Johannesburg, South Africa's economic, political, cultural center, the famous city of gold. In the most prosperous area of the city, more than a dozen flagship stores of internationally renowned enterprises such as Hyundai and Mercedes-Benz, as well as a number of furniture stores and small stores, together to build a vibrant South African business circle. One month ago, as a member of the business circle, an exhibition hall specializing in Foshan pan-household products started promotional activities, and under the promotional techniques of singing and dancing that Africans love, the passenger flow pushed up to a small peak.
Like this into the specific business areas or procurement centers of Foshan pan-home brand product exhibition hall, there are already 7 in the world. The two most recent are South Africa and Tanzania, which opened in Africa in December last year.
70 Foshan brands landed in Africa
Not long ago, Lu Mou, vice president of Boda Group, received a message from the African branch: Foshan Pan-household brand products African Exhibition and Experience Hall (including South Africa Pavilion and Tanzania Pavilion), which was invested and guided by Foshan Municipal Bureau of Commerce and built and operated by Boda Group, assisted Foshan enterprises in trading more than 30 million yuan of export business in the past three months.
In early December 2018, Foshan opened pan-household brand product exhibition halls in Tanzania and South Africa, Africa. This is the first time for a public overseas exhibition platform led by the Foshan government and jointly established by a joint enterprise to land in Africa. About 70 Foshan pan-home brands have used this platform to enter the African market,
The exhibition hall carrying these 70 brands is located in the most prosperous and convenient street in the cities of South Africa and Tanzania.
Located in Dar es Salaam, the economic center of Tanzania, the exhibition hall is the largest self-owned exhibition hall in the region, with an area of about 1,700 square meters and a logistics distribution center of nearly 6,000 square meters. Near the South African Exhibition Hall with an area of 1900 square meters, a large logistics distribution center is located in a spacious duty-free warehouse and storage center. The two pavilions are expanded on the basis of the original brand exhibition hall of Boda Group, so there is a certain basis for attracting passenger traffic.
"The exhibition hall is located near the transportation hub, the Tanzania pavilion is only 3.2 km from the port, and less than 5 km from KARIAKO, the largest commodity distribution center in East Africa; The South African Pavilion is located in the heart of the country's wholesalers' central sourcing area for building materials, just an 8-minute drive from the country's largest international airport." Lu Moudu said.
After occupying the location that is most conducive to gathering merchants and logistics, the exhibition hall has not relaxed its standards in interior design and decoration.
According to reports, the exhibition hall is operated by the Canton Fair exhibition hall design team personally, the target is B&Q, actually home and other top domestic home stores, each booth is built in the form of brand exhibition hall to enhance the brand image of Foshan manufacturing, such a specification of "hypermarket", in many small and medium-sized retail stores and stores in Africa has been rare.
The scene of an African employee on the booth introducing Foshan ceramics and small household appliances to local merchants reveals more profound meaning. In Africa, Boda Group employs thousands of local employees, through door-to-door promotion, regular visits to buyers, to achieve the exhibition hall exhibits precision marketing; Some promotions aimed at African cultural practices have also driven up visitor traffic. "Connecting Africans with Africans will help open up the African market made in Foshan." Lu Moudu said.
Not only to open up the market, behind the creation of the exhibition hall, many fresh attempts are reaping new dividends.
On the one hand, the centralized supply chain goes to sea to bring new cost advantages for Foshan manufacturing to go out. "Take logistics as an example. Boda Group is a strategic partner with Maersk and China Cosco," says Mr Lu. "We integrate multiple companies to declare logistics on a larger scale, so the cost of shipping is much lower than exporting by sea."
On the other hand, in addition to display sales, the exhibition hall is also exploring more new functions. Boda Group plans to cooperate with financial institutions such as CITIC Insurance to launch window financing services in Africa. Foshan enterprises can obtain a guarantee after shipping to the exhibition hall, which can be financed by the bank, and the difficulty of approval and procedures are greatly reduced. This is a new test of foreign trade financing, the current program has been in trial, "for enterprises, especially small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises are of great benefit."
Africa's future in the Home
It is not easy for overseas stores to succeed. What kind of strength should the operator have, and does the pan-home exhibition hall have market prospects in Africa? The answer may be found in the exploration and thinking of the Boda Group, the operator of the two African pavilions.
