Throughout 2025, the global trading system has experienced a round of repricing.
Changes in U.S. tariffs on China, the end of the tax-free era for small-value packages, many Southeast Asian countries tightening tax incentives, and compliance requirements for platforms and markets have made admission tickets more expensive.
Globalization has not disappeared, it has just taken on a different form—it has become more expensive, more complex, and more demanding of a company’s true systemic capabilities.
Cross-border e-commerce is an important part of this change.
According to data from the General Administration of Customs of China, my country’s cross-border e-commerce imports and exports will be approximately 2.75 trillion yuan in 2025, an increase of 69.7% over 2020, becoming an important engine for foreign trade growth.
As we enter 2026, the old certainties are broken and a new equilibrium has not yet been formed.
Some companies are experiencing declining profits, while some are growing against the trend; some are clearing inventories, and some are expanding overseas warehouses; some are cutting prices to survive, and some are increasing their efforts in AI and brand building.
Brand power, supply chain depth, and technological investment are dividing industry players into different camps, and differentiation has already occurred.
This also makes the 2025 annual report season particularly worth reading.
I selected 12 representative cross-border e-commerce listed companies, read through their 2025 annual reports, and tried to understand one thing: Under the multiple attacks of tariffs, exchange rates, and compliance costs, where have these Chinese companies that sell goods around the world gone?
Who is swimming naked, and who is actually wearing armor?
Globalization layout: North America is no longer the “default option”
The cross-border e-commerce industry has a long-term default premise: globalization is roughly equivalent to “selling to the United States.”
Many companies’ strategic resource allocation, supply chain design, and even team building are based on “North America first” as the underlying logic.
But the North American market in 2025 will not be friendly to cross-border e-commerce.
The pressure is not a problem for one company, but is being endured by the entire industry.
The diversified market structure is accelerating to form, with Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and other regions showing continued growth.
The annual report of home furnishing seller Zhiou Technology shows that its revenue in the United States and Canada in 2025 dropped by 10.33% year-on-year to 2.588 billion yuan; its gross profit margin was under pressure to 30.15%, a decrease of 1.68%. It stated in the financial report that this was mainly due to fluctuations in tariffs and logistics costs.
In contrast, the European market contributed 5.718 billion yuan in revenue during the same period, a year-on-year increase of 16.03%, accounting for 65.7% of the total revenue, becoming the largest growth engine; Latin American revenue surged 410.16% year-on-year to 214 million yuan, becoming a significant highlight of the breakthrough in emerging markets.
Between contraction and expansion, the market distribution strategy has been changing.
Anker Innovation, a leading consumer electronics company, will have revenue in the North American market of 14.1 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 19%, still the largest market; however, the European market revenue will be 8.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 43%, and the growth rate will far exceed that of North America.
In its financial report, Anker emphasized its “differentiated operation strategy in major global markets” and “promoted the penetration of advantageous categories and encrypted channel network coverage in stages” for markets outside North America.
The domestic market is also one of the markets where Anker continues to invest.
Its 2026 first quarter report data shows that overseas revenue was 7.250 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.35%, accounting for 95.30% of total revenue; domestic market revenue was 357 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 40.08%, and the growth rate exceeded that of overseas.
Star Technology, a manufacturing giant that started with hand tools, will have operating income of 14.666 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year decrease of 0.87%, of which hand tool revenue is 9.519 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 5.46%. It has been significantly affected by the US tariff policy.
Its revenue share in the American market has also dropped from 63.44% in 2024 to 62.85%.
In terms of strategy, Superstar Technology actively expands channels for hand tools in non-U.S. regions to make up for its shortcomings.
At the same time, power tools have entered the European market for the first time. In 2025, power tool revenue will be 1.762 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 22.55%.
The same logic is also clearly reflected in the supply chain.
The global supply chain layout of each company is taking shape, and overseas production capacity is accelerating. Domestic outstanding manufacturing companies have strengthened their production capacity layout in Southeast Asia represented by Vietnam, Mexico and Eastern Europe near North America.
During the reporting period, Greatstar Technology accelerated the construction of manufacturing capacity in Southeast Asia, and the Phase III manufacturing base in Vietnam and the Phase II manufacturing base in Thailand have been put into use; Guangbo Co., Ltd. has built a manufacturing and sales network in Southeast Asia and Europe; Zibuyu has expanded production capacity in Vietnam, Myanmar, and Malaysia, with overseas production capacity accounting for more than 10%; Zhiou Technology also stated that by the end of 2025, 80% of the shipment demand in the U.S. market can be undertaken by Southeast Asian production capacity.
Under the changing situation, a “China + N” global production capacity network that can be flexibly switched has become a moat for enterprises.
Branding watershed: Some people charge a premium, others clear their stocks
Tariff impact is the “external stress test” of globalization, while brand transformation is an endogenous issue for cross-border e-commerce companies.
Market competition has shifted from pure price competition to comprehensive competition in product power, brand power, and service power. The market share of companies with independent research and development capabilities and brand building capabilities continues to expand, and the living space of the white-label distribution model continues to shrink.
The 2025 annual report shows that the performance differentiation between brand sellers and distribution sellers has become increasingly obvious.
On the brand side, consumer electronics performed extremely well. Anker Innovation’s revenue in 2025 exceeded the 30 billion yuan mark, a year-on-year increase of 23.49%; the net profit attributable to the parent company was 2.545 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.37%.
Lvlian Technology achieved revenue of 9.491 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 53.83%; net profit attributable to the parent company was 705 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 52.42%. Intelligent storage products have become the core growth engine.
