Age: Give me 5 billion and I won't sell Vancl Eslite

E-commerce newspaper Pro

2024-04-29 11:20Posted on the official account of Guangdong E-commerce News

Vancl's 1.9 billion debt has been paid off

Recently, during the live broadcast of Vancl Eslite CEO Chen Nian, some netizens asked how much Vancl Eslite was worth, or how much Vancl Eslite once owed.

Chen Nian responded that he owed 1.9 billion in cash, which had already been repaid. The inventory is two or three billion, which together should be about 4 billion smaller. Giving him 5 billion now will not sell Vancl Eslite.

Source: Douyin APP

Who would have thought that today's Vanke once wrote the survival myth of vertical e-commerce.

In 2007, Chen Nian founded Vancl (Vancl Eslite, referred to as Vancl), and Lei Jun, as a "good friend", invested 100 million US dollars in growth funds. When Vancl was first founded, it used the method of online direct sales to offer free shipping, 24-hour customer service, and 30-day no reason to return and exchange goods.

The Internet has given Vancl its first leap forward. It is understood that in February and March 2008, Vancl's sales soared from less than 100 orders per day in the early days to nearly 6,000 orders per day, 70% of which came from the Internet.

During the year, Vancl also completed three rounds of financing. From 2007 to 2009, the growth rate of Vancl reached an exaggerated 29,576%.

In 2010, Vancl relied on the "Vancl" filmed and produced with Han Han, Wang Luodan and many other cultural celebrities to become popular all over the streets and alleys, achieving a second leap, and the total sales in this year also exceeded 2 billion yuan.

Source: Sina Finance Weibo

In 2011, Vancl was in the limelight, only 3 years after its establishment, and its annual sales reached more than 30 million pieces. Lei Jun also publicly stated through social platforms at the beginning of this year that "Vancl's success is at least 99%, unless there are major unforgivable mistakes."

In the same year, Vancl set a target for itself, raising the sales target to 10 billion yuan in 2011, 30 billion yuan in 2012, and more than 100 billion yuan in 2015.

What I didn't expect was that Vancl hit the "1%".

In 2011, Vanke only completed the target of 3.2 billion, with an annual loss of 600 million and an inventory backlog of 1.445 billion.

Since then, Vancl has been in a situation of clearing inventory, resulting in a decline in quality and damage to the brand. Vanke had no choice but to sell its logistics such as Fengda and V+ Mall one after another, losing its platform advantage and even owing 2 billion in debt.

Not only that, but Vancl has also been frequently exposed to scandals.

In 2012, Vancl's official website launched a series of T-shirts and used pictures of national leaders as large advertisements, which were criticized by netizens. The State Administration for Industry and Commerce said that Vancl violated the advertising law and severely investigated and punished it in accordance with the law.

In 2013, Vancl was exposed to a broken capital chain and was trapped in a "debt door", owing tens of millions of dollars to suppliers.

In 2014, some media exposed that Alipay's former technical employees were suspected of illegally selling up to 20G of user data to others, according to media reports, Vancl Eslite was involved in it, and spent a lot of money to purchase 10 million Alipay user information from the gang involved.

Despite this, Lei Jun has also extended a helping hand to Vancl many times, and in 2014, he joined other investors to bring another $100 million in financing to Vancl, but he still failed to save Vancl.

In 2020, Lei Jun, who used to "only wear Vancl", will also completely withdraw from the Vancl company.

Vancl eventually became the tears of the times.

Vancl Eslite is alive and well

After all these things, Vancl has become more and more low-key, growing silently in a corner that no one knows.

In 2018, Vancl basically paid off its huge debts. In 2021, under the leadership of the founder Chen Nian, Vancl slowly began to try live streaming.

In April 2022, Chen Nian appeared in Li Guoqing's live broadcast room, and cooperated with Li Guoqing to sell Vanke's clothes.

In order to sell goods, the two former e-commerce bigwigs put down their bodies, tried on and ridiculed each other in the live broadcast room, and tried their best to introduce Vanke's clothes, but unfortunately, the actual sales in the end were only 440,000.

The data shows that the best sellers in this live broadcast are the Vancl Eslite 2-piece compact spinning T-shirt priced at 59 yuan, and the Vancl Eslite business polo shirt priced at 55 yuan, while the Vancl Japanese-style high-count shirt priced at 699 yuan only sold 9 pieces. It can be seen that although users in the live broadcast room are willing to pay for their feelings, they will not empty their wallets because of their weak feelings.

Source: Aged Li Guoqing live broadcast

It is worth mentioning that in addition to the old attempt to bring goods, Vancl is also desperately laying out online live broadcast to bring goods.

In June 2022, Vancl logos were hung on various platforms, and there were more stores or talent accounts for live broadcasts, most of which were authorized agent stores by Vancl. The official account of Vancl, "Vancl Eslite VANCL Official Flagship Store", started a live broadcast at a fixed time every day in July.

