Users who know and are familiar with "ZBJ.com" should be post-90s and post-80s. From college students to find part-time jobs to earn living expenses, to small and medium-sized enterprises that need temporary professional services, you can find the job or service you want on ZBJ.com.
At the same time, as long as you search casually on the Internet, you can find many voices complaining about ZBJ.com. However, ZBJ.com has survived for more than ten years in the situation that ZBJ.com has been complained about by users and service providers. Perhaps because in the past so many years, there has not been a better and larger platform that can completely replace ZBJ.com.
Therefore, ZBJ.com can be said to be a veritable "unicorn" enterprise. Now, the unicorn is preparing for his Hong Kong stock listing plan.
However, in the case of declining revenue for many years, a loss of 1 billion yuan in three years, and even in the case of continuous expansion of losses, even if it is successfully listed, it may not be able to save the development trend of ZBJ.com. More importantly, the gold content of the crowdsourcing service platform is not high, as evidenced by the fact that ZBJ.com has failed to go public in the past. In addition, the secondary capital market is also questioning how much attention can be paid to this Internet "living fossil" company.
First, lack of intensive cultivation, not enough qualified "intermediaries"
ZBJ.com was born because its founder Zhu Mingyue wanted a website of his own, but he didn't understand it. So Zhu Mingyue found a programmer, spent a week + 500 yuan, and obtained the original version of ZBJ.com.
From the fact that Zhu Mingyue found someone to build a website, he thought of the need to buy professional services, so he built ZBJ.com into a trading platform that provides crowdsourcing services.
It was like a rock smashed into the Internet pool in 2006, setting off countless splashes.
Traffic and capital suddenly poured into the ZBJ.com website.
Born Technology Group's 5 million angel investment, IDG's $6.66 million Series A investment, Chongqing Wentou Group's $17.5 million Series B investment, and Cybernaut Investment Group and Liangjiang Industry Group combined 2.6 billion yuan in Series C financing.
From 2007 to 2015, ZBJ.com received multiple rounds of capital support. But Internet products also have a life cycle, ZBJ.com in 2015, no longer has external capital support, but also to the stage of being forgotten.
Although crowdsourcing and e-commerce may seem to be the same thing, in actual operation, the story of crowdsourcing platforms may not be beautiful at all, but full of various thorns.
The difficulty in the operation of crowdsourcing platforms lies in the fact that they provide a variety of "services" rather than standardized products, which leads to problems such as rip-offs, shoddy service quality, and even intellectual property plagiarism between the two parties in the transaction process.
To put it bluntly, ZBJ.com relies on a brokerage in the middle, collecting commissions, service fees and advertising fees from both parties to the transaction.
As an intermediate platform, ZBJ.com has indeed built a bridge between the demand side and the supply side. As a 17-year-old platform, its popularity cannot be underestimated with the blessing of time, so whether it is the demand side or the supply side, the number of customers of ZBJ.com is sufficient.
But the problem is how ZBJ.com should do a good job in its role as a "middleman", while serving both supply and demand, while ensuring that platform supervision is in place and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of users.
Zhu Mingyue may be a market-minded entrepreneur, but he is not a CEO who is good at running a company.
After initially receiving huge capital investment, ZBJ.com has rapidly expanded from a team of several hundred to thousands of people, and has opened branches in major first- and second-tier cities across the country. Chaos followed.
First of all, perhaps eager to obtain income returns for investors, ZBJ.com began to frequently sell various value-added services to the service providers of the platform, which caused dissatisfaction among service providers. On the black cat complaint platform, there are many cases accusing ZBJ.com of "inducing service providers to recharge".
Most of the service providers that would have settled in ZBJ.com were individual studios or some small businesses. When the operating costs and advertising fees of ZBJ.com continue to rise, the revenue space of service providers has been eroded.
Secondly, from the demand side. Because ZBJ.com does not screen and assess the entry of service providers, the platform is full of a large number of good and bad service providers, resulting in a situation where bad money drives out good money.
Finally, there is the "rules of the game" formulated by ZBJ, a middleman, and everyone is not satisfied. The demander needs to pay a commission to ZBJ.com when receiving an unsuitable plan, and the service provider painstakingly provides labor and professional services, often unable to win the bid, and is busy in vain. The result is that ZBJ.com is an unflattering situation on both sides.
Even in the most basic platform supervision, ZBJ.com can't do it. On the ZBJ.com website, the phenomenon of being deceived by customers, questioning false bids, and service providers delaying the completion of services has been repeatedly prohibited.
The chaos of many platforms shows that ZBJ.com needs to innovate itself from within. Whether it is a capital winter or a capital outlet, only by operating the essence of the business model and revitalizing the internal ecology of the platform can we achieve lasting success.
