Wang the business of the American Regiment into a connected business.

Absrtact: After three months of public comment on Tencent's investment, the US group also began to consider listing. Recently, the United States Group Network CEO Wang (Weibo) in a Bloomberg interview revealed that the United States network is considering the listing. Wang said the US group's turnover will increase to 40 billion this year.

After three months of public comment on Tencent's investment, the US group also began to consider listing.

Recently, the United States Group Network CEO Wang (Weibo) in a Bloomberg interview revealed that the United States network is considering the listing. Wang said that this year the United States Regiment's turnover will increase to 40 billion yuan, and the revenue will increase twice times. He said that the United States now has about 3 billion yuan in cash, will not be sold, the future will be independent IPO.

Just three months ago, the old opponents of the general public reviews have accepted the investment of Tencent, and has begun to borrow the micro-letter membership system, from the location of information to begin to embed a friend circle. In the context of group buying, the group is moving toward a broader and more challenging direction.

Good business or bitter business?

Wang the business of the American Regiment into a connected business.

He said that in a connected state, each bed of the room as a resource would be connected to the Internet, it's easier to match up with the demand, the restaurant is also the same, every table, every chair, even the stool in the meeting have sensors, tell you this position when is free, all the offline physical resources can be found on the internet all the time. In his view, because of these areas of connectivity there is still huge space, so there are many business opportunities.

However, this opportunity to connect is not the United States to grasp the first. Back in 2003, Zhang, who returned from the United States, had already created a public comment, and through the push to achieve the business and users, users and users of the connection. The essence is to build a complete online connection by helping the merchant to obtain the user and help the user to obtain the preferential way. In fact, prior to 2010, by virtue of this model, public comments have been in a slow but stable state of development.

And 2010 began, with frenzied capital, the group buying site began to intervene in this connection. Compared to the public comment on the coupon play, buy more "bloody": for the old customers coupons generally around 90 percent, and for new customers to buy but can be low to 40 percent. Soon, the public comments were also forced to join the competition.

And the outcome of the competition is also known: the group buying market from the thousand-group war to hubbub. The vanity of retreat capital, this competition also proved one thing: group buying is a business, but definitely not an easy business.

On the one hand, the group buys the website to collect the money from the consumer, in turn gives the merchant the knot. In this process, if the capital is not stable, it is likely that the capital chain will break; On the other hand, because group buying is the door heavy business, need a lot of online promotion staff, once the expansion too fast, easy to lose control. These will bring great pressure to the founders of the group buying site.

Focus on the American regiment.

Although purely from the model, the challenge is not small, but 2013 years of the United States Regiment, the report card is still quite beautiful:

Annual turnover of more than 16 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 200% per cent, business expansion, the number of cities to carry out business increased by 16, a total of nearly 200 cities in the United States to carry out business. More importantly, for most of the month, the group was profitable and achieved its first annual profit in 2013.

In fact, it's not hard to understand. A closer look at the development trajectory of the United States, summed up about three reasons:

1. Through brutal competition, consumer education has been largely completed. From the data revealed by the United States, the United States in 2013, the site actively logged on to more than 50% users, which means that in the United States, the user has formed a considerable attraction. For the U.S. regiment, this will directly reduce the cost of drainage, increase turnover.

2. The scale effect appears. Group buying market in the capital after the great winter cleaning, the scale effect has begun to appear. From the pattern of view, 2013 group purchase Top 5 rankings did not change. And from the volume, in the first camp of the United States network, the mass comment Group of the scale of more than 8 billion yuan, while in the second camp litters and glutinous rice and so on the scale of no more than 4 billion yuan. The most immediate advantage of the scale effect for the United States is to pull down the underlying operating costs.

3. Improve management efficiency. For group buying sites, management is a big problem, but this does not appear in the United States Group of the start-up company. In 2013, the number of U.S. personnel from the end of 2011 3000 to 5000 people, but the United States group turnover increased by more than 500%, per capita efficiency increased significantly.

Obviously, for the United States, from group buying to O2O, and then to the big connection, although the concept is changing, but in the heavy mode of group buying, competition is still only the resources and efficiency of the stack and optimization, it seems really not a good business.

Giant influx: Unknown variable

Despite the current success, this does not mean that the future of the United States has been determined. As the leader in group buying mode, the group also hopes to extend this experience to other areas, such as movies, hotels, takeout and so on. From the outside, there may also be a wave of local life change, which is particularly variable for the US group, which wants to be a huge and billions of internet companies.

For the United States, the largest variable from the product form.

Wang says the business of the American Regiment is connected. However, this connection is not in-depth, group purchase in the form of the link is still only in the form of coupons, a discount to market behavior. If we compare the DM single and group buy, it is easy to find that for the merchant, the group purchase mode apart from a stronger advertising effect, and no substantial progress.

If there is a product that is more advantageous to the business in fine operation, will there be any new changes in the market?

The most straightforward example is consumer information acquisition. Theoretically, the group purchase site has been the user's consumer information, if it can be combined with consumer data, businesses in marketing and promotion can do more. But for now, this data is not available to businesses.

The same is true in the supply chain. We are talking about group buying when a word is commonly used is information, but the information of group buying is to a large extent only business front-end marketing information, for the supply chain of information and on the basis of optimization, group buying does not have any. From this perspective, if a new product appears, you may face challenges.

Looking back at the United States and its market, both front-end traffic marketing, but also the supply chain of data optimization products have begun to appear in some vertical market, such as the catering market Amoy point, such as the hotel market Ctrip, such as the film market, Che and so on.

It can be said that those who have both the resources and ambitions of the Giants at any time may become a great resistance to the United States Regiment forward, there is not only bat.