One afternoon on April 21, a news about "Japan Post will suspend EMS and parcel post services to China from April 22 was popped up on big bear's mobile phone screen. As a hand-made buyer, he had not yet sorted out the whole story, but he also had a premonition that he would encounter" information explosion ".
Sure enough, on the same day, big bear received nearly 100 inquiries from domestic buyers: "is the news true? Has my goods been delivered? When will it be restored? Are there other channels? Can you store them here for free?" This makes the big bear, who has only been a part-time Japanese handymaker for less than a year, seem a little flustered. He answered the buyer's questions one by one and contacted the local post office, domestic express companies and small partners in China to discuss countermeasures. Until late at night, he was still thinking about how to appease those buyers who insisted on returning goods.
This emergency is more experienced for evi, which has been engaged in manual buying for about four years.
He has learned from the overall shutdown of Japan Post in march2020 First of all, he took the initiative to send a group of text messages to those buyers who still have "to be delivered" to stabilize their mood. "He passed on three messages: tell the truth, promise to store items for free, and are contacting other logistics channels." Secondly, his team began to discuss how to continue the follow-up work under such circumstances.
"The overall situation in 2021 was good. I could not have imagined that it would be severe again this year. When the epidemic broke out in Shanghai in March, I had a premonition that I might suffer the risk of shutdown. However, for buyers, they would not stop any work. There are always more ways than difficulties." Evi shared with financeu Yifan.
Buyers have said that the epidemic situation in recent years has had a great impact on their "small business". For example, the cost of going back and forth from Japan is too high, which makes it difficult for "human flesh" to bring back goods They can only expand their teams and recruit agents in China and Japan, resulting in an increase in operating costs
Under the normalization of uncertain factors, hand-made buyers who rely on ring business to fill their stomachs will also continue to face various bottlenecks in their "career".
New people are worried, and "seniors" are calm
When the epidemic situation in major regions in China continues to spread, international express has always been a sensitive item. In the face of many positive cases caused by overseas express, the CDC in Beijing, Shanghai and other regions has upgraded its handling of international express. Recently, all imported mail in Beijing must be disinfected in the local warehouse for more than 10 days before normal customs clearance. Therefore, the transportation time limit of international express will be doubled**
Such a situation is also the most difficult closed-loop problem faced by hand buyers mainly from Japan.
In late April, Japan Post temporarily sent China parcel post service (normal transportation of documents within 2kg), which seemed to "break the waist" the way for hand-made buyers to make money. Now a month has passed, how did they respond?
News screenshot
"We haven't received any news about when Japan Post will resume, but it shouldn't be stopped for three months as in 2020. I predict that it should be the middle of June, when the epidemic situation in Shanghai should be comprehensively improved, and it will recover in due course." The cat shopkeeper, who has owned his own trading company in Japan, is convinced of his judgment.
It is understood that this time Japan post is not entirely due to the severe epidemic situation. The main reason is that most of the international imported mail is piled up in Beijing due to the comprehensive blockade of Shanghai, and the huge pressure of warehouse transfer**
"At the time of the outage, the Japanese yen depreciated significantly, and the exchange rate once reached about 0.0495. At that time, the number of orders increased a lot, but at the same time, we didn't make that much. Recently, the Japanese yen exchange rate has rebounded." Big bear thought it was a pleasure in bitterness.
In addition, the buyers of the manual office revealed that the shutdown of Japan post was only caused by the above reasons, other transportation channels can still be sent, but the cost will be greatly increased**
"Japan post is the first choice for all buyers. The overall price is low. It doesn't look at the volume, and there are other modes such as shipping. Now those anxious buyers can also choose SF, DHL and other modes of transportation. However, they need to take the initiative to declare customs, which is nearly 20% more expensive." Big bear continued to introduce.
Based on this, the hands-on buyers have given a relative solution. First of all, the buyer is allowed to store the goods for free or restore them to Japan post for 3 months, which makes most buyers do not choose to return the goods. Secondly, provide other logistics company solutions, which can be selected by buyers who are economically capable or eager.
" most of the decrease is caused by new buyers with less than 10 orders, and their trust value has not reached the corresponding level yet. they dare not buy when they hear about the outage, or they may not want to overstock their funds. Old buyers and I have experienced many things and have cooperated well. A large part of them solve the material flow problems themselves. For large volume goods, we can also contact the transfer site in Hong Kong for transportation, so the overall impact on me is not great." The cat shopkeeper said.
