Focus On Platform Business, Such As Preparing For Leaving Zhang Da Yi?

In the "fast food" era of information explosion, net red, such as Zhang Dayi, whose business value continues to rise, is rare.

In 2014, Zhang Dayi spanformed from model to Taobao shop owner. With the good image and unique style, he quickly exploded and attracted a large number of fans to become fans of his products. After Zhang Dayi achieved 300 million of his annual sales in 2016, the news of "annual income rolling Fan Bingbing" was also rampant, which indirectly pushed the concept of "net red economy" to a climax.

Two months ago, like listing on Nasdaq, most of the attention was focused on Zhang Dayi. Because more than half of its revenue comes from shops under her personal name. However, as a result, the aura of "net red electricity supplier first share" failed to "flicker" investors, such as IPO was broken on the same day, from $12.5 per share to a minimum of $3.06 per share, a drop of over 75%.

Before June 13th, Han announced the 2019 financial year (March 1, 2018 ~2019 March 31st) fourth quarter and unaudited financial reports for the whole year. After the 23.01% increase in the post market, what are the new points to be listed as a listed company, such as how to eliminate Zhang Dayi's personal influence?

Make up for short run of proprietary business and turn to platform operation

Narrowing of losses

Data show that in the 2019 fiscal year Q4, such as Han GMV was 648 million yuan, an increase of 81.3% over the same period; Q4 achieved net revenue of 237 million yuan, an increase of 20.7% over the same period; the net loss of Q4 narrowed 53.3% to 29 million 400 thousand yuan over the same period last year.

From the whole year, the fiscal year GMV was 2 billion 900 million yuan in the fiscal year 2019, an increase of 39.9% over the same period last year, and net revenue was 1 billion 100 million yuan, an increase of 15.4% over the same period last year. The net loss attributable to such holdings was 74 million 500 thousand yuan, narrowing 28.4% compared with the same period last year, and the net loss per share was RMB 0.23 yuan, which was 0.33 yuan in the same period last year.

In the conference call, such as Han said that the proportion of GMV promoted by the top KOL (i.e. Zhang Dayi) dropped to 47.8% in fiscal year 2019, and the growth of GMV, revenue and narrowing of the losses were attributed to the increase in platform services.

Platform development, quantity to make up for quality

If there are two business models, a Full-Service Model, which is easy to understand, called self run, the most typical is Zhang Da Yi, supporting online stores and commodities, bringing their own goods, earning mainly commodity margins, and talking about the combination of production and marketing. The other is the Platform Model, which is similar to the star broker company or MCN, which carries the goods of the brand side, earning Commission for marketing, and low risk of light assets.

If we put the focus of development on the platform mode, the number of online stores in the 2018 fiscal year will be 86, but the number in 2019 fiscal year will reach 56. In the 2019 fiscal year, the GMV of the self operated mode was 2 billion 150 million yuan, an increase of 10.4% over the same period last year. It depended on the red top of several top-level networks, while the platform mode GMV was 710 million yuan, an increase of 607.8% over the same period last year, and the number of cooperative brands increased rapidly.

As at the end of March 2019, the number of Red Net signed by the company was 128, of which the number of red top and red net was 3 and 8 respectively, and the number of red net was the largest, 117.

According to the conference call, because the number of new online fans is relatively small, the full service mode is not suitable, and the simpler way of monetization is to put them in the platform. But for the top KOL fans, the spanformation of proprietary mode is still higher.

Gross profit margin declined, and marketing costs continued to rise.

In addition to the shortage of net red fans, another reason may be supply chain problems, such as culvert reducing self run online stores and developing platform businesses.

In 2017, when Han was still in the new three board, its inventory turnover rate was 0.6, which was quite poor. Today, this problem still exists. In fiscal year 2019, the gross profit margin is 31.3%, down 0.8% from the same period. The reason is that the discount sales of clothing and cosmetics have led to a decline in gross margin of online product sales, such as the promotion of inventory clearance.

Generally speaking, the increase of platform business, the reduction of self financing and the reduction of costs will be verified in Jingdong and NetEase e-commerce. If the gross profit margin is lower due to the decline in sales, it should rebound in the future.

On the other hand, the increase in the number of red nets has resulted in an increase in the cost of training, promotion and content production. In fiscal year 2019, the cost of marketing is 206 million yuan, an increase of 40.7% over the same period last year.

At the time of listing, Wang Sicong had questioned micro-blog's marketing expenses. "What is the meaning of" net red "when he spends so much marketing cost? But obviously, it is hard to cut down the cost of doing business around net red. Net red now has a low starting point, but the lower it means the more intense the competition, the greater the cost of investment and the more investment to maintain the existing influence.

It's a matter of time before we leave.

And there is still much controversy about the net red mode, which is mainly focused on 3 points: excessive marketing cost and low efficiency of supply chain.

The author thinks that whether the net red model is established or not depends on whether or not it can interact with fans continuously and low cost. The essence of net red economy is a kind of fan economy. After establishing a stable chain of concern with a large number of fans, the spanformation efficiency of the network is higher than that of other media.

Net red mode is indeed a kind of precision marketing, but passively, it is necessary to smash the influence of net red first, attract fans' attention, and then spanform it. At present, at least from the financial data, such as Han still need to continue to invest money to maintain the influence of net Hong on fans, and the distribution of net red level also proves that most of the net red that spent a lot of money and time has not had the chance to get promoted.

Another key point on Zhang Dayi is the most fatal problem. Zhang Dayi's personal name shops, such as Han's contribution, accounted for 2017 of the total revenue in 50.8% fiscal year, 2018 in fiscal year 52.4% and 53.5% in fiscal year 2019. Can Zhang Dayi stay as good as Zhi Ling's sister for ten years? Even if he can, can he keep Zhang Dayi for a long time? This is very frightening for a listed company.

So if we rely on Zhang Dayi to be listed, we can no longer rely on Zhang Da Yi, and it is impossible to create second Zhang Da Yi. Like pipelined factories, incubation, cultivation and mediocrity have no unique advantages, but they are stable and controllable. If we pay attention to the platform business and eliminate inefficient online stores, we will reduce the dependence on Zhang Dayi and the short supply chain.

But with this development, with the growth of platform business, such as the difference between culvert and MCN institutions is getting smaller and smaller. Considering the relationship between Ali and Ali, and the importance of live broadcasting to Ali, it may be possible to develop products and technology platforms and become a bridge linking Ali with MCN industry. Author: Fan Xiangdong