since August 9th, Beidian, a social e-commerce platform under Hangzhou Beibei Group, has been visited by hundreds of suppliers to ask for payment. According to incomplete statistics, at present, Beidian has accumulated more than RMB 41 million in arrears from suppliers.

From Taojiji to Beidian, social e-commerce incidents frequently occur. Is the once booming social e-commerce really going to be cool?

after Tongcheng Life, a community group buying platform, declared bankruptcy, social e-commerce also experienced a mine explosion. A few days ago, Enterprise Data Research Institute released the Report on Investment and Financing of Social E-commerce in China in Recent Ten Years. According to the data, social e-commerce financing in the past ten years was 44.116 billion yuan, with 362 cases. In 2115-2116, the financing of social e-commerce track blossomed everywhere, with 72 and 79 cases each year, respectively, which was in a rapid start stage. In 2117-2118, Pinduoduo, Xiaohongshu, Yunji, etc. competed for positions, and social e-commerce ushered in a period of rapid development.

It is worth noting that in the following years, social e-commerce gradually stepped out of the golden age, and short videos, live broadcasts and other modes emerged, devouring the dividends of the social e-commerce community. By 2121, there will only be four financing cases, and the total amount disclosed is about 2.16 billion yuan, of which "Weee!" Obtained financing of 1.98 billion yuan.

from the perspective of the employers behind social e-commerce, the enterprise survey data shows that Tencent, as a social giant, has made 14 shots in the social e-commerce track, and its "figure" is spread all over the head projects such as Pinduoduo, Xiaohongshu, Meilishuo, and ranks first with IDG Capital and Jingwei China.

Mo Daiqing, director and senior analyst of the online retail department of the e-commerce research center of NetEconomy & Society, said that Beidian adopted simple and rude marketing methods in the development process, but failed to establish its core competitiveness and was easily replaced. Therefore, the scale of Beidian has developed rapidly in the early stage, and suppliers, stores or users all enjoy dividends. However, when the social e-commerce dividend passed and the scale growth of Beidian could not rise, and the slow payment put pressure on the merchants, it would have a chain reaction, hindering their further development, and it would not be unexpected that there was a thunder, and eventually it might become a "abandonment".

Bao yuezhong, a special researcher at the research center for e-commerce of the network economy and society and chairman of Baum enterprise management consulting co., ltd, said: "from my recent observation of these social e-commerce and community e-commerce, I think the main problem is the business model design itself, and many of them regard some instrumental things as the essence of the business model, which is wrong. So I think the most fundamental thing is that they violate the basic business logic, blindly design some models and blindly expand.

Li Min, a special researcher at the E-commerce Research Center of NetEconomy and Social Security and a senior partner of Shanghai Hansheng Law Firm, said that the core of Beibei's mine explosion incident was that there was no clear business direction. Since its establishment, Beibei has been on the road of transformation, from mother-infant e-commerce to social e-commerce, to stock e-commerce, to today's new consumer brand Ximei. Beibei's real core competitiveness has not been determined, and the Group has always followed the market enthusiasm. In the process of continuous transformation, although the new brand has invested a lot of money, it still lags behind the top in the industry. The old brand has not yet made a profit or its initial profit has stagnated due to financial problems. No matter which transformation, Beibei has not found a suitable profit model and has been burning money for development. Nowadays, Beibei is betting on "Ximei", and the beauty industry is now in the Red Sea. If you want to seize market share, you need a lot of capital investment, and many transformations have led to insufficient funds. Net transmission (to be verified) Beidian incident exploded, because Beibei Group invested all its resources in Ximei, which led to the break of the capital chain, and Beibei could not pay the supplier's money, which never triggered a large-scale debt collection incident.

Lawyer Dong Yizhi, a special researcher at the Research Center for E-Commerce of NetEconomy Society and Shanghai Zhengce Law Firm, said that the reaction of a series of chain events in Beidian was because social e-commerce was really a slogan before, and then everyone subsidized by throwing money and then went to the market. Now, this thing can't be sustained, and the whole business model is still problematic.

Li Min said that if the Beidian incident is discussed purely from a legal perspective, there may be two legal issues involved:

1. Misappropriation of funds. Although Beidian belongs to Beibei Group, Hangzhou Beijia E-Commerce Co., Ltd. (the company affiliated to Beidian APP, hereinafter referred to as "Beijia Company") belongs to an independent legal entity, and the company's property should be independent of shareholders. If it is true that online transmission misappropriates Beidian's funds to support "Ximei", then it belongs to the parent company's misappropriation of independent subsidiary funds. In other words, shareholders misappropriate company funds, which may involve the denial of legal personality. Further, it is possible.

2. Debt settlement. Even through legal channels, suppliers may not be able to get full payment. Taking the road of litigation will definitely not avoid property preservation. On the one hand, the process of property preservation requires providing the property clues of the property preserver, but the merchants have limited property clues and do not know where the assets of the property preserver are. On the other hand, only Hangzhou Beijia Electronic Commerce Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Beijia"), which belongs to Beidian, can be preserved. Although Beijia is a subsidiary of Beibei Group, its company and legal person are independent, even if it goes bankrupt and liquidates, it will not implicate Beibei Group. The debts and contract disputes between merchants and Bejia can only be preserved for Bejia, but not for the parent company Beibei Group.

