With online cross-border sales from China to Russia growing dramatically over the past two years, DinoDirect, a major Chinese online retailer, has now announced the launch of “Osell,” a B2B offer targeting Russian e-merchants of all sizes – including thousands of individual entrepreneurs operating through small sites and social networks – as a first step toward global expansion.
To date Osell has involved some 8,000 Chinese manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers offering more than 800,000 products. The company plans its catalog to include no fewer than 50 million products by the end of this year.
The Chinese company says it has five warehouses of over 10,000 square meters. One of them is located at Urumchi, near the Chinese-Russian border, with automatic lines taking orders 24/7.
In an attempt to provide an all-in-one solution, Osell also offers IT support, product quality check, payment management, delivery services – including a dropshipping service for direct delivery to the end customer – and several branding options.
A special anti-fraud order filtering and checking service will “keep the fraud rate under 2% and the refund rate under 5%,” the company claims.
E-commerce for everyone
“All the merchant has to do is to provide a URL or logotype. This is how even individual entrepreneurs with little or no e-commerce experience can take advantage of the opportunities of Chinese sourcing without experiencing any problems related to sourcing or back-end,” said Osell Marketing Director Mingpu Su.
“While Russia’s production capacities in the field of consumer goods are widely known as the weak point of the country’s economy, its neighbor, China, has plenty of resources to manufacture these goods,” added Osell PR and Marketing Manager Catherine Zheng in an exchange with East-West Digital News. “This is why the trade volume between the two countries is growing so fast as their respective governments maintain a mutually friendly economic policy.”
East-West Digital News has estimated the total volume of online cross-border sales to Russia at up to $2 billion for 2012, almost doubling in a single year. China has become the most popular supplier country judging by the number of orders from Russian customers on eBay.com last year.
DinoDirect alone recorded $39 million sales to Russia in 2012, while AliExpress.com recorded 12 million visitors from Russia that same year, according to Seng.
Among other notable players in the China-to-Russia e-commerce business are cross-border operators Rutaobao.ru, Tao.ru and Optor.ru. These online services have developed over the past two years to help Russian e-shoppers navigate Chinese sites.
RUSSIAN E-COMMERCE AND CROSS BORDER SALES REPORTS – The total volume of Russian online retail reached $13 billion last year, up 27% from 2011, not including an approximate $2 billion for cross border sales. In partnership leading universities and consultancies, EWDN has published an in-depth research on this industry.
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