Take stock of the top ten failure cases in the e-commerce industry in 2015

1. Paipai.com is closed at the end of the year

Recently, JD.com issued an announcement stating that it will stop providing C2C (individual to consumer) Paipai.com platform services on December 31, 2015, and will completely close Paipai.com from April 1, 2016 after a three-month transition period. According to the announcement, from now on, Paipai.com will no longer accept new sellers' application for entry. According to the platform service agreement between Paipai.com and the seller, the current store service period of the platform seller will end on December 31, 2015, and the contract will not be renewed after expiration. JD.com’s official announcement said that the reason for stopping C2C business is to curb fakes, and closing Paipai is also an individual measure for JD.com to reduce the situation of order brushing. Although JD.com said that the main reason for closing Paipai was because the sale of counterfeits could not be controlled, the actual reason was that JD.com had no intention of C2C business at all and focused on maintaining its own advantages to compete with Tmall.

2. Most O2Os in car washes go out

From the merger of Ganjiyi Car Wash and Guagua Car Wash to the closing of door-to-door car wash and Kungfu Car Wash, the door-to-door car wash business, which was once regarded as the entrance to the automotive aftermarket, is in a situation of "dead across the board". Recently, another car wash O2O "I love car wash" went bankrupt. Compared with the previous companies that could transform or merge, I love car wash quietly closed after the capital chain broke and there was no hope of taking over: there was no statement, and there was no formal company dissolution meeting. CEO Li Dongjin quietly disbanded the company's QQ group, discontinued the commonly used mobile phone number, leaving more than 2 million yuan in debt. I Love Car Washing was in a period of rapid expansion at the beginning of the year, and its movements were slow and unraveled. After the car wash boom in May, I Love Car Washing, who was already behind, was still seeking independent financing, and missed the acquisition intentions of many companies, so that no one took over the final zero-yuan transfer.

3. P2P runs into a wind

On September 1, 2015, Shenzhen platform Guoxiang Capital was suspected of illegally absorbing public deposits, and the amount involved may reach 800 million yuan. 22 people including the legal representative of the platform were criminally detained by the police. On September 7, Shenzhen’s well-known P2P platform Finance Institute was investigated by Shenzhen’s economic investigation department, and several senior executives were taken away by the police. The report said that the incident of self-financing due to the platform’s issuance of fake bids and funds flowing to stock financing business was exposed. On November 6, Yingu Wealth Branch was seized, and the chairman of Ningbo Rongxin lost contact in October. Xinliyuan, which was established for only three months in November, ran away. It was strange that the person in charge had a problem with the operational thinking, led to shareholders' withdrawal and bad debts. There have always been cyclical factors for hiring. The product term is mostly concentrated and expires at the end of the year, and the end of the year is approaching. The difficulty in collecting loans may lead to the P2P platform ushering in the "life and death disaster" at the end of the year at the end of the year.

4. The giants intervene in the city and lose their defense

Lanting Jishi said it was rumored to have resigned on a large scale and only paid a basic salary for three months. Lantingjishi, the first foreign trade e-commerce stock in China, is in trouble. The investigation found that not only did the company's employees leave in large numbers, but the conflicts with its suppliers are also intensifying. Several Lanting Jishi suppliers reported to Beijing Business Daily reporters yesterday that Lanting Jishi often owed suppliers money. Extra-long payment periods and charging fees for various names have always been a long-standing problem in the retail industry, and even caused disputes between supermarkets and suppliers. In fact, these situations are related to giants Alibaba and JD.com, that is, e-commerce giants are involved in the field and related vertical e-commerce entrepreneurial projects are eliminated. Previously, the state also severely punished the supermarket involved.

5. Fund chain break

Yimutian fired a large-scale dismissal of sales staff on the evening of Friday (August 28), with the reason for dismissal of "seriously violating the company's rules and regulations." Later, the same colleague received a notice of layoffs. Although a unified email notification was issued for the reasons for the layoffs, according to different employees, the reasons for being opened were different. Some employees even revealed that some shareholders of Yimutian have withdrawn their capital chain and cannot keep up, so they can only choose to lay off employees.

6. Not enough to make ends meet

At the beginning of 2015, Hongxing Macalline E-commerce is expected to leave only about 30 employees. Except for the independent group buying of Hongmei E-commerce Xingyijia, the other departments have made "big moves": only one person is left in the operation department; two to three people are left in the investment department; 50% of the technical department lay off employees, and the director is laid off; and only one person is left in the marketing department. "Multiple people at the director and manager level have either left before or were laid off at the end of the year." The above-mentioned person pointed out that after this round of reshuffle, the entire e-commerce team will drop from about 100 to 30. "Laid off employees on the eve of the Spring Festival, 'slimming' for the company, saving expenses and costs, and may prepare for the overall listing of the group next year." The laid off employees revealed their speculation. They further analyzed that Red Star Macalline's e-commerce business has invested heavily, but few gains are the main factor in its strategic layoffs.

7. Real estate e-commerce is in recession

On October 10, 2015, hundreds of fired employees from real estate website Soufang gathered in front of Soufang's office buildings in Beijing and Shanghai to protest Soufang's violent layoffs and to ask Soufang.com for an explanation. The layoffs of Soufang started from September 28. At that time, hundreds of agents from Soufang received dismissal text messages in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and other places. The text messages showed that the employee had contract fraud during his tenure on Soufang.com, and was dismissed after investigation. The order brushing behavior is just the fuse for the layoffs in this search. The more important reason is that Soufang's financial statements are difficult to improve. In order to prevent Wall Street investors from voting with their feet, they use layoffs to beautify the statements and conceal the setbacks in the transformation. The transformation of Soufang is not easy. Since Soufang entered the brokerage business in a large scale, its relationship with offline intermediary companies has continued to deteriorate. The traditional sources of income have gradually shrunk due to intermediary boycotts. It is difficult for new businesses to bring considerable income to the company in a short period of time, and the entire real estate sales industry is also under downward pressure.

