Macaulay is now almost forgotten in the media and the electric circle.

Once the scenery is infinite, the first successful overseas listed Chinese electric business enterprise Mai Lin, now in the media and the electric circle has almost been forgotten.

Awaken everyone's memory, founded in 1996, Mai Lin is the first in China to obtain government-approved mail order business funded, mainly engaged in wheat forest apparel, jewelry, household items, health supplies, pet supplies and many other commodities. After the successful landing of the Nasdaq on October 26, 2010, the company Rose 57%, and once became a model for the Chinese electric business enterprises.

However, only one months after the IPO, Mai Lin began to encounter a number of shareholder class action, refers to its IPO-related documents on the existence of misleading investors and false information disclosure. After a brief burst of stock prices to more than $18 trillion, the price of Macaulay, which failed to support the performance, began to collapse, and in less than a year, its market value fell 90%.

The present situation of wheat forest

The most intuitive way is to look at its financial statements, judging from the key data from the latest report from Macaulay.

2013 the third quarter to achieve revenue 21.41 million U.S. dollars, down 40.51%, of which:

Online platform net revenue of 5.11 million U.S. dollars, a year-on-year decline of 70.2%;

The net revenue for the call center was 10.83 million dollars, down 1.56% from the 11 million dollar in the same period of the previous year;

Direct Shop net revenue of 3.36 million U.S. dollars, compared with the same period of 3.83 million U.S. dollars year-on-year decline 12.28% (a year, the number of direct stores from 85 to 58);

The franchise stores net revenue of 2.11 million U.S. dollars, 4 million U.S. dollars down 47.24% (a year, the average number of franchised shops from 265 to 217).

In the third quarter of 2013, the gross margin of 9.48 million U.S. dollars, down 27.57%, gross margin rose 7.91% to 44.27%;

Operating costs fell 36.66% to 11.93 million U.S. dollars Year-on-year, accounting for an increase of 3.38%;

Net loss of 4.98 million U.S. dollars, the same period last year, the loss of 6.15 million U.S. dollars, year-on-year losses contracted.

As of September 30, 2013, the total cash and cash equivalents held by Macaulay amounted to USD 6.4 million, which was below $13.3 million as at December 31, 2012.

In addition to the above battalion shrinking water, continuous loss and cash flow emergency performance, in the Macquarie for many years of the CFO Zhang pounds for personal reasons to leave.

Three major transformations of Macaulay "Redemption"

Before and after the transformation, Macaulay Forest has always been around the "Network + shop + Telephone mail order" business model, but a strategic focus.

Overall transformation of the Business-to-consumer

March 2011, Macaulay CFO Zhang said, as a mail-order company started the Mai Lin, in 2010 since the discovery of the overall market structure is changing, domestic business web site development Momentum, many companies have to get huge financing, scale or even higher than the Macquarie IPO income financing, This has had a huge impact on the mail order business of Macaulay. In this situation, Macaulay decided to fully promote the Internet business growth, a comprehensive transformation of the company.

The transformation is to foster the promotion of Macquarie's E-commerce platform Mai network, more mail-order customers transferred to the online shopping platform, and the end of the previous store expansion strategy, the number of direct stores significantly reduced. The results were unsatisfactory, revenues and margins plummeted, and at the end of 2011, a year after the transition, Macaulay said it would slow its investment in the Internet business.

Revelation: Transformation of the failure of the business, the key point is the biggest factor is listed as a result of financial fraud by the United States Investment Agency of the group lawsuit, triggered a trust crisis, Macquarie Capital, Warburg, and other original shareholders of the collective withdrawal is worse. There is no capital drive "in the face of every guest, Jingdong market share of the competition, Mai-lin transformation of the Internet needs to make rapid decisions, in addition to the development costs, the electric business of advertising and marketing costs, logistics investment is sky-high, not enough right to say how the management can decide a 200 million yuan advertising? "The CEO of Macaulay Gu Chunbei.

Cooperation with Korea Electric Giosis

According to Tencent Science and technology news Wang Coxin reported November 2012, Macaulay and Asia E-commerce platform Giosis (fun Skynet parent company) to set up a new joint venture giosis Mecoxlane. The joint venture will operate under the domain name of m18.com, creating and operating a new online shopping platform in the Chinese market. Under the Joint venture agreement, Giosis and Mecoxlane completed their initial contributions with 15 million dollars and 5 million dollars in cash respectively. Giosis will provide the joint venture company with network purchase platform technology, related intellectual property rights and be responsible for the formation of management team.

Both can reach a consensus, on the one hand, the wheat forest business shrinking, relying on their own efforts have been unable to change the current operating difficulties, in order to avoid the withdrawal of the city, the need to use external resources. On the other hand, giosis to develop the Chinese market with the help of Mai, ebay curve into China (ebay in the Giosis share 49%). At present, in addition to the website at the bottom of the Web site record information giosis Mecoxlane, and did not see the so-called "new shopping platform."

Revelation: The cooperation between Macaulay and Giosis is only used to defuse the former crisis and has no real meaning. If sincere cooperation, from both sides to build the platform of domain name, Chinese name why not see the Chinese localization element? Moreover, in the financial information submitted by Macaulay to the Securities and Futures Commission (SEC), there is also a detailed disclosure of the matter, so it is now a smoke and mirrors.

Easy main Business Circle net deep O2O

Recently, every reporter Wang Minjie about mai Lin "sell shell" report let Macaulay back to the public view. According to the information published by Macaulay, several shareholders have reached a fixed stock purchase agreement on January 29, 2014 with the net of the business circle. The net of business is to agree to buy 290.5 million shares of common stock from the current shareholders at the price of about 39 million dollars, accounting for 63.7% of the common stock issued and circulated by Mai.

The acquisition and sale is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2014, but it still needs to meet specific completion conditions, including approval by Chinese authorities. Once the transaction is completed, it means that the control of the Macaulay will be transferred. At present, Macaulay is still maintaining the strategy developed last year in the channels and products. However, in the long run, the new shareholders will have their own ideas and will formulate new strategies accordingly.

Business Circle Network said that the company's acquisition of Wheat forest, based on talent, channels, resources and other comprehensive factors considered. The future plans to use the resources of Macaulay, while combining their own business, company planning, continue to deep O2O business.

Revelation: Mai-lin "sell shell" business Circle Network continued to operate, compared to being ordered by the NYSE is the best result, however, the two are not the same model, Macaulay is still the main business, the line store sales as a supplement, the net is for the regional market, through the entity to provide integrated marketing platform, build online trading platform and supporting services, For Nanjing, the real business circle of the Xin Jie Kou passenger flow, do is O2O. However, the two still have a lot of intersection, Mai Lin transformation O2O can use the marketing of Business district network integration platform, from clothing extended to department stores. The disadvantage is that the MAI Lin brand awareness is not high, offline direct shop and the number of stores are reduced and the integration of a small challenge; the network of business circles, also lack of visibility, regional market limitations, replication of the national market success probability is low.

Conclusion: On the whole, Macaulay after the listing of several difficult redemption, courage but lack of vigour, there is a direction but the loss of implementation, there is hope but seemingly speculative. To this day, there is not much time left for Macaulay to prove himself.