In just one year, the war of community group buying has quickly subsided, from burning money to pursuing profits, from capital enthusiasm to no one asking, whether a business model is established, it may be worse than money, less time, almost fierce competition to fight and train the team, but these things that were supposed to happen in the community group buying were forcibly terminated.
The story of community group buying can't be told anymore, it has become an ordinary business without imagination, and the people who stay behind are still surviving. Giants are not afraid of trial and error, but for ordinary people who chase the outlet, their lives are completely changed after falling from the outlet.
Wen | Xie Chan
Edited by | Zhao Lei
Operation | Tsukimi
Figure | Xie Chan (unless specially noted)
A penny commission
In the last few days of 2021, Changsha had a rare heavy snowfall that covered roadside trees and electric vehicles. On the south road of the station in Changsha's Yuhua District, Hao Daqiang, the owner of the convenience store, is counting the dishes sent by various community group buying platforms.
On this street, the community group purchase pick-up point exists at a density of 50 meters, often people come into Hao Daqiang's store to pick up the goods, but find that the goods number cannot be found, and then verify that the other party's booked pick-up point is another convenience store next door.
Hao Daqiang's store also opened Xingsheng Preferred, Hema, Meituan Preferred and Duoduo shopping at the same time. In Changsha, a convenience store serves as a pick-up point for four or five platforms at the same time, which is a normal situation caused by giants competing for the head of the group. At the end of 2019, the urban development personnel of various community group buying platforms were active on the street, repeatedly sweeping the street, not sparing any convenience store, and each regiment leader had heard the door-to-door development personnel say something like this: "Do you want to open a new group?" To make one share of money is to earn, and to make four is also to earn. ”
As the smallest unit of community group buying, the dense spread of pick-up points on the map is the most direct evidence that the business is going crazy. In Chenzhou, Hunan Province, the self-pick-up points of the Ten Hui Tuan once reached more than 4,000, and in the Xiangjiang Century City, the largest community in Changsha, there are more than 20 self-pick-up points for Meituan to buy vegetables and prosperity, more than 90 to choose orange hearts, and more self-pick-up points to buy vegetables. At that time, the giants believed that "the leader of the group won the world", and the commission of the leader pulling new users rose from 10 points to 12 points, and later to 15 points.
For a while, the regimental leaders did make some money, that is, when the various platforms of community group buying were fighting a price war, and people were full of enthusiasm for the new thing of community group buying. Li Mei, the head of The regiment in Changde County, Hunan Province, remembers that at the end of 2020, users who rushed to the second-handicap activity frantically placed orders at twelve o'clock in the night, and the sound of the mobile phone made her unable to sleep.
Cheng Ruochun was once a member of the zero point spike army, this middle-aged woman living alone in the county town when she first came into contact with community group buying, she was very interested in shopping and buying, she and the neighbor sisters added six groups, the nearby regiment leader will throw the spike link in the group every day, they will grab a penny of the day together. In her spare time, she also walked around, a few cents and a few dollars of things everywhere, and she couldn't help but add shopping carts to everything.
Attracting a large number of new users by cheapness has brought about a rapid growth in single volume, which in turn supports a huge supply chain, logistics distribution and end-of-line regimental leader system. "Burning money to expand", community group buying platforms have tried to use this previously tried-and-tested method in the Internet fields such as takeaway and taxi to transform the traditional community retail business with trillions of yuan, reduce costs with scale and efficiency, and ultimately achieve profitability.
But right now, everyone can feel that the single amount is declining. This New Year's Day, Li Mei opened the background of several platforms to look at the single volume of this day, and there was only 3 singles on one platform. Su Fang, a local snack supplier in Changsha, paid attention to the fact that in Xingsheng Preferred, the daily sales volume of some products has dropped to several hundred, which has never been done before, "before it was tens of thousands of orders." In the past six months, the number of single products (SKUs) on the platform has also decreased, from a few thousand to hundreds or even dozens.
The amount of orders has dropped, and the commissions of the regimental leaders have also decreased. Hao Daqiang no longer put all his energy into the community group purchase as before, when the group opened in April 2020, he and the leaders of the regiment on this street secretly competed, in order to compete for the residents of the nearby community, everyone was cheering up in the game of pulling a new group, preparing boxes of salt and sending small gifts under orders.
