Just half a year after the bankruptcy of Tongcheng Life and Food Sharing Association, another member of the community group buying "Old Three Groups", the Ten Hui Group, also quietly collapsed.
"It's all closed, all the cities are closed." Recently, a number of business development of the Ten Hui Group told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that the Ten Hui Group is gradually shutting down the grid warehouses and self-pickup stations nationwide. More departing employees broke the news to reporters that according to some core employees he heard, the Ten Hui Group may have been in debt of 200 million yuan and is ready to apply for bankruptcy liquidation.
In this regard, as of the press release on January 28, the reporter has repeatedly tried to contact the relevant person in charge of the Ten Hui Group for verification, but has not received a response. The news about the layoffs and withdrawal of the Shihui Group has actually been fermenting for many days at the end of 2021.
"Daily Economic News" reporter recently logged on to the Ten HuiTuan Mini Program to switch Changsha, Wuhan, Jinan and other cities, and found that on the eve of the Spring Festival, which should have been the peak season of business, the platform had no goods for sale. Even if the reporter tried to recharge the phone bill, he was refunded.
At the same time, Qixinbao shows that Beijing QunxianHuihui Technology Co., Ltd., an affiliate of Shihuituan, has recently been restricted from high consumption, and the object of related restrictions on consumption is Wang Wenjing, the company's legal representative, involving labor dispute cases.
It is lamentable that in the "2021 China Unicorn Ranking" released by the Hurun Research Institute on December 20, 2021, the Ten HuiTuan still ranked 83rd, with a valuation of 17 billion yuan.
At this point, the once unlimited scenery of the community group purchase "old three groups", in 2021, has experienced the bankruptcy of the same life, the loss of the Ten Hui Group, and the remaining prosperity is preferred to be strong.
It can be seen that compared with the scenery of giants and capital competing to enter in 2020, community group buying has appeared to be "a chicken feather" in the past 2021. On the one hand, the policy is strong supervision, and many platforms have been punished for malicious low-price competition; on the other hand, as capital and the market tend to be rational, the original players who have long relied on "burning money" have encountered a fatal blow in the new round of reshuffle period.
Of course, it is also after the strong supervision and strict rectification of policies in 2021, in the eyes of many industry insiders interviewed by reporters, community group buying is a business model that has been gradually verified, and in the next three to five years, it will become a mature format. However, in view of the fact that the front and back end are extremely expensive and more dependent on traffic, especially from the overall market environment, it is necessary to move towards a kind of integration of store + home + community delivery, and it will also become more a means for large platforms to obtain traffic, and it is difficult to have independent development unicorns.
It is undeniable that even the only prosperous preferred one that is still standing at present has long embraced industrial capital such as Tencent and JD.com.
The ten leagues lost: "Burn the money out" after the punishment, the brushing orders continued
Zhang Bo (pseudonym), a Changsha employee who has worked in the Shihui Regiment for nearly 5 years, recently told the Daily Economic News reporter that he suddenly received a DingTalk call from the Beijing headquarters on December 20, 2021, and was laid off due to the company's poor management, "it is the third round of layoffs, and only two or three hundred people are left after the layoffs."
According to Zhang Bo, the first round of layoffs began at the end of August last year, and the layoffs were mainly new employees who had not yet reached the 6-month probationary period, with no compensation, providing a fresh interview opportunity for Hema. The second round of layoffs is for new executives in various positions, and they are compensated according to N+1. The end of the year is the third round, aimed at veteran employees.
Zhang Bo added, "In fact, the salary in October is also owed, and the basic salary is less for no reason, and it is only 70%. Another employee in Jinan, Shandong Province, told the Daily Economic News that he had just been employed for 1 year, and when the manpower dismissed him, he made it clear that the compensation was only an additional 10 days of salary.
At present, the predicament of the Ten HuiTuan is something that Zhang Bo did not expect. When he saw the news of tongcheng's bankruptcy before, he did not have the slightest sense of crisis, believing that the Ten HuiTuan had Ali's support, "Never thought that [the ShihuiTuan] would collapse at once." ”
Obviously, even if the salary is cut and the city is withdrawn, a series of "broken arms and self-help" since the second half of last year are still difficult to exchange for a glimmer of life. The exit of this unicorn, which has experienced seven rounds of financing and once stood up to the aura of Ali's investment, has once again focused its attention on the former outlet of community group buying.
