Rebirth declares war on the honest

Chapter 541 536. Huang Zheng's Countermeasures

After re-encouraging Cheng Yingying, a tenth-level drummer who had retreated, Gu Yun returned to the Paradise Building and walked into Huang Zheng's office.

Huang Zheng has always been a steady manager. He has a background in learning, precise operations, deep thinking, strong action, and a particularly calm and low-key personality. He is a young man who is called a stone Buddha.

He brewed a pot of Mingqian Longjing early, waiting for Gu Yun's arrival.

When Pinyuan entered the field of vision of the mainstream Internet crowd, it was already a small giant with nearly 3 million users, and it was less than three years after its establishment.

As we all know, Pinyuan is an e-commerce platform that allows users to initiate group purchases and purchase products at lower prices, covering all categories.

"From the perspective of the first three quarters of this year, the GMV (total turnover of the website) of our Pinyuan has surpassed Vipshop's 429 billion yuan, becoming the third largest company in the country's e-commerce sales."

Huang Zheng didn't ask Gu Yun the questions on the phone, but instead talked about the current situation of the Paradise.

In fact, Gu Yun didn't intervene much, and it was one of the fastest growing companies under the Paradise Group.

Just like Kuaishou and Dou Le, which suddenly became popular back then, Pinyuan has followed the general trend of hundreds of millions of new users.

"I probably know what you want to ask. Looking at it now, we have developed silently for such a long time, and we indeed have the basic conditions for independence."

Next, Huang Zheng clicked on a picture on the projector.

According to Jiguang Big Data, as of November 2013, in cities above the third tier, which accounted for about 11% of Chinese Internet users, the penetration rate of Pingyuan in third-tier and fourth-tier cities (55%, 21.38%) even surpassed that of mobile Taobao (35.34%). , 20.31%).

"Low price + group sharing" is consumers' understanding of Pinduan, and it is also a methodology verified by Pinduan, which can spread rapidly and accumulate hundreds of millions of users in a short period of time.

The outside world includes Traffic Fang Penguin, which defines it as a social e-commerce and sales platform.

But in the eyes of Huang Zheng, the founder of Pinyuan and who grew up watching Pinyuan, these interpretations are not accurate.

"I think that the public's attention to Pin Paradise is half a beat behind its development speed. In fact, even if we don't have WeChat, we can still survive."

When we first started our business, vertical e-commerce was on the rise, and the platform was in decline, but Pinyuan was shifting from vertical self-operation to a comprehensive platform.

When people talk about "the second half of e-commerce" and think that the e-commerce field has been divided up and the traffic can no longer grow exponentially, Pinyuan has quietly accumulated 1 million users.

When Pingyuan officially left the circle and was regarded as the leader of social e-commerce by the industry, Pingyuan began to try to leave WeChat.

As early as the beginning of 2013, Gu Yun had discussed with Huang Zheng, once the traffic portal of WeChat is no longer smooth, what should we do?
Even under the context at that time, the big boss probably just said it casually, but Huang Zheng became alert early on and started to arrange it.

Saying goodbye to the turmoil of major mergers and acquisitions and major competition, the order of the Internet has entered a relatively long period of stability, and the rapid growth of companies such as Dou Le, Kuaishou, and Pinyuan has brought the possibility of breaking through the existing order.

However, a deeper industrial chain, stronger enemies and a shorter time window all make the situation of Pinyuan more complicated.

It faces controversies about fakes and induced sharing, internal conflicts between making a good product and maintaining growth, a complicated relationship with Penguin, and short-term and long-term competition with Ali.

Multi-dimensional wars are intertwined. The pits that Ali and JD.com have gone through before, and Pinyuan have to go through more or less.

"I just heard Yingying talk about the case. I think the key point is not how to operate WeChat, but our own strength."

Huang Zheng's question was very accurate, and even on the way Gu Yun came, he even compiled the monthly report into a ppt on a whim.

He believes that the competition between Pinyuan and Taobao will be an important aspect of e-commerce in the future.

This may be more interesting than the duel between Baidu News Feed and other search businesses - because it is a battle where the giants turn around and the latecomers break through.

Both sides have their own advantages and disadvantages: Taobao occupies the two major scenarios of search and information flow recommendation, which can reduce dimensionality.

Pinyuan cannot replace Taobao's dominant position in the search scene, but it is very flexible in internal entrepreneurship such as reverse low-cost customization.

"Jobs once shot an advertisement when Apple came back, which said, you can praise him, you can insult him, you can say that he can do anything, but there is one thing you can't do, that is, you can't ignore him."

Huang Zheng said with a smile.

"Everyone thinks that we don't have WeChat, so we have nothing to fear. In fact, group buying and low prices are not the core of what we are doing now."

Group buying and low prices are actually tools and means of competition that have existed for a long time in the e-commerce field.

As early as a few years ago, Taobao’s group-buying product “Juhuasuan” ignited the popularity of group-buying among the people. In an era when the infrastructure was not perfect, it achieved an annual GMV of 100 billion yuan.

Many years later, group buying has once again entered the consumer's field of vision on a large scale, which is the link from the "1 yuan lottery draw" in Pinyuan in the WeChat group.

