Beibei.Com, A Mother And Baby E-Commerce Platform, Is Hard To Focus On Ximei Business

Introduction:

Recently, in the headquarters of Beibei group in Hangzhou, there was a scene of heated discussion: hundreds of suppliers besieged Beibei group for debt collection.

Prior to this, Beibei group also spread a large number of layoffs and other negative news.

Into also flow, failure also flow.

Once upon a time, there were many vertical e-commerce companies like Beibei group, enjoying the flow dividend and making great progress all the way.

Now, it's being swallowed up by black holes.

With the liberalization of the three child policy and the implementation of various policies such as maternity awards and subsidies, it is good for the maternal and infant industry.

But it seems that the life of mother child vertical e-commerce is not easy.

01、 Beibei group is under siege

1. It has been favored by head investment institutions such as hillock, Sequoia and IDG

In 2014, founder Zhang Lianglun founded Beibei, a vertical e-commerce platform for mothers and infants.

At that time, Beibei net was like a runaway wild horse. In only eight months, it sold more than 200 million yuan a month.

Taking advantage of the success, Zhang Lianglun began to collectivize and launched Beidian, a maternal and infant social e-commerce platform.

After that, we successively launched a special sale platform for mother and baby brand -- BeiCang, and a money saving platform for mother and baby shopping -- Beisheng.

At this time, Beibei group was favored by capital.

It has successively obtained investment from IDG capital, Gaorong capital, today capital, new horizon capital, northern lights, hillhood capital, Xianghe capital, Sequoia Capital, Innovation workshop, etc.

In May 2019, Beidian completed the financing of 860 million yuan, with the investors of Hillard capital, Sequoia Capital, IDG capital and today's capital.

At that time, the number of member users of Beidian exceeded 50 million, the number of orders in a single quarter exceeded 100 million, and the monthly living of Mau reached 100 billion level, and maintained a growth rate of 30% month on month.

Faced with Beibei group's present predicament, these former gold Lord dads seem to choose collective "invisibility".

2. Its brand or bankruptcy or transformation failed

Beidian will change its business model from social shopping with goods to shopping guide e-commerce, which obviously coincides with the business of Beidian province.

Since March this year, Beibei group has cut down BeiCang's offline stores, even Beibei's business has disappeared.

Beibei group wants to transform and focus on Ximei business. Behind it, it is hard to hide the anxiety about the increasingly tired old business.

Ximei, an independent brand established by Beibei group in March this year, is positioned as a high-end line. Its categories include cosmetics, nutrition products and daily necessities.

Some industry insiders analyzed that: "now the group mainly focuses on Ximei, and the old business performance can not go, only open a new platform.

But for shopkeepers, the platform does not realize member intercommunication, so it is not easy to migrate old users to the new platform, which means that the store main reopens the number, and the cost is very high, so there is no incentive to do so. "

3. Deep in debt crisis

In order to support Ximei business, Beidian was heavily in debt and the capital chain was broken.

Recently, in the headquarters of Beibei group in Hangzhou, there was a scene of heated discussion: hundreds of suppliers besieged Beibei group for debt collection.

Since last week, there have been groups of suppliers to Beibei group's headquarters building to recover the payment in arrears of its business Beidian.

According to statistics, there are more than 1400 businesses in Beidian, with a total debt of more than 140 million yuan.

If Beidian debt problem is not solved, it is very likely to become the abandoned son of the group.

In March last year, Beibei group made a large-scale layoff, involving its Beibei network, Beidian, BeiCang and other businesses, involving nearly 500 people, accounting for 50% of the total.

In recent years, Beibei group has been trying to transform, but failed.

Now it is faced with the problem of capital chain fracture. It is worrying whether the former mother and baby e-commerce giant can get out of the predicament.

Beibei group, as the representative of mother infant vertical e-commerce, also has many problems of mother infant e-commerce.

02、 Three "black holes" of mother infant vertical E-commerce

According to AI media data, in 2020, the market scale of China's maternal and infant e-commerce has reached 872.37 billion yuan.

