Most versions of the story of “OEM going overseas” go like this: There was a factory owner who suddenly realized one day, registered an Amazon account, uploaded the factory’s goods, and then… nothing happened.
But a company called Sitang in Keqiao, Shaoxing, has taken a different path.
Entered Amazon in 2015. In 2020, its brand NICETOWN topped the sales list in the curtain category, with 350,000 five-star reviews, and it has firmly held the top spot in the category until now.
After reading this result, many people’s first reaction is: strong supply chain, low price, and fake orders.
But these three guesses were all in the wrong direction.
1. Sitang should not be blamed for the “price war”
When many sellers see “Keqiao Curtains No. 1”, the first picture in their minds is: polyester cloth, costing a few yuan, sells to Americans for twenty or thirty dollars, and the gross profit margin crushes everything.
But this logic can’t explain one thing: the factories in Keqiao that make curtains go overseas have as many as eight hundred if they don’t have one thousand, so why is it that Sitang is the one who gets the job?
Cheapness is never a moat, it is the starting point.
The real action of Si Tang occurs at the product level.
The core selling point of NICETOWN’s hot-selling products on Amazon is “100% light-blocking” plus “three layers of heat insulation and noise reduction.”
This is not a slap in the face, but a demand dug out from negative reviews.
North American users’ anxiety about sleep quality and sensitivity to energy bills have been translated into specific product parameters, which fall on the weight of the fabric and the black coating of the lining.
Most foundries can’t do this step, not because they don’t have enough technology, but because they don’t have anyone to read users’ negative reviews.
2. When OEMs go overseas, where will they die?
Die on the word “transformation”
Sitang’s predecessor was Shaoxing Yongsheng Chemical Fiber. It was established in 1999 and started as a foreign trade OEM of polyester filament.
We started cross-border e-commerce in 2015, by which time the company had been operating for 16 years.
How difficult is it for a factory with 16 years of OEM genes to turn into a brand seller?
I have seen too many companies of the same type stuck in the middle, and eventually turned into a monster: they were reluctant to cut off the stable cash flow of the OEM business, but they also thought about the high gross profit of the brand, and ended up failing at both ends.
Si Tang did not make this mistake.
Its path is: first use intelligent transformation to stabilize the factory’s cost advantage. In 2013, it introduced ERP and international spinning equipment to solidify the efficiency of the production end; and then use the saved costs and energy to focus on branding and operations.
This order is very critical.
The logic of many bosses is the opposite: develop the brand first, but as a result, the factory efficiency does not keep up, the product quality is unstable, and when negative reviews come, all the early investment is wasted.
Save the life of the factory first, and then talk about the dream of the brand. This is the correct way for manufacturing companies to go overseas.
3. Behind the 350,000 five-star reviews, there is a secret that sellers dare not tell
First, the logic of the SKU matrix is not “distribution of goods”, but “scene coverage”.
NICETOWN’s product line on Amazon goes far beyond just “blackout curtains.”
Bedroom blackout, living room semi-transparent, bathroom small window, kitchen curtain, children’s room, office, door curtain… Every home scene has a corresponding SKU running.
The materials range from ordinary polyester, imitation linen, to natural thick linen, and the price range ranges from entry-level models at $15 to high-gram weight models above $50.
The sizes are extremely thin, ranging from 34 inches to 62 inches in width, and from 63 inches to 108 inches in length. When combined, NICETOWN can produce hundreds of differentiated listings in a “blackout curtain” category.
What is the essence of this style of play?
Use scenarios to cut traffic, and use size combinations to capture long-tail keywords, so that competitors cannot find gaps in any segmented demand.
The idea of ordinary sellers to be the first in the category is to “make the hot products bigger”, while NICETOWN’s idea is to “make the category full”.
The two strategies have completely different moat widths.
Second, OEKO-TEX certification, this card is not used by most Chinese sellers.
Looking through the product details of NICETOWN, many core products carry the OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100 certification, which is one of the most authoritative third-party certifications in the field of textile chemical safety. Middle-class consumers in Europe and the United States have a high level of awareness of this mark.
Many Chinese sellers do cross-border business and have no problem with product quality, but they never do certification because certification has costs and cycles.
The result is that your product may be better, but at the same price, consumers will give priority to competing products with certification marks.
Sitang played this card in advance and locked in the demand for the concept of “healthy home” among mid-to-high-end home users in North America.
This is not luck, but a judgment of the direction of consumption upgrades in advance.
Third, the operational logic behind the “Amazon’s Choice” label.
Many NICETOWN products have obtained the Amazon’s Choice label. The acquisition logic of this label includes: rating, conversion rate, delivery speed, and return rate.
Pay attention to the last metric, return rate.
There was a piece of data in the search results that impressed me: the Amazon brand page labeled NICETOWN as “low return rate, customers usually keep the brand’s products.”
This is something that many sellers who rely on “exquisite main images” to attract traffic and “high return rates” to consume profits will never learn.
Fourth, spend a lot of money to give “green labels” to basically all products.
