In this industry banner, JD.com, Taobao, and Pinduoduo are becoming vivid new annotations.
Author | Sihang
Editor | Pi Ye
Produced | Industrialist
There is a city where the people started their business 40 years ago by exchanging chicken feathers for sugar. They gathered commodities from all over the country and resold them. In this way, a market is formed, and buyers do not need to go to various places to choose goods if they want to buy goods, which provides convenience for everyone.
40 years later, this place has transformed into a global "stall owner". This is Yiwu City, Zhejiang Province, which gathers dozens of industrial belts and 238 industrial parks. Now, Yiwu not only sells goods to the whole country, but also many world merchants buy goods from here.
However, the three-year epidemic has cast a shadow over Yiwu. What they have to face is not only the bottleneck of exporting to domestic sales, but also the difficulty of digital transformation. Many merchants have moved their business online, but when they tried new channels, they did not get the expected returns. On the one hand, online business has different rules and gameplay from offline business; on the other hand, it is difficult for merchants to balance online and offline business.
This is not only a difficult problem for Yiwu merchants, but also a dilemma faced by merchants brought by all industries in the country.
Today, the dilemmas of these industrial belts are being solved one by one by e-commerce platforms.
A new piece of data about Pinduoduo is that in its 10 billion subsidy series of activities, Pinduoduo joined hands to help businesses in the industry to sell goods. The price of goods in the live broadcast room dropped by up to 300%, and the number of people who watched a single live broadcast and made orders exceeded 20 million.
JD.com also made moves. For example, providing free office space, tax relief, and talent cultivation and other e-commerce special policy support for merchants in the industrial belt, and for merchants in the industrial belt that lack operational capabilities, JD.com provides exclusive store diagnosis and online and offline training to help the industry With business development.
According to incomplete statistics, with the strong support of e-commerce, the online channel of many merchants has changed from 5% to 50-60%. Now that the offline channel is still flourishing, online has become a new increase.
Facing the wave of the Internet, the three major e-commerce companies, Pinduoduo, JD.com and Taobao, are all writing their own different TO B stories in front of the merchants in the industry.
one
Incremental ciphers on industrial belts
"The blueberries on the market this year are still expensive, so I don't dare to open them up and eat them." A consumer lamented. Sour taste, small size, and noble berries are the long-term impressions of blueberries in the minds of consumers.
Blueberries are expensive partly because they are in short supply. Sun Bo, who graduated from Huazhong Agricultural University, made a data comparison. "Our country has about 70 million mu of apples, about 50 million mu of oranges, and only 600,000 to 700,000 mu of blueberries nationwide, which are not enough to supply first- and second-tier consumers." Its sourness can be traced back to the problem of localized cultivation. At first, the blueberries grown in China were the varieties of the United States in the 1950s. In the opinion of European and American consumers, sour blueberries are more nutritious.
Later, under the joint research of the Chinese scientific and business circles, the Chinese market finally made localized improvements to blueberries, and the taste gradually became sweeter and the size became larger. However, large-scale planting still faces many obstacles, such as the control of temperature, humidity, light and water and fertilizer, as well as the storage and preservation problems during transportation. This series of problems requires a modern and intelligent industrial chain.
Yunnan blueberry, which is in the breakthrough period of localization, is facing a similar problem. In this regard, their solution is: the cultivation situation during the planting process can be monitored through the intelligent large screen at any time, from cultivation, management and protection to picking, grading, and then to pre-cooling, quality inspection, packaging, and cold chain transportation. Complete industrial chain. While freeing blueberries from the shortage of supply, it is also more in line with Chinese tastes.
Behind this, Pinduoduo is turning the "noble berry" blueberry into a "national berry".
Pinduoduo's approach is to solve the problem from the supply side and the consumer side respectively. From the supply side, the "Nongyun Action" at the end of February has greatly promoted the "cloud" of blueberries. First of all, in terms of supply chain, Pinduoduo platform has always maintained zero commission for fresh agricultural products, stimulating potential demand to expand the market size. From offline sales and rural purchases in the past to online transactions today, Pinduoduo helps merchants realize the digitization of transportation links and sales links.
