In 2019, when Xi Jiaqing started a part-time business in Dewu, he was still a junior in the Department of Bioengineering.
After graduating from university, he began to officially distribute sneakers and apparel from international sports brands on Dewu. In 2023, the operation team of 2 people in Dewu will sell more than 100 million.
This year, in addition to the footwear and clothing business, Xi Jiaqing is also non-stop in the layout of small household appliances, food, accessories and other categories, pulling more brands and dealers on the table, and simultaneously trying to incubate a new self-operated brand.
Chop Jiao observed that when mainstream e-commerce platforms were busy fighting for stocks, a large number of brand merchants, distributors, and agents were quietly pouring in, selling canned facial masks, folding bicycles, plush toys and aromatherapy gift boxes.
Dewu, a trendy e-commerce company that started with shoes, is rushing towards a comprehensive e-commerce platform for all categories.
"Of the 10 peers around me, 7 are making things. A gold jewelry merchant said that in less than a year after entering the market, the store's turnover in 2023 will increase by 1,600% year-on-year; there is a "big brother" in the Tmall digital industry to enter the market to expand sales channels, and GMV has skyrocketed by 10 times; and some stationery dealers have sold "moving" on the first day of listing, and the customer unit price is 3 times that of their peers.
How much does it cost to start a new business on this new rising platform, and can it really make money easily?
Chop Pepper talked to a number of Dewu merchants, mainly from the fashion shoes, beauty, gold jewelry and other industries, they have been lurking in Dewu for 3-5 years, and they may be able to explore the depths for sellers of all sizes.
"The first order of coconut gray angels on the shelves, someone took it in less than 1 hour!"
After many years, recalling the first transaction in Dewu, Xi Jiaqing still can't hide his surprise. He said that at that time, he did things because he heard that the novel "There is a sneaker e-commerce platform in China, which is quite powerful." ”
With the expansion of the business, now he has won the distribution rights of a number of sports brands, and at present, his company's business plate, Dewu is still the largest, accounting for 60%~70%, but only 2 employees are operating.
The "lightness" of the object is undoubtedly one of the most tempting hooks.
According to Xi Jiaqing, compared with the major e-commerce channels he is currently doing, Taobao has 4 people, Pinduoduo 6~7 people, Jingdong and Douyin are 4 people, and the average labor cost of these platforms is 2.5 times that of Dewu.
"Traditional e-commerce is no longer suitable for small teams, and the cost of operation and maintenance and customer acquisition is very high. Xi Jiaqing has analyzed various mainstream shelf e-commerce, and at the same time, he also found that the content platform has a lot of traffic and popularity, and it actually spends a lot of money.
"Like Douyin, you have to have a special team, GMV often looks scary, but the return rate is very high, impulse consumption. Xiaohongshu needs to be deeply cultivated, from opening an account to set up a persona, to building the content and product matrix, there must be a process. ”
In contrast, Dewu is a place where you can quickly start a business with a small investment.
Chop pepper understands that under the "semi-managed model" of Dewu, merchants only need to be responsible for entering the price and inventory for sale, and the goods are on the shelves, store decoration, customer service, and after-sales are all handled by the platform - taking Xi Jiaqing's team as an example, the daily work of the two employees is to make an appointment for warehousing, change the price of the bid, and receive the activity. "The key is to step on the sales rhythm and maintain the supply chain well. ”
There are many examples like this of "one or two employees propping up a store" in terms of goods.
A mobile phone dealer once revealed that the annual revenue of Dewu exceeded 400 million yuan with only a team of 3 people; the original home furnishing brand Creation Collection, with only 2 operations, with monthly sales exceeding one million; and the sports brand Purui has sales of more than 10 million yuan for more than a year, with a total of two people in operation and delivery, and the sales volume of Dewu is higher than that of Douyin and Tmall.
After talking with a number of merchants in different categories, Chop Jiao learned that at the level of e-commerce operation, the advantage of Dewu is that it eliminates the need to build an operation team and does not need to do advertising streaming. ”
"You don't need to keep links, you can sell popular items as long as you bid. "Merchants who sell plush toys have many IP peripheral products such as strawberry bears, and they have to pre-pack thousands of orders for the goods in advance every day.
In today's serious oversupply and increasingly diversified and scattered channels, why do users want to buy things?
Chop Pepper found in the dialogue that many merchants do not come to get things, not by rolling prices, but by relying on differentiated pallets to attract users. Open the Dewu APP, browse and observe its product recommendation page, you can also find clues, the difference between Dewu and the goods lies in a large number of new products, gift sets, and IP co-branded products.
Dewu has the youngest group of Internet users, with the post-90s accounting for more than ninety percent, and the user penetration rate among China's 260 million post-95 young people is as high as 70%, and the ratio of male to female people is 52:48.
