Wanda Electric Business Bumpy road, do not want to repeat previous experience

Wanda has been doing electricity business for two years, and now he's going to make a new one.

The public eye always follows B.A.T. It is hard to say whether this is out of curiosity or habit.

August 29, Baidu chairman and chief executive officer Robin Li, and Tencent board chairman and CEO Ma, also appeared at the press conference, this is the first time.

The special thing is that this is not an internet company's activity, Wang, chairman of Wanda Group, stands among them and talks to each other.

Wanda, Baidu, Tencent tripartite cooperation news has been rumored two days, a company called Wanda E-commerce Joint venture announced the establishment. In the initial investment of 5 billion yuan, Wanda shares 70%, Baidu, Tencent each holding 15% of the equity, the next 5 years will be additional investment to 20 billion yuan.

The big Three have a rare reunion with Taiwan, a move that suggests that the joint venture is strategically significant. But the conference ended in less than an hour. And people to the new company only get the following information: Wanda Electric Business as the main body, the three will open the line under the online account, the integration of membership system, the development of payment functions and Internet financial products, the establishment of General Integration Alliance, large data fusion, Wi-Fi sharing, product integration, Traffic introduction and many other aspects-fashionable and empty language.

They did not even announce the specific role of the 3 companies in future cooperation-before the Conference, people said from Wanda insiders that Baidu will provide from the sticky rice network, Baidu Map, as well as lbs and large data applications, Tencent will promote its micro-letter payment and Tenpay payment tools such as access, and with Wanda to build a membership system.

In view of Wanda had at the end of 2013 on the line of electrical products "million sinks net", this cooperation is based on this, become one of the conjecture.

At the very least, MA is challenged: "The word" electricity is not entirely accurate, the new company is more to use the Internet, mobile Internet, the vast untapped offline economic entities, the use of mobile internet technology into smart, intelligent business may be more accurate. ”

Wang also agreed: "We set up this company is to study how to turn the line of the square into wisdom, this is O2O, not selling things." "But with regard to concrete ideas, Wang did not describe in detail, he said, the fastest need for a year or two, Wanda Electric business is a kind of company, what kind of value will be gradually clear."

The three parties signed a cooperative agreement in a vague state like "try it".

From the Wanda point of view, the online data provided by Baidu and Tencent may become an advantage for the merchants under the line of attraction. However, a person close to the Wanda Electric Company told the first Financial weekly, Tencent is more focused on the game class data, to outline people's consumption habits, but also should seek partners such as Alibaba. In fact, Wanda looked for Alibaba to negotiate, but ultimately failed.

Although not a perfect match, but there is no lack of sincerity and appeal. Just two days before the announcement of cooperation with Wanda, Tencent and Huayi Brothers in Beijing announced cooperation to do O2O entertainment social platform "star Shadow Alliance"-that time, Ma Teng did not appear in the Conference site. "And the cooperation with Wanda is equivalent to exclusive cooperation, at least you will not see Alipay in Wanda's shopping mall." said the person.

Looking at the lively layman as in the cloud, they borrowed three companies initials "WTB", dubbed "Utopia."

For Yi Yitao, the big Three's cooperation news is nothing to be surprised. The former CEO of Wanda Electric, who left office in March this year, has embarked on an external strategic investment for Wanda.

"This is a lot of co-operation I have to talk about, including this time has not come in, talked about a lot of home." Just can't say. "On August 27, the outside world began to confirm Wanda to cooperate with Baidu, Tencent this day, usually on the social network is not active Yi Yitao in the circle of friends and Micro Bo sent a picture of surfing."

Two years, Yi Yitao "from scratch" to build the framework of Wanda O2O, established the Internet and the method of the electric business to promote the line operation of the idea. In a previous interview with the media, Yi Yitao described his work in Wanda. It is said that the O2O business is based on Wanda's core assets-commercial real estate, the value of the preservation and appreciation of the target.

Yi Yitao has served as the manager of the E-commerce technology department at Google China headquarters, Alibaba senior director of international trading technology, and he joined Wanda in April 2012. At that time, the commercial real estate group, which was building Wanda Plaza in China, put forward the idea of entering the electric business, they commissioned the search company to look for the general manager of the electric business, and made a 2 million yuan annual salary.

Yi Yitao eventually became the CEO of Wanda Electric and the first employee. "At that time Wang chairman did not know what to do, I do not know what to do." and Wanda internal discussion, mostly only stay on the internet to sell things on the level. ”

In the first 6 months of Wanda, Yi Yitao spent a lot of time researching and persuading management. He needs to let Wanda decision-makers understand that the electrical quotient pattern has been basically identified as "selling things", in this case, even if the cost of 10 billion or 20 billion yuan, Wanda electric business may not be up. On the contrary, relying on the more sophisticated shopping center system, the online as a means of accumulating members and consuming data, is at least enough to drive the flow of people, sales, rents and assets in shopping malls.

In the proposed including payment, membership points and many other sets of schemes, Yi Yitao that the most ideal way is to be a membership card into a stored value, integral, electronic coupons and other functions, with Wi-Fi, mobile phone positioning and other online interface Unicom, can cover and collect all consumer behavior data carrier.

