脉链集团董事长徐伟强：用“平台+公共品牌”整合供应链，让产业生态共同体走向全球

This article summarizes new strategies for industrial product cross-border expansion, shared by Mailian Group Chairman Xu Weiqiang at the Global Cross-Border E-Commerce Summit. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Niche Selection: Avoid the red ocean of consumer goods in saturated Western markets, and instead target the industrial product sector in countries along the Belt and Road (BRI). These markets have underdeveloped local product offerings, brands, distribution channels and e-commerce infrastructure, making them blue ocean markets where new entrants can easily gain an advantage via higher-tier capabilities, with far greater opportunities than mature markets.

2. Core Model: Instead of following the consumer goods cross-border e-commerce "hit product + traffic" logic, this approach adopts the industrial internet "trust + service" path. It uses a "platform + public brand" framework to integrate upstream and downstream resources, and leverages AI to eliminate language and professional barriers in cross-border collaboration, reducing cooperation costs.

3. Implementation Keys: Instead of going it alone, stakeholders should unite manufacturers, local distributors and service platforms to form an industrial ecological community. Trust is rebuilt through transparent profit distribution, and cultural adaptation is prioritized to match the market characteristics of different regions.

This article outlines clear direction and actionable strategies for brand owners looking to expand their industrial products overseas, covering brand building and channel development. Key insights are as follows:

1. Overseas Expansion Trends: Brand and channel saturation and intense competition have made mature European and American markets unappealing, while BRI countries still have massive unmet demand for industrial services. Future growth opportunities are concentrated in distributor channels in tier 3 and 4下沉 markets across BRI regions.

2. Brand Building Strategy: Overseas expansion should not simply replicate consumer goods logic. Brands need to embed themselves locally to deliver end-to-end industrial services, with the core goal of controlling branding, channels and quality standards in-house. Instead of only profiting from manufacturing and retail, brands can capture value from midstream service links.

3. Ecosystem-Based Operations: Open up your resources via the "platform + public brand" model to empower upstream and downstream partners to co-develop the market. AI eliminates collaboration barriers, and a restructured profit distribution mechanism solves the pain point that a single enterprise cannot cover service needs across multiple regions. This creates a symbiotic industrial ecosystem that improves efficiency and avoids homogeneous competition.

This article identifies new growth opportunities for cross-border sellers and outlines actionable strategies for model innovation and risk mitigation. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Opportunity Alert: The current consumer goods market in Europe and America is highly competitive, with high investment costs and risks. By contrast, the industrial product sector in BRI countries has massive gaps in branding services, local inventory, payment terms and after-sales systems. Entering this market allows sellers to gain a competitive advantage via higher-tier capabilities and access large profit margins. True incremental growth lies in local tier 3 and 4下沉 markets, which offer far more room for development than top-tier cities.

2. Model Innovation Reference: Abandon the traffic logic of consumer goods cross-border e-commerce, and instead adopt the F2W (factory-to-distributor) industrial service model, building competitiveness through trust and service. Sellers can join an established industrial ecological community to reduce heavy upfront investment in channels, branding and risk control.

3. Risk Alert and Mitigation: BRI countries vary widely in standards and culture, and face risks such as exchange rate volatility. Businesses need to rely on local teams for on-the-ground service, use AI to improve collaboration efficiency, solve trust issues through digitally transparent profit distribution, and split partner roles by capability to leverage reasonable incentive mechanisms that boost team performance.

This article provides clear direction for Chinese manufacturing factories pursuing overseas transformation and growth. Key insights are as follows:

1. Business Opportunities: Cutthroat competition in pure manufacturing has steadily eroded profit margins, and expanding overseas into industrial services is a promising new growth path. Leveraging China's well-established deep supply chain advantages to enter the industrial product market in Belt and Road (BRI) countries allows factories to capture substantial profits from midstream service links, with broad room for long-term growth.

2. Transformation and Cooperation Path: Factories do not need to independently solve complex challenges such as regulatory compliance, channel development, after-sales service and risk control across dozens of countries. They can join the "platform + public brand" industrial ecological community, focus on core product manufacturing, and still share in the returns from global expansion. The platform also addresses trust and payment collection challenges to reduce overall cross-border risk.

