Dialogue with Liu Bo, Founder of FanDing International: The Data Ambitions of a 100-Billion Cross-Border Logistics Supply Chain Leader

[Ebrun Original] The cross-border expansion is shifting from internet platforms to physical industries. FanDing International not only serves e-commerce giants like TEMU and Amazon but also deeply empowers industry pioneers such as BYD, JA Solar, SIGE New Energy, as well as ZUOYOU Home Furnishing, ZIYOU Home Furnishing, and YUYUE Medical.

Focusing on five core sectors—smart products, high-end medical equipment, outdoor sports, industrial manufacturing, and food—FanDing supports the steady global expansion of Chinese brands with end-to-end supply chain services.

Ebrun has learned that this 13-year-old global integrated supply chain service provider has quietly built a comprehensive service map covering 'transportation, warehousing, distribution, and sales.' Since 2024, its annual revenue has exceeded 100 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of over 50% in the past three years, solidifying its position as a leading player among China's self-operated overseas warehouse operators with robust capabilities.

As we enter 2026—a pivotal year designated by the National Data Administration as the 'Year of Unlocking the Value of Data Elements'—FanDing International has keenly sensed the new trends of the times and is accelerating the cultivation of new growth engines.

While the industry remains locked in fierce competition over scale and price, this low-key and pragmatic supply chain service provider has quietly shifted its focus toward a more imaginative field:

how to transform its global warehouse network from a cost center into a data asset capable of generating compound returns. When the physical 'transportation, warehousing, distribution, and sales' network is infused with the momentum of data elements, what kind of business model leap will it catalyze?

With these questions in mind, Ebrun and the Ebrun Think Tank engaged in an exclusive dialogue with Liu Bo, the founder and chairman of FanDing International. Through this helmsman's deep reflection on the essence of supply chains and the value of data, we attempt to deconstruct the ambitions of a 100-billion cross-border logistics supply chain enterprise to build a global digital-intelligent trade service ecosystem.

01

'Mastering Closed-Loop Data Across the Entire Chain Gives FanDing the Priority to Build a Digital-Intelligent Trade Ecosystem'

'Future competition in the supply chain will not be just about capacity and warehouse space; there will inevitably be competition over data.' When discussing the underlying business logic that FanDing International anchors itself to, Liu Bo pointedly stated: 'Whoever masters the closed-loop data across the entire chain will take the initiative in this industry.'

Today, in FanDing International's strategic thinking, data elements have been placed at the core, becoming the key engine driving future growth. Regarding why data assets have leapt from being 'by-products of logistics operations' to the enterprise's most important core assets, Liu Bo offered this interpretation:

'Without data, the logistics industry is just about moving boxes around the world; with data, the logistics industry can become the leverage for global supply chain finance, the basis for trade activity decisions, and the solid foundation for industrial AI.'

In his view, ideally, data can generate value in at least three aspects.

1. Using data for procurement and sales decisions—which products sell well in which countries, when to restock, how much inventory to hold—should be answered by data.

2. Using data for supply chain finance—accurately identifying customers' actual turnover efficiency, repayment capacity, and capital utilization efficiency, helping financial institutions provide precise credit and loans, empowering quality customers while effectively mitigating bad debt risks.

3. Using data for AI-structured consolidation—completing the structured categorization of goods in global warehouses, managing them intelligently with data tags, and then opening this AI-enhanced local inventory to third-party distributors, facilitating procurement for small and medium-sized B2B channels while further accelerating inventory turnover for both buyers and sellers.

'What ultimately changes? It shifts from 'moving boxes' to 'moving data',' Liu Bo admitted. 'Logistics remains logistics, but with data, it becomes infrastructure upon which finance, trade, and AI can grow; we are not in the logistics business, but in the data-driven supply chain business.'

'I told the team early on that just doing logistics is not enough: if we only handle ocean and air freight, once the goods reach the port or airport, the supply chain service is interrupted, and the subsequent data has nothing to do with us. So we decided to create a large closed loop, covering from 'transportation,' 'warehousing,' 'distribution,' all the way to the more downstream 'sales',' Liu Bo said.

Precisely because of this, FanDing has gradually connected all links of the supply chain and continuously penetrated downstream to small and medium-sized B2B clients, extending its distribution business to the 'capillaries' of various regional chain retailers, convenience stores, and vertical distributors.

