From Taojiji to Beidian, social e-commerce explosions frequently occur. Is the once booming social e-commerce really cool?
After Tongcheng Life, a community group buying platform, declared bankruptcy, social e-commerce also experienced a mine explosion. A few days ago, Enterprise Data Research Institute released the Report on Investment and Financing of Social E-commerce in China in Recent Ten Years. According to the data, the social e-commerce financing in the past decade was 44 1.06 billion RMB, and there were 362 * * * cases. In 20 15-20 16, the financing of social e-commerce track has blossomed everywhere, with 72 and 79 cases each year, which is in a rapid start-up stage. 20 17-20 18, Pinduoduo, Xiaohongshu and Ji Yun competed for jobs, and social e-commerce ushered in a period of rapid development.
It is worth noting that in the following years, social e-commerce gradually stepped out of the golden age, and short videos, live broadcasts and other modes emerged, devouring the dividends of the social e-commerce community. By 20021,there were only four financing cases, and the total amount disclosed was about 2.0665438 billion yuan, including "Weee!" Obtained financing of 65.438+0.98 billion yuan.
From the perspective of the employers behind social e-commerce, the survey data of enterprises show that Tencent, as a social giant, has shot as many as 14 times on the social e-commerce track, and its "figure" is spread all over Pinduoduo, Xiaohongshu, Meilishuo and other head projects, ranking first with IDG Capital and Jingwei China.
Mo Daiqing, director and senior analyst of the online retail department of the Network Economy & Social E-commerce Research Center, said that Beidian adopted a simple and rude marketing method in the development process, but it failed to establish its core competitiveness and was easily replaced. Therefore, the scale of Beidian has developed rapidly in the early stage, and suppliers, stores or users all enjoy dividends. However, when the social e-commerce dividend has passed, the scale growth of Beidian can't rise, and the slow payment puts pressure on the merchants, it will have a chain reaction, which will hinder its further development. It is not surprising that it will appear in the limelight and may eventually become "abandonment".
Bao, a special researcher at the Network Economy and Social Security E-commerce Research Center and chairman of Baum Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd. said: "From my recent observation of these social e-commerce and community e-commerce, I think the main problem is the business model design itself. Many people regard some instrumental things as the essence of business models. This is not right. So I think the most fundamental thing is that they violate the basic business logic, blindly design some models and blindly expand.
CoCo Lee, a special researcher at the Network Economy and Social Security E-commerce Research Center and a senior partner of Shanghai Hansheng Law Firm, said that the core of the Beibei mine explosion incident was that there was no clear business direction. Since its establishment, Beibei has been on the road of transformation, from maternal and child e-commerce to social e-commerce, to inventory e-commerce, and then to today's new consumer brand Messi. Beibei's real core competitiveness has not been determined, and the group has been following the market enthusiasm. In the process of continuous transformation, although the new brand has invested a lot of money, it still lags behind the top in the industry. Old brands have not yet made profits or their initial profits have stagnated due to financial problems. No matter what kind of transformation, Beibei has not found a suitable profit model and has been burning money to develop. Now Beibei is betting on "Messi", and the beauty industry is now in the Red Sea. Want to seize market share, need a lot of capital investment, many transformations lead to insufficient funds. The net transmission (to be investigated) Beidian incident exploded, because Beibei Group invested all its resources in Messi, which led to the break of the capital chain, and Beibei could not pay the supplier's money, which never triggered a large-scale debt collection incident.
Lawyer Dong Yizhi, a special researcher of the E-commerce Research Center of the Network Economy Society and a lawyer of Shanghai Zhengce Law Firm, said that the reaction of a series of chain events in Beidian was because social e-commerce was indeed a slogan before, and then everyone subsidized by throwing money and then went to the market. Now this thing is unsustainable and the whole business model is still problematic.
CoCo Lee said that if we simply discuss the Beidian incident from a legal perspective, it may involve two legal issues:
1, misappropriating funds. Although Beidian belongs to Beibei Group, Hangzhou Beijia E-Commerce Co., Ltd. (the company affiliated to Beidian APP, hereinafter referred to as "Beijia Company") belongs to an independent legal person, and the company's property should be independent of shareholders. If it is true that Netcom misappropriated Nortel funds to support "Messi", then it belongs to the parent company to misappropriate the funds of independent subsidiaries. In other words, shareholders misappropriate company funds, which may involve the denial of corporate personality. Further, it is possible.
2. Debt settlement. Even through legal channels, suppliers may not get the full payment. Taking the road of litigation will definitely not avoid property preservation. On the one hand, the process of property preservation needs to provide the property clues of the property preserver, but the property clues of the merchants are limited and they don't know where the assets of the property preserver are. On the other hand, only Hangzhou Beijia Electronic Commerce Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Beijia"), which belongs to Beidian, can be preserved. Although Beijia is a subsidiary of Beibei Group, the company and legal person are independent, and even bankruptcy liquidation will not implicate Beibei Group. Debt and contract disputes between merchants and Beibei can only be preserved for Beibei, but not for Beibei Group, the parent company.
