E-commerce platform is more willing to crowdfunding products as an initial test of the water area

Recently, Jingdong finance on-line crowdfunding platform, and after that, Taobao, Baidu finance crowdfunding platform has also been launched.

Jingdong released 12 crowdfunding projects, in addition to some intelligent hardware, is entertainment products. Taobao crowdfunding platform from the project point of view, it seems to have become some of the creative products pre-sale platform. Crowdfunding in equity is still in the faltering stage, e-commerce platform is more willing to crowdfunding product as an initial test of the water area.

For Jingdong, Taobao, Baidu, crowdfunding is a new business line they pioneered. Prior to this, professional crowdfunding platforms such as crowdfunding networks, named time and their relationship more like the relationship between e-commerce platform and vertical e-commerce. However, the platform-level players to do crowdfunding PK professional platform for crowdfunding how its future is yet to be known.

Giant water test crowd

The crowdfunding model appeared earlier in foreign countries and was initially mainly used for fundraising of art products such as record labels. As crowdfunding CEO Sun Hongsheng said, crowdsourcing was originally for art, and the Grammy Music Awards' 18 winning albums were all born from ArtistShare, a UK based crowdfunding record company. Crowdfunding breaks the line between producers, artists and publishers in previous album publishing, alters the original operating model for album publishing, and consumers have a direct say in the albums to be released.

In the United States, the most classic case is Pebble smartwatch Crowd raised more than 10 million US dollars on the Kickstarter, has achieved great success. This case not only promoted the industrial development of smart hardware such as the American smart watch, but also made Kickstarter, which made the crowdfunding model popularized quickly. Data from Forbes magazine show that as of the second quarter of 2013, the number of crowdfunding websites worldwide reached more than 1,500. One Kickstarter the most successful, by the end of 2012, the cumulative fund-raising reached 750 million US dollars.

The crowdfunding market has a huge market space. In 2012, the global crowdfunding market was estimated at about 2.7 billion U.S. dollars and at least 5 billion U.S. dollars this year. The World Bank report predicts that by 2025, the global market share of crowdfunding will be about 110 billion U.S. dollars, of which 50 billion U.S. dollars will be in the Chinese market. Sun Hongsheng that this data is more conservative, the market may be much larger than this forecast.

In China, crowdfunding websites have not been around for a long time and crowdfunding networks were established at the end of 2012. E-commerce giants are starting to start crowdfunding this year. Crowdfunding channel Taobao is on line in March this year, Jingdong Finance also on-line crowdfunding platform.

Crowdfunding is mainly divided into four categories, product crowdfunding, public crowdfunding, equity crowdfunding and debt crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is the funder's investment in crowdfunded projects, access to products or services. At present, whether it is Jingdong or Taobao, or crowdfunding network, named time, the main are intelligent hardware, entertainment and culture. In these crowdfunding platforms, the reporters saw that most of the products have their financing target ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 yuan, which is completely different from the target of raising millions of dollars in foreign crowdfunding platforms.

Relative to the foreign legal environment, the domestic equity crowdfunding is still facing numerous policy and legal obstacles, and the crowdfunding legal risks faced by the product is much smaller, but the amount still can not be compared with foreign shoulder.

This year, Ali introduced the entertainment treasure, which is a typical crowdfunding model from the point of view of its form. In order to avoid raising crowds for unspecified people and offering invitations through media such as the Internet, it promised to repay the red lines of these laws and adopt entertainment products To meet compliance requirements. Insiders pointed out that although the e-commerce giants play crowdfunding, but the platform from the United States Kickstarter is still a big gap, there are policy factors, but also market and cultural factors.

Crowdfunding culture is far from being formed

Jingdong platform, the reporter saw Wang Feng concert crowdfunding goal set to 3,000 yuan, the user spent 1160 yuan to get included 580 yuan tickets 2, and 15 seconds to record confessions VCR concert live screen.

Crowdfunding platforms in Taobao, from designer clothes to air purifiers concerts tickets can be seen, crowdfunding goals are also around million. Crowdfunding platforms such as Crowdfunding and Time-to-Date refer to many crowdfunding projects that look less innovative and offer little to no avail of smart hardware. Some commented that many crowdfunding projects are actually more like buy-side or sale.