After the enthusiasm for community group buying faded, the resentment of the regiment leaders gradually revealed. More than an hour has passed, Hao Daqiang used the plastic bags in the store to pack the dishes, talking about the promotion staff who bought more vegetables a year ago, promised to subsidize the plastic bags for the regimental leaders, and the anger suddenly came up, "Half of the bags have not been seen." Li Mei said that the wholesale price of a smallest plastic bag is 7 cents, and "I am buying more vegetable patch bags every day."
Community group buying began to be cold from the second half of 2020, but the loss of financial reports and the successive collapse of startups are too far away from the leaders, and these leaders at the end of the industry can only vaguely feel some changes, such as BD (business development) who initially contacted the leaders has resigned, and the docking people have changed several times.
Perfunctory also began to be reflected in the surface, one day when the goods, Li Mei suddenly found that the previous clearance list will show the price of each commodity and the corresponding commission of the regiment leader, but these do not know when they have been hidden. She didn't have the energy to pursue it any further, "That's it, I can only keep driving." Recently, she even took a penny commission, "after all, there is no small number, you can't give me half a penny."
▲ Community group buying posters can be seen everywhere on the streets of Changsha.
Once you boil it up, you can be good?
Community group buying is originally a side business for convenience store owners, nothing more than making more or less money, and if you can't make money, you won't do it. But the further you go, the more you feel the coldness of the industry.
Since September 2021, Zhang Chunli in Yongzhou, Hunan Province, has looked at the warehouse she has built little by little, tried to shut it down countless times, and imagined countless times that maybe everything will be back on track next month. Zhang Chunli operates a grid warehouse, which is a part of the logistics distribution in the community group purchase, the goods ordered by the platform from the supplier are first transported to the central warehouse, then distributed to the grid warehouse scattered in various districts, and then sent to the self-pick-up point of the regimental leaders, and finally taken away by the customer himself.
The concept of a grid warehouse flourished at the height of community group buying, when fierce price wars, endless "penny" concessions, and high-priced competitions for regimental leaders and land grabs were just a prelude to this war, followed by the expanding capacity of suppliers and warehouses, as well as the growing number of drivers and sorters.
Zhang Chunli's grid warehouse serves the Shihui group, a community group buying platform that originated in Hunan in 2018 and was once called the "old three groups" of community group buying together with Xingsheng Preferred and Tongcheng Life. However, at the end of the summer of 2021, there was a rift in the Shihui group without warning, and since August 20, the Shihui group has been exposed to a large number of layoffs, and suppliers in Changchun, Nanning, Qingdao, Zhangzhou, Fuzhou, Halbing and other cities have successively received notices that the local grid warehouse is about to shut down its business.
Yongzhou is located in the southernmost part of Hunan, and the news of Guangxi Guanzhan Station next door soon reached here, and people began to distrust the Shihui Group. Someone asked Zhang Chunli: "You won't and can't ship the goods, right?" She responded: "I am from Yongzhou, I will not run, if one day I pay the money and do not deliver the goods, you can come to my house to find me." ”
Although insiders of the Shihui Group said in an interview that only some areas with higher losses will be gradually closed, and the advantageous areas such as Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi will be retained, this cannot give people confidence. After September, the number of orders for the grid warehouse in some parts of Hunan fell from more than 10,000 orders at the peak to more than 5,000 or more than 2,000 orders, and in the months at the end of the year, Zhang Chunli could even see dazzling three-digit orders.
After the single volume fell back, it was followed by losses and delayed wages. Zhang Chunli's driver's salary in September was delayed by a month, and she ran to the office of the Shihui Group in Changsha and slept for two days without leaving, before the salary was paid. Subsequently, the October salary was also delayed.
The management of the Ten Clubs always has new reasons, sometimes it takes "it takes time to convert DOLLARs into renminbi", and sometimes she is sent off with a letter of commitment with an official seal. But every time, the company's response is "it will be good, there is money on the books, we will all work together to survive, will pass." In fact, until the office area of the Shihui Group was withdrawn later, the management who docked with her insisted that there would be new financing soon, and wait a little longer, and the salary would be paid soon.
In the previous recruitment process, in order to recruit drivers needed in time, almost all local grid warehouses chose to promise to guarantee the driver's bottom salary, and Zhang Chunli drove 6500 yuan a month for the driver under her hand. After there were not so many orders, the delivery drivers were idle, each driver only had more than a hundred orders left, and the cost of wages became a huge burden, and Zhang Chunli had to lay off two drivers. She had wanted to dismiss more drivers, but to complete the contract, deliver the goods to the township dozens of kilometers away by 11 o'clock, and keep some people. More importantly, everyone told him that this is the off-season, and in the future, orders will come up again, and it will not be easy to recruit drivers.
