Chou Wenbin: The Annual Growth Rate Of 500% Is Not A Myth.

This is a fast fish behind Taobao, with an annual growth rate of 500%.

In January of this year,

Chou Wenbin recalled the hardship of the early stage of entrepreneurship.

He admitted that

In early 2007, Chou Wenbin founded Bao Zun together with his former business partner. He had worked in HP, SUN and other companies, and he founded a "software company" which is a famous software company in the industry.

According to Chou Wenbin, at the end of 2006, he aimed at the coming moment of the new wave of e-commerce.

But at the beginning, Bao Zun broke through the twists and turns, and almost collapsed in the middle until Taobao met the Internet.

Today, one of the main business models of Bao Zun is to provide a package of e-commerce services to Taobao's world famous brand store or franchised store.

These include dozens of famous brands such as PHILPS, Lining, Haagen Dazs, HP, Hong, Mei, Revlon, kraft and Unilever.

"The competition in electronic commerce market has been red bayonet, and we have made a detour, which is another market -- the e-commerce service market, which can reach more than 200 billion in two to three years.

Our goal in the future is to build a Oteri J on Taobao.

Chou Wenbin seemed to be full of pride. This is his new kingdom.

The boat is small and good.

At the beginning, Bao Zun's idea was to segment the market and build an "employee buying platform". This mode has become popular in the United States, that is, employees of large companies will enjoy the price of their employees to buy their own products, while Bao Zun will provide a buying platform for these large enterprises, but this seemingly beautiful road will not get through.

"Our initial ideal pattern was to find ten companies to form an ecosystem, and they were open to each other, which means that the amount of employee purchases can be great."

Chou Wenbin described the grand blueprint that once appeared in his mind. "It sounds logical, but it is very difficult in concrete operation.

Because a big enterprise decides that the cycle of a thing is very long.

Probably when it gives you the whole business, you no longer exist. "

In fact, this is the easiest mistake for a start-up company to conceive of a business model that looks bright and promising. From the beginning, it longed for the most prestigious big client, but eventually it died in the long wait.

In the whole 2007, Chou Wenbin's biggest headache was the business model.

"We think very clearly, but we can not do it. By the end of 2007, in the face of the dry cash flow, I have been asking myself," how can we go? Although the market prospect of e-commerce is good, how can we make profits? "

He said.

However, all these troubles seemed to have been swept away by the end of 2007.

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At the end of this year, Bao Zun began to build an online flagship store for some of the big brands on Taobao mall, and the first big customer was PHILPS.

Po Zun's business model is to provide PHILPS with a one-stop e-business service and earn service fees on the Taobao Mall for its PHILPS stores and its online wholesalers.

Because PHILPS's flagship store is developing by leaps and bounds, some key customers such as HP, Mei, and Hong have started to come.

At the same time, Bao Zun became Taobao's recognized "Amoy partner", Taobao also began to introduce some 3C, clothing brand to Bao Zun.

For example, Bao Zun established an official Mall for Lining sporting goods company. Only 2 people in the mall took 2 weeks to build up the software system, which used the software developed by Bao Zun, including inventory management, warehousing and logistics management, e-commerce system platform and so on.

He told me that the annual income of PHILPS Taobao mall in 2008 was about 3 million, and that this year's brand store such as Lining and PHILPS has a revenue of 4. 5 million.

Real kungfu

Chou Wenbin defines treasure as "online retailer".

In his view, the retailer's world is made up of a series of details.

"The doorway is very deep, and it can not be seen from the surface. For example, if you enter any Taobao shop, you will see little difference from the shop page.

The biggest difference is in the background, such as activity design, customer service guidance and so on.

Chou Wenbin said, "what is the real skill of retailers? If an old customer enters a store, can you identify him immediately?

First of all, you need to know where he lives and what products he most likely to buy.

This will test whether you can immediately pfer a series of data, through analysis, to understand his preferences, purchasing power, and then active communication.

"For example, we saw customers buy some building materials before, which means that he may need home appliances because the decoration is over.

This is a logical relationship, and this logical relationship will increase the effective conversion rate of customers. "

He said.

In addition to powerful data analysis, the logistics level of online retailers is also the key to winning.

At present, the area of Bao Zun warehouse is 7500 square meters. At the end of this year, the storage area will be doubled.

"By the end of 2012, China's Internet active brands will account for 5%-15% of their total sales. When the total number of online sales exceeds 1 billion, the number of brands will exceed 100. This is a market with a total volume of more than 200 billion."