In the same year, the number of mother and child e-commerce users reached 216 million, and it is expected to reach 243 million this year.

It can be said that the cake of mother and baby e-commerce is getting bigger and bigger.

With the liberalization of the three child policy and the continuous implementation of various policies such as maternity awards and subsidies, it is good for the maternal and infant industry.

According to the truth, the mother and baby e-commerce industry should make rapid progress, but it is contrary to our wishes.

In recent years, the overall situation of vertical maternal and infant e-commerce is not good.

Most of the small and medium-sized e-commerce providers can not get brand authorization, while some large-scale e-commerce platforms are lack of capital chain or forced to transform or close down.

The main reason why there are various problems in maternal and infant e-commerce lies in the existence of three black holes in maternal and infant vertical e-commerce.

1. Black hole of flux

The importance of traffic for e-commerce platform is self-evident, especially for vertical e-commerce of mother and infant.

The reason why some big brands enter the platform is the flow of e-commerce platform.

To attract these big brands, e-commerce platforms must constantly buy traffic and inject fresh blood into the platform.

But now the flow has two major characteristics: one is expensive, the other is scattered.

If the mother and baby platform spends money on buying traffic, it is a big black hole, and it will never be satisfied.

Buy flow, capital chain break;

Do not buy traffic, can not get big brand authorization, or will face bankruptcy;

This has led to some maternal and infant e-commerce platforms in a dilemma.

Since 2015, the overall situation of domestic e-commerce has been basically determined, and Taobao + Jingdong and other comprehensive e-commerce occupy more than 80% of the market share.

These two e-commerce giants can launch a price war in any subdivision field, and the "corpses" of the e-commerce platforms that died under them are piled up like mountains.

The competition of e-commerce platform has risen from category to comprehensive strength, cash flow and flow acquisition.

Unfortunately, in the above aspects, vertical e-commerce has no advantages.

Even the e-commerce platforms such as Beibei group and Miya have been gradually marginalized, not to mention some small enterprises.

2. Short user cycle

Since the flow is expensive and scattered, it is not enough to focus on loyal user groups?

For example, the mother and baby vertical e-commerce stores retain users by selling milk powder and diapers, and make up for the losses with long-term consumption, so as to achieve the goal of × ^.

However, the maternal and infant industry belongs to the stage continuous consumer goods market, and this strategy is obviously not feasible.

How to understand the staged continuous consumer goods market?

Before and after the birth, users show enough loyalty in the mother child e-commerce platform.

Take diapers, for example, with a two-year period.

With the loss of time, the children gradually grow up, there is no need for treasure mothers will not patronize the mother and baby e-commerce platform.

This means that the user life cycle of the mother and child e-commerce platform is only 2-3 years.

In order to maintain the activity of e-commerce platform, we must constantly invest in advertising and buying traffic to attract new users.

In order to maintain the existing market share of the vertical platform for mothers and infants, which is growing sluggishly, we have to constantly spend money.

Today's mother and child vertical e-commerce, the capital market is obviously not buying.

3. It is difficult to make a standard product

In the minds of users, the impression of an e-commerce platform is directly linked to the product quality.

For example, I like Jingdong when I buy daily necessities, but I don't like pinduoduo.

The most important reason is that the quality of the products bought on jd.com is so good that you won't feel regret buying them.

Pinduoduo bought it several times, and the app was unloaded directly by me.

Almost every time I buy it back, I regret it. Quality problems occur frequently, especially affecting the shopping experience.

I don't want to return the trouble, but I feel unhappy every time I use it.

Of course, a penny for goods, pinduoduo's price is really fragrant, but for users who pay attention to product quality, pinduoduo is obviously not a good choice.

It is very difficult for mother and baby vertical e-commerce to start as a standard product, and it needs to continue to burn money.

But once ranked, sales will be more stable.

For example, milk powder diapers and other "standard products" are often oversupply, the market is close to saturation, and homogenization is serious.