A buyer's collection
In addition, evi, cat shopkeeper and others have multiple store channels. old customers still trust direct transfer, while new buyers with "itchy hands" will launch a new payment mode on Taobao store items of 500 yuan. Buyers need to purchase an order of 499 yuan first, receive the goods before delivery, and then make an order of 1 yuan. After both parties make notes, they can carry out routine operations.
In less than a month, experienced manual operators with a certain scale of stores were familiar with finding a business model, but for the part-time novice big bear, he almost "disconnected the link".
"I don't have so much capital reserves, and I don't have so much energy to contact other logistics companies. Now my family is basically full of manual transactions to be delivered, and the transactions are all old customers' wechat transfers. At present, there are basically no new orders."
Whether they are still part-time big bear or more mature buyers, evi and cat shopkeepers, although they are all in trouble because of the "postal outage", after a month, they gradually return to the normal mentality and rhythm, and added that, unlike other overseas shopping products, the stickiness and enthusiasm of hand-held buyers are rising, and their purchase desire and purchasing power are the main driving force for buyers to have confidence in blessing**
They will receive "task orders" as usual, shuttle through Akihabara's major hand-held shopping malls, browse and monitor larger Japanese shopping websites, and further have close contact with the second-dimensional hand-held stores.
Career attributes based on "small interests"
Big bear is a typical Post-00 man who has been immersed in the two-dimensional world for many years. He has a strong love for the office. When he chose to study in Japan, his desire to be a buyer of the office was born.
"I watch the video of the up owner of station B every day, especially the in-depth up owner like 'President Fei'. In 2020, he was still a small up owner. Although few people paid attention to him, he shuttled through the manual market every day and also had a certain income. I thought it was too happy." The big bear shared.
In his opinion, the two-dimensional manual buyers are slightly different from other overseas online shopping buyers, the former is not entirely for income, and love also accounts for a large proportion. Buyers have a high desire to buy, and buyers themselves love and care about it**
Big bear said that most of the secondary buyers work in two ways. First, offline buyers consume more energy, but are more interesting. They can also earn more fees, because there are more fees for working hours and transportation; The second is online purchasing. The buyer provides a shopping link. He buys and earns a few tenths of a percent of the exchange rate fee and agency auction fee.
After the buyer provided him with a handmade manufacturer and model, the buyers represented by big bear went to Akihabara (Japan's largest handmade business street in Chiyoda District, Tokyo) in the form of "treasure hunter".
"When buyers come to hand-made buyers, they will basically focus on hand-made by large manufacturers, such as' Bandai, good smile company, KOTOBUKIYA, Max factory, etc. these hand-made models are basically monopolized in Akihabara and Nihonbashi. The main shopping malls of the former are radio club and mandarake, and the latter are jungle and volumes. If these stores are not available, they can basically give up." Big bear said.
In addition, big bear will find treasure by himself when he takes over the task**
In addition to the discount area of the above-mentioned shopping malls, he also travels to and from Zhongye Broadway Street and the aeon mall of Narita Airport. There are also shops with different characteristics, such as animate, hero toy Research Institute, joshin Super Kids land, etc. Big bear thinks that when he is just engaged in hand buying, he has to earn "hard money". If he wants to get a lower price, he has to spend more time shopping**
In addition, during the activities of major shopping malls, buyers must always pay attention to them. During the festival, they will regularly push the blessing bags. Big bear will select the blessing bags of 1000~5000 yen and try his luck with a few hundred yuan. If he is lucky, he can do it himself. If he is selling other peripheral products in China, he can basically earn a small income.
In addition to shuttling through major physical stores, as a professional Japanese hand-made buyer, you should also browse Japanese shopping websites in depth, such as junhewu, coal stove, Lotte, Yahoo, etc. online leak detection is also a necessary course for hand-made buyers** The key search terms of each website should be labeled properly. GAODA, qilongzhu, chuyin future, Xia Na, pirate, ghost extinction, etc. are all popular hand-made categories. The price scarcity and market demand of each IP model should be clearly controlled. "For example, a series of appreciation items may seem to be ordinary handmade by laymen. The size and style are not prominent, but the scarcity is very high. How can you find them and sell them quickly?" Big bear continued.
Looking back on the year when he became a hand-made buyer, big bear sighed a lot.
Physical labor is only the most basic consumption. After calculating his own income, big bear thinks that going to other part-time jobs may have higher income. However, he knew that the manual buyer must be the work of long-term operating users. Moreover, he was full of joy in the process. "It's more comfortable to be PUA in a part-time job."
