Mushroom Age: The history of competition in Mushroom Street

Mushroom days in the streets

Mushroom Street is focused on the fashion of Women's E-commerce Web site, not directly to the user to sell goods, not to build logistics, not to build a supply chain, only through the guidance of the transaction Charge Shop Commission, they are known as "community-based E-commerce." Mushroom Street CEO Chen has worked in Taobao for 6 years, 2010, he wanted to play a big point, out Amoy founded Mushroom Street.

When it comes to women's community shopping sites, Mushroom Street is not the only, but also always be and founded in November 2009 Beautiful said to compare. Of course, two websites are all the way to the community E-commerce, open two website page, tonal, style, the section is also quite similar, the lake and the real difficult to distinguish, such as a party staff to admit plagiarism rumors.

Chen admits that he is not less concerned about beauty. In Mushroom street growth career, and beautiful said "rival play" constantly.

At that time Beautiful said the launch of the "talent" let Chen Echocardiography unceasingly. The so-called Tatsu people, is to love to share their own favorite reds, their fashion taste has been recognized by the crowd, and then gathered to join the popularity.

The internet industry sometimes is faster than who moves, the first advantage is the threshold of the latter. Some people have proved that people gather popularity quickly, Mushroom Street also unwilling to be outdone.

How come the talent? In their own site concentrated strength "hold", adjust the best page layout for the people to recommend, and then invest in micro-bo excavation to introduce, from the outside to dig people, money training ... Star Model role Mushroom Street can not touch, with the grassroots to transform this fashion attitude is also quite fruitful. Is lively, Mushroom Street reached the request: Why do I have to play in Mushroom Street? Can you hold me red? Can you arrange a magazine for me?

Chen Headache, I am not in Beijing, do not mix the so-called fashion circle, where to give you pull the cover? As a result, people were absent-minded.

Chen is strange, beauty said how can not these problems? He found that people can play talent because they do have media resources, talent and other series of block design around the "social media" this core.

In contrast, what is the core of Mushroom street?

There is a mushroom law in management. Long in the dark corner of the mushroom because the sun and no fertilizer, often faced with the situation of their own, this is the mushroom growth of the necessary stage. Like a person's growth, or a company's growth.

Mushroom Street must also have this karez.

Independence Day

To customers that a clothing is worth buying, Chen summed up four ways: first, the site or media authority, directly to tell you: this is the trend. For example, the famous fashion magazines, Mushroom Street is obviously not that emboldened; second, let the talent to tell everyone: this is good to wear, such as beautiful said; third, the formation of community discussion atmosphere, let everyone discuss the best; Chen feel, rather than blunt follow, rather go their own way-do the community, design formulas, and finally let the conversion rate to speak (the number of stores to buy goods and all to the proportion of the number of shops).

A current problem is: The forum post, sharing as the main form of Mushroom Street a page to show the value of the content is too little. This problem is not only the existence of Mushroom street, Beautiful said also failed to find an effective way to solve.

Until you see Pinterest "Waterfall picture Wall", Chen suddenly dawned: integrated "picture + link" way, not only to meet the needs of female users to share the beautiful things, but also to allow users who do not like to share in Mushroom Street to enjoy the fun of shopping.

The product on the wall is new, good enough, and attractive enough for the user to click on the page that describes the details. To improve the details page to Taobao conversion rate, it must be in this page before the win "like." Chen made a "like" button, users can cast their own vote, you can see how many people and their own great minds alike. "Mushroom cool" are based on "like", and then the possibility of buying a lot more.

With good presentation, good sorting is equally important. Taobao used to use prices, sales, reputation and so on to the objective ordering of goods, but users actually need a subjective sort of way, Chen want to let "waterfall picture Wall" flow.

There are many factors to consider in the sort of picture wall, for example, how many users like this product, some of these users are up to the people, Chen will give users each browse, click action to give different weights, which determines where the product will appear in the page, the whole sort is a dynamic process, Change every 15 minutes.

