"Where's the money? Where's the goods? What about the money sold? on the platform. What about the money on the platform? What about the money withdrawn? I got the goods...... "The post-90s e-commerce entrepreneur Xiao Si said that now business seems to have become a closed loop, and e-commerce people can't see much cash in their hands at all.
At present, the e-commerce industry is actively exploring various new models and expects to recreate the wave. Some time ago, major e-commerce platforms announced their support for the "refund only" policy, which set off a lot of turmoil in the industry. E-commerce giants and new entrants are also constantly exploring for breakthroughs, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the industry form is changing rapidly, and e-commerce people have to think about how to advance bravely in the torrent.
In this issue, we invite post-90s e-commerce entrepreneurs to talk about their e-commerce experience in recent years.
Graduated from the partnership e-commerce business
Caught up with the golden first year of Douyin e-commerce
After graduating in 2018, Xiao Si started a partnership business with several partners who were also facing employment difficulties. In 2019, they officially started their booming e-commerce business plan and chose to try men's clothing, a relatively "volume" category in Pinduoduo.
In the second year of entrepreneurship, a major event occurred in the e-commerce industry due to the social environment. Live e-commerce has exploded with unprecedented market potential, and Douyin e-commerce has also begun to accelerate, and this year is also known as the "golden first year" of Douyin e-commerce.
Xiao Si and his partners did not hesitate, and officially transferred their main position to the Douyin platform, and until now, they are still mainly based on Douyin. During this period, their store ushered in a period of rapid growth. Xiao Si said that he did make money from e-commerce at the beginning, but it was all hard work. "A lot of times I am busy until one or two o'clock in the evening, and then I have to get up at seven or eight o'clock in the morning to continue to be busy. ”
During this period, they did not stop trying the mode that could be explored, and live broadcast selling was a direction at that time, but after really trying, Xiao Si found that there is a certain threshold for live broadcast e-commerce of clothing.
"Live broadcast requires you to spare 2-3 hours to sit there, prepare goods, pay for streaming, observe data, etc., so you generally need a team, and it is not easy to operate alone. ”
Due to the lack of manpower and the lack of budget, Xiao Si's live broadcast of the store has come to an end for the time being. But Xiao Si and his companions have been learning how to play e-commerce, relying on short videos to continuously accumulate traffic, and gradually, with a stable customer base, their e-commerce business is stable.
Malicious competition between peers is frequent
The difficulty of doing business has escalated
Different products have different characteristics, and clothing has special market rules, and if you want to do a good job, you must grasp these rules. Xiao Si also realized this later, and gradually realized that making men's clothing may not be the best choice.
"Men's clothing is different from women's clothing, basically there is a little profit during the previous year, and the rest of the time is basically to maintain operating costs. ”
"Girls' purchasing power is stronger, so there are new styles of women's clothing all year round; boys' consumption tendencies are different from girls', and there may be more boys in the winter season, which will add some clothes that are just needed, and the style of men's clothing is more fixed and has few changes. ”
The peak season is less, and the after-sales rate is not low, according to Xiao Si, men's clothing should have a 50% after-sales rate. What makes their business more difficult is the competition model of short video platform e-commerce competing to create explosive models at low prices.
Nowadays, many e-commerce merchants create explosive models for the sake of traffic, and they do not hesitate to lose money at low prices. This kind of unhealthy competition makes it more difficult to start an e-commerce business, and if you want to make a name for yourself, you must keep up. But for Xiao Si, creating a hit is not as simple as talking.
"Explosive products like the ones that often appear in the live broadcast room are actually not accidental, and it takes a lot of effort to test and create. ”
"Popular models are actually easy to imitate, and the general survival period will be changed soon, and many popular models will follow the trend as soon as they come out, and the style of clothes will be copied quickly, and the bonus period of a popular product may be 3-5 days. ”
Platform policies are constantly being updated, and challenges are intensifying
Wind and fire for e-commerce entrepreneurship
The continuous update of platform policies is a change that needs special attention for merchants. Recently, as soon as the refund-only policy came out, many merchants complained bitterly. According to many merchants, doing e-commerce is indispensable to meet people who love to pick up small bargains.
"After receiving the clothes, not satisfied with the fault, just so that the merchant can give them some more money, if there is really a problem, then we must be actively dealing with it, the compensation, the refund, but you maliciously refund and even some of their own defects in order to refund, so that people can not speak. ”
The twists and turns of the entrepreneurial process made Xiao Sizhi sigh that the road of e-commerce is difficult to walk. Xiao Si said that starting a business should find the most suitable method for himself among a variety of options, and Fenghuo is one of the right choices he has made.
Today, several of his e-commerce platforms are using Fenghuo to manage orders. "The Douyin store uses the Fenghuo delivery Douyin version, and Pinduoduo uses the Fenghuo delivery applet to directly associate the store with the order processing. ”
Xiao Si told Xiao Spark that the addition of Fenghuo Express has doubled the efficiency of his order delivery and facilitated order management.
For example, the increase in refund orders that may be caused by refunds alone, the abnormal order detection function of Fenghuo Douyin can help merchants automatically detect refund orders, and can also pay attention to abnormal orders such as modified addresses/remarks. Partnership e-commerce entrepreneurs like Xiaosi can also open a team model and jointly manage multiple accounts to make orders.
Fenghuo delivery Mini Program can also be associated with multiple e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo, Weidian, Xiaohongshu, Doudian, Channels Xiaodian, Kuaishou, etc., and after associating with the corresponding store, you can directly synchronize the store's pending orders.
Like Xiaosi, many young e-commerce entrepreneurs seek digital and intelligent development in order to find better development opportunities in the ever-changing e-commerce industry environment. Industry policies are changeable, competition is fierce, and there are many challenges, and Xiaosi is still persistent, but there are also many people out. In this regard, Xiao Si said, "If you do it all over again, you don't choose e-commerce, although you can make money, but the situation in the platform policy industry is constantly changing, which is really tiring." ”