Dive Brief:

• At least 37% of Singles Day purchases in China were made from international brands or merchants, FedEx reported.
• Experts predict that cross-border shopping will grow to 20% of e-commerce sales by 2022, particularly in the Asia Pacific region, which handles both imports and exports.
• Services such as WeChat payment for Chinese customers and e-commerce self-collection services in Hong Kong have sprung up accordingly to serve international buyers and sellers.

Dive Insight:

International e-commerce sales are skyrocketing, but the process still poses logistics challenges.

Warehouse location or relocations, a reduced need for an intermediary site or seller and an increased reliance on unstable air cargo lines all factor in to the challenges facing cross-border ecommerce. 

In just over two years, cross-border e-commerce is expected to grow to $900 billion annually, an increase of $600 billion dollars since 2015. Yet, despite its astronomical increases, the process of international sales remains somewhat more complex than many shoppers realize. The need for precise shipping rate calculations depending on the countries of purchase and destination must be factored into the item's price, while the accuracy demanded of procurement departments in charge of reserving inventory for foreign buyers can easily throw a vendor's supply chain into chaos.

Though these and other matters are rapidly becoming familiar to those sellers and shippers immersed in the undertaking, international e-commerce remains an emerging market, albeit one experiencing warp-speed growth.