Electronic commerce in the vertical industry (1)

Ningbo Yuyao, Jiangsu a typical county. About 800,000 of the local population, nearly 400,000 of the outsiders, house prices 6k/square meters. N years ago have their first five-star hotel, grade and service no less than Beijing, Shanghai. Although most locals go to bed at 9 o'clock in the evening, they do not delay the nightly http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/39003.html "> Entertainment", which consumes more than 5K per night.

This is China's plastic town. Locals told me: "Yuyao people are not interested in the new year, the most lively and the most decorated time is the ' Plastic Expo ' period."

After the reform and opening-up, Yuyao began the plastic business, which does not produce a plastic, but is China's largest plastic trading market. 07 The overall turnover of plastic more than 40 billion. Yuyao City has two big market, one is "China Plastics City" One is "the mold City", certainly all is related to the plastic, one does the plastic business, one does the processing plastic mold/equipment business. It is said that plastic city merchants have 4,000 dozen, big annual income of billions of, small pop annual income also has millions. When the local young people graduate from high school, their parents will pay for them to start "doing business", they do not care about the education, whether the "business". (Of course, there are also high and international students, but these people after graduation have gone to Shanghai or other big cities.) ）

94, "China Plastic City" was established, the merchant is not many.

Six months after the plastic city has a supporting service agencies "Plastic City Information Center", subordinate to gong. First, they house-to-house to collect merchant merchandise and offer information, rolling on local cable TV. Later, because of too much information, it was forbidden to occupy a large amount of TV time. Then they began to use computer process access system, point-to-point Fax automatic response system, to release information. ("Welcome to call XXX, please press 1, quote information, please click ...") later they heard the Internet, 97 opened "China Plastic City Information Network", published information online. At that time, Ningbo's leaders inspected the plastic city, toured the slow-moving plastic information network and ordered the relevant units to provide better Internet infrastructure and services for the Plastics city. In this way, the small county of the "Plastic City" has become the early Chinese Internet environment is very good place. So the plastic information network began a step by step, it is said that in 2000 years or so during the dotcom bubble, there have been foreign VC to this small site out of 400 million of the valuation. It is also said that the site now has a higher valuation.

The above is the embryonic form of the plastic line. The real "Gong online" was established in 04 and has been divorced from direct relationships.

In addition to the website, the company has done a lot of business. Including the exhibition, including the company for the website, including computer maintenance, Plastic City advertising agent, typing and photocopying booking tickets, even once opened a restaurant ... Almost all of the "businesses" that serve plastic city businesses. Some say they may even sell breakfast and tea eggs if it is not because the profits are too low.

As long as they can bring their own business, Plastic city merchants do not care to buy a tens of thousands of-dollar "computer", not to mention the small internet fee. There are a number of "netizens" in China early, many of whom have been online for more than 10 years. But they "surf the internet" do not look at Sina, do not use QQ, not to Baidu, they only on the "plastic online" with "Medium plastic" (Medium plastic online own instant messaging tool). Even a lot of them can't type, much less understand what HTTP and. com means, the network cable is broken, and the computer is out of order. They called "plastic online" directly.

Of course, some of their big businesses or some of the younger bosses are now slowly becoming customers of Alibaba, who have a relatively large knowledge of the Internet and E-commerce. As long as they can bring benefits to them, a hundred thousand of, hundreds of thousands of or even millions of dollars a year to pay these sites, they are happy. To the Neighbor Information network "own people", also to Hangzhou, Ma Yun.

"Plastic Online" at the same time to sellers, buyers charge membership fees, as well as advertising fees. The company employs dozens of people, tens of millions of annual income. But that's obviously not big enough.

Most of their customers are around the plastic city merchants, half of Guangdong and other areas of the plastics industry counterparts. To continue to be big they first see two paths: "Go out", Yuyao in the national plastics industry although is the largest, but Yuyao, there are many plastic industry business, should go out of Yuyao, and even out of Asia; "extended", from the oil extracted from a small particle to the final plastic products, There are a lot of things related to this series of industrial chains. It's worth trying.

Whether it's "going out" or "expanding," or both, they face a big challenge. In other markets is unlikely to continue to charge both buyers and sellers, just to a market even advertising fees are very difficult to collect, the cost will be greatly improved; It is difficult to add new content to the Web site and product architecture today, and to be able to enrich your business, you need to redesign and restructure your existing site. , the current local user needs and habits are very solidified, is the existing site based on the addition of more for the field customer service content, or to the field to create a more suitable platform for customers, is a difficult problem.

In short, to be large, you must first make the entire company and the product a system of "upgrades." But there is not enough team capacity. After all, Yuyao is a small county, where the "talent" is very limited. Local people are "doing business", the Internet has some ability to go to Hangzhou or Shanghai. A lot of "talent" is not willing to stay here. If the core technical team is put in Shanghai or Hangzhou, they are faced with the problem of cost and manpower management.
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(The above description is hearsay.) Please be a figment of your power.

. Yuyao such a county, in Jiangsu and Zhejiang area there are many.

Here almost every county, the town has its own industry, light Yuyao what Plastic township, Mustard Township, the township of bamboo shoots 、... Food, clothing, and shelter. Any small demand link can become a local leading industry, small to a silk, a button, large to an electrical appliance. (it is said that the heads of many small countries often patronize this place, not through the local government and related departments, directly to a "factory" procurement.) ）

Similarly, almost every county, town, or a few of its own sites, almost all of these sites hold a similarly difficult sutra: The combination of Internet and E-commerce is becoming more and more close, the geographical and boundary is getting smaller, how to face the invasion to stabilize their position, how to better cater to the impact of the Internet rather than be a step by step?

1, in addition to the market, customers and brands, over the years did not have a very good talent accumulation. Now to make big, team strength is not a small problem. And it is difficult to retain the local talent to build large successful enterprises, but also faced with the cost and management problems.

2, the current business model is a little bit tailored, a lot of local unique characteristics (called "particularity" may be more accurate). Getting out of the market is hard to apply and cannot be replicated.

3, in order to seize the market, or because just in the continuous learning to grow. There is no complete planning for their products. It is difficult to add new content to the existing architecture.

4, in the Internet such an innovative industry, they have been working behind closed doors, nestled in the local special conditions of the warm embrace, the way of thinking has already had a great impact, how much a bit like a rope tied to the elephant. (Legend of the big like a child has been tethered to the rope, grow up and continue to think that they can be tethered to the rope.) ）

5, the existing local market there is always a lot of things in the busy, this is a good way to also be bound to the extent of their own.

How to make it bigger? is a problem.

. PS:
1, Hobiho Recruitment front-end engineers
2. Jiwai Recruitment product Designer