Starting from Tanzania, after gaining a firm foothold in the local area, the operation management department expanded to the country, which gave Boda Group a stronger international character compared with other early foreign trade enterprises.
As one of the earliest pioneers in the African market, Boda has been rooted in Africa for 20 years, and has not only achieved the first market share of Tanzania ceramics, but also invested in the construction of the largest ceramic production line in East Africa. At the same time, its investment in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique and other countries to build a number of hardware factories, diapers, etc., is making it a representative of the deep gold mining African market.
in October 2018, the RAND Corporation, a world-renowned comprehensive strategic research institution, released a research report entitled "At the Dawn of Belt and Road, China in the Developing World" (" At the Dawn of Belt and Road "). China and the Developing World, discussing the importance of key countries within each region to China's strategic development. The second most important region for China is Africa.
It is a continent of both opportunity and risk. The entrepreneurs who landed in Africa in the early stage were mostly interested in the profit space contained in the vast market blank.
Deloitte's report has analyzed that Africa will become the second largest market for the consumer goods industry in the future. "Africa's level of economic development is equivalent to that of China in the 1990s, the people have the greatest demand for consumer goods to meet the basic needs of food, clothing, housing and transportation, and the local market is almost empty," Lu Moudu said that pan home exactly fits this demand, coupled with the continuous growth of Africa's population and the development rate of 6%, so compared with other industries, pan home industry in Africa development space is particularly large.
In his view, the pan-home industry in most parts of Africa is still in a "mass" mode, mainly pursuing functional use. "But the market is not static, a minority of African audiences have begun to become brand sensitive, and there are already budding brand models in some places." Companies should also be sensitive to this."
Boda Group started its advance layout three years ago. At that time, the company launched more independent brands in Africa, and built a number of product exhibition halls. With the emergence of the consumption upgrading trend belonging to the African market, the exhibition hall that has laid the foundation for offline display transactions has also put the e-commerce plan for online transactions on the agenda.
"There is a certain misconception about Africa that Internet access in Africa is limited, which is not the case. Africans have a higher acceptance of social networks, "says Lu, who still remembers a tweet he posted promoting the exhibition hall that received tens of thousands of likes, most of them from African users, giving him a new understanding of African Internet users.
And Nigeria and a few other African countries even have a certain e-commerce network purchase foundation, "of course, the logistics network, and some infrastructure construction is still Africa's short board, e-commerce model in the long run is suitable for the African market, but at this stage still need to be practical and carefully planned."
The rise of a new model of going to sea
In fact, such as the South African pavilion, Tanzania pavilion such as Foshan Pan home exhibition hall, there are already 7 in the world, including Iran, Hungary, Australia, Malaysia, the United States and so on. Why do these pavilions target the pan-home industry? What can this new form of sailing bring to Foshan?
As a large manufacturing city of Foshan, building materials, home appliances, furniture, etc., are its advantage products, the pan-household industry formed by these subdivided industries has not only achieved the reputation of "there is a home made in Foshan", but also become a leading industry with a huge volume. At the seventh plenary meeting of the 12th Committee of the Communist Party of Foshan this year, Foshan proposed to strive to cultivate two more than one trillion advanced manufacturing industry clusters by 2020, one of which is the pan-home industry.
Trillion-scale industry needs a higher order of market. In order to enhance the international market share of the pan-home industry, as early as 2016, Foshan formulated the "Foshan Pan-home brand products Overseas Exhibition Hall Construction three-year action Plan", and proposed to build 10 overseas Foshan pan-home brand products overseas exhibition experience hall by the end of 2019.
"The exhibition hall through the guidance of the government, enterprises operate independently, promote the eagle brand, Wave whale and other Foshan pan household brand enterprises to actively explore the international market, so that overseas customers can intuitively feel the scene, experience Foshan manufacturing, so as to promote cooperation." Foshan City Bureau of Commerce foreign trade department director of the section, Yuan Yongxin said.
In fact, in the field of Foshan pan-household industry, it is not uncommon for enterprises to explore the sea in the form of investment and technical cooperation. In 2016, Mona Lisa Ceramics built a production base in Italy, and let the Italian high-end brand enterprises with 48 years of history produce products for its brand, in order to further open the international market; Also in Italy is Genitalo, which also works with Italian designers on product development, and in February this year signed a contract in Malaysia to launch a second overseas production site.
