Group F high-friend merger finally settled

The legend of a long time F Regiment, Gao Peng merger finally settled.

According to the official news from the Group F, the Group F and two groups of high friends will announce a formal merger this week, after the merger, the two sides will be restructured into a new E-commerce company focused on local life services. The original shareholders, such as Tencent, Groupon and Yunfeng Fund, participate as strategic investors in the formation of the new company and will continue to be shareholders of the new company.

After the merger, Ftuan.com and Gaopeng.com will continue to operate as different platforms for the new company and undertake different strategic tasks. Ftuan and Gaopeng's brand and domain name will continue to exist, but two companies will be integrated, and the current CEO of Group F Rynning will be the CEO of the new company.

From this arrangement, we can see three signals: first, the merger means that Groupon is entering a new phase in China's group buying tour, and Groupon will seek a breakthrough in the next phase by merging with its local companies and operations teams, and the appointment of CEO Rynning can be seen The new company was led by the original F Regiment. Third, because of the increase in control, Tencent, the main shareholder of the two websites, will be the biggest beneficiary of the merger.

Of course, the new company will also benefit from the merger, in addition to the scale advantage leading to cost reduction as well as the expansion of market share, the original Gao Peng and Group F two companies have some complementary, Ftuan in the local life of the electricity quotient has a strong advantage, high friends have in the global procurement and commodity purchase advantages. If the implementation of multi-platform strategy, different platforms focus on different levels of users, one for ordinary white-collar, a focus on high-end customers, will be conducive to improve operational efficiency.

The merger of high friends and F group shows that China's group buying industry has not finished the winter, group purchase site through complementary advantages, optimize the efficiency of the operation and other methods, and constantly seek new survival strategy. According to the Regiment 800 statistics, from last May to this June, a year has been nearly 2000 group buying sites were shuffled out. The merger of high friends and F group is likely to set off a new wave of mergers and acquisitions in the industry, the specific way includes the cooperation between the group, the merger, as well as group buying and electric business platform cooperation, mergers.

Of course, the merger will make the new company bigger, increase the ability to withstand bad weather outside, but the real decision to buy the company's future is not the scale, but profit, only to achieve profitable companies, can truly achieve sustainable development, from this perspective, the future of the new F Group + high Friends of the way out or in the fine operation. As the Group F CEO Rynning previously said: Group buying is a slow business. Trying to make quick money in the group buying industry can only die faster.

The winter of group buying will continue for some time, but the dawn is now looming, in the domestic, some group buying website recently released earnings show that the end of the year to achieve overall profit has become a reality, and abroad, Groupon's first-quarter earnings also showed that its first quarter operating profit of 39.6 million U.S. dollars, Better than last year's operating loss of 117.1 million U.S. dollars, the first to achieve profitability. The main reason is the decline in marketing costs and market revenue climbed. After two years of questioning, the group-buying model is finally dawning, which will certainly boost domestic confidence.

From Happy NET will buy business outsourcing to F Regiment, to catch group purchase and litters Regiment integration, handle nets, tick, litters Regiment, full network and Beijing-East strategic cooperation, to F Group and the integration of high friends, this year occurred in a number of group buying war combined operation, indicating the industry in the savings of power to achieve metamorphosis, is to survive, or perish? Group purchase business distance to achieve a critical leap is not too far.

The most important factor in the future is likely to come from the outside rather than the group buying industry itself, which includes the overall development of the e-commerce market and the maturity of the mobile internet market, both of which are now improving.