8. The founder is eliminated

Lefeng.com was acquired by Vipshop for US$112.5 million on February 14, 2014, which holds 75% of the shares, becoming a well-known shareholder of the company and achieving control. But life after marriage is not very easy. Wang Licheng, CEO of the original Lefeng.com, was replaced by Zhang Jing, general manager of Vipshop Beijing Branch. Public information on layoffs by Lefeng.com shows that after Vipshop took over Lefeng.com, multiple executive positions have changed, involving finance, human resources and other aspects. Regarding the rumors that "laid off employees" and "contract renewal is only June" revealed by old employees on the Internet, relevant persons from Lefeng.com said that there is no layoff at present, and the contract is currently signed for 3 years.

9. Light luxury transformation is difficult

In February 2015, Shangpin.com was involved in a well-known layoff storm since the founding of the brand, and the number of layoffs has exceeded 200. This is not the first time that Shangpin.com has laid off employees on a large scale. After losing capital favor, Shangpin.com has transformed into a fashionable and light luxury position since 2013. It is no longer a traditional luxury e-commerce company. However, the vitality of luxury e-commerce that has taken the narrow route has become more fragile. It has only been two years since Shangpin.com's large-scale layoffs were made. According to a person familiar with the matter, Shangpin.com has made another large-scale personnel adjustment, reducing the number of employees from more than 400 to more than 100. For this reason, Shangpin.com issued a statement stating that Shangpin.com currently has more than 450 employees, which is not the "reduced to more than 100" mentioned in the report. The company's core executives and middle-level backbone teams are normal and stable, and the company's operations are in an orderly manner. In the statement, Shangpin.com admitted that the team had made local optimizations and adjustments, but emphasized that this was a normal behavior of the company's operations.

10. Strategic mistakes

Yidao Automobile announced that it would lay off more than 100 employees. All employees of the overseas business department, which was established less than a year ago, and the Yidao Shuttle Department, which was established in January, were dissolved. This major layoff affected many executives with positions of general manager and deputy general manager, which can be regarded as a major incident in Yidao Automobile's earthquake magnitude. Yidao layoffs on employees On June 20, 2015, Yidao Car posted on Weibo in the evening, responding to rumors of layoffs. Yidao said that the report on the "Yidao Earthquake" was seriously untrue, and the so-called layoffs were the normal flow of personnel in the company's business. Yidao Automobile has a low market share. The first priority after financing is to acquire new users and attract back users who have been lost, but now it is too late. The three-legged pattern of Didi, Shenzhou and Uber has been decided, and there are few new users of special car in the market. At this time, Yidao uses car to burn money to grab users can only be a "food and clothing".

Gong Wenxiang, an expert on Weibo e-commerce and founder of Shenzhen Electric Shock E-Commerce Co., Ltd., commented on the inspiration obtained from the above failure cases?

1.c2c is already a declining e-commerce model. This trend can be seen from the closure of Paipai. From the individual to the personal e-commerce model, it is more suitable for micro e-commerce and social e-commerce.

The main models of e-commerce are now: c2c, B2C, B2B, micro-e-commerce, and life services o2o mobile e-commerce:

(1) B2C is a trend of replacing the c2c model, just as offline is the shopmall model instead of the collective market model;

(2) c2c is the old e-commerce model of the old generation, and it is declining. Paipai withdraws and c2c Taobao has limited development;

(3) B2B and cross-border are being valued and in full swing; it is not necessary to have problems with Yimutian and Lanting, it is a problem with their company's own operations;

(4) Currently, the most popular ones that are concerned are mobile e-commerce and micro-commerce;

(5) Life services o2o e-commerce and Internet finance are in a mixed stage;

2. In 2015, there were several e-commerce models that were controversial and prone to problems, such as the P2P e-commerce model and the o2o e-commerce model. After experiencing the baptism of ice and fire in 2015, the O2O model and the p2p model were very popular in the first half of the year. A large number of such projects received financing, but a large number of such models went bankrupt in the second half of the year. As for the inventory of Paidai, it can be seen that the industries of these two e-commerce models will be much more rational in 2016;

3. The e-commerceization of traditional enterprises is still on the road of trial and error. In addition to the setbacks of the e-commerceization of Red Star Macalline mentioned above, there is still a long way to go whether it is Wanda E-commerce or Suning E-commerce such as traditional enterprises.

4. From the perspective of e-commerce: According to the above inventory, luxury goods e-commerce (Shangpin), automobile e-commerce e-commerce (Yidao Car), real estate product e-commerce (Soufang.com), etc. have all encountered major setbacks and are relatively difficult to do in e-commerce. E-commerce entrepreneurs still need to be cautious.

With the development of e-commerce in 2015, categories such as agricultural products e-commerce, cosmetics and health products micro-commerce have made great progress.

5. From the above inventory, e-commerce with excessive capital operation is prone to problems, such as Lanting Jishi, Yimutian, Lefeng.com, etc., which are all negative results of capital operation leading entrepreneurship operations. This reminds e-commerce entrepreneurs to handle the relationship between e-commerce entrepreneurship and capital well, and not to lose the entrepreneurship dominance in order to blindly raise well-known funds and drag the company into the abyss;

This is a list of the top 10 failures of e-commerce, and e-commerce entrepreneurs can learn from the lessons of failure. But overall, the overall trend of e-commerce is good. After seeing so many negative things, don’t be too pessimistic. You should optimistically look at the good trends of e-commerce development.

Lao Gao Crown Club

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