Pinduoduo expands westward to lower shipping costs in the western regions.

Text by | Liu Sheng

01

"Blind Spots for Express Delivery"

On February 26, the lounge chair that Wei Yuxuan bought on Pinduoduo was shown as delivered. It took a total of 5 days from the time he placed the order. For the eastern regions with well - developed logistics, this efficiency is not high. However, for the western border region where Wei Yuxuan is located, this is already the "high - efficiency" of their online shopping over the years.

Just two years ago, Wei Yuxuan might have had to wait as long as 10 days for his online purchases. Of course, this was based on the premise that the merchants were willing to ship to the western region where he was located.

In 2017, Wei Yuxuan, a young man from Gansu, was admitted to a university in the west. At the same time, most of his high - school classmates scattered to the coastal eastern regions. Convenient online shopping changed the shopping habits of his classmates. They often shared their newly purchased shoes and clothes during conversations. When Wei Yuxuan saw something he liked, he also wanted to buy one. But when he opened the shopping app, he found that most merchants did not ship to his area. Even if they did, consumers had to pay an additional high shipping fee ranging from 15 to 30 yuan. Wei Yuxuan gave up. "The shoes only cost more than 100 yuan." His family was not well - off, and 30 yuan for shipping was too expensive for him.

During his college years, Wei Yuxuan mostly went shopping with his classmates in nearby stores or spent more time on the platform looking for local merchants. Relatively speaking, consumers in the western region developed the habit of online shopping later than others. Even when shopping online, they would first search for "Free shipping in XX region" to filter the results. Even so, they still had to confirm with customer service again before placing an order whether it was really free shipping. If there were merchants offering free shipping and high - quality products, Wei Yuxuan and his classmates would recommend and collect them from each other. After all, such online shopping resources were still rare at that time.

At that time, Zhang Pengfei's store was one of those that did not ship to western regions such as Tibet, even though Tianshui in Gansu where they were located also belonged to the west. Because the shipping fees were extremely high. In the west, whether it's receiving or sending, the express delivery fees are higher than in other regions.

Since 2018, Zhang Pengfei and his friends have been doing e - commerce in their hometown, Tianshui, Gansu. They mainly sell Huaniu apples, big cherries, and Gansu specialties such as Jiangshui (a kind of pickled vegetable soup) and Chinese prickly ash. So they first opened their store on Pinduoduo, which is friendly to agricultural products.

Guided by Pinduoduo's initiative to expand e - commerce to the west, Zhang Pengfei began to supply high - quality agricultural products such as Huaniu apples to remote regions like Gansu.

"A box of our apples weighs 10 catties. If we ship from Henan, the shipping fee for one box is only 5 yuan, but here it costs 8 yuan." Zhang Pengfei said that it is even more expensive to ship to the farther west, up to 8 yuan per kilogram. "Most e - commerce platforms do not offer free shipping to western regions such as Tibet. No one dares to offer free shipping of their products to Tibet."

Until Wei Yuxuan graduated and started working in 2021, the logistics network in the western region where he was located was still extremely sparse. He remembered that the nearest express delivery station to his workplace was about 20 kilometers away, which even gave rise to "wild express stations" spontaneously established by local residents.

"There were some people who would go to the county to pick up the express deliveries and bring them here. We had to pay them when picking up the parcels. For example, it cost 5 yuan for a larger box and 3 yuan for a smaller one." Wei Yuxuan remembered that there were three or four such wild stations at that time.

Zhang Pengfei, who was in the early stage of e - commerce, could not attract the express delivery station 10 kilometers away to pick up the parcels because his daily order volume could not stably exceed 100. So he had to take the parcels there to ship them himself every day.

The vast territory, sparse urban and rural areas, and incomplete road and transportation networks are all physical limitations that have made the west a blind spot for express delivery. In 2017, when Wei Yuxuan entered the university, there was no direct railway connection between his hometown in Gansu and the western city where his university was located. Each time he traveled between home and school, it took more than 35 hours for a one - way trip.

But the good news is that in the past three years, the restrictive conditions that hindered online shopping have gradually been removed.

02

The End of the Restrictions

The changes began to show more clearly in 2022. That year, several important railway lines in the west were opened, with a total mileage of more than 2,000 kilometers. This not only improved the transportation convenience within the region but also promoted the connection with other central cities.

At the same time, to solve the long - standing problems of high shipping fees and merchants' reluctance to offer free shipping for consumers in remote western regions, Pinduoduo pioneered the transit and consolidation free - shipping model. Merchants only need to send the parcels to the transit and consolidation warehouse, and the platform will arrange for unified shipping to the destination through third - party logistics providers. This has achieved the integration of resources in transportation, sorting, and delivery, significantly reducing logistics costs.

As a result, more merchants on Pinduoduo began to open shipping channels to the western region. Wei Yuxuan no longer had to deliberately ask customer service whether they shipped to the west. Many express delivery companies expanded their business to the western region. Formal express delivery stations began to emerge everywhere, and the wild express stations around Wei Yuxuan's workplace gradually disappeared.

Wei Yuxuan's father, a farmer who had lived by the Yellow River in Gansu for a long time, even experienced online shopping with free shipping to his home earlier than his son in the west, because the logistics network in Gansu was among the first to be improved in the western region.

Last year on his birthday, Lao Wei from Gansu ate hairy crabs for the first time in his life. They were bought by his son on Pinduoduo.

Father Wei was among the early group of online shoppers in the village. He bought daily necessities such as gloves and work shoes on Pinduoduo. At first, the express deliveries were all sent to a store on a road about a kilometer away from home. Later, as the number of express delivery stations increased, now the place to pick up parcels is only about a hundred meters away from the Wei family. The villagers have become more and more dependent on online shopping. "They even buy shovels online," Wei Yuxuan said. Many villagers who don't know how to shop online ask Father Wei for help.

