Source: Venture State
Every time, I take a step ahead of others. Author Zhao Xiaoxiao
Edit Guanju
Source Konvy
Huang Qinggui was only 22 years old when he started his first business. He used his tens of thousands of yuan to open a clothing store on Taobao. The annual sales reached over 10 million yuan. After the store began to lose money, Huang Qinggui made up his mind to leave Beijing to start his business in Thailand.
"But it was strange to see Thailand at that time," said Huang Qinggui. Twelve years ago, very few people went to Southeast Asia to start businesses, let alone Thailand, where the e-commerce market was zero, there was no infrastructure, no talent, and the market size of the relatively easy to do field was only 5% of the domestic market.
After careful calculation, he came to the conclusion that the failure rate of clothing is 99%, and selling electronic products needs to reduce inventory and money. The online beauty e-commerce that no one does has become a good breakthrough.
In order to save costs and improve efficiency, Huang Qinggui first built the website in China, and his brother flew to Thailand to fix the company framework. In 2012, Konvy and Lazada went online in the same year, positioned the beauty e-commerce platform, and operated and sold cosmetics of third-party brands. In 2015, Huang Qinggui closed domestic projects and flew to Thailand, ready to "challenge the limits of growth" again.
founder Huang Qinggui After waiting patiently for 10 years, Thailand's e-commerce market has just become hot. In 2022, Huang Qinggui went to the capital market for the first time and got an investment when the financing environment was very poor. At the beginning of this year, he got a new investment of 11 million dollars. In addition to two Southeast Asian institutions, the investors are Alibaba International.
Huang Qinggui was one of the first Chinese entrepreneurs in Thailand and the first e-commerce platform to do vertical business in Thailand. He survived the first 10 years by borrowing money and faith, but did not stop the company's growth. After e-commerce accelerated its penetration in Southeast Asia, Konvy's accumulated advantages were revealed:
In the past three years, the company's revenue has doubled to tens of millions of dollars, becoming the first beauty e-commerce platform in Thailand, and the only e-commerce platform to survive in addition to Lazada and Shopee.
Today, Konvy has more than 1000 beauty brands from all over the world and Thailand. The most important thing that can reflect the growth value of the platform is that it has been found by many Chinese head beauty brands.
Gap: Beijing and Thailand
Huang Qinggui is a native of Shantou, Guangdong Province. He is open, confident and has a radical side. His schooling experience spans four countries in Asia and North America. He has been to Thailand, the United States, and Taiwan, China. He studied business administration and international trade in the United States after completing college.
His first job after graduation was as a sales management trainee at General Electric in the United States. Huang Qinggui made friends everywhere to promote products, thus accumulating friends from different countries and cultural backgrounds.
This gave him the opportunity to join Guofeng, a new Chinese lifestyle platform, to participate in the research and sales of intangible cultural heritage products, and to increase the daily orders of Guofeng from zero to several hundred under zero budget, becoming the CMO of Guofeng in his twenties.
Later, he began to start his own business.
From serving as the president of the student union in the university, to doing sales after graduation, and then to CMO of Guofeng. com, Huang Qinggui had a smooth journey. When Huang Qinggui left the United States in 2009, the local e-commerce had already transferred from PC to mobile phone. At the same time, Taobao was on the rise, and JD was stepping up its transformation into e-commerce. Every day, a group of people gathered in cafes to talk about e-commerce projects.
"I know e-commerce, know technology, and know marketing methods. I might as well give it a try when the opportunity is there." He thought of everything simply, "Do things well."
In the two years when Taobao was the hottest brand, there were seven grid, split silk, Fanke and other clothing brands in the industry. Huang Qinggui's clothing brand once became the head of the single category of Jingdong and Tmall. The continuous growth ended in negligence in calculation. The gross profit margin of 35% was far less than the cost of marketing. In addition to labor and logistics costs, the company did not make a profit from sales of more than 10 million yuan per year.
When I looked at the Thai market, Huang Qinggui was good at calculating, "All the efforts in the wrong direction were in vain."
The most familiar clothing field has the most problems. There is no supply chain, the brand depends on agents, the gross profit rate is only 20%, and the return rate is more than 15%. The biggest problem is that "even if the gross profit rate reaches 60%, it will still lose." And the best electronic products have welcomed the strongest competitor, Lazada, ready to go online.
When investigating the beauty field, Huang Qinggui's thinking became clear.
For one thing, no one does the beauty website platform. Second, in Southeast Asia at that time, the cosmetics market in Thailand grew fastest. Third, the profit margin of beauty products is about 30%, which means that the profitability is high. From the consumer side, Thai women love beauty and makeup, and "Thai makeup" has become a local feature, so the consumption of beauty products is large.
