The idle fish sink and can't fight the two dealers

Image source @ Visual China

Wen | Photon Planet, author | Wen Yehao, Editor | Wu Xianzhi

A slightly worn-out denim robe, placed unremarkable on a small town stall, will even be complained about by middle-aged women passing by as "dirty" – but if you are in the "nostalgic" atmosphere rendered by the vintage shop surrounded by incense, this robe seems to be bound to the personality of contemporary urban youth, and you even feel that the moment you buy it, you are a traveler who inherits the story of the old days.

Similarly, when Vivian, who is drifting north of the city, returns to the town wearing an ancient denim spliced jacket, he is ridiculed by relatives, "How do you dress like a Taoist?" ”

This constitutes a peculiar landscape: the medieval objects and nostalgia that the younger generation in high-tier cities are keen on, which are considered to be the product of broken and priceless in the county scene.

According to Analysys data, most of the monthly active users of domestic second-hand e-commerce are concentrated in high-tier cities, and the sinking market still seems to be a blue ocean. But in small towns, whether it is a group of second-hand e-commerce platforms that are eager for increments, or Vivians wearing ancient clothes to return home, it seems that no one can tell second-hand stories well.

Township roads were blocked

In fact, the failure of the second-hand e-commerce sinking strategy is not unforeseeable.

First of all, the population structure of the county market is significantly different from that of high-tier cities. In the past, the flow of Chinese followed the trend of "upward mobility", that is, rural - county, county - prefecture-level city, prefecture-level city - provincial capital, provincial capital - north, Guangzhou, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.

However, compared with high-tier cities, the county market lacks job opportunities and the economic development is relatively lagging behind, which is no longer attractive to the rural population, and the rural-county path has been interrupted. According to the data of the seventh national census, compared with before 2010, the number of people separated from their permanent residence increased by 230 million in 2020, an increase of 88.52%, and the town is in an embarrassing position of lack of inflow and return.

Therefore, the scarcity of young people has become a common problem in the town, which is not in line with the user appearance of second-hand e-commerce.

QuestMobile data shows that as of May 2021, the proportion of post-90s trading users in idle fish and rotary two major head platforms is about 40%, which is significantly higher than that of other age groups; and the attention of post-00s is also higher than that of other age groups.

Taking Idle Fish as an example, its interest in e-commerce around the niche categories that Generation Z is keen on, such as Hanfu, Chao play, lolita, etc., has achieved remarkable results, but the above circles are often concentrated in high-tier cities, even if there are young audiences in the county market that have not yet flowed out, they are mainly students with weak consumption power, and it is difficult to form a wide demand side.

Secondly, large cities emphasize rules, and small towns emphasize righteousness, which also affects their idle goods circulation mode to a certain extent.

The county town of hundreds of thousands of people is essentially an acquaintance society of officials at or above the section level and businessmen with heads and faces. This group of people is like the "house of everything" of the people around them, but when they or their relatives and friends have help, they can quickly connect through social networks and use "human feelings" as a chip to dock left and right.

Tang Haozhou, who works in a county-level city in the northeast, told the photon planet that from the old refrigerator to the tables, chairs, pots and pans, once not used, the first thing he thought of was to give it to his parents or poor relatives.

"Before I wanted to sell a refrigerator, but no one in the local area cared, slightly interested in the foreigners, counting the freight is not cost-effective, it is better to be a shunshui person."

In this more closed, strong social connection scenario, idle items are often passed down according to the network of acquaintances, and even if users want to sell them, the weak local market cannot take on the corresponding demand. In addition, in the humane society, small-town residents generally have a certain prejudice against second-hand items, and "tao second-hand" will also be considered as a price-dropping and humiliating behavior.

From the perspective of commercialization, there are no more than two types of players who covet the town, that is, the main B2C/C2B model, and it is urgent to lay out offline players, after all, the C2C platform that docks the demand of idle fish does not need to be deliberately sunk.

