Domestic group buying site survival status revealed: entrepreneurs were halfway Shandao

Beijing's Wang, Wuhan's Li Yihui, and Guangzhou's Ye Shisen, they have been doing the same thing recently: how to replicate groupon.com successfully, and write a new internet legend at home.

Groupon.com is a new American group buying site, its business model is simple: a day to buy only 1 items or services, looking for the largest discount of the group purchase products, a commission of up to 30%-50%. The site can also earn a lot of money by making sure that both sides of the deal benefit.

Groupon set up its first year, earning $50 million trillion in revenue, and 2010 years ' worth of $350 million trillion. It was valued at $1.35 billion trillion after the Russian investment company DST led the investment.

Seemingly simple and successful business logic also makes the replicators everywhere. According to incomplete statistics, only in China, this year, the birth of at least 100 home purchase sites. Among them, the Wang Network (meituan.com), Li Yihui Wuhan Group Purchase Network (tg027.com), Ye Shisen of the Group Network (runtuan.com) is the pioneer of this wave of gold rush. And behind them, a lot of deep pockets of commercial websites are also eyeing.

Are these entrepreneurs hard to live? Who can succeed in China? What do investors think of group buying mode? Tencent technology for this interview many entrepreneurs and related people, trying to reveal the real status of Chinese group buying website.

Entrepreneurship three people Talk: the operation of a group purchase net per month only million

Wang is a well-known internet entrepreneur in China. In foreign Facebook, Twitter and other products, Wang will introduce these products form to China, and the introduction of the network, domestic net and rice and other sites. This March, he again followed the groupon.com launch of the United States Group Network.

Wang to Tencent Science and Technology, said the United States Group network in Beijing's entrepreneurial team has more than 20 people, of whom 7 are responsible to talk about business cooperation, the site from the original dozens of people a day group purchase, to the subsequent hundreds of people group buys, to now thousands of group buying scale, development has basically reached expectations.

In the early May, the United States Mission Network has expanded its business to Shanghai and Wuhan, and plans to expand its network to 20 cities within 1 years. Wang revealed that the United States Group network overall gross margin, but not yet profitable. The team now has more experience in group buying products and website operations. "Once the time is ripe, also does not repel the wind to enter." ”

Wuhan Group buy net Tg027.com founder Li Yihui to Tencent Science and technology, due to large enough urban consumer market and clear business model, their website on the first day of the realization of the balance of payments. There are already VCs willing to fund him and plan to quickly replicate the site's business to the country.

At the same time Li Yihui also believe that the group purchase project itself can generate huge cash flow, as long as the establishment of an efficient management operation system, without outside capital to promote, entrepreneurs can also achieve large-scale expansion.

Compared to Wang and Li Yihui, the Ye Shisen of college students is obviously somewhat immature. He created a group of nets mainly in Guangzhou to provide online group buying services. Unlike other group buying sites, the main focus of the network is on the university students ' market in Guangdong.

However, in the face of the future group buying market, he has no less than Wang ambition. He said: "If he can get a financing, will be immediately in the entire Guangdong province to carry out online buying business."

At present, the size of the network is not large, the daily independent IP only more than 20,000. But Ye Shisen also did not feel the difficulty of entrepreneurship. He said that the funds needed to maintain a group buying site are not high, less than 10,000 yuan in one months, and businesses may even voluntarily provide the funds.

Commercial website Halfway Shandao: Love Help net and Taobao's Abacus

The enthusiasm of the grassroots entrepreneur has been completely ignited by the groupon.com of the other side of the ocean. They did not even notice that some of the already sized commercial websites were quietly moving behind them.

If said, Wang, Li Yihui and Ye Shisen and other people just "little", then, with tens of millions of dollars of love help nets, as well as the largest domestic consumer-to-consumer Taobao, is undoubtedly to kill into the domestic network group buying market giant crocodile.

Love Help Network April 22 officially launched a love group, CEO Jianguo to buy business show quite optimistic. He believes that after more than 3 years of efforts, love Network has covered 265 major cities nationwide, covering basic necessities, eating, drinking, education, medical, home economics and other 110 categories, has been in many cities to expand the platform, user coverage and operational capabilities.

Love Help network President song to Tencent Technology, love help network group buying business mainly from Beijing, ready to start a place to do, if the business carried out smoothly, will be in a few months to promote the business to the whole country.

Song in love to join the network before, once single-handedly build Google China's channel system, the domestic market has a profound understanding. In his view, the Internet group buying mode can bring users to the merchant, which is much like the merchant mode of paying for the effect.

But the love network does not intend to replicate the American model alone. "If you simply copy the American model just like those entrepreneurs, the cost will be small, but the effect will not be obvious." Instead, the group buying pattern should thicken. ”

The so-called "thickening" refers to: Love to help the network will be combined with their own local life search characteristics, will be other business and group purchase business, through a variety of forms of merchandise promotion, love to help the network will also be a great benefit.

Taobao's SNS service "Amoy Rivers and Lakes" also launched a similar business: It took out two or three items a day to sell a large, Taobao people to Tencent Technology, Amoy Lake itself positioning for the community SNS, buy only to accumulate popularity, currently does not put group buying business in strategic position.

However, some analysts pointed out that Taobao has dedicated to do local life consumption of Word-of-mouth network, as well as its own deep understanding of e-commerce, once the opportunity to mature, Taobao easily cut into this market.

However, not everyone is bullish on the group buying market, CBSI China's 55bbs.com general manager Deng Shoudong clearly said they will not intervene in the online group buying market. 55bbs.com formerly known as Life consumption portal I love discount nets, known for discounts. If it is to enter the group buying market, its multi-year accumulation of large number of merchant resources will be the biggest advantage.

But 55BBS has no ambition for the group buying market. Deng Shoudong introduced that 55bbs.com after the transformation of the main advertising for L ' Oreal, Ding and other cosmetics brands, positioning relatively high-end, group buying means discounts, and brand positioning there are differences. In addition, group buying in China is also facing problems such as taxes, the future is not smooth.

Investor: No investment plan

The heat of the domestic group buying market also let many investors can not understand. The investor's point of view is certainly much more rational than the entrepreneurial passion.

The well-known angel investor Cai said, the network buys in China has the very big market, but is still in the market development stage, is not suitable for the venture capital to enter, he oneself currently does not have the investment plan.

Cai's point of view was also endorsed by Jiang Hao, the managing director of the Northern Lights venture. Jiang Haotien that, unlike the foreign online group buying market, the Chinese market is more complex, more cities, more merchants, which means consumers choose more. The network buys the pattern to need to have some transformation in China, unifies the local characteristic to carry on the change to be able to do better.

Jiang Haotien to Tencent Science and Technology analysis said, currently into the group buying site there are three main categories of companies, groupon.com Pure imitators, with user resources, companies with merchant resources. They only combine their own advantages, and touch the Chinese market, users, businesses and the characteristics and needs, it is possible in which bigger and stronger.

"From the perspective of institutional investors, the market is still in the early stage of exploration, who may eventually win is not necessarily, we will closely monitor the market dynamics." ”

In Jiang Haotien's view, the groupon.com model can be seen as social commerce (social commerce), as well as the integration of social media (social media) and commerce (electronic commerce) and other elements.

Because the Northern lights have invested in the above areas of companies, such as hanting hotels, SNS Web site, e-commerce companies, such as red children, Jiang Haotien also said that they will learn and draw lessons from groupon.com This "integration brings innovation" new ideas.