Why not get the market position at all

Editor's note: Tencent to start with IM, in the portal, SNS, games and other fields have gained a larger market share, but in the field of electrical business has been unknown. Today, Tencent's electric business has been 8 years of hard work, from the 05 seed project Consumer-to-consumer Pat NET to 08 B2B2C platform QQ Mall, from E-commerce Business merged into the B2 line of business and thus the birth of the QQ net purchase again to the last year spin-off independence was given higher strategic significance. Since 2013, Tencent has frequently appeared in the public eye.

This series of articles will be introduced in detail Tencent Electric transforms.

Pat's establishment, the official saying is based on Tencent 2005 Online powering strategy. As an important part of the online powering strategy, Pat carries the mission of reshaping C2c--communication to Commerce (communication to reach a deal) and is committed to creating a new and diversified online business circle.

High Hopes

Anything that happens has a real meaning behind it.

In June 2004, Tencent was listed on the Hong Kong main board with a lot of liquidity on hand. Tencent took a huge sum of money from capital markets to do three things in the second year:

1, the acquisition of Foxmail Project QQ mailbox, including the introduction of Foxmail founder, is now Radiant micro-trust Zhangxiaolong;

2, in Shenzhen Nanshan High-tech zone bought a block of land, the start of the construction project Tencent building;

3, the reorganization of the structure, in the instant communication, games, portals to seek new growth point, the establishment of SNS and E-commerce departments.

2004, set up only more than a year of Taobao with a swift and swift to take China Consumer-to-consumer 40% market share, attracted the industry shocked. On one night in October, MA and Lau, who was still at Goldman Sachs, talked to the wee hours of the 10-storey president's office at Tencent's fledgling technology building. The next day, RTX Tencent director Zhan Wei Mark was called to the president's office for a secret conversation. At the end of 2004, Tencent Consumer-to-consumer Project.

Ma and Lau are familiar with each other, in this separate introduction of Zhan Wei. Zhan-Wei Standard, graduated from the South University of Science and Engineering, economics double Bachelor. Do ERP origin, joined Tencent before the Kingdee and Microsoft work. After joining Tencent is responsible for value-added services and enterprise products, Pat ERA Tencent E-commerce Business department general manager, is Tencent Investment deputy general manager.

OK, say it again. Under Ma's hand-picked, Tencent's first E-commerce project, led by Zhan Wei Consumer-to-consumer, was born at the end of 2004 and quickly entered the development stage. In fact, into the development phase of the "pat" can not be called Pat, because the "Pat" the name is in early 05, the prototype has been completed before the final finalized, this is the first Tencent from the domain name and QQ completely stripped of the products. Control Taobao, Alipay and Amoy Baoxiao, in that spring, pat Nets, Tenpay and Pat Elves were formally born.

Rapid

September 12, 2005, the racket began to test operations, December 10, 2005, the number of SKUs on the last million, March 13, 2006, the official operation. After six months of trial operation, Pat NET registered sellers more than 1 million, on the last SKU more than 2 million, the total number of users more than 9 million. According to ALEXA data show, Pat Net set up the electronic Commerce website to enter the global website 500 strong minimum record.

In 2005, Tencent reorganized its organizational structure and appointed Lau as president, with more than 30 business units dispersed into 8 systems, all of which were integrated into 4 Bu (business unit)--B1 wireless service, B2 Internet service, B3 Interactive entertainment business, B4 network media business, While electronic commerce, although nominally hanging in the B2 Internet business, but in fact directly under the company's most senior management organization president of the B0 Enterprise development system.

Choosing the Consumer-to-consumer mode as the fundamental of the electric dealer's attempt is the big environment of the time and the core business consideration of Tencent. In terms of market size and profit model, Consumer-to-consumer is more prominent than other models. Relative to Tencent itself, point-to-point communication is more in line with its core business, not to mention the essence of the Consumer-to-consumer model is the platform model, and E-commerce is the only one of the most light of the pure information flow model, which and Tencent's platform for its year to locate the demand coincide.

March 2006 official operation of the beginning, Pat still pinned on the promotion of Tencent always thought. From the IM software QQ tool implantation, QQ panel settings to join Pat NET and Tenpay entrance to the sales, operation, marketing, public relations and other departments for Pat pull merchants, users, create market influence, Tencent is a whole company's power to promote Pat NET. Pat Nets from the beginning of the birth is the rapid growth of Tencent is expected to grow into the seeds of the tree, in addition to the nourishment of the internal fertilizer It also met two times from the external opportunities:

1. Ants moved by thriving

May 10, 2006, Taobao launched a six-month gestation period of "thriving" (the predecessor of the Taobao through train) service, that is, Taobao station bidding rankings. The service was launched after the uproar, most of the Taobao sellers collectively protested strike. In just one months, June 12, 2006, Taobao announced the suspension of "thriving" service, and all paid users a full refund. In this one-month period, patted the net took the opportunity to launch the "Ant move" plan, some looting, attracted a lot of rich experience Taobao sellers settled Pat.