Chen an analogy: the common algorithm always thought that yesterday I saw a car, then should not stop to recommend to me the automobile periphery supplies; but it should be considered that if I had a similar taste to another user in the first three months, the goods she purchased or recommended would be valuable to me.

Soon after the picture wall was online, Mushroom Street registered its membership in July 2011 with an explosive growth. Every day there are million users registered, conversion rate of more than 8%.

Later beautiful said also took a waterfall flow show. Now, this presentation is already standard for most shopping-sharing sites. Of course, see Beauty said there is worth learning from the place, Chen will not be polite.

For example, Chen has a time to feel that our pictures are not beautiful said that there is texture. The United States to find 10 of the same picture, placed in the PS carefully contrasted, and then found that the key is sharpening processing. Nowadays, the fashionable fluffy and plaid things look good after sharpening. But there is a careful machine is, the human face can not sharpen, or wrinkles will be all out. So Chen write code on the program. After making this adjustment, the conversion rate of Mushroom street is much higher.

"Likes" after, some "mushroom cool" will go to discuss, see everybody's opinion. Chen himself to say, he has 30 of Mushroom street vest, have different age, occupation, character, wearing preferences, easy and user to climb friendship. This step is Chen's community effort.

Some people say "Mushroom street and beautiful say quite like", Chen also don't care. He saw two sites moving from the same platform to two directions: a biased media, a biased community. Media direction to do is to continuously upgrade their brand value, the community direction, is through the continuous increase in conversion rate, the cost of unit users down. Mushroom Street do not beautiful said, beautiful said is not Mushroom street. Mushroom Street has its own way to go.

Love and Hate Taobao

Summary of Mushroom Street profit model, the most important is Taobao commission, more than 80% of its users to Taobao. This strong attachment to Taobao and Mushroom Street produced some "have to say" story.

Perhaps Chen should be worried about is not too attached to Taobao, but Taobao do not bring mushrooms street play to how to do their own play. September 2011, Taobao will "Amoy share" facelift launched "wow". Look at "wow", is clearly taobao stand inside the Mushroom street (or beautiful said).

Chen analysis, "wow" this step can be on the annual meeting in February, MA raised Taobao three items, the first one is Taobao SNS. Taobao should see the feasibility of Mushroom street, want to try water.

Mushroom Street In any case can not be with Taobao this behemoth directly confrontation. Mushroom Street has actually tried to work with other platforms. As early as the first half of 2011, Mushroom Street and Jingdong Mall, where the customer sincere products cooperation, but conversion rate has been on the go.

Is there a chance on Mushroom street?

Chen in Taobao did product manager, know how large companies to do new projects, one is to concentrate on the advantages of resource needs process, Taobao Advantage does not do e-commerce; the other is Taobao has a time limit: A new project only about six months of probation, time after no improvement, will be offline.

In this six months, Chen gradually launched the album, Mushroom Society, groups and many other sections. The feature of the album is to share the contents of the Mushroom Street users, according to the type of placement, is a sort of resources and optimization; Mushroom Society is a trial platform, on the one hand with free trial gathered popularity, on the one hand is also Chen try to cooperate with the brand Merchant; The group is similar to a small forum where users spontaneously split into groups such as " How to wear the thick legs, "We are short girls", "If your body is like this, please do not wear these" and so targeted subdivision and quite technical discussion topics, enhance the user's stickiness. "Community shopping" is the core advantage of Mushroom street, but also do the platform to start the Taobao amateur place.

That's not enough. Chen again thought of new play.

How to play reverse group purchase

Chen said Mushroom Street to do group buying, we are quite "scared". Mushroom Street is to and Taobao head-on challenge?

Moreover, group buying into China, experienced the brutal competition of hundred regiment war, after the Battle of burning money once the wind throws money will die most of the shuffle era, still did not find a real way out. The biggest difficulty of group buying site is that it is difficult for merchants to reverse the collection of consumer demand, it is difficult to coordinate the supply and purchase consumption period. Mushroom Street to come to this "Red Sea" in the First World War fame?

