HANGZHOU, China, March 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Different from the habit of the past 5 years, the company of Helen just completed the first round of procurement for the spring/summer 2022 at FondMart, through the Internet for the first time.
Helen is the founder and design director of an American brand company, which was founded in 2017. In the past five years, like most American brands, she mainly organized her products by cooperating with suppliers in Los Angeles. In the summer of 2021, she accidentally saw a website called FondMart. Compared with the local market, FondMart's purchase price was almost half and its product richness was 100 times,then she decided to try to purchase through the Internet.
In 2021, the American clothing market is about $330 billion a year. In addition to WalMart, Nike and other international giants, most fashion brands, such as Fashionnova and Lulus, organize their supply through local procurement. There are a large number of import suppliers to serve local fashion brands, gathered in Los Angeles market in the United States, Surry Hills market in Australia and Rome market in Italy. The local procurement market in the United States alone exceeds 150 billion US dollars.
Now FondMart, a company from China, is starting to serve these fashion brands. FondMart and Simplee belong to the same group company. Before FondMart went online, the brands of the group company sold more than 20 million pieces of clothing annually, and cooperated with more than 1,000 in-stock suppliers and 3,500 designers in China, and established offices in 7 major producing cities in China.. In the two years after FondMart went online, FondMart linked more than 5,000 in-stock suppliers and 15,000 designers.
FondMart is the largest Fashion Buyer Agent in the world. In 2020, according to official website, FondMart served more than 51,000 brands and more than 200,000 buyers. More than 2.3 million transactions were completed through FondMart platform, including more than 460,000 orders for wholesale and more than 1.9 million orders for dropshipping.
There are 1688.com with Chinese suppliers serving Chinese buyers, Fashiongo.net with American suppliers serving American buyers, alibaba.com with Chinese suppliers serving foreign importers, but there is no website with Chinese suppliers serving American buyers. In such a huge market, why didn't such a website get established? How did FondMart come into being?
Digitalization: Establishing the Experience of Offline Purchasing
Clothing purchasing is a process with low standardization and full of uncertain factors.
It is not difficult to set up a platform to put the products of in-stock suppliers in China. What is difficult is how buyers choose suppliers that meet their style, size, quality, delivery time and reputation requirements. Different from Sourcing, buyers have a large number of styles to purchase every day, and they have to deal with various suppliers. It is necessary to ensure the efficiency and accuracy of selecting suppliers.
"Even if the advantages of international procurement are so obvious, clothing buyers are still more accustomed to purchasing locally. The important reason is that local procurement will be very efficient in selecting suppliers, and the quality, style and reputation of suppliers can be quickly learned by visiting exhibitions or booth in one afternoon," Thomas, CEO of FondMart, said in an interview in 2020. "Let buyers select suppliers like offline", which means the platform is expected to build the standardized and visualized analysis for suppliers and products.
Taking quality control as an example, FondMart dynamically adjusts the quality rating of suppliers through four aspects: sample inspection, field investigation, bulk inspection and customer feedback. With a 60-day cycle, FondMart will update the quality of suppliers in one round.
"We divide the quality into four levels," said Mars, quality director of FondMart. "In order to let customers know the quality of suppliers better and more directly, we will display physical photos of suppliers' products on the website to facilitate customers to know our standards."
Different customers have different requirements, and how to be compatible with the purchasing needs of different customers is a problem that must be faced as a platform.
In terms of style, FondMart will judge the style of each product by means of computer vision technology + manual assistance, so as to help customers find their own products and suppliers faster and more accurately.
Thanks to the experience of the group company in the clothing industry, FondMart can establish a set of "multi-dimensional evaluation system of suppliers and products" in two years, thus forming the growth of two core competencies: scale effect and network effect.
Participate in the entire process of transaction, instead of selling advertisements to earn commissions
Whether it is alibaba.com or Fashiongo, most platforms do not participate in the entire process of transaction and promise to be responsible for after-sales personally. They all build a platform, connect processes, increase transaction efficiency, and benefit from selling advertisements or trading commission.
Looking at the user interface alone, FondMart and Fashiongo are not very different. They all have product pictures, product prices, product parameters and even product recommendations, although the level of detail varies.
The difference is that Fashiongo only provides a trading platform, and can't do more things to check suppliers and products for buyers. Fashiongo earns money from settlement fees, listing fees, and commissions from transactions.
At present, FondMart allows suppliers to settle in free of charge. It is involved in the entire transaction process, including listing, display, procurement, quality inspection, delivery and after-sales, and earns income through services, and promises with buyers that the wrong products will be borne by FondMart.
Thomas said that FondMart also considered the possibility of being a trading platform at the beginning of the discussion. The buyer's shopping experience on the trading platform cannot be guaranteed, which is the reason why FondMart gave up this idea. Because the reliability of different suppliers is different, international transactions have been criticized for the fact that suppliers are easy to upload pictures of wrong products and set artificially low prices to attract buyers.
