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"Let me show you the strength of the source factory. If you want styles and production capacity, here are 80 machines worth several million yuan..." In April this year, Xuelier (pseudonym) walked into a local clothing factory in Yiwu and filmed herself chatting with the boss, introducing the highlights and details of the factory, ranging from the factory's special after-sales service to the production line equipment.

This video is the third one that Xuelier has released on her own self-media matrix account as a factory exploration blogger. Soon, the video exceeded 100,000 hits on the entire network. Xuelier told the Southern Finance Omnimedia reporter that after the video was released, customers contacted their team one after another, hoping that Xuelier could help connect with the source factory. There were more than a dozen customers with demand ranging from 1,000 to 5,000 orders.

The so-called factory visit videos are similar to store visits and are usually produced by self-media creators. The content is a field visit to a factory or production line. In this process, factory visit bloggers often act as a bridge between the source factory and B-end customers, moving "Made in China" from behind the scenes to the front stage, and helping customers such as e-commerce platforms to find high-quality products. In fact, many associations are also incubating factory visit accounts to open up markets for source factories. In addition, some factories with spare capacity are also making such videos themselves to increase customer stickiness.

Huang Lixia, deputy secretary-general of the Guangdong Provincial Internet Business Association, told Southern Finance All-Media that the association began incubating factory visit accounts in 2021 to visit various source factories in Guangdong. "Although the development of cross-border e-commerce is inseparable from industrial belts, due to limited channels, it is difficult for outsiders to really go deep into industrial belts to understand the source factories." In Huang Lixia's view, with the changes in the foreign trade situation, factories now urgently need a full-channel layout. In order to allow more Chinese advantageous industrial belts to go overseas, not only offline industrial belt docking activities should be carried out, but also more online promotion channels should be expanded. To some extent, the rise of factory visit videos is a microcosm of companies trying every means to expand the market.

In the first half of the year, the total value of my country's import and export of goods was 21.17 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.1%. New trade formats represented by cross-border e-commerce are still an important new driving force. The scale of cross-border e-commerce imports and exports in Guangdong in the first half of the year was 427.34 billion yuan, continuing to rank first in the country; Zhejiang, another major foreign trade province, had cross-border e-commerce exports of 179.93 billion yuan in the first half of the year, an increase of 38.5%, driving the province's exports by 2.9 percentage points. Whether the overseas market demand is strong, companies are most aware of it. In this ecosystem, factory bloggers connect the factory and the market, and can keenly feel the "wings" of the market environment.

"Old foreign trade people" turn around

He Shimin calls herself an "old foreign trade person". She studied Spanish and has been attending the Canton Fair since college, working as a translator. Now she is a VIP of the Canton Fair. She recalled that 10 years ago, a large number of foreign merchants flocked to each Canton Fair, and the demand for translators was strong. "At that time, we were all holding signs at the door. The merchants asked a few simple questions, and if we thought it was OK, we could follow them into the venue to translate."

At that time, He Shimin described herself as "overwhelmed with translation orders alone". In 2016, one of her Mexican clients came to China five times within a year, each time for more than half a month. At that time, the client was responsible for a hotel project and needed to purchase bed sheets, carpets, elevators, toilets... Most of the products were imported from China, and sometimes he visited five factories a day.

Since 2020, the traditional foreign trade model has been affected by the epidemic, orders have begun to decline, and the demand for foreign trade services such as translation has plummeted. In addition, the vigorous development of new foreign trade formats all point to the urgency of foreign trade change. In Guangdong, the largest foreign trade province, the scale of cross-border e-commerce has jumped from 11.3 billion yuan in 2015 to 843.3 billion yuan in 2023, with an average annual growth rate of 71.4%, accounting for more than 10% of the province's total foreign trade and more than one-third of the country's cross-border e-commerce imports and exports.

"Old foreign trade people" realized that it was time to explore new markets. Last year, He Shimin joined a friend's company and changed from working alone to working as a team. The other two members of the company also realized the changes in the foreign trade ecology in recent years. Since 2022, they have posted foreign trade-related video content on overseas social media such as Tiktok, such as videos of helping customers inspect factories, videos of loading and shipping containers as a third-party service provider, and some popular science content, such as how to select goods and factories, etc.

The predecessor of factory visits is "factory inspections." According to He Shimin, after domestic factories have negotiated orders with foreign customers, if the customers want to verify the factory's qualifications and save time and money, they sometimes ask third-party agencies to help with factory inspections. In this process, they also post videos on overseas social media and look for some novel and interesting factories. The team quickly accumulated a large fan base overseas.

Factories have approached He Shimin's team one after another, paying them to visit their factories. Faced with the rise of e-commerce and changes in external demand, factories are trying various ways to expand sales.

Under the videos of a more well-known blogger, Yang Caiqiang, there are countless factories that invite him to visit their factories. In 2015, Yang Caiqiang started to trade home appliances in the Pearl River Delta, but in recent years, business has not been as good as before, and market feedback has been sluggish, so he decided to jump out and use his resources accumulated in the manufacturing industry to create related self-media content.

Since April last year, Yang Caiqiang has officially released factory visits, with the goal of visiting 1,000 factories in the Greater Bay Area. The reason for "locking" the Greater Bay Area is that it has a strong industrial foundation and abundant factory resources. In addition, the factory visit video itself is a means of publicity, hoping to increase exposure and promote cooperation with B-side customers. Therefore, selecting an area can be accurately pushed.

