The deteriorating temple began to worry about whether it could survive 2022.
On January 5, the Tianyancha APP showed that Beijing Siku Trading Co., Ltd. added bankruptcy review cases in the judicial risks, and has entered the bankruptcy reorganization stage, the applicant is Chai Chenxu, and the economic court is the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court. Prior to this, a total of 7 shares of Secoo were frozen, involving a total amount of 153 million yuan.
In response to the statement that "the Secoo Group was filed for bankruptcy", Secoo responded to the outside world that the above situation did not exist after verification.
But the difficult plight of the temple is obvious to all. As of the close of trading on January 5, Secoo's stock price closed at $0.406, with a total market value of only $28.678 million, which is more than 96% from its peak market value of $770 million.
On November 3, 2021, Secoo's stock price fell below $1 for the first time. Since the closing price of the temple was below $1 for 30 consecutive working days, on December 20, NASDAQ issued a delisting warning letter to it. According to the NASDAQ listing rules, Secoo's stock price will be forcibly delisted if it cannot return to more than $1 by June 15 this year.
In the face of the falling stock price, Secoo executives have also tried to save themselves. In January 2021, Secoo founder Li Rixue proposed a plan to privatize Secoo: if there is an acquisition offer at the right price, Secoo will be privatized and delisted.
The news of the privatization did not wait, but the first thing that waited was the rumor that the temple was filed for bankruptcy. Although the official Secoo officially denied the bankruptcy claim, it is an indisputable fact that the Secoo has gone downhill. Caught up in internal and external troubles, the temple continues to struggle in 2022.
A
In 2007, Li Rixue founded Green Cube Network, which mainly operates high-end home appliances.
At that time, the middle class was rising, and more and more Chinese began to buy luxury goods. At a time when the luxury e-commerce industry was booming, Li Rixue found a phenomenon: many people buy luxury goods abroad, and lack of corresponding maintenance and after-sales in China. Therefore, Li Rixue founded the Secoo online mall in 2008 and started a second-hand luxury business.
At the beginning, Secoo's business mainly consisted of luxury sales, appraisal and maintenance, but over time, Li Rixue found that the gross profit margin of second-hand e-commerce was low and it was not easy to make money. So Li Rixue resolutely adjusted the brand strategy, positioning Siku as a high-end life service platform and only selling high-end luxury goods.
In 2008, luxury e-commerce ushered in a boom in development, and Secoo took the opportunity to obtain multiple rounds of financing and develop and grow. This year is also known as the year of the rise of luxury e-commerce, and many players have entered the luxury track. In addition to the temple treasury, the treasure network, the catwalk network, the shangpin network and so on have been established.
However, within a few years, many opponents of the same track began to fall: in January 2012, Pinju.com, which had been online for less than three months, announced its closure; in 2019, Shangpin.com embarked on the road of bankruptcy and liquidation; in 2020, Catwalk.com, which had been established for more than 10 years, announced the suspension of business...
In the new round of industry reshuffle, the head unicorn Siku at that time was not only not knocked down, but instead re-financed in the cold winter of the industry, standing out from a large number of players, behind the IDG, BAI Bertelsmann Asia Investment Fund, Yintai Capital, Chinese Cultural Industry Fund, Ping An Venture Capital and other well-known investment institutions.
At the NASDAQ site in 2017, Secoo went public with the name of The first share of China's luxury e-commerce and ushered in its own peak moment.
B
After the listing, Secoo's performance in the secondary market was not ideal, and the stock price fell and fell.
The temple is not without thinking about self-help. In 2018, Secoo upgraded its brand, transformed from luxury e-commerce to a boutique lifestyle platform, laid out Secoo life, Secoo agriculture, etc., and also sold fruits, cocktails and even tourism and other eating, drinking, playing and enjoying products on the platform, but luxury sales accounted for more than 90% of Secoo's total revenue for a long time, and its diversification strategy was not successful.
The unsuccessful transformation of the temple, but also saddled with debt, and even became the "old lai" in the mouth of major suppliers, arrears of hundreds of thousands of yuan to tens of millions of yuan. The temple treasury, which was forced into a corner, even started the idea of repaying financial loans. Until November 2021, Secoo also exposed a number of complaints, mainly for two reasons: one is the arrears of the supplier's payment; the other is that consumers cannot receive the goods after shopping, and the platform does not refund.