As the original player of a community group purchase, it was once again favored by the e-commerce giant Ali, and the Ten Hui Group also had unlimited scenery.
According to Qixinbao, Beijing Shihui Technology Co., Ltd. was established in August 2018 and has completed 7 rounds of financing, and completed a $750 million Series D financing in March 2021, with a total financing amount of more than $1.2 billion. Alibaba, CICC Capital, GGV Capital, Times Capital and other well-known investment institutions participated in the investment, of which Alibaba participated in 4 rounds of investment from the A round and was an important shareholder of the 10 Hui Group.
In August 2019, Shihui Group merged with the community group buying platform "You, Me and You" that is deeply rooted in Changsha to form the New Shihui Group, ranking among the leading players in the community group buying industry, and was called "Old Three Groups" together with Xingsheng Preferred and Tongcheng Life.
The person in charge of the operation of the Alipay Mini Program of the Ten HuiTuan has released a set of data, since the launch of the Ten Huituan Alipay Mini Program in April 2021, the daily order volume of the Mini Program has exceeded 3 million orders in 100 days, and the daily increase in users has increased to 70 times, and the Mini Program has ranked first in the brand hot search list for several weeks, becoming the first Alipay Mini Program with the largest single-day collection.
According to the official website of Shihui Tuan, as of now, Shihui Tuan's business has completed the layout of 7 major regions, 25 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) and more than 2,000 cities and counties in Central China, South China, East China, North China, Northwest China, Southwest China and Northeast China, covering 830,000 communities and 50.83 million household users nationwide.
The previous good performance made the Ten Clubs become ambitious. Chen Yin, chairman and co-CEO of Shihui Tuan, said in an internal letter in 2020 that the cause of Shihui Tuan should be at least 1 trillion yuan, and "we will make the dream bigger together." At the end of January 2021, the official website of the Shihui Regiment reprinted the "New Distribution" article saying that the ShihuiTuan has more than 600,000 regimental leaders, and the goal in 2021 is to complete the strategic layout of 5 million regimental leaders in the country and open up online and offline.
Half a year later, the dream was shattered.
In August 2021, some media reported that the Shihui Group would close the grid warehouses in Nanning, Qingdao, Harbin and other cities. On the 21st of the same month, Chen Ying responded in an internal letter that the closure of some inefficient business areas is a strategic adjustment, and at the same time, the Group will also cooperate with Ali MMC. However, according to a report by the Network Economic News Agency on the 23rd of the same month, Ali insiders revealed that Ali MMC did not have any business dealings with the Shihui Group.
Did not wait for Ali's olive branch, and due to the uncertainty of Chinese stocks, according to the "Daily Economic News" reporter learned from informed sources, an important DOLLAR fund that was originally negotiated also retreated in the second half of the year. Since then, the news of the layoffs and withdrawal of the Ten Hui Regiment has followed.
In November 2021, according to a number of media reports, the Group of Ten Hui group cut a lot of employees, from 10,000 employees nationwide to less than 2,000 people.
In January this year, a number of employees of the Shihui Regiment, including Zhang Bo, confirmed to the Daily Economic News the news of the large-scale layoffs and withdrawal of the Shihui Regiment, "33 urban circles were reduced to Guangzhou-Shenzhen, Jiangsu, Jinan, Wuhan, Changsha, these 5, many of the layoffs were directly closed by the city's business, and the employees walked a lot." ”
As of press time, the Reporter of the Daily Economic News once again tried to contact the relevant media contacts of the Ten Hui Group many times, hoping to learn about the company's current operation, but it was unsuccessful. Including asking the relevant person in charge of the Ten Hui Group for verification, there was no response.
The reporter opened the official WeChat public account of the Shihui Group and found that as of January 25, 2022, the public account was still posting articles discussing the North and South Small New Year's Festival.