Second, the large but not strong ZBJ.com network loses its hematopoietic ability
According to the data of ZBJ.com's prospectus, as of the first half of 2022, the cumulative number of registered users of ZBJ.com reached 32.4 million, including 6.9 million service providers and 25.5 million enterprise employers. From the perspective of volume, ZBJ.com does live up to the reputation of the first market share in the industry.
But over the years, the development of ZBJ.com has carried a "filter": ZBJ.com, which occupies a leading position in the industry, has been lacking a stable hematopoietic business.
During the prospectus reporting period, the comprehensive gross profit margin of ZBJ.com reached 64%, 61% and 59% respectively, according to this gross margin level, ZBJ.'s profitability should not be bad. But in fact, during the corresponding period, ZBJ.com has accumulated a loss of more than 1 billion yuan.
At the same time, the revenue growth rate of ZBJ.com in the past three years has almost stagnated, and from 2019 to 2021, ZBJ.com achieved revenue of 717 million yuan, 757 million yuan and 768 million yuan. Coming to the latest, the revenue in the first half of 2022 was 287 million yuan, down 25% year-on-year.
In terms of key indicators of operation, ZBJ.com has sounded the alarm. But ZBJ.com is obviously clear to itself, because in the past few years, it has also tossed a lot of new businesses in an attempt to expand the scale of revenue.
The Internet crowdsourcing service track seems to be a "small but beautiful" vertical track with stronger gold-absorbing ability and more stable development. For comprehensive platforms like ZBJ.com, it is facing the embarrassing situation of "big but not strong".
Initially, just like Taobao's corresponding upgraded version is Tmall, in 2015, ZBJ.com also launched its own upgraded version "Tiancang.com", which is a sub-website dedicated to high-end customer service. However, this canopy network was hurriedly offline after three months of launch, and has now been renamed "canopy cloud account", from the original comprehensive service crowdsourcing platform to a vertical service - financial and tax SaaS platform.
It is impossible to go in the direction of the high-end market, and ZBJ.com has to turn the rudder in the vertical direction. However, in the field of financial and tax SaaS solutions, masters are like clouds, and it is a mature track that has been developed for a long time. Like Yonyou and Kingdee, they entered the game earlier and firmly controlled the market share.
One move does not work and there is a second trick, in 2021, ZBJ.com looked at the recruitment track and launched "Doudouyun" and "Bajie Recruitment". No matter which vertical track it is, ZBJ.com has to face strong competitors. As a latecomer, what does ZBJ.com compete with others?
At the same time, the huge amount of money required for business expansion has also exposed ZBJ.com, which was already difficult to increase revenue, to more financial risks. In the first half of 2022, the cash and cash equivalents on ZBJ.com's books decreased from 600 million yuan in 2021 to 290 million yuan.
ZBJ.com, which announced its cash flow urgently, urgently sought to go public, but whether the secondary capital market is willing to become a "takeover man" is a question.
Third, spending money does not stop, and losses further expand
ZBJ.com, which is constantly looking for new growth space, is behind its own embarrassing situation of profit anxiety.
The operating status of ZBJ.com not only has a decline in revenue, but also a trend of continuous expansion of losses. According to the prospectus, ZBJ.com's loss in the first half of 2022 increased by 241% compared with the same period;
From a macro point of view, the current primary market investment in the crowdsourcing service track is becoming conservative, and ZBJ.com has no new funds to enter after the C round of financing in 2015. In addition to improving its own hematopoietic capacity is a top priority, cost reduction and efficiency improvement should also be placed in the first place of enterprise operations.
But looking at the expenses of ZBJ.com in recent years, it is also quite puzzling. During the reporting period, the total gross profit in the three and a half years was 1.507 billion yuan, and the sales and marketing expenses alone reached 1.06 billion yuan.
In 2020 and 2021, sales and marketing expenses as a percentage of revenue were 37%, rising to 47% in 2022.
In the area of administrative expenses, its data has also aroused extensive discussion among viewers. According to the prospectus, the salaries of the main management personnel of ZBJ.com in 2019-2021 and the first half of the year were: 6.524 million yuan, 60.743 million yuan, 8.685 million yuan and 34.14 million yuan. ZBJ.com explained that the high administrative costs are mainly used for employees' equity incentives.
If a company has good operating efficiency and wants to work harder to impact the development scale of higher levels, it is completely understandable to carry out equity incentives for employees. However, ZBJ.com still spends funds on personnel costs when its own revenue growth rate declines and losses expand, is it putting the cart before the horse?
While ZBJ.com is stagnating, its competitors are accelerating. Pinwink.com, which has been suppressed by ZBJ.com and is known as the "second oldest in 10,000 years" in the industry, knocked on the door of NASDAQ in February this year and prepared to be listed overseas.
In the first half of 2022, ZBJ.com's GMV was $330 million, while EPWK's GMV was $230 million, and the gap exists. But if the development dilemma of ZBJ.com has existed for a long time, it is only a matter of time before it is overtaken by opponents.