Chen asked: Why do I have a bunch of group buying here, you choose a bar, why not consumers fancy something, and then find a bunch of people want to buy together to buy? Because they buy more people, they can bargain with the merchant and get the cheap price. While the sellers cut their profits, they saved the cost, and the sellers got the benefit from the part that was not meant to be bought, but were involved in the purchase increment because of the influence of their friends. Through the establishment of relationships between people to promote more sales-this is the real group purchase.

So in Mushroom street, when a certain item click "Like" more than a certain number of users, on the product page will automatically appear "Buy" button.

Traditional group purchase needs a huge sales force to talk about business, talk about product discounts. Reverse group buying is freely initiated by the user, Mushroom Street does not participate in this process. Let Chen a little hesitation is, bargaining, the process of briefing series things rather cumbersome, users will not feel too troublesome? It turns out that the Internet is full of live Lei Feng. Chen calculate, if by the editorial group, a day to operate a very limited, now rely on netizen autonomy, mushroom daily number can close to 25,000.

For the Mushroom Street can improve the purchase of goods, whether it is a regular link diversion or reverse group purchase, Taobao is a strong welcome-perhaps also because of the scale of Mushroom street relative to Taobao, too small.

Chen the opportunity to treat Mushroom street in the slightest careless. But the beginning of the regiment still experienced a variety of panic.

On line two hours, the free regiment has 10,000 to become regiment, because the quantity is too big, causes with Taobao API interface once to fall into paralysis.

Because the first time and Taobao Cooperative group purchase, Taobao open platform and Mushroom Street in the data interface is also a temporary connection does not come over. Ali the interface is temporarily not open, for that part of the seller, not signed up, Mushroom Street can not be the first time to let them know the order information, can only use manual way one by one notice ... Mushroom Street Technology, communication and outreach ability in the Free Corps this project has undergone a big exam.

To support the free regiment There are also Mushroom Street before the series of plates to enhance user stickiness, and reach a certain level of the user base, even the mushroom street itself has the SNS attribute. After the launch of the Free Corps, Mushroom Street up to the end of March 2012, registered users climbed to 9.5 million people, day visits to 2.2 million.

Chen the Freedom Corps because he saw the ability of Mushroom Street to know which users were interested in a particular product, to make a derivative of the shopping direction, and to allow consumers and businesses to interact. In addition to users, the opening of the Free Corps also to precipitate in the Mushroom Street seller resources formed an export. In Chen Heart, Free Regiment is a real embodiment of Mushroom Street Community shopping products.

Let's go shopping.

The free regiment becomes the Mushroom Street grows on the road an important node, compared to the Mushroom Street active, the Taobao is slowly quiet in the River Lake. Of course, from the sales scope, turnover, the number of participants, Mushroom Street in the group Buy River is still not in the seating--Taobao's poly-profit 2011 Annual total deal has reached 10.18 billion yuan, the number of independent visitors per day reached 12 million.

At the same time, the concept of reverse group purchase is not not replicable, the user base, stickiness, such as the threshold is not insurmountable gap, community-style e-commerce mode of the river is increasingly noisy. Mushroom Street, Beautiful said the explosion of growth attracted a large number of entrepreneurs and capital quickly follow, know the United States nets, petals nets, flash network immediately intensive online, even Renren began to "shopping."

It should be said that some people rob the market is a good market, you can not stop the later, it is impossible to destroy all the opponents, and not even shake some of the giant half points, Chen can do, but the Mushroom Street optimization.

He thought about the future of the price ladder on the Free Corps, to 10 people dozen how many fold, to 100 dozen how many fold, the sellers can control the setting; now Mushroom Street play a bit more, will let the novice dazzling, to the complexity of Jane ... Consumers will eventually choose what "Street" to visit, but also to see the skills of each individual.