Among them, everyone feels that the invention of the cross-age is that you only need to press the payment button, and you don’t even need to fill in the account number, you can complete the group and become one of the hundreds of millions of group members.

"Low price + join group" is consumers' understanding of join paradise.

However, Huang Zheng saw that, from Mushroom Street, Beibei, to start-up companies, big and small players have gone to WeChat to find money, and compete with Pinyuan in terms of price and category differentiation, but it is difficult to replicate the speed and scale of its rise.

This is why Huang Zheng straightened his back and told Gu Yun that at this stage, Pinyuan will not die even if it loses WeChat.

The reasons behind it are: first, the phased effect of low-price group purchases has not been seen; second, the product potential of Pin Paradise has been ignored; third, the possibility of Pin Paradise’s transformation and self-improvement has been underestimated.

Just as Dou Le and Kuaishou cannot be recreated in the short video field, the time window for copying and playing Paradise has passed.

"The growth of Pinyuan is the inevitable result of the third wave of mobile Internet demographic dividends."

Speaking of this, Huang Zheng was extremely confident.

The third wave of people mainly comes from the third-tier, fourth-tier and fifth-tier urban population, with a number of [-] to [-] million. The main reason for their rise is WeChat and mobile payment brought by red envelopes.

Moreover, this wave of users is more from families. Compared with the previous two waves of users, they have assumed the next step of China's mainstream consumption.

Penguin feels that without WeChat, many people will give up Pinduan and switch to other e-commerce platforms.

But for the third-tier, fourth-tier and fifth-tier population, even if WeChat completely blocks Pingyue, they will not be able to find the next e-commerce platform to replace Pingyue for a while.

Pinyuan has built its own moat in less than three years.

This may be the reason why Taobao failed to seize the opportunity - the lack of exclusive social tools and the threshold for using Alipay.

In addition, on the supply side, at the same time, Taobao’s de-low-end process accelerated, and Taobao began to reduce its traffic support for low-quality, low-priced mass commodities.

"Mr. Gu, Taobao has 800 million merchants, and less than half of them can get valid orders. Looking at it now, a large amount of social excess capacity brought about by the tide of export to domestic sales needs to be released urgently. One of the platforms to try."

"In the new environment, consumers need a new consumption scenario."

Huang Zheng continued with a cup of tea.

Gu Yun nodded. Since the start of their business, there have often been discussions about the future between the two of them.

Initially, the WeChat group was used to join the group—this is also the reason why Pinyuan formed a dissemination fission in a short period of time, and the user acquisition cost is very low.

After that, Pinyuan quickly entered the first rising period. From the initial stage of business to a full year, its monthly turnover quickly exceeded the threshold of 1000 million yuan, and its paying users exceeded 2000 million.

However, after entering 2013, the staged bonus of group joining has passed, and it is difficult to achieve a similar detonation effect.

"The reason why Penguin has no fear of using WeChat to threaten us is because the outside world regards Pingyuan as a group-building tool to study, copy low prices, and copy group-building."

"It seems they are destined to be disappointed."

The definition of the outside world is not accurate, ignoring Pinyue as a product, and the founding duo as reborn and top entrepreneurs are extremely understanding of human nature.

The product mission of Pinyuan is "more affordable and more fun", which just corresponds to the material and spiritual needs of human beings.

This is the second stage of putting aside the WeChat traffic factor, and the reason why Pinyuan can maintain a faster growth rate.

It is also a low-price group purchase product, and Pinduan makes users feel that "buying is earning".

This stems from the extremely subtle definition of cost performance of Pinyuan.

For example, the first product on the shelves of Pinyuan is the 1 yuan spike Lay’s potato chips.

Obviously such a low price, but has received consumer complaints.

"Although there is only one yuan, if the potato chips are broken and can't be eaten, consumers will feel that they have not taken advantage of it and say that you are lying; but as long as there is still half of it that can be eaten, he will feel that it is worth it."

Huang Zheng and Gu Yun talked about his mother's spending on Pin Paradise.

Bought 10 mangoes for 9 yuan, 2 were bad.

The aunt came to complain to Huang Zheng, but she still chose to fight Paradise when placing an order.

"If you can buy 10 good mangoes for 7 yuan, that's not a loss."

Internally, this product operating principle is interpreted as "making users feel cheap."

And this is the core measure of Gu Yun and Huang Zheng's plan ahead of time to fight against the monopoly of the WeChat traffic platform and try to find their own new path.

It can be seen that Pinyuan has done a lot of operating activities such as bonus packages, lottery draws, and price bargaining, which continue to stimulate users' various consumption desires-impulsive consumption, venting consumption, rational consumption, comparison consumption, etc., and finally reach a purchase.

"We are now giving users a feeling that if they don't click in or buy it, they will lose money."

Therefore, even in the face of differentiated competition and the crisis of a cliff-like decline in platform traffic, Pinyuan still has the ability to attract consumers to keep coming back.

"After you mentioned the WeChat issue last time, we optimized the app for three full rounds, just waiting for this moment."

Huang Zheng smiled and clicked on the next picture, which was a new project he worked on alone, optimizing the Pinyuan App.

