The first time the reporter met Hu Fei, the CEO of Selling Good Cars, was in his office. This slightly modest office is simply divided into office areas, rest areas and meeting areas according to the placement of tables and chairs, except for a few documents scattered on the desk, the whole space is clean and tidy.
Hu Fei beckoned us to sit down at the conference table. He talked to each other as he took out a teapot from the disinfection cabinet next to the table to make tea. Unlike him in the news, who wears suits and shoes, Hu Fei is dressed casually in the workplace and is cordial and talkative.
Sell good car CEO Hu Fei
Building 5, where the good car is sold, is not difficult to find, from the west gate of the dream town, go straight, you can see the whole building that belongs to the sale of a good car. Xu has been stationed here since 2015, unlike the Internet company in the impression, the office building that sells good cars carries a little mark of time - there is no elevator, no smart takeaway cabinet, the walls of the corridor are decorated with employee photos or company logos, and the office area on each floor is only covered with curtains... Weakens the sense of science and technology, but magnifies life.
Mentioning this small three-story building, when he first moved in, Hu Fei still felt that the place was too big for the 40-person start-up team to use, and he finally decided to rent it under the encouragement of the park's phrase "it will always be filled later".
Building 5, where the good car is sold
Seven years have passed since the start-up, the enterprises in the town have stopped and walked, sold good cars but have been sticking to it, and now the resident employees have increased to more than 300 people, which is finally worthy of the phrase "always filled".
From B2C to B2B
"Maybe because we're mainly for car dealers, we haven't heard much about us."
In fact, at the beginning of its establishment, the predecessor of "Sell Good Cars" was "Buy Good Cars", a B2C car sales platform based on imported cars. But after spending some time in contact with the industry, Hu Fei found that "the whole industry is not short of a car seller, but a set of overall supply chain solutions." As a result, the company model shifted to B2B and became an automobile circulation platform.
Speaking of the opportunity for this change, the reporter asked Hu Fei how to define the word "good car" in "selling a good car", and Hu Fei corrected that it should actually be understood as selling a good car: "This name is aimed at car dealers." The car dealer is responsible for selling the car, and we help the car dealer sell the car well. ”
Sell the car at the front entrance
Realizing the difference between buying a car and selling a car is due to specific research experience. Hu Fei said, "When others know that I am a car seller, he does not care at all what car I sell, he will only tell me what car he wants." ”
Limited by the particularity of the automotive industry, even if it is difficult to find a designated car, the problem of how to settle the payment and how to transport it is in front of us. As a result, there is no accurate car, no fast financial solution, no transparent logistics information, it becomes a problem.
However, to what extent can this problem be called a problem? Selling good cars has found a huge sinking market outside the 4S shop camp.
Look for sinking markets
Hu Fei gave several impressive examples:
Local villagers in Guizhou, when they have the intention to buy a car, will directly ask the seven aunts and eight aunts to introduce acquaintance car dealers, let the car dealers coordinate the desired models, or simply give the budget range to recommend the purchase of cars.
Farmers selling Pu'er tea in Yunnan, their main income is tea, and when local tea farmers buy a car, there will even be a car purchase plan of 100,000 cash and 50,000 tea worth of tea to barter cars. Or pomegranate growers will form a personalized mortgage plan for quarterly repayment according to the ripening cycle of the fruit.
Elder Ji of the Oyster Shop, because he likes cars, often discusses topics related to luxury cars with diners, and finally simply becomes a car dealer who helps rich people around Hangzhou solve the problem of luxury car trading. Lao Ji's account "Luxury Car Poison" on Douyin has accumulated 62,000 fans.
In the above case, car dealers, which are different from the traditional sense, are classified as "new car dealers" by selling good cars: "new car dealers" can be small and medium-sized car dealers in townships, or KOLs or KOCs in the field of e-commerce, and their biggest feature is that they rely on the acquaintance economy and fan economy to sell cars.
A real-time data board located on the first floor of a good car
In the "2021 China Sinking Market Car Purchase Behavior Insight Report", Ai Media Consulting pointed out that in the sinking market, small and medium-sized car dealers have grown into an important sales channel, accounting for 47.2%, almost on a par with traditional 4S stores (accounting for 50.8%).
Driven by factors such as policy subsidies and the improvement of the national economic level, the per capita consumption level of third- and fourth-tier cities has been continuously improved, and the demand for car purchases has gradually increased. Among the users in the sinking market, 58.8% of the groups have the demand for car purchases; the proportion of users who buy cars for the first time accounts for 79%, much higher than the 43% in first- and second-tier cities; and the proportion of old cars replacing new cars has also reached 34.1%.
