Shopify just made it 10x easier for indie founders to sell in China
How: By partnering with JD.com, the "Amazon of China.
According to Shopify's official announcement, this should make it drastically easier for small, independent merchants to sell to Chinese consumers.
This integration will also shorten the approval time and allow merchants to start selling in China in 3-4 weeks, instead of 12 months.
Do you plan to sell to the Chinese market?
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The only issue is business in China is insanely competitive and often has tremendous pressures on prices. Plus anything selling well will be copied quickly and your IP has almost no protections (without using expensive lawyers). Regulations change quickly destroying billion dollar business models. Even the big global consumer companies get hammered here based on uneducated strategies. Do a lot of due diligence if you want to give it a try and don't say you weren't warned. FWIW, I've run a professional services business here for 5+ years.
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Shopify is so focused on growth, they keep surprising me.
I know a few eCommerce SaaS companies who made it into the Chinese market, It's not easy to adapt to it, but once you do the potential is crazy!
eCommerce SaaS companies? You got me a bit confused here, haha. Can you please explain?
Haha yeah, I mean SaaS products for the eCommerce industry.
Such as BuyWithMe.
I'm not surprised to see the enhanced focus on the e-commerce industry in China. It's massive. Shopify is also having a tough year in the stock market, down 24%, so I'm also not surprised to see them trying these types of partnerships to generate some investor interest in them again.
One thing to keep in mind is the Chinese market is notoriousily difficult for people to break into. Even with JD's help, I'm skeptical, but if I was in the e-commerce space I'd still think this is intriguing and potentially worth investigating.
Great analysis, Seth!
Sounds good in theory, but how good will it be in practice? China is filledwith bureaucracy.
JD.com seems really prepared on this front. They've raised tons of money and have a huge logistics force.
Interesting. They say they handle everything, including logistics (shipping to China) which is really significant. Even translating your product description into Chinese. Wonder how accurate these translations are?
They mention they will auto-translate the product. My guess is there'll be space for you to chime in and add your human translator as well.
Seems like the goal here to port as many Shopify merchants as possible to JD.