3. Product Upgrading Insights: All existing products can be redesigned and intelligently upgraded with AI. Similar to the growth dividend created by mechatronics integration in previous eras, AI has opened up a new era of upgrading dividends. Capturing this opportunity allows factories to build differentiated competitiveness and escape cutthroat homogeneous competition. Adopting digital tools and AI also eliminates cross-border collaboration barriers and improves overall operational efficiency.

This article outlines industry trends, core pain points and actionable solutions for the industrial product cross-border expansion service sector. Key insights are as follows:

1. Industry Development Trends: Industrial product global expansion has progressed through three stages: OEM, third-party agency, and pure e-commerce. It is now entering a fourth, entirely new track: end-to-end industrial services. The core incremental market lies in BRI countries, where four types of market players—global leading brands, Chinese brands, local brands, and e-commerce native brands—are all seeking growth breakthroughs. Demand for professional industrial services is extremely strong, and the market remains far from saturated.

2. Core Customer Pain Points: Manufacturing factories expanding overseas lack localization channels and on-the-ground service capabilities, and single firms can hardly address varying regulatory requirements, risk control needs and cultural differences across multiple markets. Overseas distributors lack stable brand supply, inventory support, flexible payment terms and standardized after-sales systems. Traditional producer services face the core dual pain point of weak profitability and persistent bad debt.

3. Reference for Mature Solutions: Integrate upstream and downstream resources from both ends via the "platform + public brand" model, leverage AI and digitalization to improve collaboration efficiency, remove language and professional barriers, rebuild trust through a transparent restructured profit distribution mechanism, and unite manufacturing factories and local channels to form an ecological community that covers end-to-end service demand and solves long-standing industry pain points.

This article provides model references and operational direction for platform operators engaged in industrial cross-border expansion. Key insights are as follows:

1. Market Demand: The industrial product cross-border expansion sector urgently needs platforms that can integrate Chinese supply chains with overseas local channels and deliver end-to-end industrial services, to solve pain points including limited regional coverage for single firms, insufficient trust and low efficiency. There is a massive untapped market gap for this type of platform.

2. Platform Implementation: Adopt a two-end integration implementation path: On one end, partner with leading enterprises in Chinese industrial belts, organize production capacity to integrate supply chains, attract more factories to join the service transformation, and gradually scale the platform. On the other end, partner with leading local channels in overseas markets, open up channels to expand into tier 3 and 4下沉 markets, and build out localization capabilities for branding, inventory, after-sales and other services.

3. Operation and Management Priorities: Leverage AI and digitalization to enable real-time transparent profit distribution, and solve trust issues between upstream, downstream and internal stakeholders. Adopt differentiated incentive mechanisms for cross-border talent, split partner roles into operation, platform, resources, finance and other functions, and use high returns to motivate staff and solve talent gaps.

4. Risk Mitigation: Do not copy operational models from European and American markets or consumer e-commerce. Adapt to the characteristics of BRI markets, prioritize cultural integration across different regions, and resolve cultural conflicts through regular cross-border exchanges to avoid misalignment with local markets.

This article proposes a brand-new industrial model for cross-border expansion of Chinese industrial products, outlines new trends in industrial evolution, and offers high reference value for research on industrial internet globalization. Key content is as follows:

1. New Industrial Trends: China's industrial product cross-border expansion has gone through four stages: the OEM stage (1995–2005), the agency stage (2005–2015), and the e-commerce stage (2015–2025). It is now entering a fourth, entirely new stage: the industrial internet-driven F2W industrial service stage. The core battleground has shifted from European and American markets to BRI countries, and market expansion has shifted from top-tier cities to tier 3 and 4下沉 markets.

2. Innovative Business Model: This article introduces a new model distinct from consumer internet. While consumer internet relies on "hit product + traffic", this new model is built on "trust + service", with the core being "platform + public brand" to integrate upstream and downstream into an industrial ecological community. AI is leveraged to restructure distribution, shifting the model from traditional in-store transactions to warehouse-to-port end-to-end services, and reshaping the profit distribution mechanism of the global industrial chain.

3. New Research Agenda: A number of new issues require further in-depth research in the field of industrial cross-border expansion, including cross-geopolitical cultural integration, trust and profitability for small and medium-sized manufacturing factories undergoing service transformation, the scope of AI-driven efficiency improvement for industrial services, and risk control in BRI markets. These topics also open up new directions for industrial research.