A few days ago, I participated in an e-commerce peer dinner.
A friend mentioned: A merchant in Yiwu, selling towels and cups and other daily necessities, sold 200 million last year, guess how much profit can you make in the end?
The answer is, only 550,000! What's even more exciting is that the gross profit margin of selling goods turned out to be negative.
The final profit of 550,000 is because of the large amount of packages, and a game company stuffs advertising cards in it and scans it to play games for free. relied on this to earn more than 100,000 yuan a month, and finally subtracted the loss from selling goods, and only made a profit of 550,000 yuan.
The peers here all sighed: the times have changed, the logic of making money has changed, and the days of bending down to pick up steel hammers have passed.
But at the dinner, there were some peers who shared their interest.
A mobile phone dealer, they are doing e-commerce in Dewu, and 3 people sell 400 million a year. There is also a distributor of home appliances, acting as an agent for Dyson, Philips, Xiaomi and other brands of products, and it has achieved 120 million in three years.
Some merchants who sell massage and waist care products have launched "dopamine" color matching products according to the preferences of young people, and their sales have taken off directly. There are also merchants selling gold jewelry, focusing on Valentine's Day and Qixi Festival, aiming at the gift-giving scene, and frequently creating explosive models.
By the way, there are also special tracks, billiard cues that young people like, from January to May this year, a dealer's sales exceeded 10 million, a 200%+ growth rate compared with the previous month. According to the disclosure, they operate with only four people......
01
Where there are young people, there are new business opportunities
Gen Z, who grew up with the Internet and e-commerce shopping, is becoming the most important consumer force in society. And behind this, there are huge new business opportunities.
As early as 2021, Duan Cunlei, who had just started his business, noticed a platform called "Dewu". "I hung up the goods and found that they were sold quickly. I realized that this platform can do it. ”
Duan Cunlei relied on acting as an agent for Dyson, Philips, Xiaomi and other brands to expand his business in less than three years, "about 40 million were sold in 21 years, 80 million in 22 years, and 120 million last year." The core reason why his entrepreneurship has been able to take off against the trend in recent years is because he has insight into the consumption changes of young people.
"In the first month, it sold about 1.7 million." Duan Cunlei recalled: "In the second month, I caught up with Qixi Festival, so I made some gift boxes. The gift box plus Tanabata sold about 9 million that month. At that time, there were only 7 people in our company. All I think about all day is how to ship the goods. ”
Through communication with the operation, Duan Cunlei more clearly understood that the crowd of the Dewu platform is mainly young people born after 95, and they are used to expressing their feelings through gifts. Gift box products, because of their added value and uniqueness, are easier for users to buy during festivals.
"Through the explosion of the gift box, I can be regarded as quickly earning the first pot of gold in my life."
Minhuang, a distributor of massage equipment curly hair products, will settle in Dewu in 2023. The person in charge said frankly: "At that time, I didn't expect to make money, but I just wanted to lay an additional channel." ”
The result was unexpected. "The order was issued in the first month of entry, and the performance exploded in two months, and the number of orders increased several times during the big promotion." Perception has changed dramatically. It turns out that the opportunity to get things is not only clothes and shoes, but also small household appliances. ”
According to the person in charge of Minhuang, they will now focus more on products that young people like. For example, according to the preferences of young people, the "dopamine" color matching products were launched, which were exclusively available for goods, and achieved sales explosions, with a month-on-month increase of more than 150%, and another popular monthly sales of 130w, an increase of more than 4000%.
From the perspective of user data, the user base of Dewu is extremely young, accounting for 70% of the post-95s, and the gender ratio is relatively balanced, of which 52% are males and 48% are females. Different from the 618, Double 11, and Double 12 festivals of e-commerce, the shopping nodes preferred by Dewu users are traditional festivals such as Valentine's Day, 520, and Qixi Festival.
"At the nodes of 520 and Qixi Festival, the sales volume will be 3 to 6 times more explosive, and such festivals on other platforms may explode by about 1.5 times." One merchant concluded: "On other platforms, the outbreak of 618 was from the 16th to the 18th, only two or three days. But in Dewu, like 520, it started on the 1st and reached its peak around May 15th. Because many of them are given to boyfriends and girlfriends, they have to be received before 520. ”
"And these festival hits, there will be long-tail sales at every node after that, rather than stopping at one outbreak."
More importantly, we also learned that the digital category of home appliances broke out against the trend, 3C digital increased by 200% year-on-year, home appliances doubled, and some personal scene subcategories that match the needs of young people have grown by more than 200% in the past three years, such as air fryers, uterine warming belts, electric toothbrushes, health care gear, trendy household appliances, coffee machines, body fat scales, etc., and the compound growth of some subcategories has even exceeded 2000%.
With a high-growth track and a definite playing path, the opportunities are self-evident.
02
To be honest, we only have 4 operations
With 35 years of experience in the billiard cue market, we have been looking for a platform that is highly compatible with our own consumer groups.
It is easy for most people to imagine that the users of billiard cues are obviously dominated by young boys.
However, perhaps even Orbi and its distributors did not expect that one day their products would be bought by female consumers!