Zhang Chunli once mentioned in the WeChat group to shut down the grid warehouse, but the drivers under her hands do not want to lose their jobs, there are not many job opportunities in small cities, leaving the hometown to work before the New Year is undoubtedly difficult, the drivers in turn have advised her to stay up again, "at least the end of the year" "There is a difficult period for doing business, maybe it will pass after a stay.".
▲ At the end of 2021, the News of "Withdrawing from Hunan" came out of the Shihui Group. Picture /phone screenshot
If there is no shortage of money, there is a shortage of orders
When the news of layoffs and warehouse closures reached the local grid warehouse, the station managers and drivers of the grid warehouse were not without doubt. But most of the ordinary workers who were once attracted by the poster printed with the words "Alibaba Ten HuiTuan" chose to simply believe that "such a large company will not fall down."
On the more realistic side, the cost of continuous investment makes it difficult to get out decisively and in time. "Once a person has stepped into this place with one foot and enjoyed the sweetness, it is difficult to take the initiative to choose to quit."
During the hottest period of community group buying, a large number of grid warehouses were built in a very short period of time. When Zhang Chunli decided to start doing the ten-huituan grid warehouse, a friend who did logistics took her to find a warehouse, and the contract was fixed on the same day, and the next day the goods came from the couch. After the delivery of the goods on the first day, she had time to purchase materials such as brackets and vegetable baskets. She also bought a van that specially delivered vegetables, but she did not even have time to pick up the car, and the number selection of the license plate was completed by the salesman, and finally the sales helped drive the car to the warehouse to complete the delivery.
The price war became more and more fierce, bringing a sharp rise in single volume, and in Yongzhou, a small city with little presence in the south of Hunan Province, the number of grid warehouses once reached more than 40. In order to keep up with the single volume, in more than half a year, some grid warehouses have even been upgraded five times, sometimes because of the area, sometimes to do cold storage, sometimes to need a constant temperature warehouse.
Zhang Chunli's warehouse has also been upgraded three times, the warehouse she first found is just a very ordinary façade, the single amount rises, the goods sent over are piled up at the door, and she spent thirty or forty thousand yuan to build a shed at the door. Later, the warehouse area expanded all the way to the current more than 1,000 square meters.
The prosperity at that time made people completely unable to imagine that one day they would not be able to pay wages, and everyone thought of going public and sharing money. The posters are shipped to grid warehouses in various urban areas and townships in thousands of pieces, and the good news is always printed on them, such as the 750 million US dollars of investment received by the Shihui Group. Everyone in the grid warehouse has heard the words: "The Ten Clubs are going public, and you as an old employee can buy the original shares." ”
In Yongzhou, the number of drivers in some terminal grid warehouses has risen from six or seven to more than two in a short period of time, and in the summer, the number exceeds sixty. Drivers usually go to work at three o'clock in the morning, and when they have delivered all the goods, they will arrive at four or five o'clock in the afternoon, and they will be busy for a month and can earn five or six thousand yuan.
For a long time, wages were not an issue, subsidies were not an issue, and the industry may have many problems, but the only thing that is not lacking is money. Since its establishment in 2018, Tongcheng Life has raised a total of 1.9 billion yuan in eight rounds of financing; Xingsheng Preferred's Series D financing has reached 3 billion US dollars; and Meituan burned 9.2 billion yuan in the new business part of community group buying in the second quarter of 2021. Giant Internet companies either go down in person, or invest in the "old three groups" to fight the agent war, each of which is not short of money.
"No shortage of money" makes the entire industry of community group buying like a balloon, violently expanding and expanding, everyone in the system is preparing for a protracted war, sufficient ammunition is the basis for a protracted war, as long as it can attack the city and plunder the land, squeeze the opponent to death, the money will be burned to the value.
Everyone thought the industry was at its best and would continue to do well. Although the giants and startups were facing a scuffle without knowing the end, the goal set by each enterprise was very ambitious: the goal of Prosperity Preferred was 20 million per day, meituan Preferred set a new year target of 100 million daily singles, and the top executives who bought more vegetables set 150 billion GMV.