"The consumption structure of the sinking market is determined by the characteristics of consumers. What we see is that those who sell bird's nest can also sell cars, and those who sell insurance can also sell cars. Hu Fei told reporters, "What we have to do is to help small and medium-sized car dealers open up the channel and liberate their sales capabilities by providing a digital supply chain." ”
The pain points are broken one by one
When the commonality of a problem is confirmed, the next step is to solve it.
Hu Fei gave an example to reporters to illustrate the initial level of the automotive supply chain and the importance of building a digital system. At the beginning of the preparation, "the company had purchased 300 cars of the same car, and the manufacturer directly put the keys of 300 cars together and sent them together, so we had to find a key one by one..."
Hu Fei chose to cut in from the money, that is, to solve the problem of no fast financial solution first.
After several entanglements, when Hu Fei found that what banks needed was actually transparent assets, he determined that the path of selling a good car to provide financial solutions was the whole process of digital supervision. After digitizing the valuation, shape, color, and configuration of a car, banks are more willing to lend money to small and medium-sized car dealers, and the problem of money is solved.
Once the small and medium-sized car dealers get the loan, it is time to solve the problem of "no accurate car". "Is there a shared cloud warehouse that lets me know where to get the car I want?" How many are there? Hu Fei admitted that before building a warehouse, it is not that you have not tried to rent someone else's garage, "but when you want to use your own system to ensure that the digitization of vehicle information can be connected with the transparency of assets, you can only choose to build your own garage." ”
Sell good car storage monitoring center
Hu Fei described the scene when the car dealer applied to sell a good car: when the consumer told the car dealer which car he needed, the car dealer only needed to search in the selling car APP to know which warehouses there were, how many cars there were, and then the logistics was sent directly to the home.
"From finance to logistics to information flow, we have completed a complete set of automotive supply chain systems." At present, more than 300 cloud warehouses have been built across the country, covering almost all prefecture-level cities in China.
Do "new forces selling cars"
Hu Fei's goal is to use this supply chain system in the sinking market of new energy vehicles.
Ouyang Minggao, vice chairman of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, expects that domestic new energy vehicle sales will reach more than 5 million in 2022, exceeding expectations; by 2030, the proportion of new energy vehicles may reach 50%, truly achieving from outbreak to popularization.
At the annual meeting of the circulation industry, Liu Xiaoshi, executive deputy secretary general of the Electric Vehicle Hundred Association, pointed out that the number of cars for thousands of people in large cities has tended to be stable, "According to the average annual growth rate of disposable income of rural residents by 10%, the number of rural cars per thousand people will reach 160 in 2030, which is a huge increase." ”
The potential of the sinking market of new energy vehicles can be seen from the delivery performance of new car-making forces last year. Xiaopeng, the best performer last year, delivered 16,000 units in a single month in December, an increase of only 181% year-on-year, while Nezha and Zero Run, which took the cost-effective route, increased by 236% and 368% respectively.
In the sinking market, there is neither Tesla nor "Wei Xiaoli", what Hu Fei sees is that an unknown car brand can sell 4 million units of "old man music" in the county town a year, "the fame is not big, but the market demand of others is large enough." ”
With the sinking of the new energy vehicle market, the advantages of the model of selling good cars have gradually emerged. In addition to the geographical level of 4S stores and directly operated stores can not be reached, psychologically, due to the consumption characteristics of the sinking market, even consumers with car purchase needs are not biased towards buying cars through such official channels.
Hu Fei said that the superiority of the model of selling a good car can also be verified from the shortening of the turnaround time of the car. "The average turnover cycle in the industry is 45 days, and we shortened it to 24 days, which is equivalent to reducing the interest rate of the loan, which has also become a lucrative business for small and medium-sized car dealers."
Next "Battlefield"
In fact, in the case of such fierce competition in the new energy market in first- and second-tier cities, no one does not want to get the sinking market, "fragrant food", "now even auto manufacturers are doing the work of the sinking market", Hu Fei told reporters.
In addition to car companies such as Wuling Hongguang, which have targeted their target audiences in third- and fourth-tier cities, the new forces that have "fought" in first- and second-tier cities are also intent on turning to new markets.
On the last day of 2021, Tesla announced that its official store officially opened in Urumqi, Xinjiang, and at present, Tesla has 211 stores in the country, but only covers 60 cities; in March last year, Weilai Li Bin said that it would sink to the third- and fourth-tier markets such as Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang.
Compared with the car companies that are almost just starting out, the next goal of selling good cars that chose to "surround the city from the countryside" at the beginning is to "continue to sink and strive to sink into the county." ”
When asked if he would choose to start a business if he started again, Hu Fei half-jokingly said that he "didn't want to", and then added, "80% will still start a business, but may choose a slightly easier industry." ”
The road to industrial Internet is "difficult" but "correct", the new energy vehicle market has a bright future, Hu Fei is glad that he is standing at the forefront of "a wave", "Wait until I get old and think that I have even a little relationship with the development of the automotive industry, it is very good." ”