Tongfu was founded in 2000 and is quite famous in the industry.
● Customers with traditional foreign trade orders cover almost all well-known international water ware brands
● The product was officially selected by the G20 summit and the Hangzhou Asian Games
● In 2022, the company's turnover reached nearly 2 billion

These achievements are nothing but clouds in the eyes of President Yao. Back in 2020, Mr. Yao, who is at the helm of the company, made a bold decision to focus on Amazon. The reason is also very simple — he has been in the OEM business for international water supply brands for 20 years, and the products are selling so well overseas. Wouldn't it be easy to gain a foothold on Amazon?
Soon, however, Mr. Yao experienced the pain of following the trend and choosing products → slow sales of products → losing money the more they sell.

In the early stages of going overseas, Tongfu only did a rough analysis of the market and competition in product selection research. Seeing that plastic water utensils were still popular, they followed the trend with a sense of thought. However, the reason why plastic water utensils are selling well is because the market has reached saturation, and leading manufacturers have already entered the stage of reducing prices and sacrificing profits to seek scale. What is even more fatal is that plastic products are not an advantageous category for Tongfu. They are unable to take advantage of supply chain resources accumulated over many years, causing a large number of products to be slow to sell for a long time, leading to the double pressure of high storage costs and FBA freight rates.

Mr. Yao said, “The lesson was really painful. It was also because there was too little experience in product selection in cross-border e-commerce, and there was too much desire to do this business well, which resulted in blindly following the trend. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.
Do the categories you are good at, promote your strengths and avoid your shortcomings, and you will succeed over time. As a result, Tongfu decided to re-target the old business, that is, give full play to Tongfu's stainless steel water ware supply chain advantages and product advantages, adjust the strategy, and start again.

The desire to do a good job in cross-border e-commerce is real; when it comes to investing capital and resources, Tongfu is also serious.
Tongfu began to recruit troops and buy horses, and operate professionally. After in-depth analysis, the team agreed that to be Amazon confronted consumers, whether it was necessary to think outside of the original selling mindset, or whether to adapt to local conditions, actually start from the user market, and stop blindly promoting products they think are good.

Sue, head of operations, said, “We conducted a survey on user needs at the US site, sent a total of 6,000 questionnaires, and conducted one-on-one interviews with local residents, which took 1-2 months. Through a sufficiently large base of user data, we can clearly sense the preferences of American users — they like to pursue a neutral product style, new practicality with versatility, and the green sustainability of product materials. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.
At the same time, in a survey on the Japan website, Tongfu found that the proportion of leading brands of local plumbing products is very high, and the phenomenon of homogenization of products is very common, and plain and plain products abound; on the other hand, with the rise of Japan's “her economy,” the aesthetic needs of female users are receiving more and more attention; most Japanese users have a conservative attitude towards emerging brands.

How to break through Japan's conservative consumer market?After combining the aesthetic needs of women with the current state of homogenization of the market, Tongfu made an unusual but well-considered decision: to add gradation color products. Unexpectedly, as soon as the product was launched, it was a hit with 400+ daily sales!
The bold experiment with gradation colors also brought unexpected joy to Tongfu: this gradient color happened to be a cheering color for a popular Japanese boy band, and it just happened to be selected to cheer. Japan's strong idol culture and fan economy brought new growth to Tongfu, making this product a hit, and even directly showing the product logo in subsequent promotions, which is equivalent to doing zero-cost and extremely effective brand marketing for Tongfu.

Because of its user-orientation, and thanks to this luck, Tongfu quickly established its brand awareness in Japan. By accurately stepping on the fan economy this time, Tongfu realized the granularity of detailed user research+products that accurately target users' pain points can only be favored by the “God of Luck.” Based on this, the same wealth was multiplied by winning the pursuit, and two more optimizations were made:

Join the VINE Program to closely discuss user needs
The plan is to add every new product to the VINE program. “The VINE program has a high weight, which helps with exposure. In line with its leading production level, it is easy to establish product reputation. At the same time, it is also a good testing method. When users receive the product, they can more directly generate user experience and feedback on the product. However, the authenticity of the evaluation of the VINE program is also an important factor in our selection. We often encounter real buyers in the VINE program, who continuously feedback their likes and dislikes about the product to the back office. Through these real experiences, we have the feeling of “going both ways” with the buyer. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

Operation manager Sue said, “We have a straw cup product. The straws are inserted externally and break easily. In fact, this situation is quite common in the same category, and we have noticed that many buyers have given feedback several times, so we quickly improved the design of the lid based on user needs. Afterwards, we also focused on this design optimization on the A+ page and Listing, which also became our differentiating selling point from other products. "

