The inevitability of the tomato tree stopping operation: congenital absence of businesssense

The news that the tomato plant stopped running last week was not surprising, as I expected, but I didn't expect it to be that fast. As soon as the tomato tree came out, it was a little bit interesting, and every now and then it looked at its blog, and Ui/ue's colleagues chatted about its web apps. But when chatting with friends from peers and VC, I always took a negative attitude, especially after asking several of the shoe sellers about the background and circumstances of the tomato tree.

I've always had an original view. "Light electronics, heavy commerce, the Web side is performance, supply chain is the core" (this sentence was also posted on the company wall by a firm, I always want to collect the copyright fee ... By countless people do not know how to pretend to understand the criticism, think my point is to despise "electronic". They don't really understand what I mean: Electronics (mainly refers to Ui/ue, function and application) than business relatively good implementation (sourcing, bargaining, inventory, distribution and RMA capabilities), and in the start up stage, business is the main bottleneck, and the electronics to the expansion period is the big bottleneck, It is a question of who is heavier than the other. That year Lei and Chen's point of view is very different: lei think to sell things first and then aggregate the user, Chen think to aggregate users to sell things to them first. I fully agree with Lei's point of view, from the point of view of the consumer, the most important thing is that you send more and better and cheaper goods to them faster, rather than give them a great site, the goods are less expensive and out of stock, delivery is still slow. Always remember that the main purpose of your website is to buy things, not to make friends with features. Lee's "Light Company" has also said very clearly: the so-called "Light" company is a fast and large and low-cost aggregation of users, more effective data marketing and analysis, more powerful and perfect information systems and more efficient supply chain, more accurate sales forecasts, more reasonable control of inventory, more rapid response capacity, The back end is going to "heavy" development, supplier relationship, bargaining capacity, service capacity, warehousing and distribution capabilities, in-depth industrial chain capacity.

Conversely tomato tree, a few little brothers some Internet experience and technical strength, to do WEB2.0 community, SNS and other sites are very reliable, but they are seriously lack of business ability, understanding of E-commerce. Basically no inventory, basically no good price, all day immersed in the Web site. The founder of the Tomato tree, watercress out of the children full of active to find media PR, to do the Chinese Zappos, such an article I also read a few, after reading that more funny. Feeling that the storyteller and the writer are lacking or deliberately ignoring some basic common sense, that is Zappos background and history: Hsieh is sold before the company took tens of millions of knives out to do Zappos, big inventory, the most advanced automated assembly line, round-trip free shipping, unconditional return (return rate of more than 35%) , the loss of nearly 10 years until last year only 5 points of net profit, the investors are very unhappy forced to sell to Amazon. (Do not believe endless,shoes, etc. thank Zappos to help them recommend clients of those stupid articles, I specifically asked the United States of the peer, the sale of several of the shoes of the company is actually Zappos make a very depressed, we have been unavoidable freight not to engage in unconditional return comfortable money, Be Zappos make very reluctantly passively follow up is also a comparison is, Zappos attaches great importance to the service, but does not pay much attention to the website, the n year does not have the revision (this is not worth studying).

We can see that from far to near, all the top of the business, its success is basically based on the first advantage and commercial level. Although Amazon does not have a book background, but is http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/1546.html ">B2C model of the founder, in addition to the first advantage and strong capital advantage, the beginning of a few years to hit the money desperately, Desperately impulse, dozen publishers and Barnes Bookstore surrendered; Newegg itself is the IT industry background (you can check what ABS is); in the TOP10 of Bonzi Country, 8 of them were of selling goods; domestic is a bookseller Now that the book is still playing, Jing-dong is a Zhongguancun distributor, VANCL rely on internet experience and a large number of advertising, roi do a good job, product design, quality control, inventory control; Operation ability is always thought to improve the short board, the red child surface scenery is actually passive, facing the Lo Youli home into a bitter struggle. And then look at the tomato tree's domestic peers: good music to buy the first advantage, Li Shubin and other people's experience, supplier's intimate relationship, rapid capital injection; cool first-served advantage, team sports Network Marketing background and vendor relationship; Calorie Tiger flutter portal background and vendor relationships, The internet and sports shoes enthusiast background of the cyclists, and, well, at least people have the money to flow resources, and the cool guy who comes up with this. Compare, stand up to see.

In other words, "electronic" is not important? It's important to be on a scale, "electronics" can significantly reduce costs, improve efficiency, increase revenue and profitability, and doing well will be the biggest stumbling block to a higher level. For example, the Beijing-east, this array of continuous introduction of some Web applications, each application comes out, very quickly produced a good number of positive changes, and these applications are mostly not the first Beijing-east, but why other sites before doing but no effect? Because the stage is different, to the size of Jingdong, do any small action will be in the number of obvious embodiment. There are also some good ideas, I believe that the application will make the wave of the number of larger, let alone some of the background of the action of the entire enterprise operation efficiency and service level promotion. And a technology-led company, the web is very strong, ui/ue do very powerful, I and my colleagues often study, business level also has hundreds of orders every day, purchase channels and bargaining power is not, the enterprise operating costs are high. Of course it would be better if, like Amazon, NB had the ability to come up with both hands. But if the day order is less than 4 digits, talk about data mining/models or whatever is nonsense.

Writing this article does not want to laugh at the tomato tree everyone, in fact, there is a dream willing to try young people are still worthy of praise. However, business is the reality of cruelty, is the success or failure of the hero. The children have made a new thing "turn things", it seems to be a poly-people shopping search community, with their expertise this is more reliable, hope they can succeed.

PS: The leader of the tomato tree is watercress out of the children, for watercress business model my shallow understanding is cps+ advertising revenue. Back to Lei's point of view, in fact, the function of the American watercress Amazon itself to achieve very good, domestic when the excellence did not pay attention to do not do well, and now are beginning to vigorously do when the community and User Products forum/comment space. There is still a lot of potential to be tapped for the community of the Business-to-consumer.

Finally, with my friend in the United States to ask for some of the new applications of Amazom, he said the end: "Don't forget, Amazon so many fancy model, the real money to support the family is to sell their own things to earn the difference." ”