Google Launches Its First Cross-Border E-commerce Acceleration Center in Xiamen, China

On October 15, Google announced the official launch of its first cross-border e-commerce acceleration center in Xiamen, a city in southern China. The center is part of Google’s cross-border e-commerce acceleration program, which is expected to cover Xiamen and Shenzhen in its first phase.

The offline acceleration center will focus on three service functions: market education, ecosystem aggregation, and seller incubation. Market education will cooperate with industry experts to provide professional courses to help sellers systematically understand the DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) model. Ecosystem aggregation aims to introduce high-quality ecosystem service partners and provide Google customers with exclusive discounts and services to meet the development needs of sellers’ independent sites. Seller incubation integrates Google resources to create a one-stop solution for independent sites, supporting potential sellers to quickly launch independent sites.

At the opening ceremony, Liang Cuiping, Vice President of Google’s Digital Marketing Solutions in China, stated that on one hand, with the increase in the number of companies going global, competition in overseas markets is becoming increasingly fierce. Companies are using data and insights based on data analysis to improve the quality of their products and marketing. On the other hand, the international trade environment has faced many challenges in recent years, including different policies, regulations, and laws of various countries. When companies land in different countries, they need to consider the local cultural background to adapt to the diverse needs of consumers in different countries. With the rapid development of technology, consumer needs are also changing rapidly.

Liang Cuiping mentioned that many companies choose to use third-party market platforms as a starting point when they first go overseas. However, as their experience grows and brand awareness strengthens, they begin to look for new growth spaces and opportunities. At this time, independent sites become their new option. “In the past few years, independent sites have become an important way for companies to expand their business overseas and achieve growth.”

An independent site refers to a brand or company selling products directly to consumers through its own e-commerce website, without relying on third-party platforms such as Amazon, eBay, etc.

Liang Cuiping believes that creating a brand’s independent site has multiple important values for cross-border companies, including increasing profit margins, shaping brand image, driving growth through user insights, and achieving diversified promotion in the global market. These advantages make independent sites increasingly popular in companies’ international strategies.

However, while brand independent sites bring benefits to cross-border companies and sellers, they also face many challenges. Compared with platform e-commerce, independent sites have significant differences in website construction, logistics distribution, payment docking, customer service processes, etc., and the difficulty is greater. Sellers, especially small and medium-sized cross-border sellers who are restricted by the scale and resources of the company, often lack effective marketing strategies and refined operation management experience when starting independent site businesses, and have difficulty coping with transformation challenges.

In June of this year, Google launched a cross-border e-commerce acceleration program and cooperated with agents and ecosystem partners to provide a cross-border e-commerce incubation project for overseas companies. The project aims to help companies quickly solve various problems encountered in the process of building independent sites through one-stop DTC independent site incubation services and achieve comprehensive channel layout.

Liang Cuiping believes that from the launch of Google’s cross-border e-commerce acceleration program to the establishment of Google’s Cross-border E-commerce Acceleration Center (Xiamen), it is an important link for Google to help cross-border e-commerce grow, that is, to integrate resources. From the past focus on the solutions that Google itself can provide, to now integrating all key links within the ecosystem on this basis, it helps companies quickly solve various troubles when building independent sites, making each link better and easier to carry out independent site business.

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