are you taking the initiative to break through?The mousse chose the latter. After comprehensively researching global household consumption trends, they keenly caught a signal that online home consumption is entering an explosion period. According to the data, the global home e-commerce penetration rate has reached 25% and continues to grow at a rate of 10% to 12% per year. This made Mousse realize that it is necessary to seize the new opportunities brought by this cross-border e-commerce.

For Mousse, this is not only a channel change, but also an important step in restructuring the overseas business layout at a strategic level.

Ryan, General Manager of Mousse Cross-border E-commerce Business Department
“After market research and business model testing, and the rapid development of the Internet era, we have begun to embark on the path of Amazon's cross-border e-commerce. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

Ryan admits, “Mousse has become an industry benchmark and leading company in the domestic market, but it is still a junior on the cross-border journey.” Like many cross-border sellers, Mousse initially moved forward in exploration. There was no clear answer about which category to choose at the beginning. After market research, sofas are considered an ideal entry point due to their large market capacity. However, at the delivery stage, problems were revealed: large size and weight, logistics and storage costs far exceeded expectations, and profit margins were drastically reduced.

After some exploration, Mousse made the most critical strategic trade-off, “first thoroughly specialize in one category, then expand into other fields. ” They resolutely abandoned sofas and returned to their most familiar and advantageous field — household products.

Ryan, General Manager of Mousse Cross-border E-commerce Business Department
“We don't want more products, we strive for refinement. Let's first develop a category in depth, and then consider further expansion. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

Once the direction was clear, Mousse made a clear operating strategy: it did not follow the trend, did not compete at low prices, but relied on product strength to win the market. This way of thinking has gone through every step of their border crossing.

Conquering the world with products is not an empty phrase. Mousse's “paranoia” was reflected throughout the birth of a triangular back pillow.
The team's research found that many European and American consumers prefer bed frames without a bedhead and have a soft spot for furry skin-friendly products. A brilliant idea came into being: developing a multi-purpose pillow that can be both a headboard and a pillow. However, when the idea came to fruition, two problems were encountered.

● The first is the packaging volume problem
As a bulky product, how to compress the volume to reduce high transportation costs is a challenge;

● The second is the compression rebound problem
Excessive compression also causes the product to be unable to return to its original state, affecting the user experience.

The entire project was at an impasse for a while. However, Mousse's R&D team showed an amazing “fight to death” spirit: they continuously tested and upgraded the vacuum pumping equipment, testing everything from 3.5 horsepower to 8 horsepower before finally achieving the ideal compression effect. Immediately after that, in order to solve the rebound problem, the team also increased the amount of filling and tested various new filler materials, and finally found an ideal filler that can withstand high vacuum compression and has excellent resilience.
The effort paid off. After the triangular backrest pillow went online, it soon received five-star praise from many users in the European and American markets.

Ryan, General Manager of Mousse Cross-border E-commerce Business Department
“Let customers buy a safe product and let them have a brand worth recommending and repurchasing is our goal. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

In addition to refining ingenuity in products, quality is a constant guideline. According to Ryan, every new Mousse product follows a strict set of procedures from origin to shipment:

● Source control
Eliminate defective products from the beginning of raw material production, and require suppliers to inspect incoming materials.

● Internal review
The company organizes cross-review meetings to carefully evaluate every dimension, from outer packaging to product details.

● Professional testing
After the internal review is approved, the sample will be sent to a professional laboratory for compliance and performance testing.

● Full shipment inspection
Before leaving the factory, all products must be thoroughly inspected to ensure that they are qualified before they can be shipped.

Ryan, General Manager of Mousse Cross-border E-commerce Business Department
“We never allow suppliers to ship non-compliant products and must be corrected until they meet our quality standards. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

If strong product power is the “spear” of Mousse's siege, then fine operational capability is its “shield” for stabilizing the market. In this regard, Mousse also has its own set of methodologies.

1. Logistics planning size & flexible scheduling to solve the problems of bulky transportation

In terms of the first delivery pace, the team made detailed calculations, consciously avoided peak shipping periods, prepared goods in advance, turned the biggest “variable” in logistics into a “controllable item”, and found the optimal solution between cost and efficiency.