Reflecting on the loss of the Ten Hui Group, Zhang Bo told reporters that the major community group buying enterprises started a price war in 2020, "wanton subsidies and wanton losses", which gave birth to the chaos of salesmen brushing orders. Through the huge subsidy coupon, the price of the goods is lower than the purchase cost, and many salesmen will place a large number of orders and then resell the goods for the second time in order to meet the performance standards.
In March 2021, the most widely known thing was that the State Administration for Market Regulation imposed administrative penalties on five community group buying enterprises, including Shihui Tuan, for the chaos of single brushing. The reason for the punishment mentioned that these enterprises used their capital advantages to carry out a large number of price subsidies and disrupt the market price order.
After only 3 months, in May 2021, ShihuiTuan was once again fined 1.5 million yuan by the State Administration for Market Regulation for improper price behavior and ordered to suspend business for rectification.
Just after two consecutive heavy penalties, the brushing orders continued.
Zhang Bo provided a screenshot to reporters, and the salesman was still brushing orders in disguise by changing the books in mid-2021. For example, the market price of 30 grains and grain eggs on a plate is 17.5 yuan, and the price on the Platform of Shihui Tuan is 13.68 yuan. In order to meet the requirements of the State Administration of Municipal Supervision, the salesman will change the cost price of the eggs to 13.68 yuan on the book. Zhang Bo said that this commodity sold 37137 copies on the day of the opening of the group, and for each one sold, the company would lose 3.82 yuan, and the one-day sales of this product alone made the company subsidize more than 140,000 yuan.
Zhang Bo said that Chen Yin will introduce the amoeba business model into the Ten Hui Group in 2020, making each city circle responsible for its own performance and profit results. Zhang Bo introduced that after the completion of the KPI of the month in the city circle, all employees in the city circle can get unequal amoeba rewards, "The lowest level of employee salaries in Changsha is four or five thousand, but after completing the task, the amoeba reward can have 3,000 yuan, so everyone wants to brush the order." As for how many KPIs there are, Zhang Bo said that the value is not important, "KPIs can be brushed out." Some procurement said that the KPI is set at will, and how much can be completed. ”
In addition, Zhang Bo recalled that until he was laid off on December 20, 2021, the Changsha Shihui Group always maintained a normal opening and delivered every day. At the beginning of January this year, Zhang Bo opened the small program of the Shihui Group, and several changes on it made her unable to understand, "Changsha is still opening the group, which has become a five-day delivery, I am very surprised." There are also very few goods, and fresh fruits, which were originally drained, are now completely unavailable to suppliers. So why not stop? What are the Ten Clubs waiting for? ”
The reporter also noted that on the official WeChat public account of the Shihui Group, during the double 12 period in 2021, there are four related cities and provincial capitals in Changsha, Wuhan, Jinan and Jiangsu to do promotions.
As of January 27, 2022, the reporter published that there were no goods for sale on the Ten HuiTuan Mini Program. "Changsha is no longer in the group, and I heard that the remaining employees have also been dismissed." Zhang Bo told the Daily Economic News reporter. He heard some core employees say that the Ten Hui Group has been in debt of 200 million yuan and is ready to apply for bankruptcy liquidation. However, for the liability data, as of the press release, it has not been possible to contact the relevant person in charge of the Ten Hui Group for further verification.
Unicorns have fallen one after another Community group buying has entered a cooling off period
Massive layoffs, business contraction... The encounter of the Ten Hui Group is just a microcosm of the current situation of group buying in the community. Since 2021, the community group buying market is ushering in a cruel reshuffle.
Once upon a time, the popularity of community group buying was comparable to the Hundred Regiments War of that year. The epidemic has made the community group buying stage a "headwind reversal", and players from all walks of life have made great progress. According to public statistics, in the first half of 2020, more than ten financings occurred in the field of community group buying and fresh e-commerce, with an amount of 10 billion yuan. Xingsheng Preferred, Shihuituan and other platforms have completed at least two rounds of financing.
In 2021, although the policy supervision is tightened, the community group buying head enterprise is still the target favored by capital.
