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Recently, a number of media reported that in this round of Internet winter, Youzan is "tightening the belt of pants" to live a life.
On January 6, some employees said on the social platform that the company has "written personnel optimization into the OKR (Goals and Key Achievements) in 2022", and functions, products, technologies, etc. may be the hardest hit areas.
Recently, it has been pointed out that the number of layoffs in Youzan may be as high as 1500. What concept? The total number of employees in the third quarter of 2021 was 4358, so the scale of the layoffs may be as high as one-third of the company's total number of employees.
And whether the layoffs are true, there are zan who have not publicly responded, what is wrong with zan?
Youzan was exposed to 1500 people with large-scale layoffs
What exactly does Youzan do? Many people don't quite understand this problem.
Let's put aside the complicated SaaS, private domain traffic operations and other professional terms, imagine: if you have a public account, gather a lot of fans, and thousands of readers come to see your article every day, then you have "traffic".
How to make money with traffic? E-commerce, that is, selling things, is a good choice.
How do you sell something and post a link to a treasure? No, it may not be accessible. Develop your own backstage? No, it's too much trouble, and the R&D investment and operation and maintenance costs are too high.
At this time, you can spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars a year, pay to unlock the service with praise, and open your own store. From store decoration, to ordering, shipping, customer service, using the system provided by Youzan, it can be easily solved.
And that's not all. Youzan also provides a wealth of sources for you to choose, you can go to your own store with one click to complete the distribution of commissions; when the wave of knowledge payment is set off, you can also find the "template" suitable for virtual goods; when the WeChat Mini Program is online, Youzan follows up with the launch of the Mini Program store for the first time; there are relevant institutions that hold offline training activities, hand in hand to teach you how to run the store well...
Such a model has its unparalleled advantages, under the blessing of various merchants, especially small and medium-sized businesses, it has created a listed company China Youzan (08083. HK）。 In the period of surge in demand for online trading after 2020, the company's stock price rose to become the first SaaS company in China with a market value of more than $10 billion.
But after a year of continuous declines, China's stock price is only 0.31 Hong Kong dollars, away from the high of 4.52 Hong Kong dollars "ankle cut". Recently, the company has also been exposed to large-scale layoffs and executive departures.
"(Yes) Do you need that many technicians? This still needs to be a question mark" - China Times quoted industry insiders as saying so, speculating that the company's management level may not be high, and also commented that the realization and innovation of praiseworthy marketing products are weak.
In addition to layoffs, there are also reports that executives with likes are also losing. In 2017, Chen Jinhui, who joined Youzan and was "officially announced" by Youzan founder Bai Crow, joined Youzan as vice president of the company. According to media reports such as Sina Technology, Chen Jinhui has left his post in October 2021.
All because of the radical expansion of praise?
Youzan has been struggling with losses for a long time, and the company has been in a state of loss since its listing in 2018, with a cumulative loss of more than 1.9 billion yuan in the three years to 2020. The company's performance continued to decline in 2021, with revenue in the first three quarters falling by nearly 10% year-on-year, and losses nearly doubling year-on-year.
Why did Youzan get to where he is today? There are two main views in the market, short-term and long-term.
In the short term, the dilemma of the current Praise may be the bitter fruit of the previous radical expansion. From 2019 to 2021, the number of employees with Zazan has been growing steadily, and once in the capital sought after and a good financing environment, it has raised funds on the one hand and expanded at losses on the other.
The company employed fewer than 3,000 people in 2019 and reached more than 4,300 in the third quarter of 2021. The simplest logic is that if the performance growth cannot catch up with the growth of the employee speed, it is naturally not a long-term solution, and personnel optimization will be sooner or later.
In the long run, the road ahead of e-commerce SaaS may become narrower and narrower, with the risk of being "overridden", and the backlog is not someone else, it is a strong manufacturer.
What does that mean? For example, according to Sina Technology, in the early stage of Kuaishou's e-commerce, it is a very important part to have praise, helping countless short video bloggers quickly open up e-commerce monetization channels. But then Kuaishou began to form its own e-commerce closed loop, reflected in Youzan, the GMV transaction volume generated by Kuaishou continued to shrink, from 40% of the revenue contribution may drop to the latest 10%-15%, "the former partners gradually stand on the opposite side."
In this way, it is not difficult to understand that investors have insufficient confidence in Youzan and even the entire e-commerce SaaS category. More market views are quite pessimistic, wavering: youzan and other domestic SaaS industries are optimistic in 2020 mainly due to the outbreak of the epidemic, is not the real market inflection point, the prospects of such concept stocks, remain to be seen.
Coupled with the fact that the barriers between giants have collapsed under supervision, e-commerce SaaS is bound to face more severe challenges. Imagine if you really wait for the day when you casually post a link to a treasure in the public account article, does the core competitiveness of "likes" still exist?
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