Liu Xingliang: Looking at the Moon of foreign electronic commerce from excellent dilemma

There is a saying in our country: "The Moon of foreign countries is more round than China", so as to satirize those who blindly adore the developed countries. When I first heard this saying and understand its meaning, in order to verify that he is not also in this column, waiting for a lunar 15 when hurriedly looked at our head of the Moon, God, more than the foreign circle. So, my heart also put down, glad that I still retain the title of the patriot.


in fact, the foreign moon round is not round and patriotic independence. In this information age, the whole world is a big global village, everyone has to make their own think the right choice, the premise of this choice is not to prejudice the legitimate rights of others. I think, every people from the developed countries, will deeply feel the gap between developed and development, this gap is all-round. We must acknowledge this disparity.


The foreign moon is not round? As an individual to consider, as a business should be carefully considered. 2004, foreign E-commerce, the most round of the moon "Amazon" waving 150 million of dollars of olive branch found when, when the reluctance to be big capital control, only welcome strategic investment, rejected the seductive olive branch. And the Amazon right hand of the 72 million dollar olive branch of the remarkable sway of the eyes, hurriedly married himself out.


China's E-commerce field of the two-male, the same year to treat foreign e-commerce the most round moon "Amazon" when they are completely different attitude, for today's Chinese business situation of the big weather has been buried foreshadowing.


May 25, Dangdang announced and Sohu signed a framework of cooperation agreement, cooperation is mainly focused on marketing. Both sides will share user resources, advertising and other forms of cooperation. It is said that "the two sides have cooperated in April, the results are very good, and the final confirmation of long-term cooperation is in May." This is the largest since the establishment of Dangdang cooperation. ”


before this, 2006 Sohu is the mall directly subcontracted to excellence, but after the interests of the two sides dispute, excellent nets to Sohu Mall did not give their own imagination of the turnover, profits, refused to pay the agreed costs, and Sohu is outstanding default, a paper indictment to court, so far the case has not been concluded.


is more intuitive than the cooperation of the market share data. 2006 Analysys data show that the market share of Excellence Network is 10.71%, not to Dangdang (market share of 26.87%) half, the gap further widening. After merging with Amazon's global plate, the network should have more ammunition, more capable team, smarter technology, who knows the result is quite not the case, two years down, the outstanding market share does not increase, operating income is almost still in place, and it is reported that its last year's significant loss, all these, Isn't that weird?


around to see, so far does not seem to have any multinational internet giants have a successful precedent in the Chinese market. Yahoo, EBay, MSN, Google without exception by the local enterprises strong sniper and the full go-ahead, have to repeatedly change in China's partners and development strategy. Yahoo, EBay, Google, MSN, Amazon, the internet today, "Spring and Autumn Five tyrants", are facing a lot of difficult problems.


Excellence and Amazon's cooperation may be more representative. The difference between the two is fundamentally about business philosophy.


business, excellent network has been along the low price of fine model development. Excellent net opened after the first generous is to the astonishing low-cost sales of books, audio-visual, software and other products, which makes excellent network opened a year to achieve remarkable results. At the same time in order to ensure low-cost, excellent network also customized products, production and marketing one-stop, increased the space to allow for concessions. In order to ensure low prices and delivery services in place, excellent network has been to maintain the quality model. Excellent net of the storehouse area once only Dangdang One-third, excellent net only manages thousands of kinds of goods, but Dangdang's commodity kind already reached 200,000 kinds.


and Amazon has been using the whole variety model in its business. Throughout the development of the Amazon, we can see that Amazon since the beginning of entrepreneurship has been a whole variety of models as a business model. So the process of Amazon's development has been focused on expanding the size of the goods and operating areas, even at the expense of profit. Bezos's original goal was not just to use the Internet to do business, but to build one of the world's largest shopping websites, selling all possible goods, offering all possible services and the lowest price, which the entity stores could not do. So Bezos initially thought of books, because books have two main features: first, the internet can easily provide millions of books and book reviews, and the second is a "standardized" goods, not like clothes need to pick. Later, the scope of business gradually expanded to a lot of goods, as long as it is suitable for online sales of products, Amazon almost all involved.


However, there is little to ignore, Amazon later development, book sales still occupy about 70% of the share, and excellence in the first two years of the transformation process, the contrary, the proportion of book sales down to about 40%, and department stores, digital ratio is over 50%, And the Amazon line is drifting away.


To be honest, it is unwise to excel in the lines of department stores and digital as the core business. A general merchandise business is not valued by traditional businesses, and it is at best a small piece of the entire department's plate, with no ideal low price at all. Excellence is not an advantage in department stores and digital supply chains, basically get the price after a few changes, so there is little or no margin, some even to lose money, the result of a loss, can only be lost the main business and Liben; two Taobao has been in the department stores, digital and other businesses on the formation of a climate, Hard to shake.


Amazon and the original model of the network is very different, to achieve the transformation of the model requires running-in period, but also to pay the cost of mode change. such as the compensation for layoffs and so on. Although Amazon in the United States to master how to operate a full variety of online bookstores, but not necessarily easy to control the Chinese online bookstore, this point, whether it can understand the Sino-US gap between the national situation and seek to solve the problem is the key.


Amazon's policymakers may not have thought about the possibility of replicating the Amazon model in China's current market environment. In the Chinese book and audio industry supply chain is not mature, like Amazon, both zero inventory and distribution in time is not likely. Under the pressure of capital, excellence finally chose the Amazon model, followed by the inventory, distribution, sales and management of the rising costs.


in the various costs, attractive employee wages and options accounted for a large chunk. It is said that the outstanding pay standard is three or four times times higher than the peers, so high cost, if produced the same proportion of output value fortunately, if it is light out, excellent cash flow is not nervous.


Internet industry as an emerging industry, the gap between China and the Western developed countries is far from the traditional industry so big. And China as such a large market, the situation is more complex, unlike other small developing countries, multinational companies can be arbitrary. On the one hand, foreign internet giants are eager to find partners in China, but for China's market situation and do not understand, leading to information communication is not smooth, not acclimatized; On the other hand, some of the domestic Internet industry leader has the ability to catch up with foreign giants and status, localization trend more and more clear, such as Baidu, Tencent, Sina, Dangdang and so on, therefore, China-foreign cooperation to smooth the road is still very long.


"At present, China is a country which is broken and the nation is poor, but who can assert that China does not have a bright future?" No, never, we believe that China must have a bright future to admire. "This is the" beautiful China "fragment written by the Zhimin martyrs in prison, suggesting that internet entrepreneurs eager to marry foreign giants will read the book and that they do not have a" bright future to praise ". Cooperation with foreign giants is not necessarily a good destination. Remember the poem of the poet's index finger: "Believe in yourself, believe in the future!" "I recently just read the description of the" CEO "Zhang, to survive the Haier applauded, to survive the Zhang applauded!


every time when the lunar 15, must tread on our land, look at our own moon! (Author: Liu Xingliang)