Selling to the world used to be cheap, but now the situation has changed.
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 changed its form, becoming more expensive, more complex, and more testing a company’s true system 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.
Entering 2026, the old certainties have been 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 two camps, and differentiation has already occurred.
This also makes the 2025 annual report season particularly worth reading.
We selected 12 representative cross-border e-commerce listed companies and tried to understand where these Chinese companies that sell goods to the world have gone under the multiple attacks of tariffs, exchange rates, and compliance costs.
The following are three core observations.
Globalization layout: North America is no longer the “default option”
The cross-border e-commerce industry has long assumed that globalization is equivalent to “selling to the United States.” Many companies’ strategic resource allocation and supply chain design use “North America first” as the underlying logic.
However, the North American market in 2025 will not be friendly to cross-border e-commerce. A diversified market pattern is accelerating, and regions such as Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America are showing continued growth.
The annual report of Zhiou Technology, a home-selling company, shows that its revenue in the United States and Canada in 2025 fell by 10.33% year-on-year to 2.588 billion yuan, and its gross profit margin was under pressure to 30.15%, a decrease of 1.68%, mainly due to fluctuations in tariffs and logistics costs.
In contrast, its European market contributed 5.718 billion yuan in revenue, a year-on-year increase of 16.03%, accounting for 65.7% of total revenue, and was 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.
The North American market revenue of Anker Innovation, a leading consumer electronics company, was 14.1 billion yuan, an increase of 19%, maintaining growth and still being the largest market; however, the European market revenue was 8.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 43%, and the growth rate far exceeded 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 Anker continues to invest in. Its first quarter report data shows that overseas revenue was 7.25 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 markets.
The impact on the performance of Superstar Technology, a manufacturing giant that started with hand tools, is even more obvious. In 2025, its operating income will be 14.666 billion yuan, 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.
The revenue share of 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 enter 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, which are close to North America.
Under the changing circumstances, a “China + N” global production capacity network that can be flexibly switched has become a moat for enterprises.
The watershed in branding: Some people pay premiums, while 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 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%. The huge size still maintained a growth of more than 20%.
Greenlink Technology achieved revenue of 9.491 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 53.83%, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 705 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 52.42%. Intelligent storage products have become the core growth engine.
Shadowstone 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, an increase of 15%, and a net profit of 283 million yuan, an 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, has operating revenue of 4.66 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 40.15%, and net profit of 269 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 78.55%. The women’s shoe brand Coutgo and the casual women’s clothing brand Tankaneo both exceeded 400 million yuan, and the high-end brand RQ’s revenue was close to 100 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 1.9 times, driving an increase in the proportion of high-margin products.
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 the scale of inventory plummeted from 1.819 billion yuan at the end of 2024 to 956 million yuan, a decrease of 47.44%.
In the fourth quarter, net profit attributable to parent companies surged 668% quarter-on-quarter, and 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 “scratching the bones and treating 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.
For example, demand forecasting systems based on large models can significantly shorten the trial and error cycle of new products; AI-driven dynamic warehousing and logistics solution optimization can help reduce overseas fulfillment costs.
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 all aspects of product selection, AI drawing, customs clearance, quality inspection, and after-sales. E-commerce copy generation has improved efficiency 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 furniture series revenue growth of 11.65% to 4.687 billion yuan.
Huakai Yibai said that the company uses the “Easy to Intelligent Everything” large model as the core to realize the implementation of AI Agent in six core scenarios such as product selection, logistics, customer service, and publishing. The visual content generation efficiency has increased by 95%, logistics manpower has been saved by more than 375 hours/month, and product selection efficiency has increased by 80%.
Shadowstone Innovation also mentioned in its financial report that by introducing AI Agents in various aspects such as R&D, marketing, and supply chain, 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.