Single quantity! Single quantity! This is the only KPI, there is a good single amount of data, there will be a steady stream of money, this money flows from the source to the downstream, into the pockets of grid warehouse owners, leaders and consumers, more and more people enter this chain, want to make a lot of money on the outlet.
▲ In Yichang, Hubei Province, merchants posted posters of the Ten Hui Group in front of the store. Photo / Visual China
A loss-making business
Throughout the end of 2020, supplier Su Fang was moving between different venues. During that time, industry seminars on the theme of community group buying appeared intensively. In November 2020, she specially wore a green cheongsam to the Cayman Community Group Buying Conference, and also went on stage to share, followed by the private board of the Community Group Buying Supply Chain Club, and half a month later it was the Community E-commerce Innovation Conference, she ran to the Zhengzhou International Convention and Exhibition Center to participate, all the locations on the scene were full, and the participants who poured in even stood and crowded the passage.
When the news of the arrival of the giants first came out. Su Fang had been looking forward to it, and she thought that in the future, these would be her customers. She rushed to connect with each other's products, but found that the other party's "only need is cheap". The giant's money is continuously injected like air, and the logic of pricing on various platforms ranges from "earn less" to "don't make money" to being willing to "post money".
▲ In Su Fang's office, there is a map of Hunan, which is the habit of the community after the start of group buying, which is convenient for foreign customers to tell the geographical location of hunan districts and counties at any time.
When the price war was at its hottest, the retail price of goods on the community platform was once lower than the wholesale price of the local market. Take the box of 12 cans of 310ml Wang Laoji, the original price of the market for convenience stores is 29 yuan, but on the community group buying platform, a box only sells 27 yuan, due to the low price after the subsidy, the community group buying platform once became a purchase channel for convenience stores and small supermarkets. The volume and turnover rate of some products are raised to an exaggerated number. Suppliers hoard red bull and other commodities as hard currency, buy a large number of goods from the platform, transfer hands and supply to the platform, and earn two waves of differences back and forth.
In all the single-volume-oriented systems, it is difficult to say how much water these soaring single quantities are doped. Grid warehouse station chief Liang Shuang in Chenzhou recruited more than 40 drivers to deliver more than 2,000 self-pick-up points, different platforms have more stringent requirements for delivery time, but some hidden in the residential building of the distribution point, so that drivers spend a lot of time to find, sometimes to send more than 30 floors, funny is that these residential buildings in the pick-up point is usually only a single, is the owner of the pick-up point to buy his own food.
When the giants frantically recruited the head of the group, the supermarket owner was not enough, and some residents of the ordinary community also joined the ranks of the head of the group, for them, anyway, they had to buy vegetables every day, set the home as a pick-up point, there would be drivers to deliver to the door, and they could also draw a little commission. In order to compete for the efficiency of distribution, the platform can only recruit more drivers, which further increases the cost of performance and makes the business even less profitable.
Community group buying platforms are happy to see the "wool", in the case of Didi and Meituan, the early loss can cultivate the user's use habits, improve market share, and finally earn back the lost money through price increases. However, such a "ripening" market behavior was soon stopped, and the regulatory authorities issued a "nine no's" policy at the end of 2020, intending to curb low-price dumping and price collusion that disrupt market order for the purpose of crowding out competitors or monopolizing the market, and also restricting the way to implement monopoly through acquisitions and mergers and acquisitions in the later stage. In March, the State Administration for Market Regulation officially imposed an administrative penalty of 1.5 million yuan on the four community group buying enterprises belonging to Orange Heart Preferred, Duoduo Buy, Meituan Preferred, and Shihui Tuan in accordance with the law, and Food Sharing was fined 500,000 yuan.
The impact of supervision is slow to show, although it is difficult to see a penny of goods, but compared to the offline physical store, Cheng Ruochun, who has been using community group buying since 2019, still feels that the platform goods are more cost-effective, she carries the grapefruit she just bought to her colleague "Amway", and the grapefruit on the prosperity is only 3 yuan a piece, and the same size of fruit, the community fruit store to spend 8 yuan.
Community group buying platforms still maintain the inertia of "cheap", but the wind direction has indeed changed, in the public opinion environment, the Internet giants who bet on community group buying have been criticized for "only worrying about the traffic of a few bundles of cabbage and a few pounds of fruit" and "grabbing business with small merchants and hawkers". The more realistic change is that after the subsidy is reduced, the growth rate of the single volume begins to slow down, the input-output ratio of burning money has come down, and the user has not really become accustomed to the convenience of community group buying, and it will flow back to the vegetable market and small supermarket in the streets and alleys with the loss of price advantage.