2, ebay ebay by TOM group mergers and acquisitions

At the end of 2006, ebay officially announced ebay ebay to the operation of Tom Group, Tom to the site of the overall system transformation, the foreign server to the domestic server. ebay ebay, after 9 months of silence, finally launched a new Consumer-to-consumer platform. In this 9-month period, ebay's share of ebay has been falling, part of the Taobao eat away, the other part fell into the pocket of the PAT.

The failure of the bloom

With Tencent's internal resources support and external occasion, Pat official on-line more than a year of time in traffic, trading volume, the number of users have achieved high-speed growth. As of the second quarter of 2007, the net registered users of nearly 50 million, online merchandise more than 10 million, Consumer-to-consumer market share has accounted for 9% of the total. This should be a good start, but it is from this stage that the racket ushered in a long decline.

From the product layer, pat net relative to other Consumer-to-consumer website, more like Taobao Tencent version. From the commodity category, commodity quantity, popularity system, user interface, website interaction, inventory &rma, reputation evaluation system, guarantee transaction system, payment, logistics, customer service and other basic functions, the Pats are imitated perfectly. The decline of the racket, its essence is not in electronics, but in business. Comprehensive analysis, the core reasons for the film's decline are the following two points:

1. No balance has been found between community relations and business relationships

Tencent's core products QQ is strong relationship between the communication, its other derivative products are the use of QQ users and relationship development. In essence, Tencent is a social networking company with IM as its core, and the community-strong relationship between Tencent users and business relationships is hedging. Business relations need to rely on the interests of maintenance, the purpose of business is to achieve the interests of both parties, on the basis of a strong relationship between business activities, both buyers and sellers is not a good thing.

It is a big issue to draw the residents of the community to the nearby commercial street or the shops in the mall into the community. Pat NET from the beginning has not and Tencent's community relations separate, but in the promotion operation excessively relies on Tencent user's strong relation, in the electronic commerce development early stage, this is violates the commercial logic. So Pat NET and almost at the same time born QQ space, have a decidedly different fate.

2, violent operation is the biggest fatal wound

If business logic and community relations need time to precipitate, not enough to be the reason for the decline of the racket, that Pat early in the rough operation of the way is its biggest Achilles heel.

Previously mentioned, because of Tencent's internal resource support and external occasion, Pat in 2006 years quickly obtained far more than its own operating capacity of high-speed growth, and e-commerce large-scale core lies in the operation. Taobao's operation is based on the platform, sellers, buyers and a third party to explore the common, walk a solid and stable. But Pat NET is completely different, suddenly emerged a large number of sellers, while bringing a large number of goods, and patted their own operational ability to keep up with, and not too many third-party services under the premise of a campaign to promote the aggregation of such a simple rough way of operation.

This single mode of operation resulted in a large number of long tail shops, goods can not be displayed, the seller in addition to pay a large price to buy the activity page booth, can only through the QQ, BBS, and other independent transmission, and because there is no third-party marketing tools, resulting in the transfer through the independent conversion rate of the store is particularly low. And Pat for its operation of the advertising display and have special requirements for investment, that is, the price of goods must be lower than the lowest price Taobao and package mail. Buy Advertising booth Sellers in addition to dig pit fee, but also need to give the absolute space for goods, in order to ensure the basic profit, these in the flow of the head of the sellers shop in a large number of imitation goods, non-delivery, fakes, after-sales service is not guaranteed.

The foundation of Ecology is based on the synergy between the participants, and the irregular rhythm of the ecological components can easily arise. Pat because of the initial very unhealthy rapid expansion, resulting in the flow of the head filled with a large number of shoddy goods, long tail goods and no traffic. Today, patted the goods are still less than Taobao price, enough to be seen is a veritable garbage market.

The Lost Pat

Pat NET is not because of Tencent massive user resources and sustained growth, market share from 2007 onwards began to shrink gradually. According to the domestic well-known Third-party E-commerce Research Institute of China E-commerce Research Center released on August 28, 2013, "2013 (China) E-commerce Market Data Monitoring Report" shows: Domestic Consumer-to-consumer market share, Taobao Bazaar status is still solid, as of June 2013, Taobao fair accounted for the entire Consumer-to-consumer 95.1% of the market, Tencent Pat accounted for 4.7%. As Tencent once used to intercept ebay and Taobao's seed-level projects, the status of Pat is undoubtedly a failure case.