Yingshi Innovation achieved revenue of 9.741 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 74.76%. The global market share of panoramic cameras and thumb cameras reached 66% and 57% respectively; the net profit attributable to the parent company was 929 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.62%, mainly due to its strategic investment of “emphasis on R&D and strong marketing”.
Continuing to the first quarter of 2026, the revenue of these three companies will continue to maintain high growth, with year-on-year increases of 27%, 53%, and 83% respectively.
In the clothing category, Saiwei Times, which started brand transformation earlier, will have revenue of 11.817 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 15%; net profit is 283 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.17%. A total of 12 brands have annual sales of more than 100 million yuan.
Zibuyu, which began to shrink its product line and establish a brand department in 2024, will have operating income of 4.66 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 40.15%; net profit is 269 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 78.55%.
Companies with real brand recognition are more confident in facing external policy changes, because consumers are willing to pay for brand premiums; they do not need to rely entirely on platform traffic, because independent websites and private domain operations bring higher repurchase rates.
In contrast, distribution-type sellers are prone to limitations in the face of greater changes in the external environment.
Huakai Yibai is a representative company in the distribution model, and it is also one that is undergoing transformation.
Its 2025 annual report shows that the pan-product business is still a big market, with about 1.04 million SKUs on sale, the unit price per customer is only 113 yuan, and the annual revenue is 6.364 billion yuan.
The boutique business is a different picture – there are only 6,385 SKUs on sale, the unit price per customer is 305 yuan, and the annual revenue is 2.044 billion yuan, but it increased by 49.96% year-on-year.
In the year of transformation in 2025, Huakai Yibai has been clearing inventory.
The annual report shows that its inventory size plummeted from 1.819 billion yuan at the end of 2024 to 956 million yuan, a decrease of 47.44%.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, its net profit attributable to its parent company surged 668% quarter-on-quarter, and its net operating cash flow reached 972 million yuan, a record high.
The clearing of inventory and the surge in cash flow indicate that Huakai Yibai is “scraping the bones and healing the poison” – clearing out unsalable inventory through concentrated promotions to free up resource space for high-quality business.
Entering the first quarter of 2026, dividends began to be realized. The company’s net profit attributable to the parent company was 71.5433 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 574%; the gross profit margin reached 35.85%, a year-on-year increase of more than 4 percentage points.
AI is no longer a “icing on the cake” technology story
Looking through the annual reports of various companies, AI has almost become a “standard keyword”, and AIGC and AI Agent technology will be implemented on a large scale in 2025.
In addition to traditional customer service or image and text generation, AI technology is also deeply embedded in core decision-making links such as product selection, pricing, inventory, and marketing, and brings real efficiency improvements.
Savy Times stated in its annual report that the company uses AIGC to generate marketing materials, and the intelligent marketing system realizes full-link advertising hosting, accelerating the pace of global new launches, and supporting cross-border e-commerce business sales growth of 31.98% year-on-year.
Zhiou Technology mentioned in its annual report that the company has built the “Zhiou Lingchuang” AI platform, which has implemented more than 80 intelligent agents, covering the entire process of product selection, AI drawing, customs clearance, quality inspection, and after-sales. The efficiency of e-commerce copywriting generation has increased by more than 70%, AIGC2.0 has reduced labor costs, AI quality inspection accuracy has significantly improved, and R&D expenses have dropped by 13.73% year-on-year, which still supports the furniture series revenue to grow by 11.65% to 4.687 billion yuan.
Shadow Stone Innovation also mentioned in the financial report that by introducing AI Agents in R&D, marketing, supply chain and other aspects, it promotes the organization’s upgrade from “human-driven” to “human-machine collaboration”.
In the first quarter of 2026, 43% of the company’s code will be generated by AI; in 2025, more than 50% of online customer service volume will be undertaken by AI, saving the company more than 10 million yuan.
It can be seen that AI is changing the human resources structure and profit structure, and is also further accelerating the “Matthew Effect” in the cross-border e-commerce industry. Leading companies are expanding AI investment to obtain higher operational efficiency and profit margins.
Of course, consumer electronics companies with strong technological attributes will also focus their AI investment on the product side.
Anker Innovation’s layout in the AI field in 2025 is reflected in technologies such as artificial intelligence energy management systems, local intelligent security housekeepers, and home cleaning agents. These technologies are the source of its product premiums.
Anker’s non-net profit in the first quarter of 2026 was 547 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.39%. The continuous investment in R&D projects is continuing to be transformed into differentiated competitiveness on the product side.
In the product introduction of Shadow Stone Innovation, “AI” has also become a word with high penetration rate, such as AI chip, AI image processing, AI intelligent editing, etc.
It mentioned in the financial report that artificial intelligence is accelerating the reconstruction of the development model of the industry and redefining the concept of intelligent imaging. The application of AI has gradually expanded from traditional single-point optimization to complete system links such as independent composition decision-making, content generation and automatic editing.
Shadowstone Innovation’s R&D investment in 2025 will reach 1.53 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of nearly 100%, exceeding the total of the previous three years.
Taken together, the role of AI in the cross-border e-commerce industry is no longer just a technical story, but a core infrastructure for cost control and operational efficiency.
At the same time, it is also driving technological upgrading of the entire industry, with lower operating costs and lighter organizations.
Behind the supply chain, brand, and AI, the three things are actually the same thing: from “opportunity-driven growth” to “capability-driven growth.”
The impact of tariffs will pass, brand investment takes time, and technological compounding does not happen overnight.
But companies that can keep doing the right thing through the storm are getting a ticket to the future.
