Cross-Border Trade Beta Program Description

Transcription

1 Cross-Border Trade Beta Program Description 9/18/14

2 1. Objective The objective of this document is to describe MercadoLibre Cross-Border Trade Beta Program. 2. About MercadoLibre Cross-Border Trade Program (Beta) MercadoLibre is running a program for a select number of US sellers interested in selling in Latin America through the MercadoLibre platform. This program is invitation-only and is currently in Beta. 3. Assumptions Seller understands that while MercadoLibre has a tremendous traction in Latin America, its platform was not originally built for cross-border trade. MercadoLibre is improving the platform in order to better fit the needs of international sellers Dabee Inc. represents MercadoLibre for the purpose of the beta program Adjustments to the beta program are expected as the program advances Products will be displayed initially in Brazil and Mexico. More countries will be added as the program progresses 4. Workflow 4.1. Account Setup Seller shall create an account with MELI s Cross-Border Trade (CBT) Platform: At this point, access to MELI s CBT Platform is by invitation only During the registration flow, seller shall provide basic information such as , address, desired display name, etc. Seller also shall add banking information for payments to be sent to (see Section 4.4 below) MELI s CBT Platform will create multiple local accounts (Brazil, Mexico, etc.) on behalf of the seller. These accounts are linked to the main account. Seller will also be required to accept the terms & conditions for MELI s CBT Platform (click thru) Please refer to checklist for latest link to registration flow 4.2. Listing/Listings management Currently we will offer 3 ways to integrate with MercadoLibre Cross Border Trade Platform ChannelAdvisor Direct API integration Flat File ChannelAdvisor: MercadoLibre is displayed as another channel in ChannelAdvisor US account. Requires an active ChannelAdvisor account 2

3 Orders & Inventory updated immediately Synchs up with your inventory in ChannelAdvisor API: your systems integrate directly to MercadoLibre Cross Border Trade Platform using our application-programming interface (APIs). Requires some development on seller s end Orders & Inventory updated immediately API documentation is available File Based: currently we support csv method for exchanging data with platform through our FileSwap BETA tool Requires some understanding of file based systems Orders posted daily FileSwap BETA documentation and sample files are available Seller shall create a template to be used for all sellers listings Template shall contain information common to all listings from seller such as FAQs, About Seller, Process If required, MercadoLibre can help with static text translation and customization Sample template is available Dynamic content shall be listed in local language (Portuguese and Spanish) If Seller has translated content available, seller can provide content when listing (ChannelAdvisor, APIs or Flat File) Translation is Seller s responsibility. However, if Seller does not have translated content available, MercadoLibre s CBT Platform might help to translate content. Description content will be translated using machine translation (e.g. Google Translate APIs) and there are no costs associated with it. Title content is usually translated using crowd translation services. There is a cost per word for crowd translation depending on the service selected. Prices shall be provided in US Dollars. MercadoLibre Cross-Border Trade platform will take care of foreign exchange conversion and buyer will see prices in local currency. Seller will receive money in USD (see Section 4.4 below) Customer Service (Seller Q&A in MercadoLibre platform) o Initially, MercadoLibre will allocate a CS rep to help merchants answer questions on the MercadoLibre platform. However, we believe merchants are fully responsible for customer service and we will transfer all customer services questions directly to merchants in the near future. o We need a point of contact in your customer service team that can help our CS with product related questions. o MercadoLibre is developing tools to help with multi-lingual customer service. We suggest that for the beta program, seller gradually increases number of listings: start with ~500 and as we see the process run smoothly, increase to 1000s and 10s of thousands. CBT Platform cannot export used/pre-owned or refurbished to Brazil limitation the Brazilian Government imposes. These items shall be excluded. 3