The figure shows that Pinyuan has entered a new stage of development and has an independent position outside the WeChat ecosystem.

An app with an average daily activity of tens of millions in a month and about 60% of installed capacity in the first week - Pinyuan.

"After concentrating on the App, I found that social e-commerce does not exist at all. This is a false concept."

Huang Zheng laughed.

The core of social group joining is to build "people divided into groups". It should be regarded as a window to understand users, rather than being regarded as a click or a means of growth. This is the core reason why Pinyuan came out in the early days.

After fully understanding the user, the platform will push the most suitable products to the user. App is a platform for users to achieve this goal, so WeChat is not the only and ultimate scenario.

This is rarely noticed by the outside world.

Because Penguin has not opened an entrance to Pin Paradise for a long time.

Since it was born on WeChat, the relationship between Pinyuan and WeChat is more like a "cat and mouse game".

Pinyuan needs WeChat, which is a window that can reach and understand users.

WeChat also needs to play Paradise. In the early days of social e-commerce, Pin Paradise was used as an official example to demonstrate the potential of social e-commerce and attracted a large number of people to join the WeChat ecosystem.

But when Pin Paradise developed to a certain scale, the balance changed subtly.

The transaction relies too much on the WeChat social scene, which will make Pinyuan lose some of its dominance.

Before the lawsuit, Pinyuan was already using operational methods such as "app review and return red envelopes" to encourage people to stay in the app more, and even join groups directly in the app without sharing.

"Look, according to the data, the penetration rate of our Pinyuan App has increased from an annual average of about 1% to 11% in November."

When Gu Yun saw this number, he finally let go of a big stone in his heart.

This powerful figure is enough to allow Pinyuan to leave WeChat and enter a larger field and more platform-based competition.

The ability to analyze users accumulated before can also create new scenarios in new competitive fields-personalized recommendations.

From thousands of people with ten faces, hundreds of faces to thousands of faces, this is his long-term strategic plan, and it is also the road that Pinyuan must take.

Growing up on WeChat and breaking away from WeChat is a development need and a future need, and it is also what Paradise Group hopes to see.

"Without WeChat, the next step in the expansion of new users must be in this position. It is very difficult, and the first- and second-tier users are not easy to serve."

Gu Yun clicked on the map on the projector.

The data shows that the penetration rate of Pinyuan in third- and fourth-tier cities is already very close to that of netizens.

If it needs to continue to maintain user growth after losing WeChat, Pinyuan needs to find users in first- and second-tier cities. Obviously, this will be a war of attrition.

At the beginning, consumers may choose Pinduan because of the novelty of "low price, no loss", but for first- and second-tier users, as consumption upgrades and disappointment with some products, users will abandon it.

"You don't have to worry about this. The best way to solve the problem of platform products right now is operation management and supply chain upgrades."

Huang Zheng had already thought about this aspect.

For a long time, Taobao has faced accusations of fake and inferior products.

The same is true for Pin Paradise. One of the reasons is that Pin Paradise uses commodities as its operating unit, which magnifies the consequences of commodity problems.

Different from Taobao, Pingyuan does not have the concept of stores and shopping carts. The products are operated independently, and each product must be checked and priced by the operating staff.

Commodities that can form explosive models are generally high frequency, rigid demand and low price.

Low prices are likely to allow merchants to lower quality standards.

At the same time, user demand is extremely difficult to predict. If a single product suddenly becomes a hit, the shipment volume will be huge in a short period of time, and most C-end merchants do not have sufficient stock due to financial problems.

The only way to deal with it is to make wrong shipments, ask consumers to refund, go to the market to buy, or simply take it off the shelves, because Pinyuan has very severe punishment measures for merchants who fail to deliver within 48 hours.

Once there is a product quality problem, the user will give up the return considering the return cost, which will seriously affect the user experience.

At the same time, this also forcibly compresses the life cycle of a single product, putting more pressure on non-factory merchants.

Therefore, using more technology to replace operations and more standardized management must be the next adjustment focus of Pinyuan after losing WeChat.

The second is to upgrade the supply chain.

"Renovating the supply chain is the focus of development after Double Eleven. Brands are rapidly iterative. We just need to ensure that when there is a new brand, users on Pinyuan can see it."

Huang Zheng said that the next step is to support multiple brands and create exclusive word of mouth.

At present, the competition for users is not only to grab the incremental market, but also to grab the limited attention of users. The improvement of product quality and supply chain is the best way to persuade users to stay.

Pinyuan relied on WeChat in the early days, and leveraged huge traffic and user resources in the form of teamwork and other forms.

However, with the deepening of operations, especially to improve the "shopping" attribute of the park and increase user stickiness, it is inevitable that the marginal effect of acquiring customers in the WeChat system will decrease.

This is also the main reason for its big brand spending: through brand promotion, it can obtain natural increment and drive users' trust in the platform.

"In the middle of the night, I really didn't come in vain, Lao Huang."

"I didn't expect that I just pointed out a direction, and you implemented it so well."

After a long talk with Huang Zheng, Gu Yun became more confident to throw the table with Penguin.

(End of this chapter)