In recent years, the temple has been negative, first some people on the pulse have continuously exposed the company's layoffs, and then some consumers have questioned the product as fake, live data fraud and so on.
On the black cat complaint platform, there were more than 8,000 complaints about Secoo, including the sale of fake goods, identification errors, delivery overtime, non-delivery and no refunds.
Since 2020, the impact of the epidemic has made the operation of Secoo worse. According to Secoo's financial report in 2020, the revenue in the first three quarters was 1.01 billion yuan, 1.31 billion yuan and 1.37 billion yuan, respectively, and these data have decreased significantly compared with 2019.
It is worth mentioning that Secoo did not submit the financial report for the fourth quarter of 2020 within the specified time, and was also handed a non-compliance notice letter by Nasdaq in May 2021, warning Secoo of not submitting the 2020 annual financial report.
It was not until December 30, 2021 that Secoo's financial report for the first half of 2021 was late. According to the financial report, Secoo's revenue in the first half of 2021 was 1.526 billion yuan, compared with 2.312 billion yuan in the same period of 2020, a year-on-year decrease of 34.0%; the net loss was 39.826 million yuan, compared with a net loss of 36.598 million yuan in the same period last year, and many indicators such as GMV, active customers, total orders, and gross profit of revenue declined year-on-year.
C
In stark contrast to the cold in Secoo, the luxury e-commerce industry is still booming.
According to the 2021 China Luxury Market Digital Trend Insight Report, the Chinese mainland luxury market is expected to record growth of 23%-25% this year to 520 billion yuan.
A report released by Bain, a well-known strategic consulting firm, also shows that in the case of a 23% shrinkage in the global luxury market, China's domestic luxury consumption rose by 48% in 2021 to 346 billion yuan, and it is expected that by 2025, China is expected to become the world's largest luxury market.
New players are also emerging. Starting from the trend of e-commerce, it began to enter the luxury field, and established cooperation with a number of luxury brands such as LVMH's brands Zhenlishi and COACH; the luxury e-commerce app has achieved an average monthly growth of more than 60% month-on-month since its launch in early 2021, accumulating more than 400,000 users.
These new forces have also gained capital optimism. In September 2021, the second-hand luxury e-commerce platform "Explosive Luxury" announced the completion of a round of financing of 100 million yuan A+ and in the same month, Zhiji received a $40 million Series B financing. With the help of capital, new players are constantly squeezing the living space of the old temple library.
Internet giants are also constantly making efforts. Giants such as Ali and JD.com have long been in the luxury market: in 2017, Alibaba launched a special luxury platform LuxuryPavilion; in the same year, JD.com launched a white glove delivery service - "Jingzunda", cooperating with many luxury brands.
At the same time, short video giants are also entering: in December 2021, Kuaishou E-commerce announced the opening of a series of second-hand categories such as second-hand clothing and second-hand fashion clothing on the live broadcast room, opening a wave of second-hand luxury live broadcasting with goods; Douyin introduced a number of luxury brands such as Dior and Prada to sell goods in the live broadcast room at the same time. According to Tech Planet, in 2020, the GMV of the second-hand luxury category of Douyin will reach about 3 billion yuan.
The addition of these Internet giants will undoubtedly further seize the luxury e-commerce cake and compress the market space of the temple libraries. The industry is bright, does not mean that all players can make decent money, and this is the case with today's Secoo.
Li Rixue once said: "Ma Yun wants to make Ali a 102-year enterprise, and I want to make Secoo 109 years, longer than Ali." Judging from the current market value of Secoo's less than $30 million, Li Rixue is obviously getting farther and farther away from this goal.
Resources:
What happened to the temple? Arrears of payment, live data fraud, can you save yourself? Entertainment Capital;
"Shangpin.com bankruptcy, how far can luxury e-commerce companies go? Mantis Finance;
"The first share of luxury e-commerce" with internal and external troubles: Siku, what's wrong? Red Star Capital Bureau;
"Wage arrears, layoffs, and arrears of payment continue to be turbulent, and luxury e-commerce siku has been filed for bankruptcy reorganization", Interface News;
""The One Who Gets the World": What is the Essence of Luxury E-commerce| Company Research", narrow broadcast