'From picking up goods at the source factory to finally delivering them to overseas small and medium-sized B2B customers, the data sedimented throughout the entire product export lifecycle is our moat,' he stated.

Liu Bo also noted that after integrating logistics data, trade data, and capital flow data—'the convergence of three streams'—its value increases exponentially.

'For example, many overseas distributors actually want to expand their procurement scale of high-quality Chinese products but are constrained by insufficient funds and limited bargaining power. Even with smooth sales channels, it's difficult for them to secure sufficient spot inventory; meanwhile, many globalizing brands hope to enter mainstream overseas channels, but powerful channel partners often demand longer payment terms, creating capital pressure for the brands' fund recovery and production expansion.'

However, due to the involvement of cross-border trade, such financing needs often face extremely high thresholds. Domestic supply chain finance can still rely on methods like asset mortgages to obtain support from banks or financial institutions, but once entering overseas markets, constrained by difficulties in qualification audits, complex risk control, and opaque cross-border information, funders are often reluctant to lend.

'Traditional financial institutions struggle to address such pain points, while FanDing, relying on real closed-loop business data, eliminates assessment blind spots,' Liu Bo said.

'Precisely because of this, we can accurately identify those quality customers with consistently growing sales, steadily expanding business scale, outstanding development potential, good commercial credit, and healthy cash flow, and introduce more precise and secure supply chain financial services for them.'

At the same time, the data assets continuously accumulated from logistics services are, in turn, reshaping FanDing's approach to physical asset deployment.

To some extent, FanDing has already become a global digital-intelligent trade service group with data ambitions.

'We are very clear that our core advantage lies in the long-term accumulated data on overseas warehouse site selection, construction standards, system capabilities, and warehouse resource integration.'

'Now, we can export standards and management. Rather than getting entangled in a red ocean market with heavy-asset battles, it's better to leverage our data capabilities to integrate existing warehouse resources in the market: partners provide storage capacity, FanDing provides technology, orders, and operational capabilities, achieving complementary advantages, navigating industry cycles in a more flexible way, and reducing systemic risks and expansion costs.'

02

Bridging Chinese Manufacturing and Overseas Distributors, FanDing Finds a 'Win-Win-Win' Path for the Production-Supply Chain

By gradually sedimenting experience into data, FanDing has continuously explored over the past decade, gradually creating a business model that achieves a 'win-win-win' outcome—benefiting Chinese suppliers, overseas distributors, and FanDing itself.

The core of this model lies in building a global distribution network composed of overseas spot inventory, localized service systems, and a vast pool of local small and medium-sized B2B channel resources, and leveraging short-cycle distribution data to drive long-cycle procurement decisions, ultimately achieving symbiotic growth where Chinese suppliers ship goods quickly, overseas channel partners procure with ease, and FanDing continuously expands its revenue scale, data assets, and business network.

Specifically, FanDing's overseas warehouse clients store their goods in its overseas warehouses. In addition to enjoying basic warehousing and fulfillment services, clients can choose to sign distribution agreements with FanDing, setting distribution prices and inventory quotas, by FanDing then matching suitable distributors based on its accumulated overseas small and medium-sized B2B channel resources to complete the sales.

For Chinese suppliers, the small and medium-sized B2B channel leads that FanDing has continuously identified, accumulated, and filtered through practical operations over the years are themselves a high-value resource. These channels are highly precise and reliable, with conversion efficiency far surpassing the 'clumsy approach' of companies building local sales teams from scratch and developing channels through ground promotions.

For overseas small and medium-sized distributors, the procurement system built by FanDing also holds unique appeal.

Liu Bo summarized it into four advantages.

First, FanDing has established a complete set of localized capabilities overseas, including local companies, local showrooms, local assembly systems, and local after-sales service. This provides overseas small and medium-sized buyers, who previously lacked the ability to travel to China for negotiations or directly bargain with Chinese suppliers, with a truly 'what you see is what you get,' service-guaranteed, after-sales-reliable local inventory that they can connect with and receive responses from at any time.

'For many small-scale overseas entrepreneurs, avoiding uncertainty and creating trust relationships is actually crucial,' Liu Bo said.

Second, FanDing implements flexible cooperation models such as 'minimum order quantity of one piece' and 'sample consignment,' significantly lowering the procurement threshold for overseas small and medium-sized B2B clients, enhancing operational flexibility, and effectively reducing inventory and capital turnover pressure.

