Per reporter: Chen Ting Per editor: Liu Xuemei
On the eve of the second anniversary of the launch, Taote has a key move.
On March 23, Wang Hai, president of Alibaba's cost-effective platform Taote, announced that Taote launched Taote 10 yuan store and Taote 100.
Both are online official direct sales models. Among them, Taote 10 yuan store is positioned to cover small commodities covering various life scenes, such as providing small objects in different scenes such as desks, balconies, kitchens, bathrooms, etc., and develops based on each scene; Taote 100 is the main cost-effective quality commodity "big-name pingdi", mainly incubating factory brands.
"Taote 10 yuan store and Taote 100 are the shopping entrances of consumers, and they are also incubators for Taote and industrial belt factories to do a good job in products." Wang Hai told the "Daily Economic News" reporter.
In fact, every year after the launch, Taote has a new action, in order to set the tone of the development of the current stage. In March last year, Taote announced that it would build a cost-effective e-commerce platform with direct supply from all categories, and in March 2020, Taote was officially launched, using the M2C (factory direct consumer connection) model to enter the sinking market.
Through a series of actions, the two-year-old Taote grew rapidly. Alibaba's fiscal third quarter 2022 financial report released in February showed that in the quarter, the number of orders for Taote payment increased by more than 100% year-on-year. For the 12 months ended December 31, 2021, Taote had 280 million annual active consumers, up 39 million from the previous quarter.
Perhaps Taote has passed its infancy, compared with the previous two years, the number of active purchase users (AAC) is not the focus of Taote's action. How to further enhance its core competitiveness is more important for Taote.
"Taote has come to this day, we not only want to serve the sinking market, in fact, we want to serve the cost-effective crowd extensively." Wen Zhu, general manager of Taote Operations, said that in her view, whether it is the upgrade of the whole category in March last year or the launch of the new product incubation matrix this time, it is a move towards this goal. And the foundation of all this is still the M2C model that Taote has been exploring since its birth.
In any case, in this context, e-commerce can no longer just be satisfied with "doing a good platform".
On March 23, Wang Hai, president of Taote, announced that Taote launched Taote 10 yuan store and Taote 100. Image source: Courtesy of the enterprise
Further "symbiosis" with the factory
For Taote's action this time, there is a lot of speculation from the outside world. Some people believe that Taote began to make "products" in an attempt to create an "online mingchuang excellent product".
In this regard, Wen Zhu, general manager of Taote Operations, denied it. In her view, Taote 10 yuan store and Mingchuang excellent products have differences in the focus of the crowd and category, Taote 10 yuan store provides small items needed in every small corner of life, and Mingchuang excellent products are more inclined to the satisfaction of young women's consumable goods.
"It used to be said that e-commerce was a trend, but now it is becoming a real way of life, and I think e-commerce is slowly having a relationship with everyone." Wen Zhu said.
In addition, this time Taote announced the launch of Taote 10 yuan store and Taote 100, further increasing the direct operation model. Does this mean that Taote will further expand the proportion of direct operations in the business?
Wen zhu told reporters that direct operation is only a means, because many factories do not have e-commerce operation capabilities, it is difficult to directly face consumers, so the platform has such a team to help factory merchants use a simple hosting model to sell goods.
"We haven't thought about the specific percentage." Wenzhu said that if the factory has the ability to serve consumers well, the factory can also directly open a store to operate independently.
In terms of product positioning, Wenzhu said that the goods directly operated by Taote Factory are not their own brands, "All our brands are factory brands, and Taote itself does not do its own brand." Wenzhu believes that Taote is different from others in making products, "We are more from the needs of consumers to define some better products, in addition, we are working with the factory to promote the factory brand, to help the incubation of the factory brand." We're not a Taote brand. ”
Wang Hai also said that from direct supply to factories, direct supply from the place of origin to the development of products, it is in the same vein in the strategic direction.
"We talk about direct supply from the factory and direct supply from the place of origin, and more about what kind of model and ability we are using to do M2C (direct producer to consumer). This year we talk about Taote 10 yuan store, Taote 100, how to use these capabilities. So one is ability, and the other is that we use our ability to change the consumer's life and enhance the consumer's experience. Wang Hai said.
From the taote side of the taote 10 yuan store and taote 100 expression can actually be seen that the two are the products of taote on the basis of consumer insight to deepen cooperation with the factory, taote online two is not a strategic turn, closer to the original road on a kind of progress and innovation. To some extent, Taote is more like trying to achieve further symbiosis with industrial belt factories and consolidate its advantages in the supply chain.
