The East Shop announced its closure, and the social e-commerce outlet suffered a life and death disaster

Wen | Zhang Mengyi of the Weekly Magazine of Finance and Economics

Edit the | Sun Yue

On January 18, Dongxiaodian issued an announcement that due to business adjustments, Dongxiaodian has closed all functions except for withdrawal and withdrawal certification, online customer service, and no longer copies to calculate revenue. In addition, the East Xiaodian Mini Program will close the offline line at 24:00 on February 28, 2022, completely stop all services, and remind users to complete the withdrawal as soon as possible.

(Source: Screenshot of the East Xiaodian Mini Program)

According to the notice released on the official website of Dongxiaodian, in order to protect the rights and interests of users, Dongxiaodian and Fenxiang have launched a translation policy, and The strategic partners of Dongxiaodian can pan to the Fenxiang platform.

According to the enterprise investigation, the Fenxiang platform is a social e-commerce mini program, 99% of Jingdong's products have coupons or rebates in Fenxiang, and some products can choose Jingdong delivery. Deng Zhengping, the legal person of Fenxiang, is the former founder and general manager of Jingdong Smart Home, and also served as the founder and general manager of Jingdong Mobile Department. Some relevant people in Dongxiaodian have publicly revealed that the main thing is the internal business adjustment of Jingdong, and Dongxiaodian is an internal incubation project of Jingdong, and the cost performance of production and research investment is not as good as that of the market, so it is suspended.

The East Shop exits

In 2018, the efficient customer acquisition and fission ability of social e-commerce attracted many enterprises to join, and social e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo, Yunji, and Mushroom Street have gone to the capital market, and social e-commerce has been pushed to the outlet.

In this context, JD.com launched the social e-commerce platform "Dongxiaodian" in November 2019, the main model is S2B2C. That is, small B users through the platform Mini Program selection promotion, transfer chain, in the WeChat community to release the exclusive coupons of the East Xiaodian channel products, so that sinking market users to buy low-cost preferential products, and earn the corresponding commission. These goods come from Jingdong Mall and enjoy Jingdong's after-sales service. Among them, 99% of the goods can enjoy special discounts, and the platform has no threshold and no fee.

According to the official website, as of August 2020, about 210,000 store managers in Dongxiaodian have achieved monthly income of more than 10,000 yuan, at that time, Dongxiaodian also launched version 2.0, added the function of "adding WeChat", and announced a strategic cooperation with Dada Group to further enrich the commodity pool and supply chain of Dongxiaodian, when Dongxiaodian can sell individual merchant goods and Jingdong Home goods. However, since April 2021, jd.com has not heard new news.

In fact, before Dongxiaodian, a number of social e-commerce platforms have announced their closure. Last year, Alibaba's "Tao Xiaodian" issued an announcement that due to business strategy adjustments, commodity trading and other related functions will be stopped on the evening of October 11, 2021. On January 17, 2021, Xiaomi's "Youpin Youyu" also claimed that due to business adjustments, Youpin will not be able to access the Youpin Fish APP and Mini Program due to the termination of operations on March 17, 2022.

In addition to the Internet giants that have officially withdrawn, other social e-commerce platforms are also struggling. On August 4, 2021, some suppliers broke the news that Beidian owed more than 1,400 suppliers for goods, and the amount of security deposits and total payments owed exceeded 140 million yuan. In addition, the "first social e-commerce stock" Yunji also received a warning letter from Nasdaq in September this year. According to the third quarterly report, Yunji achieved operating income of 1.694 billion yuan, down nearly 60% from the same period last year, and gross profit was 626 million yuan, which was almost waist-cutting compared with the same period last year.

Social e-commerce outlet is no longer

The social e-commerce "pulling people's heads, distribution" model has been questioned for suspected pyramid schemes, and there is a risk of broken capital chains. With the tightening of regulatory policies, many social e-commerce platforms have also been subject to regulatory fines. According to public data, between 2017 and 2019, 50 social e-commerce platforms were fined, and more than 20 social e-commerce platforms were punished in 2020. Platforms including Peanut Diary, Yunji, Weidian, Zebra Members, Yige Youshou, and Honey Source have all been frozen funds or fined for suspected pyramid schemes.

On December 29, 2021, the Municipal Supervision Bureau of Yuhua District, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, ruled that Shanghai Darwei, the parent company of the "TST Court Secret", was suspected of pyramid schemes, and the social e-commerce model was once again involved in the cusp of public opinion. In this regard, industry insiders believe that social e-commerce advocates fission, secondary distribution, three-set distribution have a bit of a pyramid scheme nature, and this is the focus of the policy crackdown, so it has been greatly impacted.

In addition, the quality of the products of social e-commerce platforms and the problem of selling fake goods are also frequently complained about by consumers. On the black cat complaint platform, many consumers revealed that they were shopping on social e-commerce platforms and encountered problems such as non-refunds and fake sales. Under the dual pressure of policy and word of mouth, the outlet of social e-commerce has gradually become muted.

According to the "Electricity Treasure", the number and amount of social e-commerce financing reached a peak of investment in 2018-2019, and after that, it gradually decreased, and the number of financing events of social e-commerce in 2021 fell by 22.23% year-on-year. With the e-commerce outlet blowing to live e-commerce, major social e-commerce have also announced the transformation of live broadcast tracks, since last year, there have been future bazaars, beidians, zebra members have launched live broadcast functions.

Mo Daiqing, senior analyst of e-commerce in the network economic society, believes that the social e-commerce industry has entered a reshuffle period, and the social e-commerce industry needs to find a suitable development model to improve hematopoietic capacity. In this fierce competition situation, small and medium-sized social e-commerce is naturally unsustainable, and the law of the jungle leads to the survival of the fittest. In the future, social e-commerce will enter a more fierce battle, and the transformation and innovation of the model will be a new proposition for the development of social e-commerce.