At present, second-hand B2C/C2B platforms often choose high-value-added products such as 3C digital products and luxury goods as the main vertical category. However, compared with high-tier cities, the transition process of the county-level consumer market is relatively lagging behind, and there is no economic foundation to support its main business.

Taking N County, which borders Sichuan and Yunnan, as an example, there are only two commercial centers in the county seat, one of which is still at the level of new city planning, and the surrounding towns have only commercial streets that are not climatic. Such a consumption scene, even fast food such as KFC and McDonald's has not stopped, and why is it pregnant with second luxury, Vintage demand, even 3C digital products, often classified in a narrow sense.

According to the feedback from computer manufacturers in a town in Chongqing, the mainstream PC hardware specifications in the local market are still stuck at the level of the 900 series released by NVIDIA in 2014, and the latest 30 series graphics cards span three generations.

According to the previous statistics of the China Internet Information Center, the penetration rate of urban and rural PCs is extremely unbalanced, with a gap of up to 50 percentage points. PCs are still like this, and products such as cameras and game consoles are naturally unsought-after.

Therefore, it is not that the players cannot share the cake, but that the town simply does not have enough cake to share. With the demand side so weak and the platform hard to sink to the bottom, the smartphone seems to be the only way.

However, even so, players from all walks of life who want to invade the town must first kill the local two-way vendors who are guarding the city.

The platform can't fight the two vendors

In 2019, Zhuan zhuan defined small-town youth as a target customer group, expanding its business scope from high-tier cities downwards. In the same year, the B2C platform also entered the sinking market with a high profile.

The three-year period has arrived, the transfer of county users is still less than 10%, the story of finding a beautiful machine to sink has no news, this ideal small town carnival seems to be far from meeting the expectations of players, and the bottom of the downward exploration finally stays in the fourth-tier cities.

The roadblock is obviously a local secondary vendor in the town.

Guo Jingwei is a civil servant in a southwestern town, because his cousin is the owner of a communication shop in the city, and the sale of second-hand mobile phones has naturally become his side business. In their local area, there are several people who do the same business, and there is a group between them, and they often transfer goods to each other.

And this group almost monopolizes the local second-hand mobile phone market.

Usually, the receipt and sale information of the second seller is published in the circle of friends, and WeChat has naturally become the core transaction scene. With WeChat, the second seller won the first victory of the same platform - passenger flow.

A mobile phone micro-business in G County told Photon Planet that at first the customers were often friends, and then gradually expanded to friends of friends, and then expanded again, most of them became familiar customers after a transaction. In a small town with deep-rooted acquaintances, this "friend-friend" chain communication is no less powerful than the platform smashing into local media advertising.

Among the regular customers, the vast majority are young users of the same age, so that the groups with great potential for second-hand e-commerce users have been collected by the micro-business groups mixed in the local area.

Similarly, thanks to social connections and brutal play, the second dealer won the second battle, that is, credit endorsement.

In the county, due to the relative lack of local supply, micro-business has become a very strong retail channel. Tang Senyu, who came out of a county in Chongqing, told Photon Planet that in his hometown, almost every big family has a person who takes the agent micro-business as a side business, including but not limited to beauty, daily use, health care products and other fields.

Unlike most of the micro-businessmen who only walk online and never meet offline, the circle of acquaintances in the town is connected with multiple social relationships such as relatives, colleagues, neighbors, etc. Everyone looks down and does not look up, and naturally can obtain natural credit endorsement. In contrast, the platform to achieve endorsement in the form of physical stores is like a chicken rib, after all, the probability of relatives and friends and stores running away is very different.

Based on this, in this battle between the regular army and the ground snake, the platform has been defeated in terms of passenger flow and reputation, and in terms of price, the platform is also difficult to gain the upper hand.

According to Guo Jingwei, there is an unwritten rule in the circle of second-way dealers, that is, "I would rather make less money than catch my customers." "This unspoken rule is aimed at the recycling platforms that are constantly emerging today.