These young people, who cover from first-tier to fifth-tier cities, have a strong demand for stylized and personalized goods. "Sometimes there is nothing to do, and many big-name new products and customized models have to be grabbed. "A user told Chop Pepper.
The exclusive debut of new products is a great weapon to capture young people. Xi Jiaqing is accustomed to putting about 1,000 pieces of new trendy shoes in a single SKU inventory on the first release of Dewu, "As soon as the new big-name products are put on the shelves, they are in short supply, which is the charm of Dewu." ”
Starbucks China, which will settle in Dewu in 2023, is also an expert in making new products. Since entering Dewu, the sales of water cups have doubled in the first month, ranking first in the annual growth rate of GMV of Dewu among similar e-commerce platforms, and it is the fastest growing platform in the whole network.
It is not only a launch base for new products of big brands, but also a testing ground for explosive products for dealers.
According to Wu Yueqiang, senior manager of the brand's B2C channel, "Users of Dewu love to try new things and pursue quality, and we decide whether the new products meet the standards according to these customer feedback, and then gradually synchronize the omni-channel all in launch." ”
One of the keys to stepping on the rhythm of "new" is to seize the explosive nodes of the platform. The sales explosion period of Dewu is the various gift-giving nodes throughout the year, such as New Year, 214, 520, Qixi Festival, school season, double dan, etc., almost every month there are new and promotional opportunities, and the external double 11, 618 promotion to form a staggered peak.
Every time these small peaks, gift boxed products will usher in hot sales. According to the feedback from many merchants, the sales explosion of the gift node is about 3~4 times that of the daily sales.
"New Year's and 520 push's lovers give each other gift boxes, all of which are special contributions. Zhang Rulin, a gold jewelry agent, said that the operation team often goes to the market to understand the latest fashion trends, and once the market is judged to be hot, it can quickly cooperate with the factory to involve and produce, and with the advantage of the supply chain, the new rhythm can be done within half a month at the earliest.
Chop pepper noticed that a total of 91,000 people have paid for a "small waist light luxury ins-style 925 silver bracelet" by Zhou Dasheng, and the most popular comment in the product discussion area is "Give your girlfriend, will she be happy?"
IP co-branded models are also goods that merchants are willing to allocate to things. The co-branded electric toothbrush between Philips and Uooha accounts for more than 40% of the brand's sales, and the aerospace co-branded series of rackets launched by the sports brand Purui have become a hit as soon as they were launched, and the sales of Dewu have reached tens of millions of yuan in more than a year.
"It's not just about coming here to distribute goods and have one more distribution channel, it's necessary to design targeted pallets, which is the bottom layer of growth. Some merchants said so.
Chop pepper believes that after these special supplies are sold out, there are two long-tail effects:
First, the reverse deepens the user's mind, so that you can buy new trendy products in the first time, come to buy things for holiday gifts, and find IP co-branded models on things, and the business between merchants and the platform forms a positive cycle of growth;
"Brands that have never done anything are worried about two problems, one is whether the crowd is matched, and the other is how the traffic and conversion are. As an agent for a number of gold jewellery brands, Zhang Rulin is well aware of the concerns of those who are on the sidelines.
Doing business in Dewu, with fast volume and high growth, has become the consensus of many entrants.
Zipit, a well-known overseas stationery brand, revealed that there was sales on the first day of entering Dewu, and the GMV of 20,000 per week is still growing;The relevant person in charge of C coffee told Chop Pepper that after two years in the game, the brand will increase by 700% month-on-month in Dewu in 2023;Another data shows that the growth rate of the gold head brand Chow Taisheng in Dewu last year was faster than that of other e-commerce platforms.
The merchants who were the first to eat the crab firmly believed: "There is certainty in business here." "This determination of sales is related to the characteristics of the population, the development stage and the traffic distribution mechanism of Dewu.
"The unit price of our trendy shoes is about 300 yuan ~ 1000 yuan. Once users develop a shopping habit, they rarely go to various platforms to compare prices. Xi Jiaqing believes that this kind of unconditional trust stems from the overall user experience of shopping in Dewu, especially the service model of "identification first, delivery later".
A post-90s female user who has a 7-year shopping history in Dewu has purchased products such as La Mer Essence Cream and Balenciaga's cat-eye sunglasses on Dewu, and when sharing her shopping experience, she described it like this:
"The 'little blue box' of Dewu is very eye-catching in a pile of express delivery, and the anti-theft buckle is also blue, with a faint fragrance. The ones I bought are genuine. ”
The unique service of "identification first, then delivery" is now not only radiating luxury products of shoes and clothing, but also spreading to beauty and skin care, jewelry and jade. Previously, public information showed that in Dewu, a piece of jade has to be inspected by more than 10 kinds of scientific research-grade equipment, and "some commodities have to be magnified to 1011 times for observation".
