533Driven by the wave of globalization, cross-border e-commerce has become an unstoppable development trend. As a globally renowned hub for small commodities, Yiwu’s sellers are shining in the global market by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) technology and the power of short video platforms such as TikTok.
Image source: Internet
The Gold Rush of Yiwu Sellers: The Perfect Combination of DeepSeek and TikTok
The story of Yiwu businesswoman Fu Jiangyan is a model of how Yiwu sellers use AI technology to achieve cross-border success. With DeepSeek’s copywriting generation technology, Fu Jiangyan only needs to record a short Chinese lip-sync video, and within just 10 minutes, she can produce promotional videos in multiple languages such as Arabic and Spanish.
Moreover, she tailors background music to suit the preferences of customers in different regions. These carefully crafted videos are not only widely shared on domestic short video platforms, but are also posted on overseas social media such as TikTok and Facebook, successfully attracting the attention of many overseas users.
Her sock shop’s annual sales have exceeded 20 million pairs, with products exported to the Middle East, South America, Africa, and other regions. This case not only puts the “AI + cross-border e-commerce” model in the spotlight, but also reveals the underlying logic of how Yiwu merchants use technological dividends and traffic platforms to build global businesses.
Image source: Douyin
DeepSeek: From “Language Barrier Crusher” to “Order Accelerator”
Fu Jiangyan’s success is no accident. Since 2023, the Yiwu market has vigorously promoted AI technology, and its self-developed business large language model can automatically generate multilingual videos, translate copy, and optimize localized content. The “Small Business AI Vision Creation” tool used by Fu Jiangyan, through localized deployment of the DeepSeek model, has improved video generation efficiency to within 10 minutes, and accurately matches regional characteristics such as “South American style” and “Middle Eastern flavor.”
Image source: Internet
This technological breakthrough directly solves two major pain points for small and medium-sized businesses in cross-border marketing:
Language and Cultural Adaptation: Traditional cross-border trade relies on manual translation and local teams, which is costly and time-consuming. AI tools, through natural language processing and multimodal generation, can quickly produce content that matches the expression habits of the target market, even making overseas customers mistakenly believe that the merchant is fluent in multiple languages.
Content Production Efficiency: Fu Jiangyan has posted over 1,300 videos on TikTok, and the high frequency of daily updates is supported by AI automation in script writing and video editing. In similar cases, Yiwu merchants use AI to analyze TikTok’s trending topics and design hot-selling items such as “Qatar World Cup keychains.”
Image source: Internet
TikTok: The “Perfect Match” of Interest E-commerce and Yiwu Small Commodities
TikTok’s global monthly active users have exceeded 1.5 billion, covering more than 150 countries. Its algorithm recommendation mechanism and interest e-commerce model perfectly fit the characteristics of Yiwu small commodities:
High cost performance and creative design: Yiwu products are famous for being “small, fast, and flexible,” such as socks, toys, accessories, etc. They are low-priced but novel in design, easily triggering users’ impulse purchases through short videos.
Tag-based dissemination: Topics such as #yiwumarket and #义乌小商品 have billions of exposures on the platform, forming the “Yiwu businesswoman” IP effect, attracting overseas buyers to proactively contact and even conduct on-site inspections.
Image source: TikTok
TikTok + AI: How to Harvest Traffic
By using AI to industrialize short video production, hot-selling videos are broken down into the standard formula of “pain point question (0-3 seconds) + product demonstration (4-9 seconds) + price stimulus (10 seconds),” and 100 different script variants are generated in batches.
In addition, after recording a Chinese lip-sync video, AI technology can be used to automatically match foreign language dubbing, producing multilingual versions of the video to meet the needs of users in different regions.
Of course, attention must also be paid to traffic dissemination. You can build a matrix of accounts, such as registering more than 100 accounts for a single category, with differentiated content covering product display, factory live shots, customer feedback, and other dimensions, reaching users in all directions. During this period, you can post 30 videos per day, and after 72 hours of testing, keep the top 5 videos with the highest views for continued traffic investment, while decisively abandoning the rest. Through this “horse race mechanism,” resources are precisely optimized, traffic is efficiently harvested, and the conversion from traffic to orders is maximized.
Image source: Internet
Conclusion
Fu Jiangyan’s rise to fame marks a turning point in cross-border e-commerce, shifting from “labor-intensive” to “technology-driven.” Although the combination of AI and TikTok is not a panacea, it shows great potential in reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and breaking down geographical barriers. However, if merchants want to continue leading in this “dollar harvesting” race, they still need to find a balance between technological application and humanized operation.
After all, what AI can replace is repetitive labor, but what it cannot replace is market insight and craftsmanship for products.
