Vertical to the trap: choose to be acquired, transformation, or bide your while?

These days, the outgoing excellent purchase network COO Zhangxiaojun will be leaving the news recently, coupled with the end of January this year CMO Xu separation, back to the old club of Beijing east; early July, senior vice president Cheiyun resigned to join Tencent electric dealer ... This series of events occurred in the vertical of the most background and potential of the optimal purchase, which can not help to attract attention to the vertical again.

The dimension cotton which is sealed from the payment of the supplier to the brink of withdrawal of "China's first stock of electric dealers" Mai Lin, from the body in the wave of layoffs in the respect of cool, catwalk and other luxury sites, and then to the end of the Earth Amoy, such as the entrepreneurial platform, such as the days of vertical electric business is not easy. Those who live, where customers turn to the platform, when the expansion of the category and "from" The Cat, Red children committed to Su Ning easy to buy, Bowser married Gome, the entire vertical aihongbianye, no one alive, we can not help but think: vertical consumer there will be spring?

The dilemma of vertical Business-to-consumer

At present, platform-type electric dealers have become synonymous with the whole electric business industry, and the fate of the vertical electric business is precarious. There are three main reasons for the vertical Business-to-consumer trap:

1, the category single viscosity is insufficient

The vertical electric Dealer's intention is a certain domain or the industry fine business operation, satisfies the user individual demand. But at present, most vertical providers only do the vertical product category, such as only selling shoes or only sell bags, the goods themselves and services and large platform no difference. In addition, vertical platform is limited by its own technical level and the entire business environment is imperfect, the general user to the new platform of low recognition, and the sky cat, such as the integrated platform, compared to the lack of user choice reasons.

Platform-type electric dealers have a congenital advantage in user stickiness. Users want one-stop shopping, to solve all the needs, coupled with some of the vertical electric business of the category itself consumption cycle is long, do not need to repeat the purchase, it is difficult to form a persistent stickiness, can only through constant purchase of traffic to obtain new users to maintain sales, resulting in high market costs.

2, the channel cost is more and more high

2011 Amoy CEO Bi Sheng a speech at Ceibs Business School, to the effect that "electricity quotient is a hoax". He calculated a sum, vertical purchase and sale of the company cost = Logistics 10% Warehousing 10% Reverse Logistics 3% Customer Service 1% technology 4% Managers 10% Marketing 10% collection fee 2% packaging 1%≈50%, price war is based on the premise of the average margin of only 10%, net loss of 40%. At ordinary times, it is not possible to sell more than 50% (Amoy with good le buy roughly in 20%~25%).

On the one hand, with the end of the population growth dividend, the increase in channel costs is obvious to all, the fact that in the days of the cat on the cost of each order promotion to 30-100 yuan, and vertical to the Business-to-consumer has reached 100-300 yuan. On the other hand, the platform electric business intentionally or unintentionally "price war" also accelerates the transformation of the vertical electric quotient, further depress the price of the commodity, forcing the vertical electric trader to change the channel (such as the settled platform).

3. The press of platform-type electric dealer

According to Eric's market share report for the first quarter of 2013, the top 10 companies accounted for 91.1% of total net-business share, and the top 10 are now open platforms.

Platform-type electric trader The classic case of vertical business occurs in the mother and infant market: July 2010 Beijing-East Online mother and child channel, and in 2011 6 announced more than red children, become the industry's first, the beginning of March 2012, the monthly sales reached more than billion; the red Child, 2009 sales of 2 billion yuan, 2010 and 2011 are 1.5 billion yuan (maternal and infant supplies accounted for about 55%). 2010 fell, barely flat in 2011. In the highly standardized mother and infant products battlefield, the face of the flow, brand, users and financial advantages of the platform-type electric dealers, vertical electric business almost powerless to resist, losing ground.

Self-help of vertical Business-to-consumer

Compared with the integrated electric dealers, the higher cost of the vertical electric operators are simply powerless to withstand the siege of the platform-type dealers, as the victims of its rapid expansion behind. The vertical Business-to-consumer was unwilling to retreat, and began to seek change.

1. Category expansion

Who started out selling shirts, after a few years of undulating development, now expanded into a whole category of business, the power of the Senate, in order to better survive, but also from books to department stores; Amoy in order to enhance the product margin and channel control capacity, and constantly develop new brands ...

The logic of category expansion is only one: retaining users and reducing costs.

2, settled platform

This has become the current mainstream, after a few years of electrical quotient of the life and death speed, we all understand that living is the most important, in order to reduce costs, improve sales, have to large open platform, such as the Cat Jing East to open flagship store, to map in the professional field to do large-scale, reduce the cost of finding a way out.

At present, almost all vertical companies in the cat has a flagship store, as a listed company and open platform when the cat is the most typical representative.

There have also been a number of businesses in the attempt to 020 mode, to achieve online and offline integration, but found that the road simply does not go through. In this case, independent consumer of the pressure is very large, brand promotion costs, user costs are very high, and eventually have to the big electric business platform closer.

The darkness before the dawn? Or the twilight before dusk?

The dilemma of the vertical electric business, the reason is because now the depth and breadth of online shopping is not enough, the user's personalized demand has not been released, the platform-type electric business standardized products have been able to meet the vast majority of consumer demand, but in the long run, vertical electric operators will also have the opportunity.

Vertical electric dealers have the opportunity, but the opportunity is not from the platform-type electric business independent of the standardized products, because the integrated electric dealers can meet the consumer's general shopping needs, such vertical customers have to dusk.

In personalized products and services, platform-type electrical business can not be refined operation, and from the consumer's trend of change, personalized demand is more and more strong, such vertical operators can make up for the platform-type electricity business, adhere to the arrival of the dawn.

summed up in a sentence: standardization of the Business-to-consumer can be transformed, or wait for the acquisition of capital;