Chen Tenghua said: Entrepreneurship needs the day

Elegant 100 founder Chen Tenghua Chen Tenghua is a member of the wave of E-commerce entrepreneurship in the 2010. At the same time, the electric business start-up company also has NOP, the first carved, cotton. Now, the founder of the first Xu Xiaohui led the team back to the van, cotton 2012 because of financial problems stop operating. Elegance 100, NOP is the representative of the vertical electrical business to survive. Since its inception, elegant 100 founder Chen Tenghua experienced the excitement of the start-up period, venture capital after the initial acquisition of the ambitious, mutation after the plight of the financial market, the transition period of the company's patience. The road to entrepreneurship, even if it set a direction, the middle will be due to force majeure adjustment. After the strategic adjustment, what is being done now is not the first thing to do. "Chen Tenghua said. Chen Tenghua's entrepreneurial story is a model for entrepreneurs ' strategic choices. The initial platform dream of 2009, Chen Tenghua and start-up partners began brewing entrepreneurship, discussion of the key topic is how to position. E-commerce business is nothing but two choices: one is to do vertical electric business platform or do own brand? At that time, the former representative of the Red Child, the latter representative of the people, the second is in a category to do all-inclusive, or for a certain category of target users to do cross category business? The red child is all-inclusive in the category of pregnant baby The model is for the specific target user groups across the category, from home to stationery, from clothing to daily necessities, but each category of products are not wide, to help consumers select. Site positioning discussed for nearly a year. The final choice for a class of user groups across the category platform for urban white-collar women to provide high-quality home, home textiles, cosmetics, imported food, etc., the sale of goods, including other brands, but also include private brands. This model can be very successful or fail. Wal-Mart's Sam Club is one of the successful representatives of the Select model. With Wal-Mart supermarket focus on the concept of the surrounding business Circle, a wide range of categories, Sam member stores targeted strong, although only Wal-Mart One-fourth of the number of varieties, but can do the ordinary big exceed 4 to 5 times times the sales. This is because, Sam's Club for high-end users of selected goods, to meet the needs of specific customers one-stop shopping, can target customers a wider range of radiation. However, in the formation of a clear brand image, if each category is to do a little, it is easy to cause each category is not fine, it is difficult to use fewer varieties to truly meet the needs of customers, resulting in blurred website image, users do not know what you are doing. Therefore, it is necessary to choose the admission strategy carefully, starting from a point. Elegant 100 choice of breakthrough is home textile. When home textile category in the formation of the target audience for the attraction, brand image, trust, and then expand to other categories. "Chen Tenghua such planning. September 2010, the company rented a 60-square-metre office in the East Quarter, at the same time rented the underground garage in 200 square meters of the modified warehouse, with more than 2 million yuan own funds began to operate. Website at the end of 2010, the first round of financing smoothly launched, the investors from IDG and DCM. To be realNow for a user group across the category of the platform, the first round of funds is only start-up funds, is far from enough. As planned, in the first half of 2011, Chen Tenghua began talking about a second round of financing. But what has not been expected is that the capital market's attitude towards E-commerce has plummeted. In the June 2011, the outlook for financing was optimistic. We met a lot of investors, most of them were interested, a few talked deep, some had done their due diligence. But by August 2011, the situation suddenly changed very much. "Chen Tenghua said. There are several reasons for this. In addition to the economic crisis in the background, a few stocks in the United States suffered a crisis of confidence. More importantly, the first few listed Chinese electric quotient concept stocks poor performance, resulting in the capital market for China's e-commerce lack of confidence. Now look back, the right place and the timing is the first. Why choose to be in the market before (note: When the listing in December 2010, Chen Tenghua when the vice President Dangdang, when the listing on the eve of the departure) out of business? Just for the moment. At the time, the company was already very hot, and when it came to market, it might be time to start. "Chen Tenghua said. He believes that the start-up time is not early enough. If the timing goes on for six months, starting at the end of 2009 and completing the first round of financing in the first half of 2010, it is likely that the second round of financing will be completed in the second half of 2010, and the situation may be completely different. "By the end of 2011, corporate funding had clearly failed to support the original platform strategy. Chen Tenghua realized that there had to be a big shift. Change in direction: Elegant 100 The layout after the first round of financing in early 2011 is premised on a second round of funding. For example, the company's personnel expanded rapidly, expanding from 20 to nearly 100, established a procurement office in Shanghai, and established a professional warehousing center in Beijing and Jiangsu province, which has done a lot of network promotion work for rapid growth. The company's growth was good at the end of 2011, but it is clear that existing funds and resources cannot support such growth. At the same time, Chen Tenghua and existing investors talk about the pursuit of investment, at the end of 2012, IDG and DCM were pursued. At the beginning of 2012, Elegance 100 began to make strategic adjustments. The core is, from the multi-brand platform, into a private brand in multi-platform sales. Will be the main focus on the major electric platform sales channels, reduce the official website input. This shift, in contrast to previous positioning, has shifted from platform to supplier. From the official website sales ratio can be seen behind the upheaval-in early 2012, the official website sales accounted for more than 85% of the overall sales, at the end of 2012, official website sales accounted for only 15%. At the beginning of 2012, private brand and third party brand sales accounted for 5:5, and third party brand sales accounted for less than 10% at the end of 2012. With the company's strategic changes, the staff structure has been adjusted accordingly. Long platform sales, independent technology and servers and other demand drastically reduced, the technical staff from 19 to 6 people. In the platform sales category to be specialized, cut down just after the establishment soonBig Furniture Team. In the second half of 2012, closed the Shanghai procurement office. The operational structure also changes. In order to support the official website of the user's freshness, the need to continue to expand the category, at the end