Henan Business Daily reporter Jin Ailin / Wen Photo courtesy of the interviewee
Recently, the Henan Business Daily reporter learned that the hard library hardware industrial platform (hereinafter referred to as "hard library") obtained a Pre-A round of investment.
Industrial e-commerce - this is already a 10 trillion-level market. Driven by the integration of manufacturing and industrial Internet, industrial product e-commerce has developed rapidly. In 2017, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Three-Year Action Plan for the Development of Industrial E-commerce", which clearly required that by 2020, the e-commerce procurement volume of industrial enterprises above designated size would reach 9 trillion yuan.
In the face of the trillion-level market, the development prospects of industrial product e-commerce are optimistic, and they also attract various capital layouts.
【What is the hard library for?】 】
According to Tianyan, the hard warehouse belongs to Henan Xiaoque Industrial Internet Technology Co., Ltd., and the parent company at the previous level is Beijing Hard Warehouse Industrial Network Technology Co., Ltd.
This is a young industrial e-commerce platform. Ren Yang, founder and CEO of the hard library, told the Henan Business Daily reporter that in the 7 months since the platform was launched, the hard library has settled more than 6,000 merchants, and the average monthly turnover has increased at a rate of about 50%.
In Ren Yang's view, the field of industrial supplies has long existed in the characteristics of large and scattered, the industry downstream users face a large number of SKUs (Note: the abbreviation of the unified number of products, each product corresponds to a unique SKU number) and dealers, need to spend a lot of time and energy to find goods, inquiries, comparisons. Downstream retailers often fail to find the right source of goods in time, resulting in an increase in hidden costs and inefficient transactions. For distributors (manufacturers and wholesalers), it also consumes a lot of inaccurate promotion costs.
What the hard library is doing is to build an online market, so that the downstream can efficiently find near and far sources and products, one-stop quickly meet the needs of all categories and fragmentation. It is understood that the hard library platform currently contains fasteners, hand tools, power tools, measuring instruments, electrical products, household building materials, hardware and miscellaneous goods.
Ren Yang introduced that the founding team of the hard library platform has 30 years of deep industry experience in the traditional field of hardware and building materials, after two generations of combination, there is a full know-how for the industry (note: engaged in an industry or do a certain job, the technical know-how and professional knowledge required) and related resources matching, team members have experience in the top Internet companies in China and the United States Amazon, JD.com, Ali, etc. Among them, the technical team comes from Google, SAP, ByteDance and other top technology companies.
【The only B2B company selected for the Miracle Achievement Arena】
The Henan Business Daily reporter found that in addition to the financing information disclosed by IT Orange before, there is also a bright information. According to Tianyan's investigation, the hard library has obtained equity financing from Qijie Chuangtan.
Qi Ji Chuang Tan, formerly YC China, was founded by Lu Qi in 2018. According to the official profile of Qiji Chuangtan, Qiji Chuangtan invested in early-stage entrepreneurial projects, invested nearly 3 months, like Co-Founder (note: co-entrepreneurs, co-sponsors), working intensively with the founding team and improving the core capabilities of the startup, in order to help the team get the next round of financing on roadshow day.
Of the 30 startups selected for the Fall 2020 Entrepreneurship Camp, 87% are cutting-edge technology-driven companies, and the hard library was selected as the only B2B trading platform.
Talking about the future development, Ren Yang told the Henan Business Daily reporter that the new round of financing will be used in team expansion, market promotion and logistics-related matching construction.
【Traditional and online platforms, more of a "competitive" relationship】
The "2019 China Industrial Products B2B Market Research Report" released by iResearch pointed out that in 2018, the scale of China's industrial products market was about 10 trillion yuan, the market size of industrial products B2B was about 270 billion, and the compound annual compound rate of industrial product B2B market size in the next five years was about 43%, and the industrial product B2B market had great potential for development.
In the Internet era, no matter which industry, in the face of menacing e-commerce, the relationship between traditional channels and e-commerce channels is always an unavoidable topic.
Xu Yijun, an expert in industrial product e-commerce, believes that the two are more of a competitive and cooperative relationship. In essence, both are to meet the needs of customers, and there is no question of who destroys whom. In the face of industrial product e-commerce, how dealers in traditional channels view it is more important. "If you, as a player in a traditional channel, see it as a beast coming to grab meat, you will inevitably see yourself as an antithesis to fight against some of these emerging business models." Xu Yijun said so.
He believes that traditional dealers and sellers have their own value. Under the format of To B, the needs of customers are diverse, the types and quantities of products are broad, and the products need technical support of offline landing. Even if industrial e-commerce has high-tech and investment support, there are also shortcomings.
For the future development of traditional channels, Xu Yijun told the Henan Business Daily reporter that traditional channels cannot rely on themselves to do transformation, but more need to do digital upgrading and empowerment. He said that in recent years, the platform has realized the importance of combining offline and online models, and is very willing to cooperate with traditional channels. In this case, traditional channels and e-commerce channels complement each other's advantages and are more competitive.
【Platforms with "traditional backgrounds" are more favored by capital】
In recent years, capital's attention to industrial product e-commerce has become more and more obvious.
According to Tianyancha data, on September 11, 2019, Rui Gong Mall announced the completion of nearly 300 million yuan C1 round of financing, jointly led by Zhong Ding Capital and CDH Investment, and on September 18, 2020, Rui Gong Mall announced the completion of hundreds of millions of yuan C2 round of financing. On October 28, 2020, Zhenkun xing industrial supermarket (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. announced that it has received a US$315 million Series E equity financing, which is also the largest single round of financing in China's industrial supplies sector to date.
Talking about capital's concern for industrial e-commerce, Xu Yijun said that capital will become more and more aware that the game of industrial e-commerce and consumer e-commerce is not the same. Compared with other types of e-commerce, the input-output cycle of industrial e-commerce will be relatively long, and relying solely on the way of burning money subsidies will not work. He believes that in the future, capital will prefer some entrepreneurs and platforms with traditional origins and traditional experience, because they have experience in traditional offline channels and understand the needs of Internet e-commerce.
As for the development trend of the future industrial product e-commerce track, Xu Yijun believes that from the perspective of business development, brands that can create value will be retained. This value includes the value of the platform to customers, the value to the market, and the value to the upstream party. If you rely on the subsidy of burning money, the business scale will be larger in a short period of time, and this format will not last long.
From the perspective of capital, some large platforms independently seek IPO financing and listing, and the requirements for all aspects of enterprises are relatively high. For some small and medium-sized platforms, seeking independent listing is not the only option, but can be used as a good supplement to other formats. "There are some traditional formats, and it really just needs to be improved in a certain aspect. So at this time, the small and medium-sized Internet platforms that take the first step are a good supplement. Xu Yijun said.
(Editor: Liu Mengge, Lv Ruitian, Chief Editor, Hua Lijuan)