This membership card's storage function is somewhat similar to Beijing's business card, the Shanghai of the joint China OK Card was born in 10 ago the prepaid consumption card: in the designated store consumption, the resulting points can be directly converted into currency for two times consumption.

In addition to binding consumption, once it is outside the mall to support the alliance business consumption-such as convenience stores, restaurants and even drop a taxi, it can gradually cover the larger consumer life circle.

And with these early prepaid cards, Wanda's membership card can get through the user online behavior, such as through the membership card number of the mall Wi-Fi, shopping path will be recorded, consumer behavior will be associated with individuals, which helps Wanda accumulate consumption data.

If you stack parking information, online consumption behavior and other data, a detailed picture of the consumer is clear. Amazon's big-data-based shopping recommendations are expected to be replicated online.

The Xiamen branch of Wanda, which provides parking and guidance systems, has received data from Wanda Electric business departments to provide them with models, body colors, memberships, parking time and frequent parking positions. "Customers at other shopping malls have more to do with our intelligent parking system as a car park supplement, without considering the application of the data." "Xiamen Branch Billiton Communications Technology Co., Ltd. general manager Sun Longxi said."

At the same time, prepaid card another layer of imagination is that, when the number of membership card and the amount of stored value accumulated to a certain extent, there is sufficient precipitation funds to carry out financial operations, but also to provide users with similar balance treasure such financial products.

"If all the ideas about a Wanda Membership card can be realized, a huge universal integration alliance is really built, and that is the second Alipay." "Booth CEO Bai the first Financial weekly," said. Since September 2013, the booth has provided a member Data System support outsourcing service for Wanda Electric.

However, since Wanda does not have a Third-party payment licence, the prepaid card storage value function cannot be realized. Membership card only points and electronic coupons, the user stickiness will be greatly compromised.

You will be able to see the impact of a missing storage function when you are on the Internet and app online in December 2013. This was called the Wang "give up" with Ma's billion-dollar gamble and online website, only coupons and promotional information, the movie tickets will be transferred to the official website of the Wanda movie, the restaurant with the "takeaway" function only provides a telephone number, and in a column called "merchandise", there are only pictures and prices, there is no purchase entrance. The interface and function of the "million sinks" app is similar.

In short, Wan can easily degenerate into a general loyalty membership card.

"The special thing about Wan is that it can take points as money, and points never expire." This requires Wanda to have an integral clearing system at the bottom of the member system, which can connect all the merchants and settle the integral in real time. "Bai said, the difference from the traditional shopping center membership card of the cumulative award system, Wanda set up a higher technology threshold of the General Integrated Alliance system.

According to Wanda's strategy, the storage value payment function of Wan Hui card has been completed, and it can be used only when a third party payment licence is obtained.

But the integral alliance will be restricted by the Merchant cooperative relations, even if for such a strong shopping mall operator, it is not easy to make all the merchants in the shopping center cooperate with the Integral Alliance.

According to the calculation of Bai, there are currently 77 Wan Plaza, about 8,000 total merchants. A large merchant like Wal-Mart has no intention of joining the WAN Wui network.

Wanda Electric Business before COO Liu Sijun to "the first financial weekly" recalls that, considering the difficulties of business cooperation, the first Wanda Electric business did not think too much of the idea of Integration Alliance. But then Wanda Group IT department to intervene in Wanda Electric business, the main push this direction, "subsidized a lot of money in." ”

Theoretically speaking, the number of merchants joining the Wan Hui Network is enough to support the large-scale affiliate marketing activities of a single Wanda Plaza. But the difficulty of the integration Alliance is operation.

In Zhengzhou, a Wanda Plaza in the water bar shop owner Jia Ai, Wan's activities are not successful, even less than the traditional holiday promotional activities can stimulate the turnover growth. "We have participated in Guizhevan, but there is no significant turnover." And in peacetime, we sell more than 200 cups of drink, can have one or two only points consumption is good-many of them are Wanda employees. "Jia Ai said.

Jia Ai's Wanda Plaza is the first to open the million-card service shopping center, the commercial and regulatory departments do not ask her advice, but to the cashier system plus the Wan function.

This year after the Spring festival, shopping malls operating department to find Jia Ai, said to be just on the line of the million card to carry out a promotional campaign, the need to introduce some points consumption activities.

The first participation, Jia Ai studied the appropriate activities, and finally she decided to online a "points consumption full 20 yuan can be a discount of 2 Yuan" free coupons. This coupon is downloaded over million times on the Internet display, and also for Jia Ai to bring some points to consumers.

The problem comes after the operation.

Originally with Wanda agreed within one months can be the points settled into cash return, the money has been dragged for nearly 3 months to Jia Ai hands. And because Wanda in the transaction process still need to charge a certain fee, such activities can not let Jia Ai make money.

