The gears of foreign trade professionals' destiny begin to turn...

20 months ago, ChatGPT emerged, triggering AI anxiety across industries, with all clamoring to reinvent themselves with AI. While grand narratives of multi-million dollar AI funding filled the air, Du Si, a post-90s girl working as an ordinary foreign trade staff in Yiwu, probably never expected to reap the benefits of the AI industry.

In March this year, Du Si opened an Alibaba.com store. Following her friend's advice, she needed to list 100 product links before officially launching the store to prepare for future orders. Based on workload, it would take about a month for one person to list 100 products.

However, she found that with the help of AI Business Assistant, she managed to list over 100 products in just a week. Combining AI-selected products, this entrepreneurial novice with almost no experience successfully launched her store. Following AI advice, she even leveraged the summer season to kickstart her Christmas business for the winter, ultimately achieving top 50 industry status within 60 days as a solo operator.

The key to Du Si's success in functioning as a team by herself is Alibaba.com's AI Business Assistant, launched in November last year. Based on Alibaba.com's AI application standard of 'not showing off, but solving practical problems,' the AI Business Assistant has become a valuable assistant for Chinese foreign trade businesses in 'efficient operation and quick order processing.'

At the press conference held in Paris, France on July 31st, this AI foreign trade product underwent another major upgrade: product listing time was reduced from 60 minutes to as little as 60 seconds, and even while asleep, 'someone' can respond to messages on your behalf... Functions like streamlined product listing and automated customer service are gradually lowering the barriers for Chinese businesses to engage in foreign trade.

As the industry benefits from AI, the gears of foreign trade professionals' destiny are quietly turning.

On one side are post-95s and post-00s, the native digital residents who, driven by their instinct to make money online, have become native AI foreign trade entrepreneurs. With minimal costs and personnel, they function as super individuals, each operating like a team, with AI serving as their entrepreneurial partner.

On the other side are traditional foreign trade professionals born between the 1960s and 1980s, who were once constrained by the challenges of online and digital transformation in their businesses. Now, they are leveraging AI to revitalize their multi-million or even billion-dollar foreign trade operations. With Alibaba.com's AI Business Assistant, over 30,000 SMEs have tasted the first wave of AI-era benefits, foreshadowing a rapid entry into a new era of 'AI for all' in foreign trade.

01 Entrepreneurial Partner, Native Cross-Border AI Companion

AI is not only transforming Du Si's foreign trade venture but also others like Li Jinyu, a post-95s 'digital native' who leveraged AI to drive a four-person startup team with zero foreign trade experience. Using AI, they achieved higher efficiency than larger teams, launching over 300 products and producing 600 videos and over 10,000 product images within a month.

Taking product listing as an example, Li calculated that manually listing a product takes 3-4 hours, while using the AI Business Assistant, it only takes 40 minutes, or even 20 minutes if no on-site shooting is required. This is the efficiency before the streamlined product listing feature was introduced. In the business world, being 1 minute faster can lead to more orders within that minute.

Simple efficiency gains are just the beginning. What truly makes the AI Business Assistant a valuable entrepreneurial partner is its strategic capabilities as a foreign trade analyst. In the case of a potential best-seller, Li used the AI Business Assistant to diagnose a small mop, which, despite increasing exposure and inquiries, had low sales.

The AI diagnosed that while the mop belonged to a blue ocean market, competition was fierce, and pricing was too high. Further analysis revealed similar products from competitors priced 0.1 USD lower, leading to significantly higher sales. Adjusting the pricing strategy, Li successfully launched his first best-seller. "This product helped us through our first difficult period. Before, we had to sift through vast data to find insights. Now, the AI Business Assistant gives me a starting point, which I can then verify and build upon."

Successfully implementing AI-guided strategies has given this young team, with an average age of just 25, the confidence to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. Relying on AI's differentiated approach, Li's team quickly tests and learns, landing their first order in 5 days, achieving their initial 3,000 USD goal in 20 days, and reaching industry average performance within 3 months, earning praise from peers for their unconventional approach.

For Li, "As a young person entering this field without experience, you don't have preconceived notions. You can better integrate AI capabilities into your business. Whether you're alone or in a team, you can start, because going global isn't as complicated as you might think. The key is to just start."

Young foreign trade professionals like Li Jiale, a post-00s entrepreneur who mastered 'lazy wellness' through the AI's 0-time-lag automated customer service feature, deeply understands the importance of this mindset.

In the past, due to time zone differences, foreign trade professionals often worked long hours. However, Li realized that endurance wasn't the answer. Different industries have different buyer activity times. Matching buyer activity with team efficiency is key to maximizing results.

As a college student entrepreneur, Li used to juggle classes in the morning, customer service in the afternoon, and late-night shifts.

But now, analyzing customer service data with AI, Li discovered that customers were most active from 10 to 11 AM China time, when the team wasn't yet working, leading to low response rates. Similarly, from 6 to 8 PM, when the team was preparing for their late shifts, response rates dropped again.

Following the AI Business Assistant's optimization suggestions, Li adjusted work hours, focusing manual customer service during the two most active customer hours during the day. For other times, the AI Business Assistant handled responses, improving conversion rates and avoiding the health risks of all-nighters.

For entrepreneurs, good health is the foundation of long-term business success. Data shows that with AI-assisted automated customer service, second response rates from overseas buyers increased by about 40%, demonstrating both efficiency gains and scientific 'laziness.' The AI Business Assistant has become a heartwarming entrepreneurial partner for this generation of native foreign trade professionals.

