This is the article No. 404 of the New Consumption Internal Reference
New Consumption Guide
Pan Dingguo is a veteran entrepreneur. He once founded Jiangsu Mingyuan, which specializes in ERP for real estate, devoted himself to environmental protection, and then made a company called "Five Grid Warehouse" in the field of micro-e-commerce and fan economy. Today, he manages Aijia's life, 10 billion yuan in three years, and the bright sales data source has accumulated all the way from Pan Dingguo, and many years of experience and deep network resources have made him accumulate thick and thin.
Recently, Aijia Life announced the financing of 1 billion yuan, invested by Tiantu Capital. What is the logic behind the huge financing? What are Pan Dingguo and his team going to do in the future? The new consumer internal reference reporter interviewed Mr. Pan Dingguo, CEO of Aijia Life, for the first time, and this article will show the unique business model of this unicorn company that is not known.
As a new unicorn in the home furnishing industry, Aijia's life model is full of mystery. Its model is quite different from companies such as Qeeka.com, Tuba Rabbit and Shangpin Home Delivery.
In the words of Pan Dingguo: "This company is not only focusing on a certain vertical field, it is an Internet platform company, but it is more than that, Aijia Life is an ecological company." ”
The home improvement industry as a whole, the user experience is not good. Pan Dingguo and other colleagues found that although companies are now advocating the banner of "being responsible for customers", in fact, the industry is still full of information asymmetry.
The development of the home furnishing industry in China has been more than 20-30 years, the industry is not short of talents, in-depth into the industry will find that the home furnishing industry employees are generally more diligent. But why is there still a frequent phenomenon of consumers being "pitted"? Pan Dingguo thought that there was a problem with the industry itself.
Bad money drives out good money
In ancient Rome, there was a phenomenon of "bad money expelling good money". At that time, before buying items with gold and silver coins, people would first cut a corner of the coin, so that the left scraps could be smelted into new coins.
As a result, the value content of the currency is reduced, but the purchasing power remains unchanged. In the long run, the coins that appeared in the market have been "cut off a corner".
The so-called "bad" money expels the "good" money, and this is the truth.
Pan Dingguo told the new consumer internal reference reporter: "This phenomenon also occurs in the field of home improvement. He figuratively compared: "In the automotive industry, spend 500,000 yuan to buy a Mercedes-Benz you know where to buy; in the mobile phone industry, spend 5,000 yuan to buy a mobile phone you know what brand to choose; but in the decoration industry, you have a budget of 500,000 to go to install a house, and you can't think of who to look for for a while." ”
In addition to the above problems, Pan Dingguo also admitted that the government's "auction restriction" and "purchase restriction" policies on real estate have also objectively affected the development of the industry. Supply imbalance, market price deviation is difficult to correct, the market should have the "survival of the fittest" mechanism invalid, "good currency" supplement can not enter the market, the industry as a whole transformation and upgrading into a dead end. Previously, although the government had also rectified the home improvement market, it was not effective. The reason for this, Pan Dingguo said: "The lack of evaluation mechanism and assessment mechanism is the key to it. ”
The emergence of Didi has made there fewer black cars. Many black cars have joined the army of online ride-hailing, and through Didi's platform, the government is improving the supervision of black cars and online ride-hailing. "Since Didi can establish a business model in the field of travel, why can't the home improvement industry?" Pan Dingguo asked rhetorically.
(New consumption reference note: From 2015 to 2016, the venture capital circle blew a "decoration wind". There are many people who hold the idea of transforming the industry through the Internet, and at that time, a total of 200-300 startups gained capital favor. However, after a few years, fewer than 100 companies are still in operation. Although the original intention of Internet companies is good, but because it is difficult to land a beautiful vision, it is difficult for startups to change the climate on their own, and the problem of "bad money" always plagues industry practitioners. Judging from the feedback of Tiantu Capital, there may only be about 10 companies that will win the home improvement track in the end, and Tiantu believes that Aijia's life model is more likely to become the leader of the industry ecology, and the B round of 1 billion yuan investment is also based on this. ）
Sharing economy + trading front
Aijia's life model draws on Didi, if Didi is to create a complete set of travel solutions for customers, then Aijia Life is a platform focused on providing a full range of home life solutions.
