There are buyers, sellers, and middlemen. According to the theory of "Internet thinking" that became popular later, this means the opportunity for platforms to appear. From the perspective of the industry structure, the pain point of foreign trade is not only a high degree of asymmetry with information, but also this asymmetry is transnational. Between a Chinese seller and an American buyer, in addition to information and language barriers, let alone transactions The various nodes, links and logistics involved in it. The earliest form of this kind of middleman platform is the Yellow Pages,
but it is not as advanced as the Internet, and it is really a physical Yellow Pages, that is, a magazine. The largest of them is also the one with the loudest name, which is called "Global Sources". This company, which began to appear as a Yellow Pages magazine in the 1970s, with years of accumulation, launched its own B2B trading website in 1995, which was job title email list the leading platform among Chinese sellers at that time. In 2000, Global Sources was listed in the United States. Many old foreign trade people recalled that their first job was more or less related to this company. 4D Long Article: Twenty Years of China's Cross-border E-commerce At that time, Global Sources, headquartered in Hong Kong, was a company with a strong overseas background, but it was not yet a true Chinese company. Obviously, smart Chinese people also see the business opportunities.
One of the earliest group of people has an English teacher who will become the most famous English teacher in China and even the world in the future. As we all know, as an English teacher who looked at the world in his early years, Mr. Ma's first pot of gold came from opening a translation company. What about translation? It is all kinds of foreign trade related information. Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai, where factories gathered, were also important foreign trade centers in the early years. To sell goods to foreigners, the first thing to solve is the language problem. As far as the author knows, although Mr. Ma is the most famous one, many of the cross-border sellers who made a fortune later were foreign language teachers of the year. Because foreign language teachers are the first group of people to come into contact with foreign cultures, and they are also relatively familiar with a certain country. Let me leave a question here to show that liberal arts students still have a lot to do.