Seller profile
Emily Wu: Head of Amazon at TUI
Brand: TUI Group
Main categories: auto parts
Joined: 2018
Entry sites: multiple sites around the world, such as the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia
Outstanding results:
● With tens of thousands of SKUs, annual sales continue to double, and it is the leading auto parts giant in Amazon
● Its overseas warehouse in Los Angeles, USA has won the title of public overseas warehouse nurtured by Shandong Province

2015, Weifang, Shandong. In this city famous for its “kites,” an auto parts company that has just started has its sights set on the other side of the ocean thousands of miles away.

“In the US, there is no mandatory scrapping system for cars; the older the car, the more often parts are replaced. At the time, parts were expensive at overseas offline physical stores, and the penetration rate of online e-commerce was not high. “Emily Wu, head of Amazon at TUI Group, recalled that this huge mismatch between supply and demand is an opportunity.

As an important global automobile and parts manufacturing base, China has a complete industrial chain and cost advantages, and Weifang has a deep industrial accumulation in the fields of castings and aluminum products. TUI's founding team was keenly aware that if the “line” of cross-border e-commerce could be used to directly connect these supply-side advantages to European and American consumers, this would be a business with huge room for development.

Ten years have passed, and that small team has split into a comprehensive cross-border enterprise with more than 600 people, with branches all over Shenzhen, Qingdao, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, etc. The company has tens of thousands of SKUs, and its sales have doubled over the years, and is at the top of Amazon's auto parts category.

Starting from Weifang, TUI went through a “hard core” breakthrough path in ten years: looking at the racetrack, turning the most difficult “adaptation” into a moat, and then following the Amazon highway to promote Made in China to the world.

As long as there are cars running on the road, the auto parts business won't be bad. However, in the cross-border auto parts business, the threshold is extremely high. The first obstacle is adaptability.

Every year, new models are introduced, and even the same car may have different versions in different countries, different years, and even different configurations. TUI mainly makes replacement parts for original cars. Each product is only a component in the car, and the difficulty of adapting is imaginable.

“We have tens of thousands of SKUs, and it is very difficult to accurately match each product with the corresponding model, age, and part number. ” Emily Wu lamented.

The team knows very well that adapting to this difficult point must be overcome. Relying on technology and experience accumulated over many years in the automotive aftermarket, they first started with models: sorting out mainstream models in major sales countries, gradually building their own “model library”, compiling massive part number information, and establishing a strict system of adaptation rules. As the data continues to be added and the operation team continues to revise it in their daily work, this “adaptation base” has been strengthened little by little.

The adaptation problem has been solved. Another major challenge is the backside supply chain. The auto parts supply chain is known for being “large and miscellaneous”. The processes for chassis parts, injection-molded parts, and electronic parts vary widely. In order to cover all categories, it is necessary to integrate a large number of different types of factories.

In terms of supply chain management, TUI regularly conveys the latest demand from overseas markets and consumer feedback to the factory through a normalized communication mechanism, so that the production side is more aware of the pain points and preferences of overseas users. At the same time, detailed product specifications are formulated for each product, functions, quality requirements, packaging standards and certification information are clarified, and products can be managed in detail through “labeling”.

TUI has also established a QCM (Quality Cost Management) system and dispatched quality inspectors to the factory to carry out process supervision and factory inspection of key products to ensure that all goods sent overseas have gone through a complete quality inspection process.

The more extreme challenge is inventory. Tens of thousands of SKUs, how to avoid “hot sales out of stock and backlog of unpopular products”?TUI developed its own WMS (Warehouse Management System) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) to introduce digital capabilities into inventory management. The system will make predictions based on multi-dimensional data such as historical sales data, seasonal factors, and market trends, and formulate stocking plans. In addition, product classification management is combined with sales volume and profit amount, high-value products are kept in stock, and low-value products are controlled for turnover. At the same time, TUI has set up safety stocks for different products, and the system automatically triggers replenishment reminders to avoid stock-outs or backlogs.

Furthermore, in the face of a mismatch between the “Spring Festival shutdown” of Chinese factories and the “peak spring car use” overseas, TUI has built a “domestic transit warehouse+overseas warehouse” layout.

The goods are first entered into domestic transit warehouses, and then dynamically transferred to self-built overseas warehouses in Los Angeles and Savannah in the US according to overseas demand, forming a balance between domestic and overseas inventory.

Difficulties in adapting, many and varied supply chains, and complex warehousing layouts are all obstacles, but with TUI's long-term investment, it has gradually become its competitive advantage.

Although it has been involved in cross-border activities as early as 2015, TUI actually entered the “fast track” node and entered Amazon in 2018.