In this platform, it includes the whole process of decoration services for the design, construction, acceptance and maintenance of hard and soft decoration, as well as the procurement and distribution of furniture, electrical appliances, art and home decorations and other products.
Pan Dingguo defines Aijia Life as an "Internet home ecological platform", hoping to integrate and open up the upstream and downstream industrial chains of home improvement to make various business operations in the industry seamless. Through such a transformation, all parties benefit.
First of all, the government has obtained a management grip to regulate real estate, home improvement, home appliances, intelligence, design, finance and other aspects.
Secondly, consumers have obtained an effective feedback channel; in addition, 2B companies in the industry can also obtain orders from them, and also avoid risks such as arrears of accounts.
In 2015, Aijia obtained a registered trademark. In less than three years, the company has integrated social resources including real estate, designers, brand hard decoration, brand home furnishing and other aspects.
But as an Internet company, Aijia's model does not fully continue the traditional sense of "over-the-top thinking".
Due to the strong pool of real estate resources, the company can cut from the front end (such as new houses and other links) and the end of the transaction link, and the decoration loan company intercepts the decoration information, Aijia will "pre-position" the transaction and this model objectively monopolizes the industry traffic.
"Over the years, renovation companies will find that the back-end can no longer effectively obtain customers, many companies have run away, and the future back-end model is not sustainable." Aijia is different, we can get customer information without publicity, and this is why you have not seen Aijia's advertisement in buses, stop signs and other places. Pan Dingguo explained.
Monopoly traffic means monopolizing the industry, and the balance of business is tilting towards Aijia life.
Low frequency, long industrial chain and heavy service are the three major characteristics of the home improvement industry. All along, there has been no monopoly-level company in this field, Pan Dingguo laughed: "This is the last virgin land of the giants." ”
Big capital + community
Looking back on the entrepreneurial process in these years, Pan Dingguo frankly said: Before the pattern was small, even if it was hard work, the track was too small and did not make a large company.
Pan Dingguo's previous experience can represent the dilemma encountered by a group of entrepreneurs, and when asked what advice he has for entrepreneurs, Pan Dingguo believes that his experience is worth learning, that is, combining the entrepreneur's innovation, execution and traditional industries, which is easier to succeed than starting from scratch.
Combined with traditional business formats, it is not only a boost for the development of the company, but also a competitive barrier. The model has been established, and it will be difficult for the latecomers to catch up.
In fact, Aijia's model of life is difficult for ordinary entrepreneurs to replicate, because it requires a strong ability to integrate industry resources.
Behind this company, there are many of its own real estate companies such as Jiangsu Yide Group and Jianye Group, and with the injection of capital from these companies, Aijia Life has the ability to compete with giants. "If an entrepreneur wants to do it, sometimes he won't even see his boss." Pan Dingguo told the new consumption internal reference reporter.
In 2016, Aijia Life took the lead in Henan and won the local market in one fell swoop. Then, Pan Dingguo copied the mature model to the whole country, and the solutions it provided began to be accepted by more and more companies.
Big business gave the young company the impetus to "hot start", and as a startup, it was able to skip "from 0 to 1" directly.
With the endorsement of Henan Jianye, it has effectively reduced pan Dingguo's negotiation costs for follow-up customers. The increasing number of orders has given Aijia Life the ability to reversely constrain the back end, and the next step, Pan Dingguo's ambition is to re-establish the ecosystem and become an industry rule-maker.
When asked if the real estate giant would one day "copy" the Aijia model, Pan Dingguo did not think so. In his thinking, simply setting up one or two vice presidents in a giant company to lay out this business is a bit "different".
Pan Dingguo believes that innovation needs soil, that is, "what kind of soil will grow what kind of flowers". Aijia Life, which owns real estate genes, operates independently, and through the operation of Pan Dingguo, who is familiar with the Internet, the company has more free space.
This freedom is more embodied in the pattern.