"It can be done," said Huang Qinggui.
After the domestic clothing business never turned around, Huang Qinggui stopped the domestic project and flew to Thailand. Everything started from scratch. What he wants to do is to educate the market so that consumers can buy cosmetics online and believe that online and offline products are the same, but online prices are cheaper; Convince them to make online payment by transferring money through ATM, and the products are mailed home.
In the situation of zero e-commerce in Thailand at that time, the first step alone was difficult enough. Just as there was no trading volume when Taobao was first launched, the popularity of Taobao's online auction was created by the group of seven Taobao founders, which lasted for a period of time.
Huang Qinggui doesn't have a group of seven people. He only has hundreds of thousands of yuan saved when he opened Taobao stores in China. If you look for someone to set up a website backstage in Thailand, the cost will be 2-3 times higher than that in China. At least it will cost several million yuan to go out. But the problem is that you can only do 50 million yuan business, and the market size is so large. In addition to various costs, hundreds of thousands are not enough.
"It's strange to see Thailand after doing e-commerce in Beijing," said Huang Qinggui.
All costs first. Referring to the model of Jumeiyoupin and Lefeng.com at that time, Huang Qinggui first set up the backstage in China, and his brother flew to Thailand to complete the company's infrastructure. After arriving in Thailand, the team mainly recruited college students with the lowest cost, and then trained one by one to try to reduce the cost one by one.
Huang Qinggui also admitted that it is much more difficult to "do e-commerce" in Thailand without e-commerce environment than he knew. "It's hard to do it," said Huang Qinggui.
There is no chance offline. He can't beat Watsons, who has been in Thailand for more than ten years, and he doesn't have enough money to open an offline store
Success: waited for 10 years
The first mode of exploration is group buying.
Huang Qinggui cooperates with Groupon and other group buying websites to encourage consumers to buy discount coupons for group buying on Konvy and then go offline. After the discount, the commodity price can be 40% cheaper than offline, and even have the opportunity to buy a MAC lipstick for one dollar.
The beauty group purchase model originated from JumeiYoupin, which is the pioneer of the "cosmetics group purchase" model, mainly using the leftovers from the sinking market as clearance discounts. In Thailand, beauty group buying is also a new business model, but it is difficult to be as big as China because of the resistance of the brand. Secondly, the local beauty market does not have much tail stock to clear.
The company ushered in its first transformation - from group purchase to shopping mall, to directly connect with the brand side, to build a pure retail platform, which tests the ability of the team more than group purchase. Konvy operates on its own from the supply chain, marketing and channels, so that it can maintain its profits at about 40%, and the company will become large-scale as soon as possible.
In 2015, Thailand's e-commerce market ushered in the mobile era after several years of rapid development. This is five years later than China and nine years later than the United States. Huang Qinggui took advantage of the opportunity to switch to the mobile terminal and launched his own app, which was synchronized with Lazada again and was the only two e-commerce platforms that had an app terminal at that time.
The change cycle of the market is unpredictable, and a good environment and market will not always exist. If a company seizes the opportunity of a change and allows itself to adapt quickly, it may become a giant in the industry.
In 2021, TikTok Shop will be launched in Indonesia, and later Shopee will become the largest e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, followed by Lazada. Traditional big brands will be launched online, and local emerging brands will continue to emerge. The e-commerce market competition will become fierce, channels will change, customer acquisition costs will become expensive, and flow dividends will decline.
Huang Qinggui said goodbye to independent development, and took Konvy to settle in Shopee and Lazada, which was laid out in advance before TikTok Shop was launched in Thailand.
This is a test of a company's strength, because the establishment of a new channel requires the support of the supply chain, the decision of the boss, and the operation of the team, which also means greater risk. Live broadcast e-commerce is not as mature in Thailand as in China, and layout means high investment and high cost. So far, many local brands in Thailand still have some resistance to entering TikTok.
Huang Qinggui made a bold leap and got positive feedback.
After 10 years of establishment, Konvy will usher in the fastest development stage in 2022. The number of cooperative brands will exceed 1000 and the number of SKUs will exceed 20000, from small brands and emerging brands that used to account for a large proportion to multinational giants and international brands. The rapid growth of local brands in the past two years has become a new force on the Konvy platform.
In terms of sales volume, Konvy has become the No. 1 beauty brand in Shopee's sales volume for two consecutive years, and its popularity has been opened all at once, with partners ranging from the platform to the largest local commercial group. From the perspective of revenue scale and sales volume, Konvy has become the largest cosmetics e-commerce platform in Thailand.