It was not until 2024 that the western region where Wei Yuxuan is located achieved full - scale free shipping. In September of that year, to further benefit merchants and consumers, Pinduoduo announced that the platform would "foot the bill" for the logistics transit fees of all merchants in remote regions such as Qinghai, Tibet, Gansu, and Ningxia. This further reduced logistics costs and made merchants no longer have concerns about shipping to the west. By then, Wei Yuxuan no longer needed to pay attention to whether there was the words "Free shipping in XX region" after the product link when shopping on Pinduoduo.

For merchant Zhang Pengfei, Pinduoduo's initiative came at a very opportune time. Because at the end of August every year, it is the season when local Huaniu apples are ripe, and September is just the peak sales season. So since September 2024, Zhang Pengfei's e - commerce business has started to expand to a broader western region. Compared with apples, western consumers prefer to place orders for local big cherries from Zhang Pengfei.

Zhang Pengfei no longer takes the parcels to the express delivery station by himself every day. His e - commerce order volume has been steadily increasing. During the production season, he can sell an average of about 2,000 boxes of Huaniu apples per day on Pinduoduo, and the peak can exceed 6,000 boxes. After the Tianshui spicy hot pot became very popular last year, the daily seasonings such as chili powder he sold reached a record high of more than 18,000 orders in a single day.

Compared with the more e - commerce - concentrated eastern regions, Zhang Pengfei is at a relative disadvantage in terms of logistics costs when doing e - commerce in Gansu. Because in the west, both inbound and outbound logistics are more expensive. "In Hangzhou, for example, the shipping fee for small and medium - sized parcels within one kilogram may be just over one yuan, but here it costs 3 yuan. Our cost is still a bit higher than theirs." Zhang Pengfei said that due to geographical limitations, some gaps cannot be bridged.

However, Pinduoduo has noticed such gaps. So while helping to improve the western logistics and promoting the downward flow of consumer goods, it also promotes the upward flow of western specialties, alleviating the problem of one - way empty trucks and difficult cost sharing in the past, and enabling the western region to participate more extensively in the national economic cycle. Now, Tibetan matsutake soy sauce, Medog black tea, Huanxian mutton in Gansu, and Tianshui Huaniu apples have also broken through geographical and seasonal limitations and are selling well across the country.

03

New Opportunities

When Zhang Pengfei and his operation team found that Pinduoduo was subsidizing the transit shipping fees for parcels sent to the west, the first thing they did was to calculate the cost of sending each category of products to the west and then reopen the product links. In this way, consumers like Wei Yuxuan no longer need to spend time distinguishing which merchants can ship to the west and which ones offer free shipping.

In Zhang Pengfei's view, the west is a vast market that has not been fully developed. The only reason it was not fully noticed before was the shipping fee problem. Now his store will tilt more towards the west. "Under the condition that shipping fees allow, in addition to online sales, we will also do some offline business and find some distributors to develop the market there."

In the western region, a considerable number of migrants are from Gansu, such as Wei Yuxuan and his uncle. They will inevitably buy some Gansu specialties. Zhang Pengfei has taken a fancy to this very definite potential consumer group. "In the past, when the big cherries were in season, they would find relatives and friends through various channels to send them a box at a very high shipping cost to taste. Now, with the strong subsidy from the platform, the shipping fees are basically the same as those of e - commerce in other provinces across the country, and they are also willing to buy."

On the other hand, Zhang Pengfei found that the number of local e - commerce businesses in Tianshui has increased significantly since last year. "It has developed very fast. Whether it's online or offline, there are a lot of people selling Huaniu apples. Some are drop - shippers. For example, there is an e - commerce business outside that doesn't have a (purchasing) channel, and someone will pack and ship apples for them. More of them are self - owned stores that purchase and sell by themselves. There are also those who do offline business. They load two trucks of apples if they have the channels and then send them to other provinces to sell. There has been a significant increase last year."

Moreover, many live - streamers with millions of followers have come all the way from southern cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen to Zhang Pengfei's place to promote products. "They can sell four or five thousand orders in two hours, which is quite good."

It was obvious that the storage volume of apples in the local cold storage in Tianshui decreased sharply last year. Zhang Pengfei remembered that from November to the end of January, the apples in the cold storage were basically sold out. This was the fastest - selling year for apples since he started doing e - commerce.

This year, Zhang Pengfei plans to expand the scale and rent the entire cold storage he is currently using. "This warehouse can store 10 million catties of apples. Previously, we only rented about 1/20 of it." It would be a bit difficult for him to rent the whole warehouse by himself, so he wants to find a few other peers to share it. "Firstly, it's more convenient to manage if the whole warehouse is filled with apples. Secondly, we can unify the packaging, and everyone can use it in a coordinated way. Thirdly, in terms of shipping fees, if our order volume is large enough, maybe more than 10,000 orders a day, we can negotiate with the express delivery company to see if they can lower the (shipping) fee a little. In this way, when developing in the rural area, I can also create more job opportunities. Many of our workers are women from the surrounding villages."

Zhang Pengfei also has an idea to set up apple exhibition halls in several cities in the eastern region that are diagonally opposite to their location this year.

Whether it's apples or big cherries, Zhang Pengfei's products have been sold all over the country. Now it's the sales season for Tianshui big cherries. Zhang Pengfei remembered that last year, their big cherries were shipped as far as Mohe. Now, a large number of big cherries are being sent to the nearby western region. The once - distant west, which was always excluded from the shipping areas by e - commerce, is gradually becoming a favorite for merchants, and this vast territory is also actively participating in the national economic cycle.