Jin Lin, director of crowdfunding at Jingdong, pointed out that firstly crowdfunding is more presale, and it will take some time for the returns to be returned to consumers. The pre-sale nature of group buying is not that strong. Second, buy products can be bought everywhere, and crowdfunding products can only be purchased on a platform, consumers can wait to accept is an exclusive feature. Most importantly, crowdfunding has the power to pay for dreams, with strong ideological attributes behind it.

Sun Hongsheng pointed out that the biggest challenge for China's crowdfunding lies in the degree of innovation in the project and the lack of a real high-tech high-quality project. This is the pressure on various crowdfunding platforms.

Wang Hao, founder of Magic Teng, who successfully completed the crowdfunding goal on the Jingdong platform, pointed out that crowdfunding in a sense needs the formation of a crowdfunding culture rather than just a model or platform. He cites an example. If a person launches a crowdfunding trip around the world, the reward is that a traveler sends a postcard to everyone who supports him at each travel destination. The crowdfunding that appears to be unequally repayable In the United States is possible, in line with the crowdfunding culture that supports the dream of others. Because of this, crowdfunding innovative products in the United States often have overtime paybacks and even bounced products. Users are highly tolerant.

In China, users pay more attention to crowdfunding returns and payback times. Magic Teng smart platform in the Jingdong crowdfunding is a combination of smart lights. Prior to crowdfunding on the line, Jingdong related staff deliberately stressed the product must be delivered on schedule, can not be delayed. From the user's point of view, China's crowdfunding culture is far from being formed, which also makes the domestic crowdfunding look more like pre-sale or group buying.

Giant fight is the channel

Although there are still 38 days away from the end of crowdfunding, Magic Teng smart has completed 137% of crowdfunding goals in Jingdong crowdfunding platform and raised more than 27000 yuan. However, for Wang Hao, the money from the perspective of the company's operation is negligible, a smart hardware startup capital needs at least 1 million yuan. Therefore, if there is only technology or creativity, it is very difficult to start the project through crowdfunding.

However, for Wang Hao, crowdfunding is about marketing and user interaction. In addition, the choice of crowdfunding Jingdong platform, their own more pay attention to Jingdong channel value, that is, their own products in the future can be completed in the Jingdong platform scale sales.

This is precisely the Jingdong hardware eco-chain plan, Jin Lin pointed out that Jingdong crowdfunding is not only a financing platform, but also a incubator platform. Jingdong already has its own strong advantage in hardware sales, the future, Jingdong actually want to create their own hardware ecosystem. In the field of intelligent hardware, Jingdong can integrate the guest community, manufacturers, content service providers and channel operators to build the open ecosystem of Jingdong smart hardware while Jingdong Smart Cloud provides chip-level networking services, big data, cloud open platform services and Super APP and so on.

In this smart hardware ecosystem, crowdfunding projects play a front-end role. Since these projects are early projects, the crowdfunding represents the user's vote, and the platform may test a project. If the crowdfunding has a good effect of raising funds to prove that the future of this product is promising, and Jingdong also better marketing resources can be configured to accelerate the growth of products. In other words, crowdfunding is actually a process of screening products.

However, Sun Hongsheng that e-commerce platform for the gene does not necessarily fit crowdfunding this model. "Crowdfunding business model is a stock exchange model, a financial model, it is precisely not an electricity supplier model." Sun Hongsheng said crowdfunding is the C2B model, is a private custom, is personalized, is to go Center mode. Most importantly, crowdfunding is a social model, a model of personal credit, not a traffic model, which makes the crowdfunding inconsistent with the existing model of the e-commerce provider.

Sun Hongsheng gave an example. A crowdfunding sponsor posted a project in Crowdfunding Network that may not be visible on the site but the link exists. Crowdfunding sponsors can share the information forwarded to Wechat or Twitter, In the process of friend forwarding established layers of trust, through their first contacts, second-person connections to complete crowdfunding, this is the typical crowdfunding, social gene is very obvious.

In addition, the crowdfunding has two factors. One is information symmetry, that is, the crowdfunding project is very clear for the project payer. The business plan and the cost structure of the project are very clear. The project proponents also have symmetrical information about the project sponsor. The project The sponsor can also get all the supporters of the data and information; the second is trust, the user is the trust of the project, not the trust of the platform. Crowdfunding model is based on the relationship between people and people, rather than the relationship between people and the platform.