According to the new consumer internal reference reporter, there is no direct designer team, decoration company and construction unit in the Aijia life platform. On the contrary, Aijia Life will open the platform and cooperate with all relevant enterprises in the society, and Aijia's self-designed "evaluation mechanism" will connect all stakeholders, and Pan Dingguo will call this model the "home version" of Didi. Although the industry chain of the industry is relatively long, Aijia will "share" all parts, so that the relevant parties on the single chain have "traceable" and "evaluable" attributes.
In Pan Dingguo's view, Aijia's imagination space is larger than Didi's. The reason is because there are many aspects of design, construction, labor, materials, etc. that need to be transformed, and any one of these points can contribute great value.
"Light" between "Heavy"
Aijia Life is both a "heavy" company and at the same time very light.
In order to ensure the quality of decoration, Aijia life platform has a large number of quality inspectors to supervise the quality of offline services. On the other hand, Aijia uses a top-ranked home improvement company as a supplier to ensure that the quality of service can represent the leading level in the industry.
Pan Dingguo added: "For example, the full score of the service is 100 points, assuming that the average score of the first few is 70 points, then in Aijia, you can get 70 points of service." ”
Pan Dingguo believes that the current home improvement industry still has potential to be tapped, and in the future, with the further improvement of the service level of supplier companies, users can enjoy 90 points or even 95 points of service in the future they meet.
Taking home appliances as an example, Aijia Life has removed the intermediate links. With such a reduction, the cost of water, electricity, and personnel wages that were originally apportioned to end consumers has disappeared. As a result, soft decoration and other goods on the Aijia Life App are at least 20%-30% cheaper than supermarkets.
Taking home furnishing as an example, Red Star Macalline, known as the king of offline channels, has seized most of the industry's profits, and its profit margin is as high as 48%, if this part of the benefits are ceded to consumers and manufacturers, then more consumption will be released invisibly.
Pan Dingguo further explained: "I believe that users' online shopping must be the trend of the future, this trend is unstoppable, and the value provided by offline channels is bound to become less and less over time." ”
Pan Dingguo feels that aijia life's model is extremely similar to the "S2B" mentioned by Zeng Ming; on the other hand, aijia life is actively building an "M2C" model, from the factory to the user's home, to ensure the quality of goods and delivery efficiency.
Pan Dingguo believes that Aijia's design and service should be generally higher than the general decision-making of couples.
He said: "The designers of Aijia Life come from all over the world, and some of them are already big names in the industry. The quality of the programs they designed must be much higher than the aesthetic standards of ordinary people. "It's worth noting that such a high-quality design service is actually not expensive. The reason for this is that Aijia Life packages the design solution into products and shares it with all users, which invisibly dilutes the cost, and each designer also receives a large number of orders, and the user side also benefits. In the words of Pan Dingguo, users are both worry-free and aesthetic. "Previously, these schemes were only provided to high-end villas or residences, but now ordinary residents can also enjoy them." Pan Dingguo added.
In the industry, there is a classic comment that "all large enterprises are because of standardization, and all private customization must not be big". For Aijia Life, there is a part of the gene reference to the Apple model, that is, "hardware standardization, software personalization". The home decoration style is "hard" and the home soft decoration is "soft". Pan Dingguo is quite proud of this, compared with Vanke and other real estate companies, there are many choices available for users in the Aijia life platform, which greatly caters to the trend of consumption upgrading and also allows artists' works to fly to the homes of ordinary people.
(New consumption reference note: Dachen Venture Capital and Tiantu Investment have another reason for their preference for Aijia Life, that is, the platform can achieve both large-scale operation and efficiency improvement.) Nowadays, Aijia has a considerable number of technical personnel, and Pan Dingguo hopes to further improve the production level of the industry with AI and intelligent solutions, so that everyone can have the home in his own mind. ）
After the end of this round of financing, Aijia Life will focus on lifestyle solutions and deeply target 2 million families to provide them with better products and services.
When asked why the strategy was formulated, Pan Dingguo explained: "We think that home improvement is a low-frequency thing, and home life is a high-frequency thing, with low-frequency band high frequency, in the future Aijia life will have more imagination space." ”
END
Author:Yuan Jing(WeChat:yipingjiaduobao)
Editing & Visual: Ling Xi Language
The article is the original of the new consumer internal reference, and unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.