Steel Trade Test Hydro

This January, near the spring festival, some site shutdown, factories and logistics companies have a holiday. In this generally does not count as normal trading month, less than half a month time, Wood Tiger Industrial 4 online shops sold more than 2 million yuan, is currently ranked Alibaba in the forefront of the sales of industrial metallurgical products.

While online sales account for less than 3% of total sales, Dong Shumao believes the attempt is worthwhile and promising.

Extension channels

The traditional steel trade is sandwiched between steel mills and downstream users, which is both a reservoir of steel stock and an important link in circulation.

The traditional sales model let the steel traders have not too much discourse power.

Dong Shumao recalls, in the new work, they in order to run business, once rode a bicycle to the industrial area, home to find customers, dozens of dozen calls a day, contact the need for steel purchasing manager. "Keep calling to inquire about a purchase order. ”

Of course, rejection rates and hit rates are high. 100 of phone calls, it would be nice to be able to contact 10 purchasing managers and retain 5 customers.

Alibaba opened the shop after the company, they feel greatly different. "All we have to do is to release the information about the enterprise and product, to beautify the page and to continue to promote, working time to send people to maintain the line." We from the initiative to customer change to let customers take the initiative to come to the door. ”

But Dong Shumao also stressed, and will not discriminate, the physical channel to reduce or even shut down and fully into the electrical business. "We are not going to change the electricity quotient, but to develop a new sales channel." ”

Opportunity

Compared with the hot sales of Taobao, Cat Consumer-to-consumer and the business model, business-to-business sales of industrial products are much colder.

1999, Alibaba was founded. As the first open Alibaba business-to-business platform, it has been a platform for information publishing and display over the years and does not support online trading.

In the three or four quarter of 2012, Alibaba explored open industrial raw materials online Trading mode, so far, has been tested more than April.

Electric dealer Sales is the general trend. Mr Ma is not content with a trillion-dollar sales of cat and Taobao, and he is planning 10 trillion sales.

To achieve 10 trillion sales, the daily turnover will have to be 30 billion yuan. With the existing logistics and express capacity, simply can not support such a scale. In a recent closed-door meeting, MA Yun announced the network logistics system. It becomes a necessary breach to make the trade of industrial raw materials with larger turnover become reality.

Test water

A batch of raw material vendors saw this opportunity. Dong Shumao also saw the opportunity. "E-commerce is the general trend," he says. Consumer-to-consumer has been successful for many years and has been fast growing, and business-to-business has been trying to break through. ”

In addition, the major platforms continue to force online transactions, the time is ripe. My steel net, China steel spot NET, steel net, credit line and other vertical type of steel platform and Alibaba as the representative of the comprehensive platform, in the past two years has begun to exert a large spot online transactions. "The vertical platform is more professional, can be in their respective areas of in-depth service." However, Alibaba as a representative of the comprehensive platform, in all aspects have a combination of advantages, platform advantages, a large number of customer advantages, can be cross-sectoral exchanges, the future more potential. "Dong Shumao said.

In several sites are involved in the wood tiger industry, so far in Alibaba this comprehensive class platform to achieve more deals. "Online trading allows prices, services, credit more transparent, so that both sides are very concerned about the accumulation of credit, both buyers and sellers can better find and understand each other." Sellers are more likely to find more unfamiliar buyers, sell products, and buyers have more suppliers to choose from. Both sides have avoided any arbitrary default by using Alipay. "Dong Shumao said.

What will be the future trend of the combination of traditional bulk products and electric dealers?

For this, Dong Shumao is optimistic: "business-to-business online trading has just started, immature, need to continuously improve and improve, including payment terms, specifications customization, payment methods, but can learn from Consumer-to-consumer, the mature part of the business." ”

At present, in order to adapt to the commodity raw material is different from commodity trading particularity, Alipay is making adjustments. Personal Alipay Business will each person each day can pay up to 49999 yuan per day, no more than 3 restrictions, modified for each individual transaction for 500,000 yuan/day.

Pay a larger amount of enterprise Alipay has also been developed, currently tentatively for a single sum of 5 million yuan/day, the future will continue to increase the amount of words.

Dong Shumao said that commodity raw materials and small commodities, the amount of high, large, and price fluctuations at any time, so it can not be like the day cat to do "7 days without reason to return goods", it is not possible to package freight.

For steel trade enterprises, freight costs accounted for the sales of 1%~3%, and the enterprise profits only about 5%. "Commodities want to prevent malicious returns. Dong Shumao said that this part of the future may be considered by insurance companies to underwrite. At present, Alibaba's business-to-business online trading policies are in the design revision.