In the past two years, many Chinese brands have also sought Huang Qinggui to open up the Thai market. He is relatively conservative in choosing Chinese brands, with low average price, competitive products, and limited number of cooperation. The corresponding explanation is that Thailand's consumption level is low, there is no market for high priced products, and the platform operation costs are high, with large investment and risks.
"Our ability is limited now. It's great to be able to operate these Chinese brands well," said Huang Qinggui.
Capital assistance and own ideal
Doing e-commerce is a very expensive business. Without money, there are probably two kinds of results: one is to keep faith, the other is to be eliminated by the market. Huang Qinggui belongs to the former. Konvy has been in a state of slight loss for ten years since its establishment, and survived by borrowing money.
Huang Qinggui has two beliefs. One is the original intention of starting a business. In order to make money, he ranked second. The reason he persuaded others was, "If it is just for money, someone in the middle talks about buying, I can sell it and cash out directly." Second, the size and sales of the company have been growing, and the market is also growing. He firmly believes that there will be results after waiting.
In the past two years, the rapid growth of the company has both market factors and capital. With the rapid rise of Southeast Asia e-commerce market, capital has also begun to be active. They all want to catch up with this wave of e-commerce dividends as soon as possible on their way to look for projects and see projects.
In the past, Huang Qinggui would not take the initiative to find money. Now this idea has changed, because Konvy wants to reach markets outside Thailand, such as the Philippines, Malaysia, and Myanmar, which have more population than Thailand. The beauty market pattern is scattered, and no large players appear. "If it can be arranged in advance, it will become a new growth point of Konvy in three years," said Huang Qinggui.
Before the completion of round A financing in 2022, Huang Qinggui talked about more than 100 institutions. The reason for the slow connection is that the capital market of Thailand has been inactive in the past decade, and venture capital lacks understanding and trust in this market, so no one dare to take the first step.
"At that time, there were more than a dozen institutions willing to follow the investment, but none was willing to lead the investment," said Huang Qinggui.
Finally, Insignia Ventures Partners, a venture capital firm in Southeast Asia, whose boss is a Chinese, has the plot of fellow villagers, but is more optimistic about Huang Qinggui, who is stable, practical and has rich Internet experience; Strong strategic ability, leading the team to succeed in several strategic transformations without capital intervention; For more than ten years, we have only done one thing, and we are not anxious for quick success and instant benefit. Insignia Ventures Partners has invested in more than 100 projects, but Konvy is their first project in Thailand.
The A+round of financing just completed in January this year follows the company's strategy, so more emphasis is placed on the business and strategic direction of investors.
Huang Qinggui's goal this year is to open offline channels and do O2O. First, in order to supplement the user experience demand, and second, the company's online growth has slowed down, so it needs to find new growth channels as soon as possible. Third, in the next five years, Thailand's e-commerce market size is expected to grow by no more than 40%, which is difficult to achieve as high as China or the United States in a short time.
From the rise of the Internet in Thailand to the present, many international beauty brands have spent money on marketing and discount, but they have not achieved great growth, and even lost money.
"The best consumer experience in Thailand is offline." Huang Qinggui said, "There are six convenience stores 30 meters below my house, and there are nearly 20000 711 convenience stores in Thailand." Last year, Konvy's first offline store opened in Thailand. Thailand's retail market has high saturation and few good locations. Konvy's store opening speed is not so fast. In the early stage, Konvy started the "running mode".
Huang Qinggui wants to open offline stores in the Philippines next year. In the round of financing in early January, Huang Qinggui received money from Philippines retail giant Robinson Retail. Behind it is strategic thinking. Robinsons Retail's local retail business covers supermarkets, convenience stores, pharmacies, etc. Konvy wants to open stores locally, so efficiency and cost will be optimized.
Ali is also one of the investors in this round of investment. Its strategic thinking is very clear. Overseas business is now one of the core businesses of the company, Southeast Asia and South Korea are the key markets Ali focuses on. The former mainly expands its territory through investment, while the latter relies on quick sale.
Huang Qinggui is familiar with Alibaba's model and can understand Alibaba's overseas investment layout strategy through his Internet experience over the past 15 years. "With Alibaba platform, Konvy can develop faster."
In the eyes of investors, Konvy is a good target. It is rare for Chinese entrepreneurs in Thailand to achieve such a heavy e-commerce model; With good localization, Dayone is a global company; The company's predictable growth and sustainable model.
After the financing money was received, Huang Qinggui felt that the most valuable thing to spend was that he dared to find some practical senior managers and invited "expensive talents". The team capacity was becoming stronger and the number of people was increasing, with more than 300 people. The company is getting better, facing more challenges and competition, but more confident than before.