There is another more intuitive signal. Looking through the entire NICETOWN store, almost every product has Amazon’s small green label hanging in the lower left corner of the thumbnail – Climate Pledge Friendly.
This green label is not posted casually. Sellers are required to obtain at least one third-party sustainable certification recognized by Amazon. OEKO-TEX is only one of the ways.
Being able to cover almost all product lines with green labels shows that Sitang is making a certification layout consciously and systematically, rather than a certain hot model passing the test occasionally.
What is the value of this matter?
When North American consumers search on Amazon, they can directly use “Climate Pledge Friendly” as a filter to filter the results.
In other words, the green label itself is a traffic entrance. Products without a green label will disappear directly under this filtering dimension.
The deeper logic is: European and American ESG regulatory pressures are tightening every year, and retail buyers’ requirements for supply chain sustainability are also increasing.
Today’s green label may be a hard threshold for entering the European market tomorrow.
Si Tang now has this qualification system in place and is buying the tickets in advance.
Most domestic sellers don’t do this, not because they don’t know, but because they find it troublesome and costly.
But once troublesome things are made standard by leading players, the threshold for latecomers will be raised directly.
There is another detail: NICETOWN PRO series.
Around 2024, NICETOWN will begin to launch the PRO sub-line, which focuses on pleating technology and farmhouse linen blending. The average price is 30% to 50% higher than the basic model.
This is a signal for the brand to move towards high-end, and it is also a move for it to get rid of the label of “high cost performance” and move towards “brand premium”.
From polyester blackout curtains to natural linen PRO series, every time the average product price increases by US$10, the logic of brand valuation changes.
Si Tang was walking on this road.
On the Amazon platform, NICETOWN has accumulated more than 350,000 five-star reviews.
Many sellers were silent for two seconds after seeing this number.
It’s not because I’m shocked, but because I feel a little guilty: I know how many reviews of my store are left by real users.
The platform’s crackdown on counterfeit knives is getting faster year by year, but many sellers are still betting on the odds.
Sitang’s evaluation volume is based on nearly 10 years of accumulation. This accumulation itself is a moat. It is almost impossible for any latecomer to equal it within 3 years.
There is a very cruel reality here: Amazon’s category competition has long passed the stage where “everyone has a chance.”
In the category of curtains, NICETOWN has taken over the keyword “blackout curtains”.
If you come in now, you can either find a more detailed vertical scenario (such as anti-scratch for pets, anti-UV for children), or start a price war and then die on cash flow.
There is no third way.
But please note that what I said here is “the curtain category is already very popular”, not that “there is no chance for soft furnishings”.
Si Tang’s own next step has already told you the answer.
4. What are they betting on for the 2 billion industrial base?
In 2021, Sitang announced an investment of 2 billion yuan to build the “Sitang Fashion Soft Decoration Industry Base”.
The first phase of the 55-acre smart park will produce home soft furnishings such as curtains; the second phase will be the women’s clothing industry chain.
Many people see the word “women’s clothing” and think it means diversified expansion and risk diversification.
No, this is copying the methodology.
Siltang has verified a strategy for curtains: using Keqiao’s textile supply chain advantages, superimposing cross-border e-commerce channels, and relying on product research and development rather than price to occupy the first position in the category.
What women’s clothing needs to do is to run this set of things again.
This is why they talk about “F2C global sales”, Factory to Consumer, which cuts out all the intermediate links between the factory and the consumer.
The essence of this matter is not “factories making brands”, but “whoever controls the supply chain is qualified to collect taxes from middlemen.”
What does it mean to you to understand this sentence?
This means that if you are still thinking purely about platform operations and relying on product selection and operation to make a living, then your competitors will sooner or later be players with factories.
They are cheaper than you, faster than you, and more stable than you.
What are your strengths?
If you have a factory, this article should be read by your factory boss.
5. In a company of 600 people, there is one thing that is rarely discussed in the seller circle
Sitang has more than 600 employees and has built its own “step training mechanism” and a “Sitang Qinzhi” education fund.
Few people talk about this in the cross-border circle. Everyone prefers to talk about product selection, advertising strategies, and listing optimization.
But I want to say: Talent density is the real moat for cross-border e-commerce companies, not the brand or the supply chain.
Supply chains can cooperate and brands can acquire, but where can you buy an operations team that can read negative reviews from North American users, translate demands into product specifications, and manage Amazon advertising?
After Sitang became the first in its category, it chose to invest money in people and production equipment instead of marketing.
This decision is in the minority among sellers.
Most of the big sellers invest in advertising when they make money, because the ROI of advertising is immediately visible, while the ROI of talent training can only be seen after 3 years.
Is your accounting period calculated quarterly or annually?
This question determines how long your company will survive.
Finally, let me tell you something that will allow you to transfer to Moments: Siltang Technology told the entire industry one thing, but no one said it loudly: Amazon is not a channel, but a money detector.
What it tests is not your operational capabilities, but whether there is real demand for your product.
Good operation is just the ticket. Whether the product has users who really need it is the final confidence in whether it can stay on the poker table.
350,000 five-star reviews prove this, and the 2 billion industrial base is betting on this.
Do you believe it or not?