Mousse never tries to “eat” the world with one product. They know they need accurate insight into local aesthetic preferences in order to have a conversation with consumers.
● In the US, they provide soft memory foam products with a strong sense of wrapping to meet users' ultimate pursuit of comfort.
● In Japan, mattresses with a hard sleeping feel have been introduced to suit their long-standing tatami lifestyle.
● In Germany, the team focuses on calm colors such as black and navy blue and simple design to be close to the strict and practical aesthetics of the region

This localization is even reflected in tiny product iterations. One of the best-selling backrest pillows on European sites, Mousse has made a “magic pen” improvement: compared to other brands, two small pillows were added, and the fabric was upgraded to a more high-end plush material. This small change accurately hit users' needs for more comfort and texture, making this product quickly one of the hottest products on the European site.

The precise insight into customers also brought an “unexpected” surprise to Mousse. At one point, a customer from a German site kept asking extremely in-depth and professional questions about product size, toxicity, etc. The team immediately realized that this was probably a B-side customer who had gone through an Amazon Business Shopping Scan.

The e-commerce team did not have a modeled answer. Instead, they quickly switched to a “deep thinking model”. After patiently understanding the customer's needs, they provided the customer with a detailed “product file” containing details on all aspects and attaching all relevant verification certificates, proving that the product fully complies with human safety standards and is not allergenic. The professional materials completely allayed the customer's concerns, and the other party immediately ordered more than 40 pillows in one go. This experience made the team deeply aware of the huge potential of the B-side, and also verified that professionalism is the key to large orders.

4. After sales exceed buyers' expectations, gain trust, and win praise

When it comes to large pieces of home, a poor after-sales service can destroy a brand's goodwill. ——Large size, difficult installation, and high return costs. Once a problem occurs, the user experience can easily decline.

Mousse's approach is to use as meticulous service as possible to win the customer's experience and trust beyond expectations. Not only do they include detailed installation videos and instructions for each product, they even clearly label details such as “Let stand for 72 hours after unpacking” that are easily overlooked.

A customer accidentally scratched a mattress while unpacking it and asked for a refund. After weighing high reverse logistics costs and product losses, the team made a bold decision: a full refund, but the customer didn't need to return the product. The customer was greatly moved by this sincere plan. Not only did the store not lose money, but it also received a five-star review that took the initiative to leave.

4. Conversion Rate Enhancement Techniques: Using Sensibility to Grow Grass, Using Rationality to Make a Single

Faced with the problem of a long decision-making cycle for household products, Mousse's strategy is to take both “sensibility” and “rationality” and take a two-pronged approach.
They first use “sensibility” to touch people's hearts: through carefully crafted images and videos that incorporate real life scenes, they create a strong sense of familiarity and engagement, and ignite consumers' desire to buy.

Afterwards, “rationality” was used to accept this desire: the team used tools such as Amazon brand metrics to conduct accurate data insights and discover their own optimization space through targeting top sellers. Then, based on this, continuous optimization and iteration of dimensions such as copy, images, prices, and reviews are carried out, so that every click by a consumer is one step closer to the final order.

Ryan, General Manager of Mousse Cross-border E-commerce Business Department
“We use images and videos to create a sense of immersion while controlling the price-to-price ratio, so that customers have no worries. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

As the business continues to advance, Mousse continues to expand more sites. Starting in the second half of 2024, the US site will be rolled out one after another to the Japanese site and the European site. Less than a year after the launch of the Japanese site, the cumulative sales volume has exceeded 16 million yuan. The two products are in the top 100 of the BSR category, and one of them has been in the top 20 for a long time.

In the future, on the basis of continuing to cultivate product strength, Mousse will increase investment in innovation, lay out cutting-edge fields such as AI smart sleep, and promote intelligent products. I believe that with focus and innovation, Mousse will be able to open up a wider world in the cross-border market. We also expect more industry leaders to take advantage of Amazon and bring high-quality products to the world, so that Chinese brands can shine in the global market!