Secondly, in terms of merchant operations, the platform encourages and trains young farmers in the agricultural belt to open stores on the platform and complete the "from 0 to 1" start; for merchants that have already started and have a good supply chain, complete the "from 1 to 1" 100" jump. Finally, in terms of blueberry planting, Pinduoduo joined hands with brand owners to realize the intelligence and modernization of the industrial chain.
From the perspective of the consumer side, Pinduoduo has launched a series of live broadcasts of "Spell out a better life", and CCTV news "Lu Binghua" helps to bring goods. With the endorsement of the official media and the official subsidy, the price of a catty of 18mm blueberries is more than 70 yuan after the subsidy. On that day, the flagship store of Joyvio JOYVIO sold 100,000 yuan.
Low prices and heavy agriculture are the stories of Pinduoduo.
As the largest retailer in China, JD.com also has its own unique strategy. JD.com's advantage lies in its digital empowerment and the support of JD.com Logistics. A recent piece of information is that recently, JD.com’s first stop has landed in Fuzhou, providing support for merchants from five core aspects of settlement, logistics, finance, insurance and technology. The main strategy has four major initiatives: product standard formulation, e-commerce supply chain Construction, brand building and sales channel expansion, online and offline marketing activities.
Specifically, when a merchant enters the store, JD.com will waive the platform usage fee for the first three months, and return all the deduction points for the first half year of opening the store, as well as additional advertising subsidies and free promotion. After settling in, JD.com will also help merchants build their brands and carry out marketing activities. Relying on the digital capabilities of JD Cloud, merchants can determine the portrait of the target group through data analysis, and master the skills of refined operation in the multiple trainings provided by JD.com, and finally achieve performance growth.
In Danyang, the capital of glasses in China, the epidemic has had a big impact on the businesses brought by the glasses industry. The lack of offline passenger flow and the impeded supply chain have become the main problems for optical shops. In 2018, an optical shop entered JD.com, but due to unclear user portraits and crowd positioning, sales were not satisfactory for a while. Therefore, the team relied on JD.com's digital analysis tools, studied the store data, and positioned the customer group as male senior white-collar workers aged 26 to 45. The product positioning is the vertical classification of business optical glasses.
In addition, JD.com also provided relevant training, and the team optimized the advertising strategy and made fine adjustments to the keywords, cities, time and other dimensions. The final data shows that the adjusted advertising click-through rate increased by 34%, the cost per click decreased by 32%, and the average monthly sales increased by more than 10 times year-on-year.
In addition to Pinduoduo and JD.com, Taobao also has its own industry expression. At the beginning of this year, Taobao launched an industrial belt support plan to address the problems of factory inventory backlog and capital turnover in some areas of the current industrial belt. Through Taobao live streaming subsidies, anchor training, and one-on-one guidance for small and medium-sized enterprises, it helps small and medium-sized enterprises clear inventory.
As for how to clear the inventory, live broadcast may be the best way. Therefore, Taobao Live has invested tens of billions of exclusive traffic, providing traffic support for industry anchors and institutions, and a single account can get up to 3 million traffic per month.
Not only that, Taobao also has a layout in terms of sales and live broadcast. First of all, in terms of sales, Taobao will label "high-quality industrial belts" for high-quality products from key industrial belts across the country to increase the weight and increase the conversion rate of transactions; Live account, 200,000 new anchors, 1,000 million live broadcast rooms.
The self-operated system is the story of JD.com, Taobao is the live broadcast empowerment, and low prices and heavy agriculture are the strategies of Pinduoduo. The three major e-commerce companies are all giving play to their respective advantages and competing to become the incremental passwords on the industrial belt.
two
Industrial belts press the "accelerator button"
After the epidemic, e-commerce platforms have appeared in many industrial belts based on their own advantages, pressing the "accelerator button" for their digitalization process.
For businesses that lack digital capabilities, the three-year pandemic has brought about three years of no harvest, which is the fate of most industrial belts. In Danyang, the "glasses capital of China", due to the impact of the epidemic, the circulation of the supply chain was not smooth, which led to an increase in the cost of raw materials and express delivery. Finally, the store sales and profits fell sharply. As a result, many optical shops were closed for several months due to the epidemic. That's good. Glasses are a violent industry. "If you know someone, you can get it for 300 yuan, but if you don't know someone, the price is 2000 yuan." Perhaps, this is why in today's Danyang Glasses City, there is an endless stream of people at the door.