Wang Hai revealed that Taote and the factory have their own strengths, "Taote's insight into consumer trends, and Taote can establish a strong performance system to ensure that consumers get things in a timely and safe manner; the strength of the factory is to produce a good product at a very low price." We put our respective strengths together to create products that meet the needs of consumers, which is a model that taote and manufacturing have combined. ”
In this regard, Cui Lili, executive director of the E-commerce Research Institute of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that taote launched a new product incubation matrix similar to the private brands of some offline supermarkets, but it is not exactly the same. "For Taote, it is a channel brand. Based on Taote's channel brand drainage, it matches supply chain partners who are more in line with channel attributes in product positioning at the front end of the supply chain. In essence, it should be a cost-effective product supply chain matrix headed by Taote. Cui Lili said.
E-commerce competition turning?
With the increasingly fierce competition in the sinking market, Taote's online Taote 10 yuan store and Taote 100 are more out of the need for differentiated competition.
E-commerce platforms vigorously increase the "product force", which is not a new thing in the industry.
On December 3, 2021, Dingdong Grocery announced that it will upgrade its original procurement and sales center to a product development center. Up to now, Dingdong Buy Has a total of more than 20 own brands such as Dingdong Ace Dishes and Dingdong Damanguan. In May last year, Hema announced the establishment of a new brand incubation center "Hema X Accelerator". Hema said at the time that the new brand incubation center plans to open up internal and external resources such as investment and financing, commodity research and development, supply chain support, marketing promotion, etc., to incubate and accelerate potential new brands, commodity lines and commodities, as well as strategic investment.
In this regard, Cui Lili said that from the current pattern of domestic e-commerce platforms, the number of netizens and the number of online shopping netizens have limited room to rise, so the core of the next competition is around customer activity, repurchase and loyalty. "This is no longer a competition for traffic ports, but a comprehensive competition based on supply chain capabilities, that is, brand power + product power." The key to determining whether traffic can be monetized in the end is product power, speaking with the product, and consumers voting with their feet. Cui Lili said.
Even so, in the eyes of the industry, Taote's launch of Taote 10 yuan store and Taote 100 is more like a market testing behavior.
Taking the Taote 10 yuan store as an example, it has adopted the "small scene of life" that the e-commerce platform has rarely taken before as a shopping guide, and the product communication will disclose that the Taote 10 yuan store provides many small objects in different scenes such as desks, balconies, kitchens, entrances, bathrooms, etc., and has made deeper and more practical development based on each scene.
Zhuang Shuai, founder of Bailian Consulting, told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that the two channels launched by Taote are more based on the unit price to expand the corresponding life scenes for differentiated operations, but whether this model can be fully reflected in the e-commerce platform needs to be verified, and whether users can correspond to the scene under the unit price system also remains to be seen. "In addition, for users, e-commerce platforms have always provided more cost-effective products and convenient fulfillment services as essential requirements, not scenarios." Zhuang Shuai said.
It is worth mentioning that Taote also announced the upgrade of three channels: good looking and expensive, limited-time rush purchase and official subsidies. Taote did not give a detailed introduction to these three channels.
"Daily Economic News" reporter found after consultation, users can search for "official live broadcast room" to find the "good look is not expensive" channel, the reporter found that the form of live selling goods is also widely used in Taote, as of now, Taote official live broadcast has completed 758 live broadcasts. In addition, click to open the Taote app, in the bottom project bar can find the "look" page, click on the page, users can pay attention to the short video account, you can also enter the Taobao live broadcast with one click.
Low-key online "good looking and not expensive" channel Image source: APP screenshot
It can be seen that adding code content has long become a consistent behavior of e-commerce platforms. According to the "Daily Economic News" reporter, at the beginning of this year, some users found that the Pinduoduo client was upgraded again, and the "Duoduo Video" was launched to the first-level entrance at the bottom of the APP homepage, replacing the original live broadcast entrance. It is reported that the business is currently testing in grayscale.
All kinds of signs show that the competition of e-commerce platforms has entered another dimension, and refined operations have begun to become more and more important.
"The current competition between e-commerce platforms can no longer be called 'grabbing traffic', but is closer to 'grabbing time'." Zhuang Shuai said that the snatching of users' attention is becoming more and more intense.
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