The story of burning money and expanding cannot be told, and the community group buying suddenly loses its imagination and becomes an ordinary business that is no different from the second-way vendors, and the capital boom gradually recedes. The startups that were once in the limelight suddenly found that the money in their hands was starting to run out.
The last funding round was $750 million, jointly led by Alibaba and DST Global. The Daily People asked a number of grid warehouse leaders of the Ten Hui Group in a row, whether they had felt some shock when the giants came, and all they got was a firm answer, "No, not at all." An employee who worked in the Shihui Group for three years admitted that "at that time, the Shihui Group was not short of money" and "nothing was afraid" However, when the Shihui group shrank back to Hunan and Hubei, not many suppliers even in Wuhan dared to continue to supply the Shihuituan.
This is similar to how similar the run faced by shared bicycles at that time, the original situation was not so bad, but everyone had no confidence, and queuing up to refund the deposit became the last straw that crushed the cash flow. Everyone knows that "the biggest problem with community group buying is not making money."
At the end of December, after the collapse of the Shihui group and ran away, a woman who worked in the building heard the noisy movement to watch, heard that it was a community group buying company running away incident, she remembered the Meituan Preferred and more groceries she had used, and the only impression was cheap.
She asked the people around her, "What does a company like the Ten Hui Tuan rely on to make money?" ”
"Don't make money." A supplier returned her.
"How is it possible to make no money?" She looked a little too surprised.
"Even if you don't make money, you're burning money."
The trees are scattered
The bubble is punctured faster than it can swell up.
On July 6, 2021, He Pengyu, the founder of Tongcheng Life, mentioned in an internal letter that the company will change its name to "Honey Orange Life" and transform wholesale. According to late Post, a supplier who later owed 10 million yuan called He Pengyu, who also said that it was just a business restructuring.
Although she still had more than 50,000 payments in her hands that had not been recovered, Su Fang did not realize that the internal letter was already the last struggle of the community group buying company. The next day, He Pengyu declared the company bankrupt. Su Fang remembered that not long ago, an executive who was good with her had euphemistically revealed to her on WeChat, "The company may not be very good, how much money do you still have there?" She pressed back, but the other party did not reply. At that time, she thought that it was not good, that is, the business was difficult to do, "Such a large plate, it is impossible to collapse all at once, right?" ”
Looking back, for the community group purchase, the instantaneous collapse was repeated in the second half of 2021: 20 days later, the Wuhan headquarters of the Food Sharing Association was also empty, and the founder Dai Shanhui quietly stepped down as the company's legal representative and chairman and disappeared into the public eye. Then there was the rout of the Ten Leagues.
On New Year's Day 2022, the Daily People saw a chicken feather left behind after the death struggle of the Shihui Regiment in Changsha, and the debt collection suppliers and grid warehouse employees occupied the office of the Shihui Tuan in the Huakun era, and a grid warehouse leader pointed to the building and said, "The 12th floor, the 13th floor, the 15th floor, the 20th floor were originally the offices of the Shihui Group", but almost overnight, the building was empty. The management's office is also scattered with interview resumes of some large factory employees who have not had time to take away, and posters that should have been plastered on the streets and alleys are now pasted on glass doors to prevent people outside from seeing the scene inside.
▲ The office of the Ten Hui Regiment sealed the glass door with a poster.
The supplier's payment was not settled, not to mention the employee's salary and overtime pay. Debt collectors appeared all over the country with black-and-white banners that read, "Repay my hard-earned money," and called their debt collectors on the spot the amount of money owed and the type of supply, such as the "egg seller who didn't get back seventy thousand yuan" and "the grid warehouse that asked for money for more than forty drivers under his hand."
An advertising vendor went to the headquarters of the Shihui Regiment in Beijing, and in the embassy block, he saw that the debt collectors were "persuaded to leave" in less than five minutes, and he returned to Changsha, still making no progress. Originally, he also planned to go to the office of the Shihui Regiment in Jiangxi to ask for money, where the regional business was still going on, but in the crowd, he knew a supplier who ran from Jiangxi to Changsha to ask for debts, and suddenly felt that there was little hope of going anywhere.