4 4.3. Intl Shipping, Customs, Taxes Seller ships items to a MercadoLibre warehouse in the US and the MercadoLibre Cross-Border Trade Platform will be responsible for Intl shipping, customs and Taxes. Seller ships items to one designated address in the US (domestic shipping) o For the beta program, seller will be asked to ship items to our 3rd Party Logistics warehouse in Miami or Kentucky o We are in the process of rolling out more ship-to locations in the US. The MercadoLibre Cross-Border Trade Platform will automatically calculate the cheapest and fastest rout depending on your type of item and warehouse location o Seller can send 1 daily shipment to Miami in order to optimize domestic shipping cost. However, each package has to be packaged and labeled individually An invoice shall be included in each package, including buyer name, item details and price in US Dollars. This invoice is important for customs clearance in Latin American countries The MercadoLibre Cross-Border Trade Platform will take care of the international shipping and clearing customs locally. In order for that to happen, seller needs to provide at listing: Weight and dimensions of the package package dimensions are optional - Exception: when an item dimension is significantly different from the one provided, we will be passing these extra shipping costs to seller. Domestic shipping needs to be included in file/data you provide us - so that it can be passed to the buyer Sales tax shall be excluded Category mapped to one of MercadoLibre categories - MercadoLibre can help with category mapping initially All Customs and shipping costs will be passed to buyer when MercadoLibre Cross-Border Trade platform calculates fully landed price in local currency to be displayed on listing. The MercadoLibre Cross-Border Trade platform will update order status for buyers. In order for that to happen, sellers need to provide: Order details including domestic tracking number (API or Flat-File) of the package sent to MercadoLibre s US warehouse. Fast shipping: it will improve the buyer experience and total waiting time for the international transaction. - The international portion of shipment typically takes 2-3 days always by air freight 4.4. Payments Sellers receive payments locally thru their MercadoPago accounts in local markets. Every 15 days MercadoLibre Cross-Border Trade Platform will disburse payments to seller preferred US bank account. Payments collected from buyers locally will be in local currency and will include customs, taxes and international shipping MercadoLibre Cross-Border Trade Platform will split local payment between legal entities that own money: Local Customs Authority International Logistics Company 4

5 Merchant For the beta program, we will remit money from local markets (BR, MX, etc.) to US every 15 days (2 batches per month). Once in the US, money is transferred (ACH) from US account to seller s US account (no cost to merchant) Note 1: since the MercadoLibre fees are charged on top of merchant product price, it is a good strategy to lower product price to make product more competitive in the marketplace. Remember that lower product price means lower duties & taxes for the buyer as well Fees There are no fees to post products (no listing fees) Dabee will add MercadoLibre final value fees on top of the product price value received from merchant s product feed. To compose the total product price on each country, Dabee first calculates the fully landed cost of the product. Fully Landed Cost = merchant product price + international shipping + duties & taxes. In the last step, Dabee adds MercadoLibre fees on the top of the fully landed cost, convert the total price to local currency and list the product on each MercadoLibre platform. Once the product is sold and delivered, Dabee transfers the product price value to merchant The MercadoLibre fee added to the fully landed cost is between 10%-12% depending on the country. This will be all-inclusive: marketplace fees, MercadoPago and CBT money remittance fees Returns MercadoLibre Cross-Border Trade Platform can handle reverse logistics (buyer > seller). Ultimately, return policy is seller defined, but we suggest at a minimum the following policy depending on use case: Broken/damaged: all packages shipped through MercadoLibre Cross-Border Trade Platform are 100% insured. In the case of a broken item, upon the buyer contacting Seller and showing proof of damage, we shall initiate the process with insurance company. Buyer Remorse: Buyer pays shipping back to US. Buyer will get refunded merchandize price + international shipping. Buyer will not be refunded taxes. (Not possible at this time). Note that in Brazil, by law, buyers have up to 7 days to return items no questions asked. Not as described/ Wrong item: seller shall replace the item and pay for international shipping and customs for the replacement. Buyer should not have to bear any costs for receiving a replacement. For the beta program, we suggest seller to work on case-by-case basis and try to jointly figure out the best option for the long run (minimizing cost and minimizing reputation risk) 5