FondMart takes after-sales risk by personally participating in the whole process of the transaction, which means that it has the motivation to strictly examine suppliers and the products they provide. The commission model pays more attention to the number of suppliers, the number of products released by suppliers, and the promotion of transactions, thus reducing the motivation to control transaction risks.
FondMart is the first platform in the industry to carry out all quality inspection on suppliers' products and make after-sales commitments to buyers. FondMart will settle claims as long as there is any issue on product size, product quality or delivery, reported by the buyer. FondMart will also re-examine all aspects of the transaction, and adjust suppliers' ratings, etc.
"It's not easy to get every customer, and we try to make every customer satisfied," said Elson, FondMart's customer director.
Keep the original working mode of the buyer and ensure the working efficiency
While purchasing clothing at the booth, the buyer's working way is to select the products he likes from the products displayed by suppliers. However, the strength of Chinese suppliers lies in the cost performance of production, price and quality, and they are not good at grasping the demand of US fashion buyers, which is also an important reason for the lack of websites for Chinese suppliers to serve American buyers.
FondMart's merchandise team can keep buyers working the same way and be very efficient. Relying on 5,000 + suppliers and 15,000 designers, FondMart has 200,000 + products and more than 500 new products updated every day. Thanks to the powerful data analysis team, all suppliers and products are digitized, which can help different buyers find the best matching suppliers and products more efficiently. FondMart's merchandise team recommends products one-on-one for the corresponding brand buyers, with 200 products every half month.
"Through our recommendation, the work efficiency of buyers has been greatly improved, and high-quality products with both brand pertinence and supply advantage have been obtained from thousands of products from suppliers," said Michael, merchandise director of FondMart. "This helps buyers to achieve better performance and increase the brand's sales."
76% of brands have grown after cooperating with FondMart, and 35% of them have grown by more than 100% in 2021, which far exceeds the market average. One of our successful customers, an American brand, has achieved sales of US $50,000 per month in four years. After cooperating with FondMart in 2020, its sales increased from US $50,000 to US $330,000 per month, its staff increased from 3 to 14, and its product quantity increased from 500 to 2,000 products. In 2021, the brand still maintained a monthly growth rate of more than 10%, and was one of FondMart's fastest growing customers.
Redefining the fast fashion supply chain
Another important reason why buyers are used to local purchasing is getting the selected products quickly, which is also a very important factor in the fashion field.
Thomas has his own opinion on this point. "In fact, the products obtained from the importer are the ones ordered by the importer from China 3 months ago, which is not really a quick response to the market. The real speed is that after the hot spots come out, FondMart will quickly list the latest products on the website and recommend them to the buyers as soon as possible. And delivery to brand stores within 3 business days by air, the entire process from hot spot to receipt of products can be completed within 15 days at the fastest. "
"You've got the products that your competitors want in the first place" Thomas added.
With the establishment of global logistics network for decades and the construction of China's ultra-fast response supply chain in recent ten years, how to use this new infrastructure to gain greater competitive advantage for their own business is a problem that frontier buyers are rethinking.
FondMart updates more than 500 products every day, which is still under the condition that it strictly controls new suppliers to settle in. FondMart cooperates with more than 40 logistics providers around the world, covering postal parcels, line logistics, commercial express delivery and shipping, covering 220 countries and regions around the world.
"To the United States, for example, We have the richest routes and logistic suppliers. There are routes at various prices, and we have selected 1-2 suppliers for each type. The fastest commercial express DHL can be delivered in 3 business days." Allen, logistics director of FondMart, said.
"No buyer can refuse the website that gets the hottest products at the first time." Zara is popular all over the world through fast supply chain, Shein has caught up with a faster supply chain, and FondMart is using a commercial way to make this supply chain serve more brands.
At the same time, FondMart is also testing a 45-day global door-to-door delivery Sourcing service, that is to say, it takes only 45 days to place orders, arrange production and ship products to the United States, which depends on the 10-year supply chain precipitation of the group company. Compared with the Sourcing ordering cycle of more than 90 days in the local market, the speed has been significantly improved.
International procurement is becoming a trend now
Internet, logistics network, payment network, ultra-fast supply chain... Undoubtedly, with the superposition of these factors, international procurement is becoming a trend.
The appearance of FondMart provides another choice for brand buyers, who can only purchase locally before. Through a platform like FondMart, they can purchase directly from global suppliers, which has stronger price advantage and richer product choice. Meanwhile, there are many problems waiting to be solved.
About FondMart
FondMart is the largest Fashion Buyer Agent in the world, serving more than 51,000 brands and more than 200,000 buyers annually. Cooperating with 5,000 suppliers and 15,000 designers, FondMart is the best platform for women clothing wholesale and dropshipping business.
Contact Us:
+1 5714890103
sales@fondmart.com
https://fondmart.com/
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