"The company headquarters informed us to withdraw from the station at the end of October, and sent someone to talk with us on November 2, only to make up the basic salary of half a month." Li Qian, an employee of Fushun Station, told China Youth Daily. 24. The basic salary of employees in Fushun Station is 1400 yuan, and 700 yuan in half a month. For the 700 yuan, half of the 14 employees signed a resignation agreement in three days.
24 coupon is a group buying website launched by Beijing Hongweibo Culture and Art Co., Ltd. According to its official website, in more than 200 cities across the country, it provides the best value and latest fashion consumption services in the same city 24 hours a day, covering restaurants, theaters, bars, hair and body beauty, KTV, SPA, nightclubs, outdoor sports, tourism, sports events, concerts, fitness and other fields.
Wang, an employee of Fushun Station, introduced that the 24 coupon Fushun Station opened in April and went online in June. Although its performance is rising, it has never achieved a break even. Their average salary is about 2500 yuan when the base salary is added with performance and subsidies.
"The company said that if it did not sign a separation agreement, it would not get the salary in October, but we still have to fight against this unequal separation agreement," said Li Qian.
Fushun Station is just a microcosm of many stations with 24 tickets.
It is reported that the Huai'an Station of 24 coupon group buying network was empty overnight, and there are still millions of merchants whose accounts have not been settled, involving hundreds of thousands of yuan. Many cooperative businesses come to ask for money. At present, the police have been involved in the investigation.
In fact, 24 vouchers began to adjust the staff structure at the end of September. At present, it has reduced its staff from 6000 to 5000.
Group buying bogged down
A resigned middle manager of a group buying website said that it was lucky that he didn't work at the group buying website early, otherwise he would have to drink the wind from the west if he was fired.
Gaopeng was jointly funded by Tencent and Groupon, the largest group buying company in the United States, and was deeply involved in the trust storm of fake lottery at the beginning. In October, on Gaopeng Internet, the group purchase price of a Tissot watch was 690 yuan, which was lower than a quarter of the market price of this Tissot watch. But then some consumers complained about the poor quality of the watch, which was suspected of being fake.
On November 4, Tissot China said that all the Tissot watches that consumers bought from Groupon for inspection were fake. Gaopeng made a statement on November 7, accusing the supplier Tianjin Jinsan Commerce and Trade Co., Ltd. of "using false agency qualification information", and admitting that the quality inspection personnel were negligent in complying with the inspection process of the merchants. Gaopeng said that in addition to full refund, consumers who have paid but have not received the form will receive 200 yuan in cash compensation; Consumers who have received and returned watches will receive 400 yuan in cash compensation.
As of September 30, Gaopeng had a net loss of $46.45 million, and its revenue in the same period was only $2.14 million. Previously, Gaopeng had cut 13 sub stations in a month.
According to the data of Yitao.com, the turnover of China's group purchase market in October fell by 11% month on month compared with September, and the total turnover of physical commodity groups and life service groups was only the same as that in June.
According to the Observation Report on Group Buying Consumption in China in the Third Quarter of 2011 released by the group buying navigation website Group 800, there are 754 group buying websites that cannot be opened or have been transformed from group buying. Among them, 9% of the websites have not been updated for more than a month, and 5% of the websites have closed the group buying business for reasons such as revision and internal adjustment.
According to the Census Data Bulletin of National Group Buying Websites, by the end of October 2011, 1483 group buying websites nationwide had closed or withdrawn from the group buying market in the fierce competition, of which 456 were closed in October alone.
According to the monitoring data released by Yitao.com, as of the end of October, more than 20% (20.5%) of the group buying websites in China had not updated their products in the past month, and more than 1000 of the more than 5000 group buying websites in China either stopped updating, or revised or closed their websites.
More worrisome is that VC no longer favors Groupon. com. Lashou, one of the top five group buying websites in China, is ready to go public for financing, but the prospect is not optimistic at present.
On November 8, the relevant documents submitted by Lashou to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showed that the company would issue 5356990 American Depositary Shares (ADS), which is equivalent to 36 ordinary shares, with an issue price range of $13 to $15. At the highest price of $15, Lashou can raise up to $80 million. According to the plan previously announced by Lashou, the company should be listed on NASDAQ on November 14.
On November 10, Tu Hongchuan, the general manager of Plateau Capital Venture Capital, disclosed on Sina Weibo that the IPO of Lashou had been canceled, according to the investment bankers on Wall Street. On November 14, Lashou failed to list as scheduled.
According to the financial report, the half year loss of Lashou Online reached 391 million yuan, 6.8 times the net income of the same period. The insiders believe that the cash flow of Lashou is difficult to sustain for a year due to such money burning speed.
Non independent group buying websites have also dragged down the parent company.
On November 11, Renren (Renren and Nuomi under Renren) released its financial report for the third quarter of 2011, and its Nuomi website suffered a huge loss, which had a huge impact on the net profit of Renren.
Renren disclosed in its quarterly report that in the third quarter of 2011, Nuomi.com had a total revenue of 1.7 million US dollars, revenue costs of 141000 US dollars, and operating expenses of 8.1 million US dollars. In this quarter, Nuomi.com's two expenses totaled 8.241 million US dollars, and Nuomi.com suffered an operating loss of 6.541 million US dollars. The revenue of Nuomi.com in the first quarter and the second quarter of 2011 was $0.9 million and $1.1 million respectively.