“Amazon's huge high-quality customer base, perfect FBA logistics, and brand building tools and data analysis capabilities are highly compatible with the direction we want to take in brand development and refined operations. ” Emily Wu said.

But as they began turning more resources to Amazon, they soon realized that it was a system that needed to be relearned. Amazon has its own strict set of rules and requirements for the quality of product listings, customer service standards, advertising strategies, and FBA logistics details, which are clearly different from the platforms they have come into contact with before.

The pain of the early stages of transformation is inevitable. The team once “sold one order and lost one order” due to not being familiar with the rules and ordering the wrong price; they also received malicious reports, which caused the fund account to be frozen. “It was a really crashing time, and the pressure was huge. ” Emily Wu recalled.

It was these lessons that forced TUI to quickly formalize. They made targeted adjustments and training to the team, and in this process, Amazon Seller Growth Service became a key support. “We get one-on-one coaching from our dedicated account manager, and we have refresher meetings every month, it's like having a teacher taking you. ” Emily Wu described it.

From controlling the direction of product selection, to fine-tuning advertising strategies, to optimizing inventory turnover, both parties hold data reports, break down problems one by one, and explore opportunities one by one. In the midst of such a review time and time again, TUI gradually refined Amazon's operations in detail.

Speaking about creating blockbusters, Emily Wu said that the core is still accurate market insight. The first is to rely on our own market data and model library to determine the potential of certain products at specific sites. The second is to determine the direction by combining data from Amazon's back office, as well as product selection suggestions and data reports provided by account managers. The third is to use seller growth services to solve core problems from new site expansion, high-quality product selection, and new product breakthroughs to improving operational efficiency. Finally, through dynamic response on the supply chain side and the cooperation of scenario-based operations, many products stand out in a short period of time.

In order to further enhance its brand image, starting in 2023, TUI will set up a special brand department to further cultivate Amazon brand flagship stores and A+ page design. They used a tough store image, a clear brand story, and scenario-like content to tell overseas consumers about the quality story of Chinese auto parts, and gradually establish the perception of a “professional auto parts brand”.

This refined and branded operation quickly paid off. Starting in 2019, TUI's Amazon business has at least doubled every year.

Even the most mature systems and methods will eventually fall to people. In Weifang, it is not easy to recruit people who know both auto parts and cross-border e-commerce. TUI's solution is to cultivate “insiders” yourself.

Emily Wu explained that many of the new employees were “young people” when they joined the company. TUI not only arranged one-on-one help from mentors, but also set up a comprehensive training system and rotation mechanism from parts knowledge to operation skills. The company has basic courses for junior employees, such as part number knowledge, product suitability, and industry standards, as well as advanced courses on operations, marketing, logistics, etc., to help employees understand the business from a more global perspective.

Looking forward to the future at the juncture of ten years, Tuyi's ambitions do not stop there. In addition to being deeply involved in Europe and America, they have set their sights on emerging markets such as Latin America and the Middle East, especially Brazil, which has a large population and a large number of cars, which they see as a very promising incremental space. In terms of products, they have also begun to lay out new energy auto parts to prepare for the next wave.

Looking back over the past ten years, from entering cross-border auto parts in 2015, to entering Amazon in 2018, to continuing to expand at multiple sites and markets today, TUI has embarked on a global breakthrough path belonging to the Shandong Auto Parts team in ten years.

This path isn't easy, but it's solid enough: instead of being consumed in the low price competition, they chose to overcome the “hard bones” of adaptability, supply chain, and logistics, making the hardest part their own threshold. Use Amazon's tools and services to move operations from extensive to detailed, and from retail to brand. Use systematic training to create a team that truly “knows cars, understands business, and understands cross-border”.

The TUI explosion is not an exception; it is a microcosm of the “Age of Discovery” of China's auto parts industry. According to statistics, from 2020 to 2024, China's auto parts exports climbed from US$32.997 billion to US$56.744 billion, with an average annual growth rate. Among them, the US is one of the largest auto parts consumer markets in the world, ranking first among China's auto parts export destinations with a share of over 32%.

As global car ownership continues to grow and the average age of vehicles is aging, overseas consumer demand for cost-effective and highly adaptable Chinese parts is experiencing a blowout. For more Chinese companies with supply chain heritage like TUI, directly accessing terminals through cross-border channels such as Amazon is not only an upgrade in the business model, but also an opportunity to seize trillion-level market dividends.

When accessories marked with the TUI brand are shipped from the factory in Weifang and are accurately installed on cars around the world, this is not only Tuyi's success, but also the best explanation for the transition of Chinese manufacturing from “exchanging price for quantity” to “going overseas with technology and brand.”