Innovative research and development to build a sustainable brand moat
Long-term cooperation with product designers in nine countries around the world
“After adhering to being guided by user needs, we firmly believe that designers from the target market with corresponding life experience have a more localized understanding of the product design direction and can more intuitively implement user needs into the product. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.
Set up a CMF team to organize a national project postdoctoral workstation
“Stainless steel water cups seem lightweight, but they require continuous innovation by the R&D team. From coating treatment on the surface of the product, the improvement of the bottle process, to the functional research and development of stainless steel materials, every step of the technology is a secondary enhancement to the depth and width of the brand's moat. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

Thanks to the continuous deepening of user needs and the stable output of product development, Tongfu has delivered impressive results at various sites, especially in Japan. However, on the way the brand goes overseas, they want to go further and go further, and Tongfu also returns from big propositions to the details of the business — refining internal skills, and doing a good job in reducing costs and increasing efficiency in marketing and logistics.

Sue, head of operations, said, “Due to the characteristics of the plumbing category, we are unable to achieve a high customer unit price in terms of pricing, so our advantages in terms of price and profit margins are weak. As the brand matures, logistics costs and marketing expenses invested in major sites will also increase. If corresponding strategies are not formulated in advance, it is easy to have the negative impact of products being sold the better, but profits are getting lower and lower. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

Use our supply chain advantages to reduce logistics costs to 1%
Sue, head of operations, said, “Water ware products are lightweight but bulky, and require a lot of expenses to support logistics and warehousing. In order to optimize this cost, we set a shipping plan for each batch of products in advance with the factory in our own supply chain (this is very important. Plan the profit and weight size of the product in advance, and many problems can be avoided later). Overall, we use a small-batch multi-frequency circular delivery model. The fast ship and slow ship are shipped together. There is an interval of 15-20 days, which can guarantee FBA's first batch of goods, the first batch of goods on the road, and a small batch in the warehouse. While reducing the risk of delivery, we can ensure a good balance between investment and sales. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.
Tongfu cooperated well with its own supply chain, flexibly changed the logistics delivery model, and successfully reduced logistics costs from 5% to 1%.

In-site advertising+social media marketing maximizing marketing benefits
On the marketing side, which accounts for the other major share of the cost, Tongfu “split” one of the original expenses into two, arranged the inside and outside of the website to promote interaction, spend the same amount of money, and do more.
Sue, head of operations, said, “In terms of brand marketing, if we simply rely on in-site advertising, it's like putting eggs in the same basket. Ordering an advertisement costs 1-1.5 US dollars, and our product is priced at only 20-25 US dollars, which not only reduces the fault tolerance rate of advertising, but also loses traction with potential users outside the site. In response to this situation, on the basis of on-site SP advertising, we set aside our budget, seek cooperation from external KOLs, feed back the brand's Post content, promote the internal and external circulation of brand communication, occupy the minds of users, and reduce promotion costs. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

From blindly following the trend and losing money to achieving a hot launch at the Japanese station, from traditional sales thinking to deepening user needs, Tongfu has always been on the path to stepping into a hole and has gained valuable experience of continuous improvement from it. Deeply delving into the secrets of Tongfu's transformation and success, from beginning to end, revolved around “user thinking”. It was this original intention and persistence that made it not scary to take a short detour or run into a wall in the early stages.

At the end of the cross-border confession, Mr. Yao, CEO of Tongfu, and Sue, head of operations, also wanted to give some advice to major overseas sellers: “We believe that in the era when brands go overseas at their best, more traditional foreign trade companies can take advantage of Amazon and grow into a world-famous Chinese brand. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

“Brand Slogan+ Visual Design” double buff, taking the lead in conquering consumers' minds.
“Formulate an accurately obtained brand slogan and carry out marketing activities around this key point. At the same time, all channels are required to unify the visual tone of content and unify the output of content to form unified key themes and visual unity of event content, ensure the stability of the brand's image during marketing activities, and enhance memory points in the minds of consumers. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

I believe that Amazon's official team and various seller tools will help expand the business.
“To become a brand on Amazon, we must have an in-depth understanding of the use of various seller tools, such as using Amazon's official business opportunity detector for product selection to further explore the real needs of overseas consumers; rationally matching product promotion SP+ display advertising SD in marketing to build a product marketing matrix; and using the Amazon Key Account Manager team to help us reduce a lot of unnecessary energy consumption and complete the brand overseas accurately and efficiently. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.