Lawyer Dong Yizhi, a special researcher of E-commerce Research Center of Network Economy Society and Shanghai Zhengce Law Firm, also pointed out that the legal responsibility of Beidian is to bear the arrears of this supplier and the wages of employees, and there may be a process of bankruptcy liquidation. Including it may have a gambling problem with the previous founder and the previous limelight and PE.
Cao Lei, director of the e-commerce research center of the NetEconomy & Society, said: The decline of social e-commerce is mainly due to the reduction of platform subsidies. Social e-commerce users belong to price-sensitive groups, which are different from other e-commerce groups that value service quality and experience, and are likely to turn to other platforms because of price orientation. The decline of distributed social e-commerce does not mean the decline of the whole social e-commerce. In addition to distribution types, there are shopping-oriented social e-commerce represented by Pinduoduo, and shopping guide-oriented social e-commerce represented by rebate network and worth buying, which are still in full swing.
CoCo Lee further pointed out the disadvantages of upstream and downstream of social e-commerce:
1, upstream supplier; Lack of core competitiveness
The upstream suppliers of social e-commerce have no core competitiveness. This is the core issue that led to the decline of social e-commerce platforms. With the rise of social e-commerce platform, the platform has not formed obvious advantages in terms of category, goods, cost, price and overall brand differences. At the same time, although the platform develops new products by itself, it often does not meet the market demand by launching more products, but constantly recruits more brands from the society. In the long run, consumers measure between different platforms, and the attractiveness of the platform is greatly weakened after too many competing products.
2. Mid-stream platform: express delivery time limit
As far as the social e-commerce platform itself is concerned, the delivery carrier of the e-commerce platform mainly relies on express delivery. The delivery experience of traditional express delivery is not as good as that of JD.COM. COM's self-built logistics system the next day. Secondly, social e-commerce is far worse than live e-commerce and video e-commerce in terms of commodity distribution efficiency and commodity reach.
3. Downstream dealers: only subsidy theory.
Social e-commerce platform, traffic depends on merchants, and this group of merchants often follow subsidies and have no loyalty. Once the platform subsidies drop, they will switch to other platforms.
If we look at these problems clearly, we will find that the transformation of Beidian to its own brand "Messi" is inevitable, because the original business logic is no longer feasible. However, in the private brand, if the goods are not special, scarce, highly viscous and high gross profit, both buyers and sellers will eventually fail, leading to the explosion of Beibei Group.
In recent years, social e-commerce has been repeatedly punished by pyramid schemes for multi-level distribution, "pulling people's heads" and other illegal issues, and the "original sin" of "pyramid schemes" has never stopped. According to the Research Report on the Compliance of Social E-commerce in China in 2020 issued by the Research Center for Network Economy and Social E-commerce, the top 10 platforms in the "List of Public Opinion of Social E-commerce Controversy Network" are: Global Moment, Good Things, Gathering, Thousand Groups, Global Catcher, Gathering Products, Fish, Peanut Diaries, Future Market, Gathering Many Good Things; The platforms ranked in 1 1-20 are: Tiantianpin, Onion Overseas Warehouse, Darling Home, Taoxiaopu, Zebra Member, Beidian, Big V Store, Pink Elephant Life, Fragrant and Love Inventory; The platforms ranked 2 1-30 are: Yunpincang, Daren Store, Shuaibao, Honey Source APP, Chuchutui, Speedpoint, Wanse City, Honey Bud plus, Xituan and Chanchuang (under the access group).
According to Diannvbao, a domestic online consumer mediation platform, refund, product quality, online fraud, delivery, online sales of fake goods, false propaganda and after-sales service are the main complaints of social e-commerce.
Zhuang Shuai, a special researcher at Netscape E-Commerce Research Center and founder of Ambry Consulting, believes that with JD.COM, Pinduoduo, Meituan and Ali entering the field of social e-commerce and community group buying one after another, the early social e-commerce faces enormous competitive pressure. The integrated e-commerce platform will become the mainstream platform for social e-commerce and community group buying, and become a supplementary format for the retail industry.
Mo Daiqing also said that the Beidian incident shows that the social e-commerce industry has entered a reshuffle period, and social e-commerce needs to find a development model that suits them and improve their "hematopoietic capacity." In this fierce competition, small and medium-sized social e-commerce is naturally unsustainable, and the "jungle law" leads to the survival of the fittest.
Bao further stated that social e-commerce will become a retail form in the future, but I think this retail form needs to be organically integrated with store-to-store retail, including home-to-home retail, in order to play its best role. If you simply regard it as a retail form, from now on, let alone social e-commerce. Now we see that both store retail and e-commerce retail are beginning to face difficulties. If this social retail relies solely on a relatively single retail form, it is also the future prospect is not optimistic and must be integrated.