Wen play e-commerce "big wave sand": capital boost from large-scale expansion to quality management

After experiencing large-scale investment by venture capital institutions, the domestic cultural and art e-commerce industry is quietly entering the stage of big waves.

Recently, the market rumors that the domestic large-scale cultural and play e-commerce platform - Toys Dezhi fell into a storm such as layoffs, suspension of collection trading business, and arrears of payment to merchants.

According to the data, in November last year, Plaything Dezhi announced the completion of 80 million US dollars C round financing, and has completed five rounds of equity financing since its inception, becoming one of the companies with the largest cumulative equity financing amount in the Wen play e-commerce track.

An investment director of a venture capital institution who has long tracked the investment opportunities of the Wenwan e-commerce platform revealed to reporters that behind this, it reflects that some Wenwan e-commerce platforms have blindly expanded their business scale and ignored business quality after obtaining venture capital injection, which ultimately led to the business model becoming unsustainable.

Ai Media Consulting released the "2021 China Cultural Play E-commerce Industry Development Research Report" predicts that the transaction scale of China's cultural play e-commerce market last year was 163 billion yuan, and it will exceed 400 billion yuan in 2022. By the end of 2023, the scale of users in the wenju e-commerce market may exceed 100 million, driving the entire market to show leapfrog growth.

"This has led to some wenwan e-commerce platforms blindly expanding their business teams but ignoring the quality control of wenju products in order to quickly obtain market share, resulting in more and more twists and turns in business development." He said bluntly. Different from other e-commerce platforms, the role played by the Wenju art e-commerce platform in the entire industrial chain is by no means as simple as that of the transaction matchmaker - the particularity of the cultural play industry requires the Wenjue e-commerce platform to make strict screening and evaluation of the qualifications and professionalism of the merchants to ensure that the goods sold are genuine, which is the most fundamental cornerstone for continuing to win the favor of users and collection sellers.

"Unfortunately, some wenwan e-commerce platforms have ignored this key issue in order to develop their business rapidly." An industry insider in the field of cultural play revealed to reporters. The reason why the above business turmoil has occurred in the market rumors is that it is not strict enough to control the goods in the identification of cultural and play artworks, resulting in a vicious circle of continuous customer investment - customer loss - business shrinkage - personnel layoffs.

The reporter learned from many sources that although some platforms have encountered business turmoil, the investment enthusiasm of venture capital for the track of wen play e-commerce is still undiminished. Previously, Wenwan Jewelry E-commerce channel brand "Hulu Beast" completed a seed round equity financing of 10 million yuan, the leading investor was Meihua Venture Capital, and the supply chain capital in the field of traditional culture participated in the follow-up investment.

"In the due diligence process, venture capital has made an extremely strict investigation of the identification of gourd beasts and the ability to control product quality to ensure that the cultural and toy goods it sells are genuine." A venture capital partner familiar with related equity investments told reporters.

A micro-pat hall person pointed out to reporters that for the Wen play e-commerce platform, how to establish a trust relationship between the wen play art operators and consumers, and win a high degree of trust from both sides, is particularly important for the sustainable and steady development of the business model.

"In the industry environment at that time, it was not easy for wenwan e-commerce platforms to win the trust of consumers. Therefore, Weipaitang has never positioned itself as a matchmaking dealer, but allows consumers to grasp China's long-term and profound cultural knowledge through the sale and purchase of cultural play goods, and on the other hand, to do a good job of supervision and after-sales supervision and after-sales of the authenticity of cultural play goods, to solve the pain points of the traditional cultural play transaction model, so that consumers can buy at ease. The above-mentioned micro-pat hall person pointed out. This business model has also won the recognition of many venture capital institutions, so that Weipaitang has won multiple rounds of equity financing from venture capital institutions such as DT Capital, Tencent, and Maggier Investment.

The reporter learned that at the beginning of this year, Weipaitang signed a strategic cooperation agreement with 9 national jewelry and precious metal jewelry appraisal institutions in China, and established a quality inspection alliance, aiming to formulate and implement a set of treasure identification standards suitable for the cultural play e-commerce industry, and work together to build a benign cultural and electronic e-commerce ecology.

In addition, through the community model, Weipaitang also encourages users to share their own treasure discovery experience. At present, the cumulative number of "Jianbao" videos taken and shared by users themselves has exceeded one million. These records from the real experience of users, on the one hand, enhance the authenticity of wenju commodities, on the other hand, provide more consumers with reference for the authenticity of wenju commodities and investment decision-making assistance.

"In fact, with the entry of venture capital to promote the development of the cultural play e-commerce platform into the fast lane, we need to abide by the initial business logic and risk control bottom line, and strive to build a stronger relationship of trust between the operators of cultural play art and consumers, and help the platform to develop steadily in the incentive market competition." The micro-pat hall person revealed. For example, in order to welcome the upcoming November 9 micro-auction ceremony, they joined hands with many cultural and art merchants to invite many domestic calligraphy and painting masters, art collectors, and jade carving masters to come up with excellent works to create a genuine feast of cultural and artistic e-commerce transactions.

In his view, unlike other consumer goods, most of the cultural play artworks are non-standard, and many seemingly identical cultural play artworks are actually "very different". For example, the jianzhan fired by the master of intangible cultural heritage may be less than one-tenth of the finished product, and among the scarce exquisite works, each one is different. This requires Weipaitang to make full use of the new business model of live broadcast + auction, first allow consumers to fully identify the intrinsic value and creative quality of different literary works of art, and then give the most appropriate collection trading pricing, and truly achieve "buy at ease, shop happy".

At present, many venture capital institutions also believe that the business model of live broadcast + auction is one of the effective ways to solve many pain points in the current e-commerce link of cultural and play artworks (including the lack of strict identification of cultural and play items, the unclear source of cultural and play items, and the difficulty of distinguishing the authenticity of cultural and play items). At the same time, venture capital institutions are also concerned about whether the cultural play e-commerce platform can expand its business scope to young people, because only when more and more young people begin to like cultural play collection, and take the purchase and sale of cultural play collection as a new hobby of life, can the business model become more sustainable and stable. The investment director of the aforementioned venture capital institution said bluntly to reporters.

It is worth noting that on the occasion of the micro-auction ceremony held on November 9, Weipaitang also launched the concept of "quasi-middle-aged people" through fun ways, advocating young people and middle-aged people to increase their cultural collection hobbies and form a healthy and happy life concept and work stress reduction method.

A senior executive of Weipaitang pointed out to reporters that the current steady development of the wenju e-commerce industry needs to expand the user group, and it is also necessary to continue to strengthen the trust relationship between consumers and the wenju e-commerce platform. After all, the long-term and benign development of the wenju e-commerce industry is based on "trust".

A number of venture capital institutions told reporters bluntly that they are currently paying close attention to whether the micro-auction ceremony on November 9 can create higher sales performance, so as to judge whether the wenju e-commerce industry can quickly recover and return to the track of benign and rapid development after experiencing some platform operation storms.

"At present, our equity investment interest in the industry head and the emerging model wenju e-commerce platform has not decreased, but we need to see the user's trust and stickiness to the platform, and whether the wenju e-commerce platform can effectively avoid various problems in the previous industry development process, and then make more appropriate equity investment decisions." A venture capital partner said.

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