According to the data of the E-commerce Research Center, in 2021, there were a total of 10 financing incidents in China's community group buying industry, involving platforms including: Yipin Fresh, Xingsheng Preferred, Dolphin Purchase, Good Neighbor Good Things, Shihui Tuan, Vegetable Lady, Guangyi Supply Chain, and Kangpinhui, with a total financing amount of more than 28.59 billion yuan. Among them, Xingsheng Preferred alone obtained three financings in one year, with a financing amount of nearly $4 billion.
The turning point occurred in the second half of the year.
In July 2021, Suzhou Fresh Orange Technology Co., Ltd., the parent company of Tongcheng Life, issued an announcement that due to poor management, the company decided to file for bankruptcy. The industry, which was once the second largest in the industry after Prosperity and Preferred, officially declared its collapse, becoming the first community group buying unicorn in China to fall, causing an uproar in the industry.
On July 23 of the same year, the Wuhan headquarters of the community group buying platform Food Sharing Club Company has been empty, the supplier's payment has not been settled, the employees' wages have been owed, the platform shopping mini program has not been opened, and a number of senior executives have left their posts. But Dai Shanhui, the founder of the Food Sharing Club, responded a few days later that it was just shut down, saying that the community group buying business was too expensive and had been losing money, and was ready to transform into a physical convenience store.
Today, the Ten Hui Group, which was once considered to be "backed by the big tree" because of the investment from Ali, has suddenly fallen into operational difficulties, and there are few original players left in the community group buying market.
Bao Yuezhong, a special researcher at the E-commerce Research Center of the Network Economic Society and a new retail expert, said that there are problems in the business model of community group buying like Shihui Tuan. Relying solely on community group buying, it lacks supply chain capabilities and user operation capabilities, so such a relatively single business model is difficult to "run through".
He further said that in the current market environment, retail should be in-store retail, home retail, including the community group purchase is now creating a form of retail delivery to the community. From the perspective of the overall market environment, it is difficult for them to survive alone, and they must go into a kind of integration, which can form a kind of store-to-store plus community delivery, and integrate these forms together to form a more valuable form of retail.
This also seems to explain why the original players of the community group purchase are extremely competitive when they occupy one side, and once they blow the horn of expansion across the country, they all end up in failure.
Peng Chengjing, a community business research expert, also believes that community group buying cannot become an independent business model, it can only be a means for large platforms to obtain traffic. "If community group buying wants to become an independent business platform, the front end needs a lot of funds to expand the market, the back end needs a strong logistics supply chain and procurement team, and the front and back end are extremely money-burning work."
In Peng Chengjing's view, this is also a problem that must be faced in the process of the expansion of the original players of each community group purchase: if the independent community group buying platform wants to develop and grow, it is necessary to repeat the work done by the original e-commerce platform, no matter the time or technology is in a state of catching up, as long as the big platform is not lazy, the funds are not worse than you, and the first-mover advantage of the independent group buying platform will gradually decrease over time until it lags behind.
It is precisely for this reason that the current predicament of the Ten Hui Group is related to its burning money for scale, loss for traffic, the product in addition to the low-price advantage, there is no core competitiveness, the platform lacks "hematopoietic" ability, although it has realized that it has begun to shrink the business, but in the face of the giant squeeze, it is downwind. This is also a common problem faced by life in the same city and food sharing.
"As for the competitive pattern of follow-up community group buying, don't think about it, unicorns are very difficult, even if there are also the kind with thighs, independent operation is basically difficult." Community group buying will become an auxiliary means of traffic acquisition, existing in various platforms and chain entities retail channels, which is dependent on survival and extremely difficult to develop independently. Peng Chengjing said.
Difficult to become an independent format Where does the business model go?
"Community group buying is a proven business model, and in the next three to five years, it will definitely become a mature format." However, in this process, it is also necessary to continuously change and integrate according to the characteristics of the region, the changes in the consumer population, the adjustment of policies and the upgrading of technology. He is actually a good entry point for online and offline integration. Zhuang Shuai, founder of Bailian Consulting, told the "Daily Economic News" reporter.
The consensus in the industry is that although the unicorn scenery is no longer there, community group buying is actually an incremental business model that has been proven to be feasible and has consumers willing to accept.
However, this business model, its current market size is not enough to support its independent existence, it must rely on mature formats for development, such as relying on mature takeaway formats, relying on mature e-commerce formats, relying on mature supermarkets, convenience stores formats for development.