"Now the valuation given by the recycling platform is generally inflated, in fact, there will be all kinds of faults to reduce the price, but the customer does not care so much, will only take the estimated price to question us, so I have saved a screenshot of the previous customer being depressed by the platform, in order to prove that the platform is much darker than us." Guo Jingwei laughed.

Objectively speaking, if you really want to provoke a price war, the platform can rely on the capital disk that far exceeds that of micro-businessmen to exchange losses for the market, and it is difficult for micro-businesses to win. But even if the money is thrown down on the market, how much can the second-hand e-commerce platform benefit from the county market? It depends on the relationship between cost, foot traffic and profit.

According to the observation of Photon Planet, the frequency of updating mobile phone products in the circle of friends of the second road in large counties is maintained at about 2-4 models a week, mainly the main models of Apple 2 or 3 years ago, of which the number of mobile phones marked "out" accounts for less than half, so as to calculate that the town passenger flow is not much.

The aforementioned G County micro-business also admitted that some people in the local circle had set up a shop to do second-hand business, and the result was that it was closed in less than half a year. "Shops have to be opened to the market, and the county can only be used as a receiving point."

It can be seen that second-hand transactions are non-high-frequency trading scenarios, and the population base of most small towns is not enough to support the consumer market, even if the platform opens stores to shorten the transaction chain, it is difficult to avoid the instability of customer flow.

In terms of profits, Guo Jingwei told Photon Planet: "A single is to make a milk powder money, it is good to encounter a faulty mobile phone, and you can have hundreds of them after going to your cousin's repair and refurbishment." It's just that the people I ship are very well maintained, tempered film, mobile phone shell pieces are complete, this kind of 'beautiful machine' 200 can not earn. ”

If the platform launches a price war, the profit will be tightened, superimposed on the unstable passenger flow, and the battle to infiltrate the town is not a good business, but may drag itself into the quagmire of heavy assets.

Therefore, small-town youth seem to be one of the best customers for second-hand economic portraits, but a large number of players seem to lack the weapon to attack the city, whether they are docking users or personally going down.

end

In fact, it is not only second-hand e-commerce that is trapped in the county.

In a county in the Sichuan-Chongqing region, taxis are dense, and the business of Didi drivers is relatively deserted, even if it is a relatively good cross-city hitchhiking business, it has also become a local full-time driver diversion tool. Private domain channels such as "carpooling groups" range in price from tens of yuan lower than the platform, and also build a wall at the price level.

The above logic is also true on the second-hand e-commerce platform, which essentially reflects the small town residents' disapproval of the added value of the platform.

For users, the platform is not without advantages, B2C/C2B-based platform e-commerce can better handle user information, privacy and other issues in the mobile phone recycling scenario, and the travel platform can also provide more comprehensive protection in terms of security than the private domain carpooling group.

But in small towns, people seem to be more willing to pay for the economic benefits of de-platforming. This is not the wrong way the platform plays, but the problem of user education.

Although the regional cognitive gap in the Internet era has collapsed, the consumption habits and overall consumption level of small town residents have changed in a slight way, and the difference in consumption era between high-tier cities and small towns and villages is not something that can be changed by the downward layout of platforms such as Didi and Meituan.

Of course, this is not to say that second-hand e-commerce must not go into the town, but the platforms need a more "local" way of playing.

In the past, in the face of a huge county economic system, Ali once launched rural Taobao, hoping to leverage the town's e-commerce consumption through government-enterprise cooperation and partnership system. But in the end, the magnificent tone of rural Taobao ended up in a bad end, and it was difficult to have the wrong judgment of e-commerce in the sinking market.

But it was also a few years ago that the much-maligned Pinduoduo took the sinking market ignored by the giants into its arms with the barbaric way of "sharing and receiving money", and broke out a huge increase.

Obviously, demand is bound to exist, and the future is bound to explode with the development of the economic base, but players only rely on the single model of playing high-tier cities in the past, and it is difficult to eat the market. The county market always needs to look for the doorway of the county.