In the "old three regiments", only Xingsheng Preferred stubbornly survived, but since September, the company, which has only eased from the price war, has shown a trend of business contraction: no new cities have been opened, many "ready to open" urban businesses have been completely suspended, and some cities that have already rented large warehouses have also suspended expansion. The operational slogan of Xingsheng Preferred was originally "user experience, desperately running", and now, the second half of this slogan has become "reduce costs and increase efficiency, do deep and thorough". An insider close to Yue Lihua told the Daily People that "[Yue's] goal is not to leave the table."
For all startups, the market that was once smashed with money is not necessarily safe. A good-looking single volume should be supported by a comprehensive upgrade of production capacity at a larger cost, and the above-mentioned prosperous preferred people summed up all this: "After the order volume rises, your production capacity should be matched, in order to match the production capacity, to expand the warehouse, expand the supply chain, to ensure the speed of distribution, to recruit people, but you don't know when this passion will end, when the order volume is not so large, all the supporting things do not know how to deal with." ”
In Yongzhou, many of the fast-built grid warehouses later had only three or four hundred singles, making Zhang Chunli a small self-employed person who put her wealth into it. With the fall of one head company after another, the industry no longer needs so many suppliers, Su Fang shut down the warehouse in Jiangxi, and in the year that did not make money, the partners directly swept away the payment received.
Not incomprehensibly, this is the scenario that business is not doing well: about money that can't be recovered, and fragile business relationships that can't be broken at any time. A year ago, she watched people pour in from other industries, engaged in construction, training, whether there is professional skills or not, all came in to become suppliers, want to cooperate with the giants to make money, "originally wanted to go to pan for gold, the result is only a pile of sand, not necessarily back."
There are no winners
It's hard to find the right mood to encapsulate the year of community group buying. To the extent, community group buying is not the industry that has lost the most in the year. When you put on the brakes, the industry is far from peaking. However, after watching the wild running and scuffles of this industry, in the remaining days, except for insiders, few people are willing to pay equal attention.
The startups that have left the market are all empty baskets, but the giants who are not short of money are still struggling to persevere, and their lives are not so good. Didi's third-quarter financial report revealed that the loss of Orange Heart Preferred reached 20.8 billion; since 2021, the new business sector to which Meituan Preferr belongs has suffered continuous losses, with losses of 8.04 billion yuan, 9.24 billion yuan and 10.91 billion yuan in the first three quarters, respectively; duoduoduo has also dragged down the pace of Pinduoduo's overall profitability.
When the cake is no longer larger, there is more entanglement between people who were once intimate and shared dividends. The suppliers at the scene of the Ten HuiTuan rights protection have denied that they have made money in this industry, and they talk about the arrogance of the giant procurement and the helplessness of the quotation that has to be more and more cautious. An egg supplier said that the giant's procurement likes to bluff people, not only with other platforms, but also between different regions of the same platform, "Changsha has been cheap to this extent, if the internal data shows that the price is lower elsewhere, they will promote suppliers from other regions to come in and grab business with us."
A supplier talked about the scene of replenishment in the middle of the night, "the lack of a bag of chicken leg meat also requires you to drive a cold chain car to send", the goods are sent from the supplier's warehouse to the platform's warehouse, usually from one edge of the city to another edge, this demand-oriented business is not as easy as the outside world imagines, "late delivery to fine, send less also fine, if the goods exist in the cloud warehouse, even the gross profit can not be covered."
Grid warehouse people will spit "never go back to the box", the company's daily fruit sent from the warehouse is packed with a fruit box, clear the goods to return the box, but as long as the company does not receive the box, whether it is a third-party logistics problem, the box needs the grid warehouse to compensate. The box is 27 yuan a piece, everyone on the scene has lost the box, and a person in charge of the grid warehouse even bought 500 boxes to put away, and when it is necessary to lose, it is taken from the inside.
Liang Shuang blamed the giants for ruining the business. Community group buying is his third business, before that, he was the head of the rookie station in the two administrative districts of Changsha City, the community group buyer came to the door, wanted to buy his subordinate sites and employees, he was not optimistic about this business, felt that there was no "oil and water", but still could not stand the invitation to join the gang. At the beginning, "not scale, but still make some money", but as soon as the price war started, the whole market was chaotic, and he felt that the Ten Hui Tuan fell because "the burning money burned too fiercely, there was no room for himself, and there was no room for partners".