Chou Wenbin is obviously confident of the future.

In order to become more familiar with retailing, he began digging people from traditional retail and manufacturing industries.

The new employees come from new and old retail businesses such as Tesco, WAL-MART, Jingdong mall, and some other traditional manufacturing companies such as Anta and BBK.

Taobao partners

One day in October 2009, Chou Wenbin and his colleagues went to a meeting with their customers.

According to Chou Wenbin's words, "Alibaba's investment department sneaked into the meeting site, and they observed us in the dark.

At that time, we were talking about cooperation with customers and Taobao people. We also regarded the people of Alibaba investment department as customers.

After the meeting, the Alibaba investment department gave us a call and wanted to chat, and then things were quickly confirmed.

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Zhang Yong, head of Taobao CFO and Taobao mall, once said: "e-commerce service providers as an essential part of e-commerce ecosystem, reducing the threshold for brand enterprises to develop e-commerce."

Zeng Ming, vice president of Alibaba, said: "Taobao's platform strategy is to give full play to the strength of the group and give the most creative and personalized services to others. We provide the most basic and platform support."

As one of Taobao's partners, Bao Zun provides "personalized service" - "end to end" comprehensive operation.

With the gradual opening of Taobao, the boundaries of the new kingdom of Bao Zun will also be broader.

"However, in cooperation with Alibaba, what we value most is not only capital injection, but more importantly, regular strategic communication meetings. The senior group of Alibaba group and its companies are regularly communicating and communicating with each other to grasp the strategic direction."

Chou Wenbin said, "these are the most important things for a start-up company."

interview

Details determine success or failure.

Q: when you started your business in 2007, what opportunities do you think you have?

Chou Wenbin: the first wave of e-commerce in China was in 1999-2000 years, followed by the collapse of the Internet bubble. At that time, two problems could not be solved: payment and logistics.

After the appearance of "Alipay" in 2004, the payment problem was solved step by step.

In January 2007, when we started our business, we just caught up with the early stage of the second wave of e-commerce in China, that is, the awakening period, which is a good time to enter.

Now, you can see that China's e-commerce market has been very competitive. The main reason is that some e-commerce companies have adopted the Red Sea price war means, but the prospect of the entire market is very huge. The sales of those famous traditional brands from e-commerce account for 1%-3% of their total sales, and our goal is to make this figure 15% in three years.

Economic Observer: where is your starting point?

Chou Wenbin: we are e-commerce service providers plus retailers. The mode is different from the vertical B2C website. They first look for consumers, then use the crowd to negotiate with the brand, get the goods, and then give the profits to consumers.

And we are looking for big brands first and then crowds.

This is a small risk because big Brand Company have brand appeal first and there is no problem with stream of people.

Q: This is an era of platform for kings. Why didn't you go online shopping mall first, is it constrained by the bottleneck of capital?

Chou Wenbin: most of the e-commerce websites in China, or the whole Internet industry in China, are copying American models. The advantage is that they can enter the market in a faster way and are more easily accepted by the investment industry.

But our approach is different. What we are doing now is to create a new industry, and there is no object in the United States that can be fully referenced.

The US market is Amazon's largest and China's market is Taobao's dominance.

Of course, money is very important.

We don't like the way to make money before making money.

In this respect, we may not be the same as the usual practice of the traditional Internet industry. We should not burn the money to earn the traffic, then consider how to make profits.

It is not in line with our way of thinking that we should consider making money after a few years of smashing money. We operate our Internet Co like the traditional retail business. We need to make money from the beginning.

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Q: as a technology oriented company, how can you face the consumer directly? Where is your bottleneck?

Chou Wenbin: our blood is indeed the blood of a software company. This is why our business is developing so fast today, but the support of the whole system is still so strong.

But on the other hand, the traditional retail industry is a sample of our study.

For example, the details of WAL-MART determine the spirit of success or failure. It has precise rules for every detail.

What I highly admire is WAL-MART's three basic principles of service (ThreeBasicBeliefs): first, respect personal principles and strive to do the best; second, 10 feet rule (10-FootRule): any staff member must greet them within 10 feet (3 meters) away from customers; third, the sun fall principle (SundownRule): any request from employees or customers must be answered before sunset.

These are all things we need to learn. We have to inject traditional retailers' blood into our IT blood to complete the pformation.