02 Defying Age, AI Empowers Every Generation Going Global

If post-90s foreign trade professionals, born into the digital era, are naturally attuned to technological benefits and AI-era trendsetters, then for traditional foreign trade professionals, AI industrialization addresses their lack of technological sensitivity during the online and digital transformation process.

In the past, many traditional foreign trade bosses knew that digital transformation was inevitable but struggled due to limited online operational capabilities or high learning costs for digital products, turning online transformation into a risky venture that could exhaust employees or lead to losses.

Xu Jingqian, a post-60s foreign trade professional, was once seen by his employees as a boss who wasted resources. As the boss of an old foreign trade machinery factory, Xu led a company-wide operational transformation. However, the results were disappointing: out of ten selected products, only about 10% tested successfully, and team members weren't focusing their efforts effectively.

'Having designers look at data annoyed them, and having salespeople constantly in meetings delayed top salespeople from closing deals,' employees complained, leaving Xu frustrated.

But the explosion of AI technology is rapidly transforming the foreign trade industry. When Alibaba.com's AI 'Business Assistant' launched on November 1st last year, Xu became one of the first to 'eat the AI crab.' After three months of use, Xu was deeply impressed by AI's capabilities.

He noted, 'Without AI, businesses would capsize. The AI Business Assistant broke the myth that old foreign trade ships are hard to steer. With AI, businesses can turn around. My new employees quickly mastered professional large machinery foreign trade with the AI Business Assistant. To use AI, we must defy age and embrace novelty.'

The Business Assistant provided keyword optimization suggestions for a screw compressor product, for example. By adjusting product details to better suit American buyer needs based on the AI's almost 'customized' recommendations, the inquiry conversion rate improved from 4.5% to 9.38%.

AI benefits extend beyond online transformation for traditional foreign trade professionals. Lv Hongwei, an experienced post-80s foreign trade professional, has leveraged China's industrial belt advantages to continuously explore new product categories and drive billion-dollar growth.

Sensitive to business opportunities and efficiency gains, Lv has already nurtured three Alibaba.com stores with annual sales exceeding 100 million USD, and is now expanding into a fourth category - 'prefabricated houses' or mobile homes.

But this fourth venture differs from the previous three. From opportunity identification to demand analysis, product listing to customer follow-up, AI is involved in every step.

In product listing, disagreements often arose over how and who should list products. Even experienced salespeople can fall into habitual thinking when titling products, which can significantly impact traffic.

But now, with the AI Business Assistant's streamlined product listing feature, simply uploading a product image or keyword generates all necessary listing information. In a test between salespeople and AI, the salespeople took 10-20 minutes to list a product, with no inquiries for a week, while AI took just two minutes and generated two inquiries on the same day.

Higher listing efficiency enriches product scenarios. In the past, while product types were abundant, efficiency constraints made online scenario presentation costly and inconvenient.

The AI Business Assistant generates outdoor mountain scene images for 'prefabricated houses.'

Selling 'prefabricated houses' requires attention to scenarios and performance. With the AI Business Assistant, products can appear in gardens, by the sea, with various scene images and videos quickly generated by inputting product selling points, significantly shortening the customer decision-making process.

'This time is different. With AI fully integrated, the growth rate of this new category has exceeded expectations,' Lv said, updating his timeline for this project's success. 'Previously, a new category took about three to four years to reach 100 million USD. Now, my goal is two years.'

03 The AI Bonus Era for Foreign Trade Professionals

Defying age and embracing novelty, the current wave of AI industrialization in the cross-border market is ushering in a universal technological bonus era for the entire industry.

On one side are entrepreneurial newcomers with zero experience, needing to quickly stabilize and grow their businesses to secure their first orders. On the other are seasoned foreign trade professionals with over a decade of experience looking to revitalize their multi-million dollar online platforms.

Newcomers lack startup capital, relying on low-cost trial and error and rapid iteration. Veterans struggle with the learning curve of online operations, with numerous digital tools posing a significant hurdle. But in the AI era, both have found their perfect match.

Covering entrepreneurs at different stages of going global, addressing pain points throughout the business lifecycle, and catering to the needs of foreign trade professionals of all ages and levels, the AI bonus era for all foreign trade professionals has begun. Each AI product upgrade presents an opportunity window for foreign trade professionals to reap these benefits.

For example, as one of the first to 'eat the AI crab,' Lv Hongwei's streamlined product listing speed may soon be outdated. After the July upgrade, product listing in the AI era can now take as little as 60 seconds, a drastic reduction from the previous 60 minutes. This 60-second listing era marks a new milestone in AI-driven efficiency.

Streamlining extends to 'image-to-product' generation, where uploading a product image or keywords prompts AI to generate product descriptions, introductions, videos, and scenario and white background images tailored for overseas markets. AI-optimized products have seen a 37% increase in overseas exposure and a 50% improvement in buyer conversion rates.

At this pace, much like when automobiles emerged, carriages mistakenly saw them as 'competitors,' unaware of the impending disruption. As economist Joseph Schumpeter's 'Creative Destruction' theory suggests, technological innovation disrupts existing economic structures, propelling economic progress.

The emergence of AI is just like the birth of cars in the past, which undoubtedly represents a highly disruptive upgrade to carriage technology. This "creative destruction" at the technological level has completely replaced carriages in the transportation industry. At present, disruptive upgrades are also taking place in the overseas business field. Every foreign trader who is still "riding on horseback" has also arrived at the time to obtain an "AI driving license".