In August last year, Ningbo Hanyun, a distributor of the Orbi brand, settled in Dewu. In the early days, sales were relatively stable. The flashpoint came on Valentine's Day this year, which coincided with the Chinese New Year, when young people went home for the New Year and asked friends to play billiards. On the Dewu platform, female consumers gave their boyfriends billiard cues as gifts, which led to a significant increase in sales.
According to dealers, from January to May this year, sales exceeded 10 million, achieving a 200%+ increase month-on-month.
What many people didn't expect was to be asked: "How large of a team are you operating in terms of deliction?" ”
"To be honest, there are only four of them." The dealer continued: "These four people have to do things on other platforms. In terms of operation, it accounts for half at most, and the operation of things is honestly more labor-saving. ”
Duan Cunlei in the home appliance industry also mentioned that the pictures of the goods are all white background, very clear, very clean, and there are no complicated discounts and exaggerated backgrounds. "To achieve tens of millions of sales on other platforms, at least a dozen people are needed, and we only have 7 people for packaging and delivery, and customer service and artists are not needed."
Zhao Lu, a big-name beauty merchant, has exceeded 4 million GMV on Valentine's Day in 24 years alone, but their operation team on Dewu has always been only 2 people. Without investing a lot of energy, the platform provides operational support, which greatly reduces the operating costs of merchants, allowing Zhao Lu to focus on the selection and sales of goods.
Shen Qiu, the owner of a distributor who runs the skin care category, has rich experience in both offline and online. They operate 1000+ SUKs in Dewu, with an annual GMV of up to 16 million, but the operation team is only 6 people. Regarding the achievements made in obtaining things, Shen Qiu believes that "it is not difficult". "There is no need to operate in Dewu, and the platform does not need to do a lot of tedious work, just put the existing goods on the shelves and bid on them."
The simple operation mode of the platform brings real convenience and benefits to merchants. First of all, the operation is simple. There is no need for a marketing team, no need to decorate the store, and the merchant only cares about the pricing and quality. This greatly reduces the difficulty of operation and labor costs. Secondly, there is no need to cast streams. Many platforms take traffic as the core, and whoever is strong in streaming will be able to run out. During the interview, we learned that the entire operation structure of Dewu is based on goods, which means that Dewu has a large amount of natural traffic, and as long as there are good goods, it can run out, rather than PK who invests more money.
03
Only if the return rate is low, can there be a profit
"E-commerce business is not doing well this year. The traffic is getting more and more expensive, but the return rate is getting higher and higher, and the pitiful profits are directly eaten. On social media, some women's clothing merchants complained that they sold nearly 10 million yuan during the 618 period, and later only refunded 3.5 million yuan, returned 3.8 million yuan, and finally lost 500,000 yuan.
Not only are clothing merchants tormented to the point of "collapse" by the return rate, but the return rate of the gold jewelry track is even more amazing. "It's unbearable, and the return rate was as high as 40%-90% at one point."
However, there are also some gold jewelry merchants who are quietly ushering in a "double explosion" of sales profits.
In 2023, Chow Tai Sang's team made a change. "We found that the people who got things were a little different from what we imagined. The people who get things are younger, mostly 18-25 years old. Based on such a group of people, we rematched the goods and rights, and basically did not sell enough throughout the year. ”
"This year, we will increase the supply of goods in Dewu." Zhou Dasheng is very optimistic about the development of Dewu.
Similar to Zhou Dasheng, after a well-known time-honored gold brand dealer in Shanghai settled in Dewu, through accurate matching of people, goods and yards, and at the same time doing a good job of content storage and grass planting, it also quickly broke out, achieving sales of more than 100 million yuan in half a year and a month-on-month increase of more than 700%.
They have their own operational methodology, focusing on the understanding of the platform's people, goods and yards, formulating operational plans and goals, executing and constantly adjusting. The team is good at playing nodes, relying on nodes to raise the ceiling, and at the same time attaching importance to the ability to lay high-quality content.
According to them, the return rate of goods is very low, less than 10%, "which is very friendly to gold jewelry merchants".
The aforementioned Orbi cue dealer also said that the return rate was significantly reduced. On the one hand, the identification process of Dewu allows users to have more trust in product quality; On the other hand, Dewu's customer base is mainly young people, who are all real needs and have relatively high quality, so they have a lot of worry in dealing with after-sales problems.
The "not fake, not inferior, not low" of the product has won the trust of consumers. Nowadays, the genes and advantages of the low return rate of the Dewu platform are attracting more and more merchants. Platform-merchant-consumer, the flywheel of trust has been turning rapidly.
04
epilogue
Where there are young people, there are new business opportunities.
There are a total of 260 million post-95 young people in the country, and the penetration rate of Dewu is as high as 70%, which can be said to have gathered the youngest user group in the field of e-commerce. The simple operation mode greatly facilitates the easy transfer of traditional dealers to online. High efficiency, large sales, and low return rate have allowed merchants to keep extremely precious profits in this era of continuous involution.
We also learned that at present, the demand for multiple categories of Dewu has exploded, such as beauty and personal care, sports and outdoor, digital home appliances, clothing, food, home furnishing, etc.
[The author of this article is i Dark Horse, i Dark Horse original.] If you need to reprint, please contact the WeChat public account (ID: iheima) for authorization. ］