Among them, JD.com is the main player. "When I entered JD.com, I didn't think too much about it. I only heard from my friends that the consumers were relatively high-end, so I settled in. Unexpectedly, it has become our main site, and the average monthly GMV in 20 years has increased by 1000%+ year-on-year!" Dan Yang The manager of the optical shop BESTFEN expresses emotion.
In order to support the industrial belt, JD.com has started from various aspects to improve the GMV of merchants, including traffic incentives, JD.com logistics distribution, operation guidance, and C2M reverse customization. First of all, JD.com uses C2M reverse customization to find the most popular styles through the supply of online traffic, so as to bring precise customers to offline stores.
Secondly, in terms of operations, JD.com will also provide relevant training for merchants who lack online operation ideas. Take BESTFEN as an example. At the beginning of 2022, BESTFEN participated in the Kirin Program held by the fashion home training group. After passing the training, they made fine adjustments to the advertising, and the efficiency of store advertising increased by 1000%+. Delivery costs have increased by more than 200%.
Finally, JD.com also launched the "factory store" model to help industries that lack e-commerce operation capabilities but have good source goods to bring merchants to JD.com. The highest full refund of technical service fees, step-by-step payment of quality assurance funds, etc., serve as the upstream supply chain. Other merchants supply goods, and the platform deduction point is as low as 0.5%. After settling in, JD.com will provide a "growth package" to grow the store level through the "playing monsters" model, providing merchants with a clear path to advanced growth.
Behind all of this, JD.com stands out among the three major e-commerce companies with its unique self-operated and self-built logistics model. In addition, after the merchants settle in, they provide assistance in operation and training services, thus forming a complete commercial closed loop. . In this system, JD.com's self-operated model gives merchants a natural traffic advantage.
In contrast, Taobao’s industrial belt support plan revolves around live broadcast traffic subsidies, anchor training, and one-on-one guidance for sophomores to help merchants drain traffic and clear inventory.
"This year, we will help hundreds of children's clothing factories in Huzhou to clear their inventory, and we expect to sell 500,000 pieces of inventory," said "Lizi", an anchor of a children's clothing store. Lizi is a new live broadcast account opened by Taobao to help industry belt merchants clear their inventory. Anchors like Lizi have opened more than 60,000 streams in ten industries including Huzhou and Haining in less than a year. Solving the inventory problem of merchants, the problem of returning funds will be easily solved.
In addition to live streaming empowerment, Taobao’s biggest advantage is still the “Shop Xiao Er” model as an omni-channel e-commerce company. Take Shenzhen Shuibei jewelry industry as an example. In Shenzhen, Shuibei’s gold merchants have always been targeting B-end business. It became more and more difficult to do, and they had to turn to the C side. However, in the face of sudden transformation, merchants who are accustomed to the B-end sales model do not know how to sell gold directly to consumers.
At this time, Taobao's shop assistant played a role. For the gold industry, "sell by gram" is more suitable for merchants in the industry belt than "sell by piece". Because the unit price of "sell by gram" is low, and the profit of the merchant is not high, while the profit of "sell by piece" is high, but big brands like "Chow Tai Sang" have the confidence to sell at a high enough price, so "sell by piece" It has become the default sales model in the gold industry. Now, as the supply chain becomes more transparent, the price system of gold is gradually becoming known to the public, and "sell by gram" has become a consensus online and offline. So there is a product called "Golden Doudou". This is a unique sales method developed by Dianxiaoer for merchants in the industry according to the consumption preferences of young people.
"Dianxiaoer" is the front-line service personnel of Taobao's industrial belt merchants in various places. At present, Taobao has established Dianxiaoer territories in 26 industrial belt cities including Wenzhou, Jiaxing, Xiamen, and Nantong. The common feature of these cities is that they have strong manufacturing capabilities. The high-quality source of goods in the place of origin forms a perfect combination with Taobao's over 900 million annual active consumers. But for a long period of time, due to the lack of store operation capabilities in these industrial belts, many merchants ended up fighting alone. With the help of "Xiao Er", merchants have a clearer understanding of how to operate their stores online.
