During this time, the cross-border e-commerce platform Fanno has emerged from nowhere and has been a hot topic on the internet for a while. Some people have ventured to speculate that the next windfall of cross-border e-commerce has arrived; others have expressed doubts, saying that Fanno is just another Aliexpress. So at this point, for sellers, should they hurry up and get in Fanno, or should they wait and see for a while longer?
What is Fanno?
In November this year, Bytedance quietly launched this cross-border standalone e-commerce app and even found a “1 cent purchase” campaign to its new users during Black Friday, doing something big in a sultry way.
Fanno is currently open to five European markets, including the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, with beauty, watches, bags, headphones, glasses, clothing, toys, pets, fitness. Fanno focuses on a comprehensive shopping mall with high-cost performance in platform positioning. As of now, most of the products on the platform are priced between €1 and €16, with fewer products above €50, and strong discounts accompany some best-selling products. It is reported that some European consumers have already started buying products from Fanno, where users can buy watches, accessories, clothes, and other items for as little as £1, £3, or £5. However, the same sources revealed that these prices are the official subsidized prices and not the actual selling prices of the sellers.
Should sellers be in Fanno or out?
According to statistics, the number of downloads of Fanno for Android is around 70,000, with users from European countries; on the other hand, the number of downloads of the iOS version is around 3,000+, with users mainly in the U.K. Fanno is still in the testing stage. The number of users will not grow extremely fast shortly. But despite this, the launch of Fanno has sent shock waves through the cross-border community, with many experts and sellers expressing their optimism about it for several reasons：
The help from TikTok
There are informed sources who have provided three explanations for this project: one is based on TikTok’s traffic distribution, combined with the current trend of cross-border independent station explosion, to achieve a commercial breakthrough;
The second is to refer to the domestic Jitterbug to do the business logic of the closed-loop, first content and then e-commerce;
The third is to build its cross-border e-commerce platform, combined with suppliers to open up the chain to exporting. Throughout the byte overseas version of the e-commerce business, from the TikTok to TikTok Shop and TikTok Storefront, a closed-loop set to TikTok as the center of the flow for the radius, together constitute a unique TikTok e-commerce ecology.
The lousy performance of Amazon
Since this year, the Amazon platform policy has been tightened, and many sellers’ living space has been squeezed, but they have to continue to make a living on Amazon. Sellers have a hard time saying, so they are eager to have a new cross-border e-commerce platform to compete with Amazon, rather than let Amazon still be one and only.
With both internal and external affirmations, some people in the industry have expressed a positive attitude towards the future of Fanno.
Another voice from within industry
Some industry practitioners have said that there is still a question about whether Fanno will succeed.
Fanno is currently open to five countries: the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. At the same time, these five European countries are also prime areas for cross-border e-commerce distribution and are all important strategic points for Amazon and AliExpress in Europe. It must be said that in the past years, there are not a few companies that have made a breakthrough in technology. Aliexpress, Joybuy, VOVA, Wish all failed to achieve a share in the cross-border sector led by Amazon, and it is still unknown whether Fanno can achieve such a breakthrough.
Some people also think that a new platform is not necessarily the best opportunity; there are so many cross-border platforms at the moment that grabbing one is enough! No matter what kind of platform you choose, you should focus on your field, deepen your product operations, do well and grow more prominent on one platform first, and then consider multi-platform operations.
But there is no doubt that Fanno still has a long way to go before it can become a full-fledged export e-commerce platform.