Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
What is Fanno?
“Fanno is an e-commerce platform in the early stages of exploration, and it provides global users with cost-effective and comprehensive categories“, said the ByteDance representative.
Fanno has listed a number of categories including clothing, 3C products, fashion accessories, beauty products, children’s toys, pet products, home, outdoor, and fitness products, etc., with clothing as the main category. A variety of hot products on the entire platform have large discounts ranging from 40% to 60%, and the price of products is mostly between €1 and €16.
Fanno has slowly climbed up the ranks of the world’s most popular apps. It had an average rank of 240th among the most downloaded iOS apps on Saturday, across the five markets where it is available, according to market research firm App Annie. It also indicated that Fanno performed best in Britain and Italy, where the ByteDance product was ranked No 144 and 185, respectively, in the same period. (Source)
A current Fanno promotion has new users choose a discounted product that costs as little as £0.01 (US$0.013), receiving free shipping with no minimum order value and a discount coupon, according to information on the App Store. Free shipping is also offered for a user’s subsequent orders.
Which Countries Does Fanno Open to?
Fanno is currently mainly open to consumers in 5 European countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Britain. Because these major European countries are important sites for cross-border e-commerce, and are also important sites for Amazon and AliExpress in Europe.
Since Fanno is currently in the testing phase, Chinese sellers are allowed to settle in. But we learned from the ByteDance employees that in the future, Fanno may gradually open to European sellers.
What is TikTok Shopping?
Fastest growing brands worldwide in 2021
TikTok, ranked second among the fastest growing brands worldwide in 2021. It recorded 1 billion monthly active users in September, started testing online retail features in Indonesia and Britain earlier this year. In August, TikTok partnered with Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify that initially allowed users in the US and Britain to buy goods directly through the app. The TikTok Shopping feature was later expanded to other partners, including Square, Ecwid, and PrestaShop.
TikTok Shopping mainly promotes two modes: The first is TikTok Shop. The transaction is completed on TikTok. Sellers manage the stores in the seller center. TikTok will charge sellers who use this feature a 5% commission but provide Incentive policies such as commission-free.
The second mode is TikTok Storefront (cooperative store model), which is mainly for Shopify sellers in North America. You can synchronize products on the Shopify store to the TikTok store admin with one click, but the final transaction is completed on the Shopify platform.
The Reasons Why Fanno Took a Nosedive?
First of all, there are objective reasons. Fanno, unfortunately, experienced a time when the prices in Europe raise due to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. People’s willingness to shop online has decreased. What’s worse, while oil prices and freight rates have risen due to the wars, Shanghai was severely affected by the pandemic. The supply chain and logistics of Fanno have been Affected.
As for subjective reasons, Fanno mainly sells light, small, and cheap products. Sellers have little profit margins from products so they mainly rely on platform subsidies. But the subsidies are limited. Therefore, sellers can only reduce losses in other ways like refusing to honor discounts, canceling orders without authorization from the consumer, or persuading consumers to cancel orders for reasons of non-delivery or out-of-stock.
Fanno also has shortcomings in logistics, warehousing, payments, etc. The efficiency of delivery is getting worse and worse. It takes 3-5 weeks to deliver and the packages may lose.
Besides, the quality of the products on Fanno depends on different sellers. It’s hard for Fanno to control, leading to low overall customer satisfaction. When facing the complaints, Fanno’s handling of returns and refund applications was not ideal.
Fanno is facing multiple strong opponents, including Amazon, AliExpress, eBay, wish, and other major e-commerce platforms. However, it does not have a mature e-commerce service system and has no strong support in logistics, warehousing, payment, etc. From the current trend, perhaps shutting down Fanno in the future is the best solution for the ByteDance to avoid causing more losses.
For dropshipping business, what can we learn?
There are many people dropshipping on big e-commerce shopping platforms like Amazon and eBay, which have a huge traffic base. Dropshipping stores can quickly get exposure directly through the platforms. Besides, these platforms also provide subsidies and some protection policies for merchants.
Although there may be lots of limits and rules on large platforms, dropshippers can quickly start up their businesses with the help of the platforms, compared to building a store from zero with Shopify.
Fanno had support from the huge traffic of TikTok. It once had the potential to become a large emerging e-commerce platform like Amazon. And those who want to start their dropshipping businesses on large platforms must have been interested in Fanno and have expected Fanno could open the permissions for European merchants to settle in.
Unfortunately, Fanno is no longer possible. There may be other e-commerce platforms similar to Fanno emerging in the future. If so, how to judge whether a new e-commerce platform is suitable for your dropshipping business to settle in?
First, you have to figure out the traffic and audience of the platform. For example, Fanno has huge European traffic and performs best in Italy and Britain. It provides cost-effective comprehensive categories, and its audience is very suitable for most dropshipping businesses. But if you want to dropship high-end products or dropshipping to Brazil or the US, then such a platform is not for you.
Secondly, the platform policy is very important, especially the policy for dropshipping. For example, Amazon has a dedicated dropshipping policy and policy on the categories of products that are allowed to be sold. You need to read these policies carefully to ensure that you can run your business smoothly.
The sales and promotion plans, approval conditions, after-sales policies, subsidy and preferential policies, promotions, etc. are also worthy of attention, which are related to the cost, difficulty, and profit margin of starting your dropshipping store on the platform. And guaranteed profit margin is the key point.
To occupy the market as soon as possible in the exploring stage, the products on Fanno are all cheap and cost-effective. Although Chinese sellers on Fanno seized the early traffic dividends and obtained platform subsidies, the final profit margin was still pitifully low, which led to the dishonesty of sellers to consumers to a certain extent. The final results proved that Fanno was no longer possible or suitable for European merchants or even dropshippers to settle in.
If you are looking for a Chinese supplier suitable for Amazon dropshipping, you can try to upload your orders through SourcinBox and enjoy professional fulfillment services.
For merchants who are dropshipping using Shopify or some other store-building platforms, we also have three tips for you:
Carefully use low-price strategies
Low-price strategies are not suitable for all products and stages. Blindly relying on low prices to attract consumers not only squeezes your profit margins but also reduces consumers’ expected value of your products and your store will become cheap.
Therefore, please carefully consider the pricing of your products. The pricing can not be too lower than the market average price while being competitive. You can provide product discounts on the premise of ensuring sufficient profit margins.
Focus on customer shopping experience
Providing consumers with a high-quality shopping experience is one of the keys to enhancing core competitiveness. The shopping experience involves many aspects, including store display, promotion strategy, shipping timeliness, customer service, etc. You can learn about four ways to enhance the customer shopping experience in our article
Work with dropshipping suppliers with a complete supply chain
As a small business, dropshipping needs to rely on a third-party supply chain and logistics distribution system, that is, a third-party dropshipping supplier. Partnering with AliExpress is a great option, but for lower costs and better delivery and after-sales service, you can check out our list of the best dropshipping suppliers.
Final Words
Matters about Fanno, a hot topic that many people in the e-commerce field are discussing, is worth e-commerce merchants, including dropshippers thinking deeply about. The emergence of new platforms can bring new opportunities, but it will also bring huge challenges. Therefore, whether you choose a dropshipping platform or a supplier, you need to be sensible and weigh the pros and cons.