Lawyer Dong Yizhi of Shanghai Zhengce Law Firm, a special researcher of the Research Center for E-commerce of NetEconomy Society, also pointed out that the legal responsibility of Beidian is to bear the arrears of this supplier and the wages of its employees, and there may be a process of bankruptcy and liquidation. Including it may have a gambling problem with the previous founder and the previous limelight and PE.

Cao Lei, director of the Research Center for E-commerce of NetEconomy & Society, said: The decline of social e-commerce is mainly due to the reduction of platform subsidies. Social e-commerce users belong to price-sensitive groups, which are different from other e-commerce groups that value service quality and experience, and are likely to turn to other platforms because of price orientation. The decline of distribution-based social e-commerce does not mean that the whole social e-commerce is declining. Besides distribution types, there are also shopping-shopping-oriented social e-commerce represented by Pinduoduo, and shopping-guiding-oriented social e-commerce represented by rebate network and worth buying, which are still in full swing.

Li Min further pointed out the disadvantages of upstream and downstream of social e-commerce:

1. Upstream suppliers; Lack of core competitiveness

Upstream suppliers of social e-commerce have no core competitiveness. This is the core issue that led to the decline of social e-commerce platforms. With the rise of social e-commerce platform, the platform has not formed obvious advantages in categories, items, costs, prices and overall brand differences. At the same time, although the platform develops new products on its own, it often does not meet the market demand by launching more products, but constantly recruits more brands from the society. In the long run, consumers measure between different platforms, and after too many competing products, the attractiveness of the platform is greatly weakened.

2. Mid-stream platform: express delivery timeliness

As far as the social e-commerce platform itself is concerned, the delivery carrier of the e-commerce platform mainly relies on express delivery. The traditional express delivery takes three days, and the delivery experience is not as good as that of the self-built logistics system in JD.COM. Secondly, in terms of the efficiency of commodity distribution and the reach of commodities, social e-commerce is far less than live e-commerce and video e-commerce.

3. Downstream distributors: Only subsidy theory

Social e-commerce platform, the traffic depends on merchants, and this group of merchants often follows subsidies and has no loyalty. Once the platform subsidies drop, they will switch to other platforms.

If we see these problems clearly, it is inevitable that Beidian will transform into its own brand "Ximei", because the original business logic is no longer feasible. However, in the private brand, if the goods have no particularity, scarcity, high viscosity and high gross profit, both buyers and sellers will eventually fail, resulting in the explosion of Beibei Group.

In recent years, social e-commerce companies have been repeatedly punished for pyramid schemes because of multi-level distribution, "pulling people's heads" and other illegal issues, and the question of "original sin" of "biography" has never stopped. According to the "China Social E-commerce Compliance Research Report" released by the Network Economic and Social E-commerce Research Center in 2121, the TOP11 platforms ranked in the "Social E-commerce Controversial Network Public Opinion Ranking" are: global moment, good things, gathering, thousands of groups, global catchers, gathering goods, fish, peanut diaries, future markets, and gathering many good products; Platforms ranked 11-21 are: daily spell, onion overseas warehouse, darling family, Taoxiaopu, zebra member, shellfish shop, big V shop, pink elephant life, fragrance and love inventory; The platforms ranked 21-31 are: Yunpincang, Daren Store, Shuaibao, Miyuan APP, Chuchutui, Sudian, Wanse City, Honey Bud plus, Xituan and Chanchuang (under ACCESS Group).

according to the complaints received by the domestic online consumer mediation platform "Dianv Bao", the refund problem, product quality, online fraud, delivery problem, online sales of fake goods, false publicity and after-sales service are the main complaints of social e-commerce.

Zhuang Shuai, a special researcher at the research center of e-commerce of NetEconomy and Social Security and founder of Bailian Consulting, believes that with JD.COM, Pinduoduo, Meituan and Ali entering the field of social e-commerce and community group buying one after another, the early social e-commerce faces great competitive pressure. The comprehensive e-commerce platform will become the mainstream platform for social e-commerce and community group buying, and become a supplementary format for the retail industry.

Mo Daiqing also said that the Beidian incident indicates that the social e-commerce industry has entered a reshuffle period, and social e-commerce needs to find a suitable development model to enhance its "hematopoietic capacity". In this fierce competition, small and medium-sized social e-commerce companies are naturally unsustainable, and the "jungle law" leads to the survival of the fittest.

Bao Yuezhong further said that social e-commerce will become a retail form in the future, but I think this retail form needs to be organically integrated with store-to-store retail, including home-to-home retail, in order to play its best role. If we simply regard it as a retail form, from now on, let alone social e-commerce. Now we see that both store retail and e-commerce retail have begun to face difficulties. If this social retail relies on a relatively single retail form alone, this is also the future prospect is not optimistic, and it must be integrated.