However, the effect of Vancl's delivery is not ideal. The data shows that the sales in the past 30 days are only 130,000 yuan, and clicking on one of the live broadcast room clips of the official account, the logo of "the number of people reaching 80 people on welfare" in the upper left corner can also show the bleakness of the number of viewers in the live broadcast room.

At this time, Vanke met its "soft-hearted god" - Lei Jun.

In the live broadcast on Douyin on April 18, Lei Jun casually mentioned that what he was wearing was actually what engineers usually wear, Vancl's T-shirt, Vancl's jeans, and Vancl's canvas shoes.

The three mortals spoke, and "the riches of the sky" poured on the mortals.

On the day of Lei Jun's live broadcast, the traffic of Vancl's multiple live broadcast rooms quickly soared by 3-5 times, and after Lei Jun's live broadcast ended, more than 180,000 people poured into Vancl's live broadcast room. On the second day of Lei Jun's live broadcast, an anchor in the relevant live broadcast room of Vancl revealed that Lei Jun's canvas shoes of the same style had been sold out.

The recent single-game sales of a number of Vancl-related live broadcast rooms have also reached more than 100,000 yuan, and the single-game sales of "Vancl Eslite/VANCL Clothing Store" on April 19 have reached 5 million to 7.5 million yuan.

Before Lei Jun's spontaneous drainage, the sales of a single live broadcast in these live broadcast rooms basically did not exceed 50,000 yuan, and there were many live broadcasts with a single sales of less than 10,000 yuan.

Source: Douyin APP

But this wave of traffic comes and goes quickly. According to the data of Cicada Mother, the number of live viewers of the old year has been declining since reaching its peak on April 19, and the number of viewers of a live broadcast on April 22 is only 27,000, and the number of live viewers of the official flagship store of Vancl Eslite VANCL has also dropped from 501,000 on April 21 to 58,000 on April 22.

Lei Jun's wealth and wealth, Vancl received the first wave, but for Vancl, who has fallen out of the mainstream brand position, the road ahead is still long.

Can vertical e-commerce usher in a second spring?

Vancl can no longer become the Vancl of the past, and the glorious era of vertical e-commerce is gone.

Compared with integrated e-commerce platforms, vertical e-commerce lacks advantages in terms of traffic and supply chain, and has many limitations. With the exhaustion of traffic dividends, the vertical platform has touched the growth ceiling early and entered a period of recession.

At the same time, the comprehensive e-commerce platform can maximize the user experience advantage with the help of scale advantages, successfully increase user stickiness, and rob users of time, while the vertical platform is powerless, and there is still a large gap between the two sides in terms of core competitiveness.

As a result, many small and medium-sized vertical platforms have almost disappeared. Among them, Jumei, Dangdang.com, Miya, NetEase Koala, Secoo and other industry leaders have come to an end.

Liu Qiangdong once said that in the future, e-commerce only needs to exist one company.

So, is there no chance for vertical e-commerce at all? Not exactly.

With the rise of Generation Z and consumption upgrading, the pursuit of quality and personalization has become the consumption psychology of more people.

Starting from vertical categories, vertical platforms that accurately focus on user needs are more likely to win the "hearts" of consumers than traditional e-commerce.

Therefore, the surviving vertical e-commerce can also explore the appropriate development direction according to its own advantages.

For example, the pattern of continuous deepening of verticals.

Vipshop is one of the representatives, and it is very focused on the "sale" model. At present, Vipshop is the only e-commerce platform that is considered to be alive and well by the market, except for Taobao and JD.com.

According to the latest financial report, Vipshop's net revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023 was 34.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.2%, and the net revenue for the whole year of 2023 was 112.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.4%. Net profit attributable to shareholders also increased, to RMB3.0 billion in the fourth quarter, up 32.2% year-on-year, and RMB8.1 billion for the full year, up 28.9% year-on-year.

It is worth mentioning that this is the 45th consecutive quarter of profitability since Vipshop made its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Source: Vipshop official account

The second is to gradually expand to related categories based on core categories and become a comprehensive platform in the professional field.

For example, the core category of Confucius's second-hand book network is still second-hand books, but it is expanding to group-bought books, cultural toys and other categories related to the attributes of second-hand books.

In addition, joining the integrated e-commerce platform and becoming a supplier of a large platform is also becoming the choice of more vertical e-commerce platforms, such as many second-hand e-commerce platforms, as well as NetEase Yanxuan and Jingjing Manufacturing. Even Zhaopin Recruitment and 58.com have joined the Doukuai camp and become partners in the transformation industry of these leading platforms.

In addition, with the rise of content ecological e-commerce, short videos and live broadcasts may become tools for vertical e-commerce to innovate content and improve quality.

It should be noted that there is not much time left for vertical e-commerce platforms. Vertical e-commerce needs to continuously innovate and optimize to improve its competitiveness and differentiation in order to stand out in the fierce market competition.

In the second spring, vertical e-commerce needs to take the initiative and create.

Author | E-commerce Jun

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