In addition, what bothers big bear more is the customer operation. He often meets and needs to answer questions about buyer Q & A, transportation damage, customs handling and so on. Even small sellers like him have to deal with the surprise inspection by the Japanese tax bureau**
Anxiety and the future
With the deepening of Internet application, the increasingly developed cross-border transportation network, and the sudden emergence of generation Z consumer groups, the domestic secondary industry has entered an explosive period. According to iResearch's Research Report on China's secondary industry, as early as 2020, the overall market scale has entered the "threshold of 100 billion", with an annual growth rate of 32.7%, and the number of Pan secondary users is expected to reach 500million in 2023.
Under the two-dimensional upsurge, hand-made buyers naturally welcome good. However, with the advent of the epidemic era, the overseas Amoy industry where hand-made buyers are located is facing various interference from extremely unstable factors.
Faced with various uncertainties, secondary buyers who already have a certain store size, such as evi, cat shopkeeper, etc., will be affected, but they will not hurt their muscles and bones. The important reason is that they have a large number of loyal customers through years of operation accumulation, and domestic players' enthusiasm for Japanese handmade is only increasing. In addition, the uniqueness of Japanese handmade can not be replaced by other regions, It also doomed the stability of their business.
First of all, as long as the hands-on players "enter the pit", it is difficult to "get out" The charm of collection is that if you don't continuously update your collection, you will feel that you don't respect your previous investment "The curtilage man has a wall and a suite in Beijing. Although it is very exaggerated, it can also show from the side how addicted the hand-made players are. Not only the local tyrant players, but also many working-class buyers. I have a customer who can't save any savings in his hand by collecting house loans every month and buying hand-made apartments every month." The cat shopkeeper added to Yifan.
Secondly, the excitement of treasure hunting from Japan is unparalleled. The process of target - Treasure Hunt - waiting - harvest is more sensory. If you buy directly from China, buyers describe it as like picking a box of coke. After the first bite is satisfied, it will not be too exciting.
"Sometimes, even if the buyers don't have a clear goal, they will let me go to the manual store and talk to him via video. They will 'blind select' the manual store. The buyers also like this process of leak detection and vacancy filling." Said the big bear.
In addition, Japanese handmade goods are guaranteed to be authentic** In the eyes of the buyers of hand-made products, the market of domestic hand-made products is too deep, and the quality of the sellers is uneven. Things worth hundreds of yuan are not very expensive, but if they encounter fake goods, they are very disgusting. Finally, the hands-on buyers think that through their overseas shopping process, the price will be cheaper. In case of domestic hot selling products and business conscious buyers, after starting, they can return to China to resell at a certain cost.
Therefore, Japanese hand-made buyers are not worried about the cold and warm market. The bigger breakthrough is how to further develop external users, and how to improve trust internally to promote word-of-mouth communication.
"The scale of our stores is far larger than that of those large overseas online shopping websites, such as shoppin, FreeGate, or Taobao, which has a scale of one million payees. they are already a large-scale trading company in China and Japan, and have great advantages in logistics resources, warehouse storage, etc. they have the ability to touch all types of overseas online shopping, so we are only focusing on the manual operation line at present. We are specialized and have no energy to earn large websites And to provide more meticulous services. " The big bear shows his heart.
For new hands-on buyers like big bear, they will promote their stores in any channel in China, tieba, Zhihu, Xianyu, xiaohongshu, B station, microblog and other social platforms will not be spared, "it is not only to promote advertising, but also to answer questions and dispel doubts, so that novice buyers can eliminate their concerns and recommend their own services. This is my most commonly used method at present, accumulating a little." Bear continues to share. Later, he also plans to try to be a short video up owner, share the experience of the buyer, and start the live broadcast.
The experienced cat shopkeeper has already set up his own xxxxx Co., Ltd., and his trading company has also developed many business lines and applied for many business licenses, such as the wholesale exemption of alcohol trafficking, the antique dealer license, etc.
Under the shadow of the epidemic, the buyers of the two-dimensional manual business show different images of survival, but their love for the profession has not been weakened. On the one hand, the enthusiasm of domestic buyers makes them believe in the sustainability of their business. On the other hand, they also want to make the two-dimensional pure land less "intriguing" because of their original intention.
The two-dimensional buyers in the circle are sticking to the blue sky above their heads.