This Wenzhou OEM factory has shocked all its peers. Can foreign trade OEM really build a brand like this?

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In the current sluggish global economic environment, foreign trade has become one of the few remaining drivers of domestic economic growth. Among many enterprises, there is a consensus: "Without international expansion, we are out of   game."

In recent years, although the total sales of B2B foreign trade have maintained a growth trend, the profit margin has been declining.

This phenomenon arises because overseas wholesalers have gradually come to understand the Chinese market, making price the core of the entire business relationship. This, to some extent   limits the long-term development of B2B businesses.

Under these circumstances, YesWelder   which mainly produces welding machines and has a strong B2B background, found a breakthrough in the C2C market . After nearly 5 years of development, the brand's GMV exceeded 500 million in 2022, almost doubling compared to 2021.

I. B2B to B2C Platform E-commerce

"Even if an OEM generates 50 million in revenue in a year, the final profit margin is less than 5%. After deducting costs such as labor and factory, the remaining money is not enough to share with the shareholders."

Zhu Chengfeng, a Wenzhou businessman who has been engaged in traditional foreign trade OEM for more than ten years, is determined to change the current situation of his company. He hopes that his products can have a greater say in the market and obtain more substantial profits.

Zhu Chengfeng's team happened to see a few people selling welding products on e-commerce platforms with considerable profit margins, so they resolutely decided to create the YesWelder brand. They tried e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, eBay, and AliExpress. After more than half a year of operation, YesWelder gradually gained its first batch of users;

At that time, Amazon was massively banning domestic stores, which made them realize that relying solely on e-commerce platforms as a single revenue stream was risky. "You can't put all your eggs in one basket."

In addition, most consumers on e-commerce platforms only value the quality and low price of products and find it difficult to develop a deeper sense of identification with the YesWelder brand.

In other words, selling goods on a platform has significant limitations in building brand influence and dissemination effects. 

Based on the above considerations, founder Zhu Chengfeng decisively decided to build a brand website and carry out brand operations — to try to create a brand with high consumer recognition and loyalty by directly facing consumers and through content marketing and other methods .

II. YesWelder Brand Positioning : "The essence of business is products and target audience. We need to update customer feedback in a timely manner and try to meet customer needs in terms of product functionality and quality."

"We also need to pay more attention to the purchasing needs of our audience, as well as who they are, what they do, and what they want."

Based on over a decade of meticulous observation accumulated from traveling the world, the YesWelder founding team discovered a gap in the highly competitive North American welding machine industry: "In the United States, people often wear welding helmets and hold welding torches at home, welding window frames amidst sparks, or DIY welding crafts in their garages. Because hiring workers is expensive, it is more cost-effective for ordinary families to handle welding work themselves."

This extremely common demand has long been overlooked by the few welding giants that dominate the market, but for startups, it represents a niche market with considerable potential and strategic depth for differentiated competition .

For YesWelder, the key to this "differentiation" lies in recognizing the potential of the "household consumer goods" logic when local giants are still selling welding tools using the logic of "industrial products".

Therefore, YesWelder sets its product prices at one-fifth of those of traditional big brands such as Lincoln, Miller and ESAB ;

Importantly, YesWelder positions itself as a "family consumer product," which immediately opens up a vast new market for YesWelder.

Taking YesWelder's best-selling product, the "FIRSTESS MP200 5-in-1 Welder & Cutter" (hereinafter referred to as "MP200"), as an example, its innovation logic closely follows this positioning.
For an average household user, dealing with metal components during home repairs requires not only welding but also cutting.

At that time, the mainstream brands in the North American welding machine market were mostly models specializing in a single function. If a household did not need to weld frequently, the machine would be used once or twice and then gather dust. For home users, purchasing several relatively inexpensive welding and cutting machines for occasional welding was simply not cost-effective.

Another issue is that welding has a certain technical threshold. For beginners, the overly professional and complex operating system is difficult to learn and inconvenient to operate at home.