Finally, among all the e-commerce platforms, Pinduoduo, which has plunged headlong into the agricultural production belt, helps merchants accelerate their digital transformation with unique method of "direct connection between production and consumption".
At the beginning, Pinduoduo will have a complete set of incentive mechanisms for new farmers who have not opened stores, plus digital agricultural support from planting, monitoring, warehousing, and logistics to help the industry drive merchants to sell goods. Through Pinduoduo's team-building model, we will support the growth of more benchmark new farmers. However, low price comes first and quality comes second. Low prices are just a strategy to attract traffic, especially for agricultural products, quality is the key. Therefore, Pinduoduo has also begun to pay attention to quality control. Through continuous optimization of sampling inspections, store ratings, after-sales monitoring, consumer feedback and other measures, it ensures the quality of agricultural products and helps merchants achieve branding.
In addition, the person in charge of "Nongyun Action" believes that platform operation is also very important. "The platform attaches great importance to cost performance, but it is far more than just a dimension of price." Consumers will be attracted by low prices, but products and services are more important to maintain stickiness. If the store has a good rating and the brand has great potential, there is no need to "roll the price" with other merchants.
It can be seen from this that Pinduoduo's ambitions in the agricultural belt have shifted from focusing on whether the product is "available" to "good or not", from attracting "traffic" to "reserving volume" of good service. Not only Pinduoduo, JD.com and Taobao are giving full play to their respective advantages to help the digital development of industrial belts.
three
Who is restructuring the industrial belt?
A mysterious and invisible line divides the economy into two levels of "ice and fire". On the map of China, the starting point of the line is Heihe, Heilongjiang, and the end point of the line is Tengchong, Yunnan. This 45-degree straight line is the famous "Hu Huanyong Line". And this line not only divides the two levels of real estate, but also divides the degree of digitization of the industrial belt.
Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Jiangsu and other places have always been the major regions with a high degree of digitalization in industrial belts, while the industrial belts in Heilongjiang, Yunnan, Qinghai and other regions have long lagged behind. The main reason is closely related to the local economic development. Because, the development of the industrial belt and the local economy will promote each other. For example, a well-developed local brand means that the surrounding supply chain is more complete, which will promote the development of the industrial belt. For another example, if the GDP of a certain area is relatively high, and the development of digitalization and intelligence is relatively rapid, the nearby industrial belts will naturally benefit from this.
In addition, the density of head enterprises is also a factor that affects the development of industrial belts, which is positively correlated with the concentration of industrial belts. Ali Research Institute pointed out in the "Research Report on China's Digital Industrial Belts", "In industries with higher brand concentration, the concentration of industrial belts tends to increase more; the lower the brand concentration, the smaller the increase in industrial belt concentration, or even Negative growth."
Therefore, the digital development of China's industrial belt is related to the local economy on the one hand; on the other hand, and more importantly, the development level of the Internet. The two seem to be the same but different. Although the local economy is developed, the Internet development must be higher, but conversely, the Internet is well developed, and the economic ranking may not necessarily be high. Because in the future, the development of China's Internet will spread to every corner.
At present, the degree of digitization of China's industrial belt is not perfect, and there are still many industries that need to be regulated. Due to the weak brand awareness of merchants in industrial belts, many entrepreneurs and even the government have the inertial thinking of using prices to attract traffic. The result is that the current industrial belt is still facing the dilemma of low-price competition, which leads to the result of bad money driving out good money, affecting the overall industry quality and profits.
The breakthrough to find these problems lies not only in e-commerce platforms, but also in which the government should play an important role. For example, in response to the phenomenon of "bad money drives out good money", regulatory authorities need to regulate industry standards, influence corporate decision-making from top to bottom, and prevent more serious low-price competition from forming a vicious circle.
The second breakthrough is to cultivate leading brands in areas where the density of industrial belts is relatively concentrated, and then use the leading brands to drive the upgrading of industrial belts, so as to create brand advantages rather than price advantages. Let the digital industrial belt become a new window to stimulate the local economy.
In this industry banner, JD.com, Taobao, and Pinduoduo are becoming vivid new annotations.