Steven: “My personal experience is that for a traditional factory or integrated industry and trade enterprise, to successfully transform into cross-border e-commerce, it is necessary to have: solid quality, branding strategy, experienced operation team and product team, and at the same time have a data mindset and adhere to long-term principles. "

Denuo Forestry is an enterprise that has been doing traditional foreign trade for decades. It began doing cross-border business in '21. It handed over a report card with a turnover of 800,000 US dollars in the first three months, and new products were made very fast.

Steven: “We were very prepared at the time:
1. From our point of view, we have the advantage of traditional foreign trade offline, so we have done enough research on categories, clearly understand the sales volume and price trends of the categories, and the inventory planning is also quite accurate.
2. In terms of operational expertise, we are very careful in creating every listing. We put a lot of effort into the five-point description and visual creativity to maximize the click rate and increase the conversion rate.
3. In terms of the effective use of official resources, Amazon's official tools must be used. We joined the VINE program as soon as possible. After receiving reviews, we used a combination of promotion plans and advertising plans for new products, so we quickly achieved the goal of new products being listed. "

Such impressive results gave the e-commerce team great encouragement. However, Deno Forestry soon discovered that it had encountered major challenges in “product selection.” Due to excessive confidence in the manufacturing experience of foreign trade products accumulated by the factory over many years, the team believed that the original high-priced wood material would definitely be loved by consumers, but they ignored the shortcomings of this material not resistant to sunlight. As a result, some products had quality problems such as cracking after delivery, causing user ratings to drop dramatically.

However, when they hadn't gotten out of the first predicament, they immediately stepped into the second “pit.” After receiving a large number of e-commerce orders, in order to reduce transportation costs, the product components were split up in detail, and were not equipped with detailed installation instructions suitable for the “Hand Handicap Party”, which did not match the hands-on ability of terminal consumers. This further led to lower ratings and lower rankings, causing order volume to drop.
Steven: “In the past three years, we have gone from an initial loss of millions to now achieving more than 100 million in cross-border e-commerce sales. The entire transformation process has gone through all kinds of hardships. "

The first hurdle of transformation: changing the concept
The first hurdle of transformation is a shift in “ideas,” not just team building, talent recruitment, or style of play innovation. Although many traditional foreign trade enterprises consider themselves business experts, they originally serve corporate customers, while cross-border e-commerce directly targets individual users. This huge transformation has caused the original experience to lose its guiding effect to some extent. Therefore, it is necessary for companies to change the way they think about products and operations.
Currently, Denuo Forestry is continuously optimizing. While closely observing market trends, it develops new products according to the latest needs of the market and customers, thus creating products that meet the actual needs of users.

The second hurdle of transformation: building an experienced team
Successful transformation also requires the support of an experienced team. Cross-border e-commerce has its own unique approach and rules, and the entire operation also has a certain underlying logic, but these require repeated practice to be thoroughly understood.
Steven shared, “The experienced team will analyze all the details clearly, such as: How does Amazon work?How are others successfully selling these products?How to advertise?Where is the balance between the company's costs and benefits?By entrusting these tasks to a professional operation team, the factory side can focus more on product development, and the boss only needs to learn to analyze the data and understand the report. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

Steven: “We started with a manufacturing factory and wanted to do e-commerce. We have our own unique advantages, backed by our own 10,000 mu mountain forest, and a factory with strong R&D and manufacturing capabilities. We also have a 'brand dream' to forge ahead courageously. "

In the current environment, most domestic manufacturing companies are still at the bottom of the “smile curve” and face the challenge of extremely reducing costs.
“You have to brand it. If you don't do branding, you can only cover it in the price. ” Steven emphasized the importance of branding based on his experience since engaging in cross-border e-commerce.
Driven by sentiment, Deno Forestry made a big splash on brand building and launched the Soliwood brand, focusing on creating beautiful garden solid wood furniture. The branding strategy brought significant rewards: in May of this year, daily sales of popular products reached 560,000 US dollars. Steven summarized the branding process in the following two points:

Improve product quality
Quality is the cornerstone of a brand. Whether it is a service, product, or product, we must pursue high quality. Companies should first focus on the product itself and enhance the retail consumer buying experience on the basis of maintaining good quality. In this regard, Soliwood has shown outstanding strength.
Steven: “Many companies think that outdoor furniture doesn't need special packaging; they can do whatever they want to save on the size of the product. However, we discovered that if the product was designed in a beautiful gift box, the price could increase by two dollars. Even, consumers can buy a complete gift box for family and friends, which is a great buying experience and helps enhance the brand image. "
Additionally, Soliwood has made further enhancements to the product. They included a detailed product description card in the gift box, along with the brand story, installation steps, and after-sales service process. Consumers don't need to worry about any issues; the Soliwood customer service team is online 24 hours a day and provides assistance via email. By incorporating purchasing experience, installation experience, and branding concepts into the product development system, Soliwood successfully brought consumers a more comfortable user experience.

Optimizing brand vision
In terms of promotion, Soliwood has also found a path that suits her. Product promotion advertisements, brand promotion advertisements, and product placement advertisements are carried out in combination. In addition, branding strategies are also implemented in terms of visual presentation. Through this comprehensive promotion style, they successfully created their first hit product, the Garden Beach Chair Set, which still ranks first in the list.
Steven：”
At the end of 2022, we collaborated with a European photography team to place beach chairs in a European and American home environment, shoot scenario-based videos, including family gatherings, night barbecues, etc., and edit them into branded videos. The final results showed that the brand advertising conversion rate was very high, taking our brand to a new level, which fully demonstrated the power of brand strategy. "

In the first two years of entering the cross-border e-commerce market, Denuo Forestry focused on basic work, increasing sales volume and optimizing profits. In the next three years, Denuo Forestry will continue to be committed to brand upgrading, not only conveying product value, but also achieving brand upgrading in terms of visual design and user experience to win the recognition and trust of more customers.

Deno Forestry mainly focuses on outdoor and horticultural products, which have obvious seasonal characteristics. The sales season for horticultural products usually starts in March and ends in August-September. Users are less in demand to buy horticultural products in winter. As a result, during the one-year and 12-month sales period, on average, Deno Forestry can only sell for 8-9 months, and there was almost no sales in one quarter. Steven also mentioned that this is their biggest problem and a major bottleneck in the business development process.

Currently, Deno Forestry is considering expanding the product category to increase overall revenue. Their principle is to understand product search requirements through the platform and select appropriate, data-based products.
Steven: “When selecting products, we still need to meet the real needs of the market. There are three factors required to increase the product order rate. First, the quality of the product must pass customs, the second is that the price must be competitive, and third, it is necessary to accumulate a certain amount of praise. This is the key to continuously improving product transaction rates. As long as these three conditions are met, there is no product that cannot be sold. "

The tide is frequent, and the wind and waves are still the same, but this cannot stop cross-border e-commerce from becoming a promising racetrack. Denuo Forestry's cross-border e-commerce path has gone through ups and downs, but thanks to Amazon's support from various aspects, such as continuous upgrading of advertising products, support for seller back-office data, and the improvement of Amazon's FBA system, etc., it has now achieved certain results.

In the future, Denuo Forestry will continue to develop its business, launch unique products, and build a unique brand. Next, Deno Forestry will continue to attack Amazon Europe and achieve an accelerated rise in performance.