Temple Bank completed a total scale of more than 100 million US dollars of a new round of financing

Reporter Huang Huang Shanghai reported

SECOO, a luxury e-commerce platform, announced recently that it has completed a new round of financing with a total size of over 100 million U.S. dollars. This round of financing led by Li Ruigang Chinese Cultural Investment Fund (CMC) lead investment, with the investment side IDG Capital, the French venture capital Ventech China, Mori investment, Pangu create wealth. At the same time, Silicon Valley Bank of America offers tens of millions of dollars in credit.

This is the fourth round of financing obtained by Temple Bank. Temple Lee CEO Lee said that this round of financing will be mainly used for the strategic layout of Temple Bank globalization, as well as the expansion of overseas business.

Temple of the high financing, no doubt to the current vertical electricity market into a shotgun. Since 2012, a large number of vertical e-commerce websites have experienced declining performance, bankruptcies and mergers and acquisitions - McCaw Lin, Fan Ke, and Haole Buying are obvious examples. However, in 2014, vertical e-commerce seems to start to pick up. Financing, listing, high-valuation news appears frequently.

"It should be said that changes in consumer behavior makes vertical e-commerce now presents new opportunities now." Business School Network Vice President Ji San Yong told 21st Century Business Herald reporter. In the past, consumers valued the fast and cheap channels of e-commerce, but now, people are increasingly concerned about whether the Web site can bring additional value. In this case, those who serve segments of the site, will usher in significant growth.

Mode of argument

In recent years, the e-commerce business fever, luxury e-commerce has mushroomed soaring. However, there seems to be a natural lack of electricity supplier gene, a lot of luxury goods B2C website appearance soon after the high profile, it broke the news of the restructuring, collapse, mergers and acquisitions. Since 2011, problems such as shortage of funds, job cuts and structure shrinkage have all emerged.

It is reported that goods gather network, Jiapin network, such as luxury network for the positioning of the site for nearly two years have suffered a collapse. Even the famous network of privilege has not been spared, to know that it is on the line a month, you get the Softbank SAIF investment.

Insiders told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter, behind the collapse of these sites, the supply of goods has been a constraint on the continued growth of luxury goods business. Although domestic consumption of luxury goods is very strong, major brands are not willing to pull down their image due to e-commerce, nor do they want e-commerce channels to threaten their own price system. In order to maintain the scarcity of products, the brand aspect of the channel is very strict control, will not be authorized to the Internet channel. The domestic luxury goods e-commerce, nothing less than the use of purchasing, foreign buyers panic buying operation. Some websites claiming joint merchants, most of them are cooperation with brand agents, can not guarantee the supply.

In other words, while luxury sales have considerable profit margins, the site is not stable due to lack of brand authorization. Correspondingly, all kinds of fears and complaints about fakes are endless.

In addition, luxury high-end positioning and e-commerce low-cost shortcut to the opposite direction, shopping experience really difficult to meet the high-end users, "enjoy the prestige service" appeal. The other hand, the price constraint is also pressure on the body of luxury goods another big mountain.

Because of this, as soon as the emergence of luxury e-commerce, they were all kinds of questions. Temple Bank was established in 2008, the same pure luxury online model pessimistic. It is reported that Temple Bank does not position itself as a "luxury electricity supplier", but aimed at "high-end consumer service platform", that is, open luxury purchases, appraisal, after-sales maintenance, second-hand circulation of the entire industrial chain.

Specifically, Temple Bank's business involves luxury online sales, physical experience clubs, luxury identification, conservation services. This positioning makes temples do not have to spend as much energy as other luxury e-commerce sites to stockpile goods, at the same time to some extent, solve the problem of offline experience. At present, there are three types of luxury goods sold in temples: consignors, agents and brands. Correspondingly, Temple Bank by charging 10% to 15% service charge, proxy pumping and branded point to make a profit.

Right now, Temple Bank has established clubs in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Hong Kong and Tokyo, and clubs in foreign cities such as Milan, New York and Paris are under preparation. Public data show that Temple Library now has about 3 million members, online average customer price of 8,000 yuan, offline average customer price reached 15,000 yuan. Last year, Temple of the transaction volume of about 1 billion yuan.

In addition to the temple library, other previously the concept of luxury flagship website, is also trying to get rid of supply problems, the trend toward the full category of fashion platform transformation. Take catwalks, for example, the company has now licensed about 50 brands or platforms, including eBay, South Korea's largest shopping platform Gmarket, and US fashion merchant KarmaLoop. In cooperation, Cathay Web is equivalent to service solutions provider for overseas brands or platform providers in China. It is responsible for all matters including transportation, returns, customer service and new user market.

In terms of three brave look, luxury goods around the market a lot of opportunities in addressing the basis of supply, the longer the service chain provided by the site, the greater the viscosity of the user. In this case, a single user on the site continued to contribute more value. "This kind of service is more viable for segments with longer service chains, and websites that are just selling discounted promotional products can hardly survive."

Vertical e-commerce breakout

In stark contrast to the high financing of Temple Bank, from 2012 onwards, the vertical e-commerce sector will face a wave of bad singing.

One side is the squeeze giant, the other is the transformation of the weakness and the loss of users, the vertical e-commerce, venture capital presence, scale expansion, quality out of control, capital rupture seems to have become a hiding path.

However, entering 2014, this situation seems to be reversed: the first US-American gifted to the United States market; after the only product will be in the capital market shine, the stock price of more than 200 US dollars, the market value exceeded 10 billion US dollars; now Temple Bank announced the completion of 100 million USD financing. High valuations, listings, financing, restructuring ... A series of news seems to indicate that vertical e-commerce ushered in the second spring.

Insiders said that the current vertical e-commerce, the basic can be divided into two types: the first is the brand of e-commerce, such as Where off, Grand Park, the first moment; the other is the channel e-commerce, Such as the only product will gather, the United States excellent products, such as wine cents.

"In the area where the big platform can not do well, these vertical electricity suppliers have a chance." Ji Yong said. In his eyes, the current vertical operation of good vertical business, most have several features: repeat purchase rate, customer high price, service chain length. More importantly, instead of selling the product, they combine the product with content and offline activities to provide additional value through interaction with consumers.

"For example, some fresh websites not only sell ingredients, but also popularize healthy diet and nutrition knowledge, while other wine websites introduce consumers to the historical context of various wines, not just selling a bottle of discounted wine. Yong said, "In contrast, today's big platform provides shelving services, by draining consumers, consumers immediately left after the purchase.If the vertical site to attract and gather a specific consumer base, you can get a huge potential."

In fact, the vertical e-commerce model is not static. The traditional vertical e-commerce is often "sell something for everyone," such as selling books, selling shoes, selling clothing for everyone. But nowadays, more and more sites are beginning to serve a segment of the population, rather than selling only one category of product. For example, some vertical websites sell smart hardware to influxes, others sell pet supplies to pet lovers or sell hosiery bags to "Mori Girls."

"Every consumer group is distinguished by a certain trait; the website needs to shift from a seller-centric to a consumer-centric one," says Ji Yong.