"Since the push of the million-card, the mall's promotional activities are significantly more frequent than before, base this month, but because of the long balance of points, and did not significantly pull sales, now we are basically reluctant to participate in Wan activities." "Jia Ai said. For large restaurants with higher unit prices, if the use of million-card consumption of customers, merchants will not receive cash flow, which will even affect the normal operation. Some catering businesses around her began refusing to take part in Wan's activities.

"Wanda Electric has not realized that they want to do this thing is operational priority, they put a membership card in Wanda Square issued after, not too much to want to how to encourage, guide consumers to use." "Bai said. In his view, even in the line of relatively easy to operate the electric business site, how to produce consumption stickiness is one of the most important things, and to the physical mall to "catch" live real consumers, more difficult.

When Yi Yitao left Wanda Electric, his team has more than 200 people, including nearly 100 operations team, in addition, each Wanda Plaza has three or four employees full-time to do electrical Business Project operations. But in the early part of the year, 70 of thousands of Wanda squares were intensively on the line, and he had a clear sense of lack of operational manpower.

"People are not enough to standardize, such as set up a fixed line flow 123 steps, all Wanda Square is unified to do so," Yi Yitao recalls, "only so ah, it is impossible to do different." ”

In addition to the day-to-day technology and product docking fifty or sixty people, Bai also in the first two batches of Wanda Plaza on the line to send a team of more than 20 people to work together with Wanda Electric business. On the first line of the 10个万 Plaza, they gave local business management team to preach and training to guide them how to promote the membership card and initial operations to do.

Since then, Wanda Electric business team to quickly replicate these experience, to accelerate the speed to more Wanda Plaza online.

But in recent months, Bai has clearly sensed that the Corps team has lowered its operating priorities. Before the new Wanda Square into the million-card operation, Wanda Electric Corps team will be in the booth products and technology to put forward new requirements. But during this time, Bai clearly felt that such new demands were getting smaller.

"This time, I feel like they have been at least 3 months, and there will be so much energy to run the business." "Bai said. Now at this point in time, they also need to wait for Wanda Electric business strategy, in the end is to Baidu, Tencent's cooperation as soon as possible, or continue to the original "big members, Big Data" Do deep, this will affect the next to the booth how to cooperate.

In Bai's view, the recent meeting of the Wanda Electric Business leadership team replacement and the establishment of new electric dealers, to some extent, will destroy the continuity of the operation of the million card before. "There's nothing wrong with the direction of Wanda's choice, but you have to dig through it." ”

The ship turned around in a catastrophe.

Now, the problem is in front of Wanda's new CEO Donze, 70多个万 Plaza in the past half a year has been linked to the network system, how to let the ship set sail to adjust the direction, and also Baidu, Tencent, the two partners to access.

For Donze, the co-founder and COO of the former Jiapin network, this is clearly not a "quick trial and error" thinking in his familiar internet environment.

The problem has also plagued his predecessor, Yi Yitao, for the past two years. "In Wanda's thinking habits, the first emphasis is on scale and number, with a standardized management of the way to further down, and then consider the problem." Yi Yitao the first financial weekly.

During the initial discussion, Yi Yitao was able to find Wang to chat frequently, but the honeymoon period did not last long. According to people close to Yi Yitao, because the level is not enough, Yi Yitao can eat with Wang less time. Conversely, colleagues from other interest-related departments will proactively find Wang to express their aspirations.

The most intense conflict is Wanda Group's IT department in charge of the initiative to join the Corps team, the worry that the electric business impact to their work managers, trying to implement their own ideas within the Wanda, leading to Yi Yitao and his team's work was forced to suspend.

The conflict has also partly led to the exodus of Yi Yitao and his initial group of electric dealers. In the months before and after the Yi Yitao separation, two COO Liu Sijun and Mahaiping also left.

"Wanda is now doing this too much, too wide, which may lead to its eventual start." And their team is now more than 200 people, once the wrong direction, the resources are not enough. "In Bai's view, Wanda Electric dealers only the original line of the general integration of the alliance to do it-do not pay the function, also do not get through Baidu, Tencent, a team of 2000 people are not enough."

But in the field of real estate and retailer O2O, talent is scarce. In 2012, when Wanda launched the recruitment scheme for the electricity business sector, it had indicated that it wanted to recruit a team of thousands of people. Two years later, Yi Yitao was able to build a team of only 200 people. "To do this, there is no one to have money." "Yi Yitao said.

He in any two years, Wang allocated to his 1 billion yuan also used almost, in addition to all Wanda shopping malls equipped with Wi-Fi in the cost of hundreds of millions of yuan hardware facilities, personnel costs is also a small amount of expenditure.

However, Wanda assets have reached China, O2O if the plaza can increase the value of 10%, the power of the company's investment is nothing. Moreover, "for Wanda, 5 billion is not a big investment." "Yi Yitao said.

5 billion, is also the new joint venture company Wanda Electric Business investment. And operations remain a problem for new companies.

Wanda does not want to repeat previous experience. In order to distinguish from the "Wan Hui", the new Electric Company also registered a new name, currently inconvenient to disclose.

September 1, Wang son constructed bought wanda.com domain name, allegedly spent 60 million yuan.