Perhaps it is also early to see the advantages of its own scale and strength, and community group buying was once the focus of competition for giants such as Ali, Pinduoduo, Meituan, and Didi. In the past two years, Jingdong's investment has flourished, Pinduoduo has pushed more vegetables, and Meituan has developed Meituan Preferred, which has also made the competition in this track extremely fierce.
However, in the face of increasingly tightening policy supervision and escalating market competition, competition among giants is also stratifying. Under the pressure of "burning money" and market competition, even with rich market experience, many giants are difficult to be alone. Over the past year, the giants' footsteps have also been a little difficult and cautious.
Didi said in its third-quarter earnings report that due to the change in the fair value of Orange Heart Investment, Didi confirmed a net investment loss of 20.8 billion yuan in the third quarter. As a community group buying business that Didi has entered in a big way before, Orange Heart Preferred has also encountered difficulties such as business contraction and store closure in 2021, and it is urgent to explore new business models and transformation directions.
Meituan disclosed in its third quarter 2021 financial report revenue that its catering takeaway business, arrivals, wine and tourism revenues were profitable. However, the company's new businesses such as Meituan Preferred and Meituan Grocery Shopping achieved losses. Meituan revealed that the above-mentioned new business loss was about 10.9 billion yuan.
After Ali failed to bet on the Ten Clubs, or the internal horse racing "abandoned" the Ten Clubs, the internal adjustments were also made in a timely manner. In March 2021, the Ali community e-commerce business group was officially established, and in September, the original "Hema Market" and other brands were uniformly upgraded to "Taocai Cai"; Ali's financial report showed that its Tao Cai Cai GMV in the second quarter of the fiscal year increased by more than 150% month-on-month, and is currently in rapid development, but there is still a distance from the industry's head platform in terms of scale.
Public data shows that in 2021, the community group purchase track will receive financing of up to 28.5 billion yuan, and if the giant's investment in this track is added, the community group purchase may burn up to hundreds of billions of dollars.
It is worth mentioning that after embracing Tencent and Jingdong industrial capital, as a unique community commercial unicorn at present, Xingsheng Preferred revealed to the "Daily Economic News" reporter that by the end of 2021, Xingsheng Preferred has been stationed in 17 provinces and municipalities directly under the central government, more than 1,400 prefecture-level cities, more than 100,000 townships and rural areas, and more than 1 million cooperative stores. The monthly active users of the platform are about 80 million, and GMV has achieved 1400 times growth in 5 years.
Zhuang Shuai said that from the perspective of the current market pattern, the community group buying is a combination model with the offline supermarket convenience store format, the most typical representative is the prosperity of the preferred; the other is the platform model of Taocai, Meituan, and Duoduo. However, looking closely, the model of buying more vegetables is more focused on performance; meituan prefers the combination of group leader acquisition and performance; Ali's taocai dishes are more focused on customer acquisition, and now the operational details of each giant in community group buying have appeared.
Under this trend, the future of community group buying will still be further refined operation, and the platform's original model, front warehouse, offline formats to explore opportunities for further integration, but it is uncertain what the future policy and capital changes will be, and the future development prospects of community group buying should also be combined with these two factors.
"At present, the small and medium-sized communities in many areas are still relatively good to survive, if you can operate a good design group purchase in a certain area, and then cooperate with the giants to serve the giants, it is also a way." However, in order to independently develop a national design group buying enterprise, it is still difficult to look at start-ups. Zhuang Shuai said.
At the beginning of 2022, compared with the shouts of giants last year and the previous year about the gunpowder of community group buying business, this year is more quiet and low-key. However, from the depth of buying vegetables, tao vegetables, and meituan's preferred depth, it can be seen that this track is still undercurrent.
From the fiery 2020 to the deep water area of 2021, community group buying has entered the inflection point of development, and this proven business model has been difficult in the development process, and the competition is still continuing.
Reporter| Zhao Wenqi Yang Xinyi (intern)
Editor| Liu Xuemei, Lu Xiangyong, Du Hengfeng
Proofreading | Cheng Peng
| the original article of the daily economic news nbdnews |
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