of 2011 has more than 3,000 SKUs. But in multi-platform sales, there are not too many products to display opportunities, every day cat shop average baby number of less than 100. From the width of its own brand to the expertise of a third-party platform, this is a huge conversion. This transformation causes our original commodity structure, the category strategy all does not apply, the adjustment is very long, painful. "Chen Tenghua said. For example, in the official website will sell some convenience products, such as cups, users come to the official website often incidentally buy. Access to platform sales, these convenience products are simply difficult for users to see. Third-party platform is a more detailed division of the place. Users want to buy cups, will be in the Sky Cat Search Cup, to sell cups shop. "The difficulty lies in the status of the official website. If 90% of sales from Third-party platforms, the official website is necessary to exist? In this regard Chen Tenghua has never hesitated, the official website definitely continued to operate for the old customers continue to provide services, while as an elegant 100 overall brand and service experience display window. But the official website will not invest heavily to pull new users. This choice is not without cost. In the third party platform sales, rely on two products can be successful, timely introduction of some new color, size can be. To maintain the official website, the need for a certain platform width, the category can not be particularly small. But the website size is already very small, specially for it is not the economy. This is particularly difficult to adjust, as there is a conflict between short-term and long-term strategies. In the long run, its own platform has the greatest value to the brand, so we will stick to the long-term strategy. "The response to channel volatility into the 2013, the company's main keynote is in the major electric platform sales." But the biggest problem is that the rules on the platform have no right to speak and need to deal with the fluctuations of each platform. In 2012, for example, sales from a group buying site accounted for nearly 50% of monthly sales. But as the site's parent company's internal adjustment, positioning changes, the way the operation changes, starting from 2013 Q2, the site's sales to drop by 30% per month quickly disappeared. Another big channel of volatility comes from a certain big platform. January 2013, the platform will buy business from the open platform stripped, independent operation. Group buying under the open platform, the whole operation is mutual cooperation, the merchants will choose cost-effective products to do group buying, as an open platform for operations. But after the split, group buying business needs to create additional value, so began to bid, sales guarantee, which increased the cost of the merchant, and at this time the platform group purchase business is still far from the level of the quality of the traffic, some high-quality old businesses do not want to lose money to do this, brave new businesses and failed to provide cost-effective quality products, Led to the flow of group buying has been lower, the overall home textile open platform sales also fluctuate enormously. "Chen Tenghua said. We expect traffic from the platform to grow steadily. I am more optimistic about the rapid development of the current Beijing-east.But unlike the Sky cat, including Jingdong, when the company's open platform itself is still in the early stage of exploration, internal policy continuity, stability are slightly worse. "Chen Tenghua said. Another channel change comes from the only product. Now, after less than half a year of cooperation, only goods will already be elegant 100 of the highest sales volume of channels, more than other platform for the business. Because the only product will provide a completely different from Taobao also different from the traditional shopping experience. More similar to consumers familiar with the traditional way of shopping, at the same time through the flash purchase to create scarcity, improve user retention. "Chen Tenghua said. But what worries Chen Tenghua is that it is easy to rely on suppliers as a sales channel. Not every brand can guarantee a one-month online opportunity. As a brand supplier, we have a weak voice in cooperation, although the current cooperation is very smooth, but the theoretical risk is quite large. "He believes that the cat is the most unique brand sales platform." Cat platform rules are relatively mature, brand operators can almost use the rules to deal with things, not involving human factors, brand-day cat platform for the most controllable, can almost be regarded as its own channels. This year, the day Cat channel is also one of the highlights of Elegance 100. Do a good job in the immediate business waiting for the opportunity to do from the original for a certain category of users to do across the category platform "dream, to now deal with the major electric platform sales fluctuations, from the original dream a little distant." Back to the start of this matter, the early 2012 strategic adjustment is relatively safe, conservative decision, but also in line with the characteristics of our team. With our ability to operate, the support of shareholders, the company will be able to survive, but survived and did not do one thing before. "In another perspective, does this mean that we lack the courage to doom?" If we do not adjust, still do according to our goal, continue to find investors, may be ' born great, the glory of death ', either quickly finished, or become a classic. "It's hard to say which mentality is better. There is the possibility of success, slow and steady there are many successful cases. At present, relying on the third party platform sales of the road is relatively easy to make money, but for Chen Tenghua, this is only a transitional strategy. Even if money is made, there is limited room for growth in corporate value. "In Chen Tenghua heart, still keep the dream of the platform." But unlike the original, Elegance 100 will choose the distinctive platform orientation. The traditional ' vertical platform ' obviously has been hard to do, if only intelligent shelves stacked goods, and jingdong, when there is no essential difference. The innovation in the field of electronic commerce is constantly happening, from the Community electricity quotient, the fee member, to the personalized customization, the new pattern emerges endlessly. He revealed that elegance 100 's new moves will be related to the Community electric business. We have studied for some time, and have made some product prototypes, and have done a preliminary research on the various participatory roles of the model. The core is still around home textiles sales, is a platform for the model, but the way of sales and user participation and the existing model completely different. "In a way, entrepreneurship has just begun, far from over. Although from the initialThe platform strategy turns halfway, but it also leaves a valuable asset. Chen Tenghua said that the company's own development of the front and rear system will be the future of the important foundation of the Bureau. Now, Elegance 100 is basically flat. For the future, Chen Tenghua said, to do the immediate business, and then patiently broken the bureau.