Image source @ Visual China
Wen | the planet of photons, written by | Wu Xianzhi, Editor | Wang Pan
The "new forces" of offline chain stores are seizing the time to IPO. Earlier, the news that the convenience bee wanted to go to the United States for an IPO within the year, and the technical service providers behind it now seem to be unable to hold back.
Recently, Photon Planet exclusively learned from a number of people familiar with the matter that digital retail solution provider Multipoint Dmall is preparing to go public in Hong Kong and is expected to submit an application to the exchange this quarter.
Last year, Dingdong grocery shopping and daily excellent fresh food have been listed, and Internet food shopping and community group buying once stood on the cusp.
An investment banker said that duodian was ready to go public in the United States as early as the end of 2020, when in addition to hiring a number of foreign banks, Chinese banks and China Renaissance Capital were also listed, but in the summer of 2021, the entire Chinese stock market continued to fall, Dingdong to buy vegetables and daily excellent fresh market value shrank sharply, coupled with stricter supervision, it was not easy to obtain high valuations for listing, and under multiple unfavorable factors, it had to give up the application.
At the same time, Photon Planet confirmed the above statement from a multi-point Dmall investor, who said that the company is indeed preparing for an IPO, but the current environment is not good, and it is difficult to say how it will eventually progress.
According to our exclusive knowledge, multi-point is not profitable today and is still in the red.
Management team "material beautification"
Many points are born with a "golden spoon".
In 2015, Liu Jiangfeng, the former head of Huawei Glory, started a fresh e-commerce firm, dmall, in the absence of BP, no LOGO, won a $100 million angel round of financing from IDG and other institutions, and has since established strategic cooperative relations involving capital and business with Tencent and Shenzhen Investment Control.
Early investment look at the team, at that time the multi-point founding lineup can be described as quite luxurious, bringing together a number of technology and e-commerce giants executives. CEO Liu Jiangfeng and partner Li Wenzhi are former Huawei executives, COO Lin Jie is a former JD.com executive, CTO Han Xin is a former Vipshop executive, and partner Zhang Feng is the core figure of Wumart E-commerce Division.
However, within a few years, almost all the executives of the original team left.
In March 2016, Liu Jiangfeng faded out of the team management for one year after its establishment, basically did not participate in the operation, and then officially left.
Liu Jiangfeng's successor is COO Lin Jie, who adjusted his bias towards the "running errands" business model after taking office, turned to category management, and focused on the layout of funds in the field of logistics and distribution. In addition, during Lin Jie's tenure, multi-point began to fully integrate with Wumei.
Unfortunately, Lin Jie also left his job after only one year of work, and in the second half of 2017, Zhang Feng, the president of multi-point, acted as CEO. And "back-up" partner Liu Guihai comes from Wumei, so far many points have been completely "materialized" from the inside out. According to a person familiar with the matter, Wumart has a financing relationship with multi-point, but we did not find this situation when we checked the data of the enterprise.
According to information obtained by Photon Planet, Zhang Feng, president of Multipoint Dmall, is the nephew of Zhang Wenzhong, chairman of Wumei, and the latter is gradually moving to the front of the stage in 2018 after the latter washed away his grievances in 2018.
On February 17 this year, Zhang Wenzhong attended the "4th CGF Consumer Goods Forum China Day" and used the title of "Chairman of Multipoint Dmall", which shows that After the management of Wumei, Multipoint and Wumart are gradually transitioning to the Zhang family business.
In terms of business development, Wumart has helped many points to complete the breakthrough from 0 to 1, and for a long time it was the only customer of Wumart. The first customer of retail SaaS solution Dmall OS in 2016 was Wumart. Three years later, the overall switch of Dmall OS was also completed in Wumei. Obviously, since its establishment seven years ago, Wumart has provided almost all the application scenarios of new technologies for multi-point.
With the business in a loss-making state and nearly two years since the latest funding round, the IPO is expected to ease cash flow pressures.
It is necessary to rely on financing blood transfusions
As a digital retail solution provider, the fate of multi-point is not in their own hands, but in the hands of customers.
Rent, staff and inventory make the cash flow requirements of chain convenience stores quite high, and the profit is slow, the turnover is difficult, and the profit is low. In recent years, with the acceleration of online and offline integration, it once showed a small yangchun. Until the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, the winter was instantaneous, and many offline chain stores had an extremely difficult time, for example, this year, the convenience bee began to close stores and lay off workers on a large scale.
Even if there is a wumei platform behind the multi-point, it still has to rely on financing to supplement funds - this is the knowledge Zhang Wenzhong learned from reading books in prison.
There are two main types of multi-point business models, one is the retail joint cloud for retailers, helping retailers and brands achieve digital transformation. The other is to use multi-point Apps and Mini Programs to provide value-added services for channels, such as helping chain stores to pull new and maintain membership stickiness.
According to official sources, as of June last year, Duodian has reached cooperation with more than 120 chains and convenience stores, covering 15,000 stores in four countries and regions. In addition, there are more than 2,300 employees, including more than 1,300 technical developers.
From new retail to community group buying and Internet food shopping, multi-point has always been one of the beneficiaries of the past retail outlet. At present, the epidemic has put the economy in a certain difficult situation, the future is full of uncertainty, and international investors will become very cautious, and various factors may affect the valuation of multi-point IPOs.
It is worth mentioning that the above-mentioned investors also told Photon Planet that Liu Jiangfeng, the founder of the multi-point who has long faded out of the company's management, still holds multi-point equity, and if the listing goes smoothly, it is expected to achieve cash-out.