Feng Xiaohai, CEO of Manzuo.com, said in an interview with the China Youth Daily that the larger group buying websites wanted to continue to raise funds from private placement, but there were not many people who could accept the offer, and once the financial situation appeared, "they would be very crazy about layoffs".
Crazy expansion is too absurd
Lawyer Zhao Zhanzhu once took over labor arbitration cases caused by layoffs in several group buying companies, including Wowotuan, Tuobao.com and Gaopeng.
Zhao Zhan said that he acted as an agent in the labor arbitration case of the employees of Ordos Branch of Wowo Group. Three months after the establishment of Ordos Branch of Wowo Group, there was no single list, but the employees' salaries were still paid.
"Gaopeng and Tuanbao have hundreds of branches nationwide, and those third and fourth tier cities only have two or three orders in a quarter."
Group buying websites are planting flags all over the country in order to get financing from investors under the guise of hundreds of branches. Zhao Zhan said that the crazy expansion of group buying websites was too outrageous to take into account the market acceptance.
"The Suzhou branch of a group buying website is in the best office building in the city center, working in the same building with banks and oil companies. How much is its gross profit rate? How dare you rent such an expensive office space?" Feng Xiaohai said that some group buying websites spend a lot of money on investors, burying the curse of blind expansion.
"The whole group buying industry has a huge bubble and is badly done," said Fang Xingdong, founder of Blog and chairman of Internet Laboratory.
Group buying websites are too eager for quick success and instant benefit, and exceed the growth law of enterprises. Today's major Internet companies have gone through ten or eight years of development to form a scale. From zero to thousands of people, the group buying website has experienced less than a year, and it is difficult to bear such "expansion" in management and finance.
"The group buying website has turned a marathon into a 100 meter sprint," said Fang Xingdong.
It is only a matter of time before the bubble bursts, and whoever has more money will have more life. Group buying grew savagely, and venture capital contributed a lot. "These venture capitalists are rushing out, chasing up and killing down like investors, not comparing with who can vote accurately, but who can vote ruthlessly." Fang Xingdong said, "Group buying cannot become the mainstream consumption model and normal business model." Fang Xingdong said that specific commodities are suitable for the discount promotion model of group buying. "Group buying websites will gradually shrink, and inflection points have emerged. 2012 is the year of group buying contraction."
Feng Po, an analyst with China Investment Group, said that after June this year, in addition to strategic investors, professional investment institutions have stopped investing in group buying.
Group buying websites that lack funds have to cut costs to survive. The two major costs of group buying websites are advertising and manpower. Feng Po said that compared with the overwhelming number of advertisements in the past few months, the number of group purchase websites that can be seen now is greatly reduced; The news of layoffs and withdrawals from group buying websites is endless.
Group buying is to make money in the process of helping merchants expand their business and marketing. "But there is disorderly competition among the group buying industry in China. Every business contacts different group buying websites. Group buying websites are free and even pay businesses to promote, which makes many businesses unbalanced." Feng Xiaohai said that helping businesses promote products and services has costs, but the fierce group buying competition makes businesses have a vicious circle of "no money" mentality, Finally, it broke the rules of the whole market.
Feng Xiaohai believes that once there is a large-scale layoff of group buying websites and they default on payment for goods, it will cause severe supervision by the national regulatory authorities, which will increase the operating costs and affect the entire industry.
Where is the group purchase route
According to the data of Yitao.com, from June to October of this year, the proportion of group purchase of physical goods by consumers continued to increase, and in October of this year, it exceeded 50% of the total market consumption for the first time, reaching 52.75%. However, the market share of group purchase of life services such as catering services, travel tickets, entertainment and leisure continued to decline.
Wang Tingting, an analyst at iResearch, said that in the e-commerce industry, group buying is a high cost operation mode, with a lot of money spent on manpower and advertising, but little income.
The rise of group buying in kind is not a good omen. Wang Tingting said that the direct competitors of group buying in kind are B2C enterprises such as Jingdong Mall and Dangdang. com. These enterprises are large in scale and rich in funds. They have fully entered the upstream of the supply chain and the distribution system. Group buying websites are difficult to compete with them. Since group buying does not involve warehousing, logistics and distribution, it is a "light" mode compared with the traditional e-commerce mode. Only by focusing on catering, beauty salons and other local service industries can we go out of the group buying characteristics in a down-to-earth manner.
Wang Tingting believes that the contribution of Chinese group buying websites is to cultivate the market and users. The group buying market has become mature, and consumers have increasingly recognized this consumption model. Now is the time for group buying websites to return to rationality, from investment driven to consumption driven.
Feng Xiaohai said that, according to local conditions, the local service developed cities, even if the city is small, can also develop group buying; Some economically developed cities, with scattered urban areas, are not necessarily suitable for group buying. In general, group buying is still a good model.
He believes that group buying should deepen the cooperation with merchants in marketing, provide solutions to merchants, and stabilize the turnover, rather than running around in various cities. By reducing salaries, optimizing services, reducing costs and increasing revenues, Manzuo's losses are decreasing. "It is expected that it will break even in January 2012," said Feng Xiaohai.
Although Manzuo.com is also actively looking for the next round of venture capital, Feng Xiaohai stressed, "Don't rely on venture capital blood transfusion. If the enterprise makes profits, it will have the hope of survival."
Article from: http://news.sohu.com/20111124/n326681810.shtml