Last September, Yang Caiqiang released a video of a visit to a second-hand robot factory. The video was fast-paced and full of golden sentences. The discussion on the low prices in the second-hand industry was very eye-catching. For example, industrial robots that originally cost 400,000 or 500,000 yuan were sold at a discount of 10% after recycling. After the video was released on social media, it suddenly "exploded", with millions of hits, and a large number of companies in the comment section asked for the factory's contact information.

Yang Caiqiang visited many industrial manufacturing factories in the Greater Bay Area. In his opinion, industrial equipment companies such as industrial robots are currently attracting much attention. In China, the scale of industrial equipment is large and the potential for renewal is sufficient. With the release of a series of favorable policies such as the "Action Plan for Promoting Large-Scale Equipment Renewal and Consumer Goods Trade-in", a trillion-level market space may be opened. In Southeast Asia, the Middle East and other places, with the trend of industrial transfer in recent years, the demand for industrial equipment is strong.

But not every video can go viral. Factory visits are a relatively vertical and niche track, and they focus more on how to accurately connect factories with the market. Last year, Yang Caiqiang visited nearly 100 factories, which is still a long way from his goal of visiting 1,000 factories. Based on his experience with companies in recent years, companies that have expanded overseas business generally develop better than those that only focus on the domestic market.

"Foreign customers are not only concerned about price, but also product craftsmanship and quality. For factories, this is a relatively virtuous cycle. Factories with good quality may develop better." Yang Caiqiang told the Southern Finance and Economics Omnimedia reporter that many of the companies he has contacted have gradually turned to overseas markets since this year, while companies that were originally engaged in foreign trade are looking for growth in emerging markets.

Join hands with the industry to go overseas

Xuelier claims that she has seen countless “Three O’clock in the Morning in Yiwu”. “Since starting my business, I have been on the road and have no time to regret. I just want to get this done, and I rarely go to bed before 3 o’clock.”

In 2021, Xuelier resigned from her real estate company in Hangzhou and came to Yiwu, where she had always wanted to be. At that time, she had already reached management level and her annual income could reach one million yuan. However, in 2021, the real estate industry reached a turning point, and she had reached the age of 30, so she wanted to start her own business.

Yiwu, known as the "World Small Commodity Capital", has more than 2.1 million kinds of goods and trades with 233 countries and regions. With the vigorous development of e-commerce, "Made in Yiwu" has "touched the world" through cross-border e-commerce platforms. Last year, Yiwu achieved a cross-border e-commerce transaction volume of 121.16 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.8%. The total number of e-commerce entities is about 600,000, and more than one-third of e-commerce companies are conducting cross-border business.

In the past three years, Xuelier has personally contacted thousands of factories. From the information conveyed by the factories, the market operating environment is more difficult than before, and it is more difficult to make money and expand customers. In fact, labor-intensive products are the pillar industry of Yiwu. In the first half of this year, Yiwu's exports of labor-intensive products exceeded those of electromechanical products. However, as Xuelier said, these products do not have strong barriers, and there are more market choices, which lead to low-price competition.

There are also many companies that have done well. When interviewed by a reporter from Southern Finance and Economics, Xuelier had just visited a local makeup brush factory in Yiwu, which supplies products to the world's leading makeup brush brands. Xuelier chatted with the factory manager from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and summarized the characteristics of factories that can rise to prominence today: strong sense of purpose, continuous learning, and fighting spirit. Despite fierce competition in all walks of life, in Xuelier's view, the market still lacks "good products", but "the original channels have been dispersed, from trade city stalls to offline exhibitions to e-commerce platforms to short videos, etc., and factories need to expand channels as much as possible."

Factory visit videos are also a channel. Xuelier is currently focusing on in-depth cooperation with factories, so the factory visit series is free of charge. There are many factories in Yiwu, and sometimes she can visit two or three factories a day. Her early idea was to drive cooperation with factories through domestic social media platforms and target e-commerce B-end users in the fan base. In the future, she will continue to build overseas social media platforms as a showcase for "Made in China".

The purpose of the Guangdong Provincial Internet Business Association incubating its factory visit account is similar. Huang Lixia said that she continues to be optimistic about the booming development of cross-border e-commerce. Despite the fierce competition, there is still a trace to follow in the future. "For manufacturers, they need to have their own R&D capabilities and rapid response capabilities, as well as corresponding overseas qualifications and supply chain management capabilities. For example, the Xiyin platform has promoted the digital transformation of thousands of factories. Factories cooperate with cross-border e-commerce platforms and need to adapt to changes in the supply chain and have the ability to respond quickly to small orders."

In her opinion, the biggest problem facing enterprises going overseas is risk compliance. They need to improve their own compliance risk and prevention awareness. At the same time, the association is also working together to promote the improvement of factory compliance. In addition, we must pay attention to the different rules of cross-border platforms and adapt to the platform rules. While the growth of traditional European and American markets is slowing down, companies are also looking at emerging markets, but when approaching emerging markets, they need to plan ahead and do local research, etc.

Last year, the Opinions on Promoting the Stable Scale and Optimized Structure of Foreign Trade proposed to encourage local governments to combine their industrial and endowment advantages, innovate and build comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zones, and actively develop the "cross-border e-commerce + industrial belt" model, which is a policy-level support for "source factories" to go overseas. As an emerging promotion channel, although the data of factory visit videos is not stable at present, the traffic is not as hot as other tracks, and the conversion rate is difficult to estimate, but in the eyes of many bloggers, they have opened a hole to the outside world, hoping that the influence of Chinese products will gradually penetrate out.