The start-up operation of the pan-home overseas exhibition hall is different from that of these individual enterprises. It represents the rapid rise of platformization and echelon output. Behind this model is the combination of the government's guidance, service function and the industry's coordinating force. What it brings is the re-engineering of the whole "going out" ecology of Buddhist enterprises.
In this process, the government plays an important role. Taking the European Pavilion as an example, the basic services enjoyed by enterprises in the exhibition hall depend on the memorandum of cooperation signed between the Foshan government and the Sino-European Trade and Logistics Cooperation Park. Under this cooperation framework, after the actual order is generated, Buddhas can use value-added services such as logistics, overseas warehouse, payment, finance and after-sales service provided by the Sino-European Trade Logistics Cooperation Park Co., Ltd. according to their own needs, and take advantage of the smooth distribution network system covering major cities in Europe and China initially built by the park.
Such platforms are still springing up in Foshan, such as Zhongtao Alliance, also led by the government. The platform takes "ceramic industry + Internet" as the main operating model, bringing together a large number of Foshan ceramic enterprises. Through the establishment of the "Belt and Road" information center, financial service platform, to provide the corresponding big data and financial services, Zhongtao Alliance is also in the group to go to sea and enter the "Belt and Road" market.
Foshan as the center to radiate to the world:
How does Pan home exhibition Hall break into different national circles
In order to clarify the positioning of the overseas exhibition hall and give full play to the efficacy of the exhibition hall, Foshan carried out the layout from the top design as early as 2016. In the layout, according to the "Foshan pan-home brand products Overseas Exhibition Hall Construction three-year action Plan", in accordance with the standards of having a certain trade and investment foundation with Foshan, good business environment, strong regional radiation influence, and large market potential, the important nodes along the "Belt and Road" and Foshan key trade and investment target countries are selected to lay out Foshan pan-home brand products overseas exhibition and experience hall.
From a regional perspective, the exhibition center in Foshan radiates to the world, aiming at the surrounding countries, such as Malaysia, and covering non-traditional markets with great potential such as Iran, as well as developed economies such as the United States and Australia, as well as emerging economies such as South Africa.
Another feature of the exhibition hall is the cooperation between government and enterprise. On the one hand, with leading enterprises as the core, set up Foshan pan-home brand products overseas exhibition experience museum enterprise alliance; On the other hand, give full play to the government's power to gather high-quality resources and build a support network of Foshan pan-home brand products overseas exhibition experience museum.
In this layout, combined with the local conditions, each overseas exhibition hall also has its own characteristics.
At the end of September 2016, the first Foshan pan-household brand products overseas exhibition and experience museum was launched in Tehran, the capital of Iran. A major goal of the museum is to maximize the advantages of seamless docking between domestic manufacturers and foreign buyers. In the exhibition hall, overseas buyers can directly communicate with domestic factories by scanning the product QR code; The exhibition hall also developed an APP to provide Chinese and English translation services, and collected big data of products to feed back to Foshan manufacturers.
In 2017, Foshan entered Hungary to establish the first European pan-household brand product exhibition and experience museum. The museum has enjoyed the benefits of China-Eu cooperation. After the actual order is generated, the stationed enterprises can use the value-added services such as logistics, overseas warehouse, payment, finance and after-sales service provided by the China-Eu Business Logistics Cooperation Park Co., Ltd. and the local distribution network system to effectively reduce the international operation cost and risk cost for Chinese enterprises.
The Australian Pavilion, which also opened in 2017, was built by the Foshan Municipal government in cooperation with Lesso Group, relying on the group's Global Home Australia project. The exhibition and experience museum has a construction area of about 30,000 square meters, and the total booth area is about 7,000 square meters, which is the largest single-floor exhibition center of building materials and other household products in Sydney at that time. Famous enterprises such as Midea, Wanhe and Jinitao are exhibiting in the experience hall.
Offline, the Australian Pavilion provides business consulting services, docking with overseas buyers and industry associations, and direct marketing promotion and other supporting services for Buddhist enterprises. Online, the pavilion uses the cross-border e-commerce platform of Lingshang Global Home to set up a special area of "Foshan Pan-household brand products" to provide online global promotion and supporting services for Buddhist enterprises.