To address the aforementioned user pain points, the MP200 has undergone two key improvements:

Firstly, it integrates multiple functions such as welding and cutting into one machine, allowing for seamless switching between functions. Secondly, it simplifies the welding machine into a "foolproof machine," automating the parameters and operating steps of several important functions and "packaging and integrating" them into a "one-click solution," allowing novices to quickly learn and operate it.

In the welding machine sector, YesWelder's innovations primarily focus on convenience and ease of use. Meanwhile, its welding helmets showcase a highly personalized approach.  

In fact, YesWelder's "first shot" in the North American market was its highly stylized welding cap products.

The decals for this product were designed by several American tattoo artists and make extensive use of American artistic symbols.

Designing personal protective equipment like "trendy toys" is an unconventional approach that made this series stand out from the sea of ​​monotonous welding helmets, becoming YesWelder's first blockbuster product.  

The "three-pronged approach" of convenience, simplicity, and personalization has gradually transformed welding tools from professional equipment that exudes an aura of "keep away, strangers away" into "household consumer goods."

III. YesWelder brand website content marketing

"YesWelder's goal is simply to provide ordinary people with a household essential tool, it's that simple... Because people recognize and choose YesWelder, we focus more on telling the stories of ordinary people to resonate with them."

YesWelder positions itself as a "family consumer product," so its target customers are naturally a large number of ordinary people—what kind of content can it use to impress its target customers?

Zhu Chengwei, the founder in charge of brand operations, checked the social media fan base of the leading welding machine brand one by one. He eventually came to the conclusion that welders have a strong desire to express themselves and are eager to have a platform to share their welding stories. 

Based on this conclusion, a section called "WhyWeWeld" was created on the YesWelder official website.

At the same time, YesWelder also invited professional writers to listen to the stories of different welders and, through repackaging, introduced the welders' fascinating work and lives to the outside world.  

【WhyWeWeld】revolutionized people's perception of welders. Each protagonist in the event not only demonstrated passion for life and a unique understanding of the value of their work, but also exhibited remarkable creativity.  

For example, a female welder named Thea Ulrich mentioned that the circus was the reason she chose this profession, because she wanted to be able to weld the tools needed for trapeze performances herself.

Here, she welds children's dreams. This story has attracted more and more welders to join YesWelder's business website.

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In this era of "universal international expansion," if enterprises aspire to carve out a broader market and secure greater "survival space" amidst fierce global competition—

Chinese brands must have their own B2B export website, serving as the endpoint for all traffic and the carrier of all brand strategies;

The importance of a foreign trade brand website that conforms to Google's best practices for business websites is self-evident.

A foreign trade website built according to the detailed standards of foreign thinking and conforming to Google's best practices for business websites is the foundation of all the above.

Epilogue: Little Creator Has Something to Say

YesWelder   primarily sets up two lines for the B-end: supermarkets and distributors. These two lines are mainly leveraged by YesWelder's recognition and brand awareness among consumers.

YesWelder has not given up on its B2B plans.

" Even now, once you reach a certain level, you still need to go back to B2B, because welding products can't be sustained by purely doing e-commerce. They require after-sales service, a technical system, customer experience, and various local support. "

Previously, B2B foreign trade involved selling goods directly to distributors who would then sell the products. However, YesWelder   is doing the opposite. They first bypass the middlemen (B-end) and increase YesWelder's brand recognition among consumers in the North American market before letting the C-end influence B-end customers.

For example, once a YesWelder customer has already purchased a welding helmet or welding machine from Amazon, they may go to supermarkets such as Walmart or Home Depot to inquire about the availability of YesWelder products.

When 10 or 100 people ask, the opportunity for YesWelder to connect with supermarkets, distributors, and brands begins to emerge.

Real and valuable business experience is often this simple and unpretentious, without sophisticated marketing tricks full of industry jargon, just simple business logic.