Third, FanDing can also help buyers in reverse, conducting centralized procurement negotiations with Chinese suppliers in a 'group buying' manner.

Liu Bo explained that if a particular product continues to sell well among multiple distributors, forming stable procurement demand, FanDing will organize the various buyers to negotiate more competitive wholesale prices with upstream suppliers.

In some cases, FanDing will adopt a self-operated procurement model, stocking goods itself to further dilute costs through bulk purchasing, and only retaining a reasonable profit margin of around 10% to 15%, passing the rest of the cost advantages entirely to the distributors.

'Helping distributors make money and grow their business will naturally lead them to continuously help us expand our channels. The wider the channels are laid, the more significant the value of our entire business system becomes,' Liu Bo admitted.

For those buyers with clear sales prospects and stable growth trends, FanDing can accept advance funding for stocking to help them expand their procurement scale.

'Using short-cycle distribution data to drive long-cycle procurement decisions.' With precise data analysis capabilities and an extensive distribution network, FanDing can reduce the production risk exposure of cross-border orders, lowering the uncertainty of inventory backlog and bad debt risks.

Regarding data security, FanDing has also established a solid and credible 'firewall' for the sensitive issue of 'using customer data for distribution.'

Liu Bo stated that they always prioritize customer data security and strictly adhere to business ethics, for which FanDing has 'established three principles.'

First, FanDing consistently refuses to engage in C2C business, avoiding competitive relationships with overseas warehouse clients in the end-consumer market.

Second, FanDing does not intervene in large B2B channels, but focuses on helping overseas warehouse clients expand into those local small and medium-sized B2B channels that were originally difficult to cover, creating entirely new incremental value for clients.

Third, within the same sub-category, FanDing strives to cooperate with only a few high-quality suppliers, enhancing the exclusivity of cooperation, reducing internal homogeneous competition, achieving healthier, non-cutthroat long-term development, and building a 'growth alliance' of shared interests with clients.

'We increasingly position ourselves as a globalized platform embracing the era of AI and data elements,' Liu Bo stated. 'We provide data infrastructure and localized services; we definitely will not compete with our clients for the market.'

03

FanDing Aims to Build an Ecosystem-Based Digital-Intelligent Trade Service System

In Liu Bo's view, the value of data assets is far from fully unleashed.

Standing at the new starting point of 2026, FanDing hopes to build a new type of supply chain ecosystem with data as the foundation and AI as the driver, based on constructing a globalized supply chain network. Around this goal, he shared with Ebrun two key focus areas for the coming years.

First, fully embracing data elements and AI technology.

'Currently, the systems we use in various countries and for various businesses are developed separately, aiming to provide precise services for different segmented fulfillment scenarios. To integrate them all and optimize data governance is a very time-consuming and labor-intensive project—but we have already started advancing this,' Liu Bo said. FanDing is introducing a senior data technology team from Silicon Valley to help rebuild its entire data model, reorganizing the data system from an AI perspective.

'Data is the key springboard for FanDing's business model leap,' he pointed out.

On the other hand, what truly excites Liu Bo is the immense potential released after combining AI with the global distribution system.

'We have thousands of offline small and medium-sized B2B channels globally, accumulated bit by bit over more than a decade of logistics services. Previously, for a product to enter these channels, a sales team had to promote it store by store, which was very inefficient. Now with AI, we can organize all the product data in our global warehouses and let AI automatically complete the matching—which products suit which channels, regions, and types of customers. AI calculates faster and more accurately than humans.'

'Small and medium-sized B2B clients don't need to maintain inventory, and FanDing doesn't need to maintain a large sales team. Both sides can find a lighter, more flexible way to operate,' he noted.

Second, accelerating the construction of an ecosystem-based digital-intelligent trade service system.

FanDing plans to gradually move from relying on internal data accumulation toward broader data ecosystem integration. 'For example, we have established a strategic partnership with Focus Technology (MIC). The large amount of exhibition data they accumulate from participating in global exhibitions will be imported into our system. This is data we didn't have before; now that it's integrated, it becomes new data increment. Part of it can be converted into logistics clients, and another part may become trade clients.'

Meanwhile, Liu Bo reiterated that FanDing will continue to rely on real, credible, high-quality data assets to break down financial barriers for supply chain globalization, achieve intelligent synergy between cross-border supply chains and modern financial institutions, and ultimately form an ecosystem-based digital-intelligent trade service system.