This has led to a sustained decline in gross margin.

Therefore, many maternal and infant e-commerce platforms choose to do non-standard products, such as children's wear, toys, etc., which have more room for development.

03、 What does the mother infant vertical e-commerce take to compete with Jingdong and tmall

At present, the mother infant e-commerce market is mainly divided into the following categories:

Comprehensive e-commerce platforms, such as tmall, Jingdong and pinduoduo, account for more than 40%;

About 20% of maternal and infant vertical e-commerce channels, including honey bud, Beibei, etc;

The rest is the community category and others, such as some brand private online channels, mumbang, etc.

From the overall layout of mother and child e-commerce, comprehensive e-commerce is still the online consumption channel of users.

Although it is said that maternal and infant vertical e-commerce can take a share in the maternal and infant market, the market is still firmly grasped by comprehensive e-commerce.

1. How to break the situation of mother and baby vertical e-commerce?

As a business model for deepening the operation of maternal and infant market segments, maternal and infant vertical e-commerce has become an important part of online maternal and infant channels.

It has the following advantages:

Provide professional and accurate content or products.

For example, vertical e-commerce like Miya will be equipped with a team of professional buyers to screen overseas brands from an emotional perspective. After streamlining SKUs, they fit in with the characteristics of "small interface, more browsing than search" on the mobile terminal, which shortens the selection time of consumers.

Secondly, corporate endorsement improves consumer trust.

The main reason why consumers buy products on the vertical e-commerce of mother and baby is the safety of the products.

Compared with the third-party platform mode of integrated e-commerce, vertical e-commerce guarantees commodity quality with its own brand and provides consumers with trust endorsement.

Then, the community sector to enhance user viscosity.

The vertical e-commerce uses the existing traffic to build community circle, collects the big data after the evaluation of commodity experience, and accumulates the user portrait, so as to realize precise marketing.

Finally, private brands seek differentiation advantages.

Some vertical e-commerce companies, such as Miya, have developed their own brand "rabbit head mother selection" based on ODM mode. Through the promotion of their own brand, they further expand the source of * * and establish the image of professional buyers in the hearts of consumers.

Including Beibei group this year also launched its own brand "Ximei", positioning high-end routes and seeking transformation.

2. Horizontal extension and vertical expansion

From the perspective of long-term development strategy, vertical e-commerce should not only extend vertically in the industrial chain, but also expand the online and offline channels horizontally.

The vertical extension of the industrial chain includes expanding the layout to the upstream and downstream links of mother and infant (maternal and infant medical care, early childhood education) and extending the user life cycle.

Taking Miya as an example, through the strategic cooperation with the United States, China and Yihe, a women's and children's medical group, it provides medical supplies such as pregnancy and childbirth, vaccines and physical examination to the hospital, and helps the hospital realize e-commerce. At the same time, with the authority of doctors, it diverts potential maternal and infant users to the e-commerce platform.

Horizontal expansion, mainly from strong related consumption scenarios, docking with other formats.

For example, the mother child e-commerce platform can meet the needs of users in many aspects and build a maternal and infant ecosystem through cooperation with various formats such as the month and child center, children's paradise, photography agencies, insurance companies, parent-child hotels, etc.

In the development of online and offline Omni channels, vertical e-commerce gives full play to its online advantages.

On the one hand, it uses consumption big data information resources to complete the insight and orientation of consumers and potential customers and guide the offline product layout.

On the other hand, high-quality supply chain and strong logistics system are used to realize efficient distribution and comply with the new retail trend.

With the effective offline access to consumers' daily life scenes, it can enhance users' awareness and trust, and improve the brand service experience.

As a popular channel form in 2014, mother infant vertical e-commerce has ushered in a dark moment.

Most of the maternal and infant vertical e-commerce have collapsed.

However, there are still some maternal and infant vertical e-commerce still strong.

Any business model follows the following sentence: poor change, flexible, long-term.

As the market is changing and consumer demand is changing, enterprises must also change.