The appraiser is verifying the authenticity of the goods
After the positive user experience is achieved, the trust endorsement of the platform can be strengthened in a circular manner, and as a result, the return rate of many categories on Dewu is lower than the industry average. Taking gold jewelry with a high return rate as an example, the return rate of Saturday Fu Zaide is less than 10%, far lower than the industry's 70%~90%.
From the perspective of the development cycle, Dewu is in a critical transition period, and traffic distribution is good for new businesses.
It is reported that the trendy footwear category, which started as a business, now accounts for less than 30% of the business on the whole platform, and accessories, beauty, trendy toys, digital, food, home furnishings and other categories are showing a high growth rate. In the transition stage from trendy e-commerce to comprehensive e-commerce, the ecological flow of Dewu is abundant, but there are a large number of gaps on the supply side.
Regarding traffic distribution, a special point is that there is no such thing as advertising streaming in Dewu. Many merchants said, "Don't worry about traffic." As long as there are good goods, they can be sold on the shelves. ”
In terms of subdivision, if it is a characteristic non-standard product, it is basically in short supply. There is a bidding mechanism behind the same standard product, and the lowest price and high fulfillment rate are given priority to dynamic sales, and merchants can dynamically change the price.
Back to the characteristics of the platform, Dewu is driven by the dual mode of "e-commerce + community". In addition to organic search traffic, content is also an important means of heating explosive products. It is reported that the community of Dewu has contributed a lot of traffic to merchants, and some gold jewelry merchants have revealed that the production ratio on the content side of Dewu is 20%.
In the same way, the community sector of Dewu may not be able to compete with Xiaohongshu in terms of daily active data, but in terms of traffic accuracy, Dewu has its advantages, one is that the crowd has a stronger shopping mentality, and the other is that the blue V content and talent notes output by the brand come with their own product links, so they don't have to go out to the shelf e-commerce, and directly promote closed-loop transactions in the station, and the link from planting grass to pulling weeds is relatively shorter.
"We've gone through all the big and small masters in things. Wu Yueqiang, the person in charge of C coffee, told Chop Pepper that every 520, Qixi Festival and the beginning of the school season, the proportion of cooperation with more than 100,000 fans will be increased, and the content will be the core to promote the creation of explosive models.
But in today's Dewu, more than 20 categories are speeding up, and the merchants who are the first to enter the game have quietly won the early bird tickets for this blue ocean event.
In the process of running towards the whole category of e-commerce, the traditional advantages of Dewu fashion sports, fashion shoes, social sports related goods are growing against the trend, such as luxury bags, last year's turnover increased by 58% year-on-year, luxury shoes tripled in 3 years, and the average transaction price reached 4,000 yuan.
The 3C sector of home appliances, beauty, gold jewelry, trendy toys, and food and health care sectors are all growing rapidly. According to data, in the case of the overall decline of the industry's market, Dewu's 3C digital products increased by 200% year-on-year, and the demand for gifts was 5 times that of daily sales. Gold jewelry, in the past two years is in a blowout period of demand, the turnover of the sector in 2023 will increase by 300% year-on-year, according to agents, this year is expected to continue to grow 4~5 times.
In order to enrich the supply and meet the explosive demand of users in multiple categories, Dewu announced that in 2024, it will introduce richer categories and more diversified types of merchants through new business measures such as 10 billion traffic, 0 threshold entry, and 1v1 support. For new merchants, Dewu has launched an ultra-long 30-day commission-free and 0-yuan margin policy to settle in, and through new business training camps and 30-day personal escorts, etc., to help new merchants set sail quickly. "Bidding is operation", no store, no decoration, so that merchants can settle in worry-free; high-quality natural traffic, low return rate, fast payment collection, so that merchants can operate worry-free; similar hosting mode, merchants are only responsible for bidding and shipping, and the rest will be handed over to the goods, so that merchants can worry about after-sales.
In addition, Dewu will also help merchants obtain off-peak sales highs through differentiated marketing for the new generation of festivals. For new products, Dewu has also launched special support plans, such as targeted support for high-quality natural traffic, commission-free for zero-breaking products, marketing and content differentiation operations, etc., to help potential new products quickly stand out.
Xi Jiaqing has clearly felt the temperature and flow direction of this tide, and is speeding up the pace and opening a multi-category layout in Dewu.
"In 3 years, we will make the business 500 million ~ 1 billion. When talking about the expected goals for the future, Xi Jiaqing is optimistic and firm.