Su Fang is back active on Douyin, calling on her peers to withdraw earlier and transform into a group or other business. Talking about the community group buying that has been cold because of multiple factors such as policies and business environment, she does not think that this is a bad thing, "If it continues to be hot, there will be one more community group buying in the industry that dies today."
Just like for an entrepreneurial company like Xingsheng Preferred, fighting a war is not the original intention. "Community group buying has changed from an Internet business to a pure retail business", when some media regrettably made such a summary, the above-mentioned prosperous preferred people tried to correct this sentence, "Our core is retail + Internet, but in the past year, many people have played it as Internet + retail".
There are still many small-scale WeChat groups living in the community of Changsha, they do not have the ambition of the giant to dominate the world, just make a little money, but in the community group purchase under the leadership of the giant, after all, it has not been able to achieve the "economy of scale" such as takeaway and taxi, and can only boil little by little, penny by penny to reduce costs and achieve the goal of profitability.
▲ Photo/Visual China
After falling from the outlet
When a company collapses and escapes, for Zhang Chunli, in addition to the money that cannot be returned, there is also a livelihood that depends on survival, and all the sincerity and persistence that they have paid in the past few years.
"It's like a child, at first you make money, and then you put all the money you make into it, and you look at it and you raise it like a child, and in the end you still feel a pity." 」
Hearing that the Ten HuiTuan had fallen, the people who bought more vegetables heard the news and made several phone calls to Zhang Chunli one day, hoping to take over her warehouse and driver. She didn't say yes, and now, she began to wonder if the industry would be better, "What if today is the day of the Ten League?" ”
Zhang Chunli can still remember some things from two years ago. Yongzhou people laugh at themselves Yongzhou is a fifth-tier city, "anyway, it is far away", the first willing to come here is the Shihui group, the community group buying first appeared in this remote small city, Zhang Chunli felt that this is a good thing, convenient and cheap, the village left behind the elderly, are she to help step by step how to buy vegetables, no smart phone the elderly want to buy a pound of potatoes, are her help to place orders.
Zhang Chunli had just given birth to a child at that time, and while raising children at home, she was the leader of the group. At that time, she thought very simply, she wanted to make a little money, and she couldn't put too much pressure on her husband. In 2019, a regional leader specially invited the head of the group with good performance to have a meal, and at the dinner table, the regional leader talked about many future plans, hoping that the leaders could go to the grid warehouse to work.
Many people who entered the grid warehouse with Zhang Chunli mentioned the summer heat. There were only old-fashioned ceiling fans in the warehouse, which played less than half a role in the southern summer, and beads of sweat slid down the forehead and fell to the ground. Because the child was too small and the kindergarten refused to accept it, Zhang Chunli and another mother who had just given birth to a child chose to carry the child on their backs, so they constantly bent down to sort the goods, and the child also followed the head down. Because there are not enough drivers, they need to deliver the goods themselves, and the children are sometimes tied to the co-pilot and sometimes have to hold the electric car in one hand.
Another mother also appeared at the debt collection scene of the Ten Hui Group, she was pregnant again, holding up her 7-month-old belly and defending her rights with everyone, talking about the moments when she "injected her life" into the Ten Hui Group, and the people at the scene joked that the child should be named "Hui Sheng".
For most ordinary people in this industry, whether an industry is an outlet or an ordinary business is not a question worth caring about. When ordinary workers gathered together in the square to pull up banners, attracted many people to watch, in order to prove to the surrounding people that the decision to find Alibaba after the disappearance of the executives of the Ten Hui Group was not unreasonable, Zhang Chunli and several suppliers said over and over again, "If it were not for the banner of Alibaba, who would believe the Ten Hui Tuan, what is the Ten Hui Tuan."
The icon of Taobao shopping for vegetables was originally the entrance of the Ten Hui Tuan, and she wanted to prove that Ali and the Ten Hui Tuan were inseparable. But after opening Taobao, this time, I found that the icon had long since become the entrance to Taocai dishes.
She may not know, or may just be unwilling to face the reality: for Alibaba, the failure of the investment in the Ten Hui Group is just a trial and error and a wayfind. The big factories would have a way out, but she didn't. The onlookers dispersed, leaving Zhang Chunli alone crouching on the ground and muttering silently, "This place used to be the entrance to our Ten Hui Regiment."
▲ The office building of the Shihui Regiment has been emptied.
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