Zappos How Far Can China'S Road Map Go?

However, the reporter still noticed that the purpose of Xie Chuangang's trip to China was to inspect Le Tao net.

Despite the fact that cooperative investment is not yet clear, Zappos has shown strong interest in Le Tao and China's e-commerce market.

Le Tao net is the main B2C website of sports shoes and leather shoes in China. It was founded in May 2008 by the former Baidu marketing director and assistant president, and the investor is LIAN Ventures Ceyuan.

Le Tao has just completed a new round of financing in June this year, raising more than ten million dollars, and the investor is the Tiger Fund and the United States capital.

After visiting Le Tao's storehouse, Xie Chuangang made a judgement: according to the practice of Le Tao, the market value and revenue of Le Tao can reach more than 3 times of Zappos in the future.

"The main reason for this is that China's e-commerce is still in its infancy, and then it will explode."

Another important reason, Xie Chuangang said, is that Le Tao has a unique business model.

Le Tao's "Chinese style business"

Zappos, founded in 1999, is located in Henderson, Nevada, and is currently the largest in the world.

"North America has huge market space and will not enter China for the time being, but will not have a capital level cooperation with Lok Tao."

In September 1st, Xie Chuangang, director of Zappos international business, said in an interview with our reporter.

However, Xie Chuangang showed a strong interest in the business model of Le Tao.

Although the establishment of a year's Le Tao has a distance compared with Zappos, in August, the sales volume of Le Tao day was about 2000, with a total of 200 yuan per pair of shoes and 200 pairs of shoes, its annual revenue was about 144 million yuan, while the Zappos revenue in 2008 reached US $1 billion.

Chen Hu, vice president of Le Tao network, explained that the business mode of Zappos in the US is "real store distribution" mode, that is, brand shoe dealers and agents sell goods wholesale to Zappos.

Le Tao is different from Zappos.

Le Tao adopted the "real storehouse sale", the brand shoe factory placed the goods in Le Tao's storehouse, and was sold by Yue Tao.

According to the regulations of Le Tao, from the date of the first day of a shoe's purchase, the date of the expiration of the month, the shoe section of Yue Tao will be handed over to the shoe factory. Some of the products will be returned to the brand shoe dealers as part of the service charge, which has not been sold off, and the manufacturers will then supply other styles.

This made Xie Chuangang very excited.

The mode of "real warehouse sale" not only does not need to advance any funds, but also can deposit a large amount of funds on the online shopping platform. It is "no business".

And the mode of real library distribution requires a large amount of capital to be paid. This will create a lot of risks, such as products can not be sold or stock prices fall.

Another phenomenon that puzzled Xie Chuangang is: Why are Adidas, Nike and other big brands willing to release goods to le Tao? In the United States, the first 7 years of Zappos, from 1999 to 2006, Adidas and other famous shoe factories were reluctant to sell their products on Zappos, because Zappos affected the offline channels.

Chen Hu has a secret strategy: the reason is China's business environment.

Because counterfeit goods are in vogue, consumers such as Nike and Adidas can buy all kinds of fake shoes through the Internet even if they do not sell through the Internet.

Through the sale of Le Tao's website at a lower discount, it can effectively curb the share of fake shoes in the online shopping market, and play a brand promotion role in network sales.

Chen Hu said that because of the different service capabilities, not all websites can obtain the right to sell the real library.

Reporters interviewed learned that another sports goods B2C mall hopes to get Anta's right to sell, Anta refused.

{page_break}

However, the sales agency of Le Tao is not really without business, at least there is the cost of warehouse.

Chen Hu said that some e-commerce websites in China, in order to save costs, do "virtual warehouse sale", that is, use the brand shoe factory's storehouse, only to help the brand shoe factory to do sales on the Internet, but this will cause a higher shortage rate, and users can not buy shoes after placing orders.

Xie Chuangang is not optimistic about "virtual library sales".

He believes that the virtual warehouse sale can not control the logistics and distribution links, nor can it guarantee the quality of products and services, and is prone to disputes.

He said: "if there is a dispute, it will have a great negative impact on the website brand".

Chen Hu also thinks that the virtual library mode is not enough to ensure the quality of products and services.

Zappos China Road Map

Although Zappos claims that there is no plan to invest in China's footwear e-commerce website, as early as 2006, the company has set up a China office in Dongguan to help us operate headquarters for image processing and other operational support, because 80% of the world's shoes are produced in China.

Xie Chuangang said that global collaboration is not the only hope of Zappos for China. It will enter China in the future or Zappos, or cooperate with China's footwear e-commerce website.

As part of the China trip plan, Xie Chuangang also invited Yue Tao, founder of Bie Sheng, to pay a return visit to Zappos in the US.

Xie Chuangang said that Zappos's vision is not only the prospect of Le Tao's "3 Zappos" in the field of footwear e-commerce, but also the possibility of the development of other businesses in the vertical e-commerce field.

"China footwear e-commerce website will produce a platform level company."

Xie said that the company can make use of the three streams of "customer flow, logistics and capital flow" to expand to other vertical e-commerce fields, and eventually become a department store or shopping mall similar to "Amazon".