Seeing that Shangtong Trading Company's B2C business was on the right track and operating with ease, Zhao Yi decided to add more business to them.
He talked about the future group e-commerce model and cross-border e-commerce model, so that the B2C e-commerce platform of Shangtong Trading Company can increase the development of these businesses.
The group-buying model is the business philosophy of Pinduoduo in the previous life, but Zhao Yi kicked out Pinduoduo’s cheap product model, added their social attributes, and emphasized that they can cooperate with Xinghan Technology Company, which will be of huge benefit to their development of group-buying business.
With a global social platform in hand, it is really unreasonable not to operate this business. Moreover, the group business is very attractive to consumers because they can purchase goods at a lower price.
Moreover, if you invite friends to join a group, you can not only increase the number of users on Xinghan Technology's social platform, but also increase the number of users on the e-commerce platform at a faster rate, which is much stronger than the current simple advertising and event promotion.
The reason why group buying is cheap is actually that the cost is saved on the backlog of goods. The number of orders can be determined according to the number of users joining the group, achieving zero inventory, and the cost of e-commerce platforms is very limited.
The past experience of cross-border e-commerce business shows that the profit margin is higher than the main business of B2C e-commerce. If done well, the profit margin can be as high as 60% or more, which is a huge profit.
However, not all companies can do cross-border e-commerce, which involves the entire service chain of procurement, logistics, payment, settlement, sales, and after-sales.
This may be very difficult for other companies, but for Shangtong Trading Company, it is very simple. They already have such business around the world, and adding cross-border e-commerce does not increase much cost.
It's just that under the existing B2C business, the B2C business limited to each country will be expanded to open up the barriers between various local B2C network platforms so that consumers can purchase goods across borders.
On current B2C e-commerce platforms, consumers from various countries can only purchase products that are available in their own country. If the products are not available in their own country, they will naturally not appear on that country’s e-commerce platform.
Cross-border e-commerce breaks through this restriction, allowing consumers to choose to purchase the goods they need from other countries. Except for the difference between consumers placing an order first and then purchasing it, and the current method of purchasing now and placing an order later, there is no difference in other aspects. .
The main reason why cross-border e-commerce is highly profitable is that it has zero inventory and no pressure on capital turnover. If users want to purchase cross-border goods, they must pay first, and then the platform will help organize the purchase and then deliver the goods through logistics.
For Shangtong Trading Company, since their B2C business covers the whole world, they do not even need to go to manufacturing companies to purchase. They can directly transfer the goods from the national warehouse where the goods are available and ship them, reducing organizational procurement costs.
Jia Siqi was also amazed when she heard Zhao Yi's ideas. Maybe as their e-commerce business becomes more and more mature, they will discover the business opportunities in it sooner or later, but they have not considered these now.
As a person who is proficient in trade management, she only needs to hear a general idea to basically know how much profit there is in it. This ability is much stronger than Zhao Yi.
Now that everything has been said, Zhao Yi no longer hesitates to say a few more words, so he talked about community shopping, offline group buying, takeout business, ride-hailing platforms, etc. in the future.
In fact, at last year's annual meeting, he had already listed some O2O application scenarios, but so far he has not launched a mature product. It's not because the technology is not good, but because they can't separate their efforts.
Because all his companies faced great expansion pressure last year, almost all their energy was focused on their main business. Naturally, they would pay less attention to a new business like this that does not know the size of the market.
Since Shangtong Trading Company has connected e-commerce businesses in various countries with its existing e-commerce platform, now it will face much less difficulties by adding several more businesses.
The reason why Zhao Yi said so much is not that Shangtong Trading Company must do it all at once. They can decide how to do it based on their actual situation and are not forced.
For example, judging from the current situation, the development of their group-sharing business is more convenient. Basically, this business can be launched in a short time without major changes, and social platforms can also actively cooperate with their work.
It will not be too late to launch cross-border e-commerce business later. Anyway, judging from the current level of e-commerce development, the business demand for cross-border e-commerce is not too large, and the time can be later.
Community shopping, on the other hand, can help Shangtong Trading Company better control offline physical resources. It is not particularly profitable. With high commissions like Meituan in the previous life, business will become increasingly difficult to do.
The purpose of Shangtong Trading Company is to connect the world with business. It is really to make it easy to do business in the world, rather than just caring about one's own interests and completely ignoring the life and death of others.
If we really want to do this, it will not be possible to become the world's largest trader. Various forces have already risen up to confront it, and it will even cause the intervention of various governments. It will definitely not be as peaceful as it is now.
If you want to do business happily around the world, you must balance your interests and properly take care of the interests of all parties, instead of just caring about your own interests. If it goes on for a long time, you will inevitably find it more and more difficult to move forward.
Even when competition was fiercest before, it was because other retail and supermarket companies had encroached on their interests that they had to fight back. When these retail and supermarket companies withdrew from their territory, they would no longer pursue the victory.
In fact, their current B2C e-commerce platform and the upcoming C2C e-commerce platform have also infringed on the interests of offline retailers. However, because they have not adopted a price war, they are still in peace for now.
But as time goes by, offline retailers will gradually find that business is getting worse and worse, which will inevitably cause some backlash and cause certain troubles to their operations.
The O2O business can bring more customers to offline retailers. Although there may be damage to interests overall, it can partially increase the business of some offline retailers, thereby achieving the purpose of internal differentiation and collapse.
At the same time, the development of these businesses means a higher number of employees, which will bring great benefits to the development of local jobs. If the local government wants to use some means, it also needs to consider the jobs of these employees.
Finally, Zhao Yirang Shangtong Trading Company can carry out fresh food cold chain business when conditions are mature. The profits in this area are also not low, but it is more difficult to do and the requirements are very high.
His Tianji Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Company and Baiwei Food Company have a strong demand for this service. Shangtong Trading Company also had a foundation in this area before, but it was more difficult to integrate regional services into global services.
At last year's annual meeting, Zhao Yi asked Shangtong Trading Company to consider marketizing their drone products and establishing a specialized company to operate in the field of civilian drones.
In fact, doing this business is not as easy as imagined. At least now, this drone company has not received many orders, and there are not many individual consumers.
On the contrary, film and television drama companies such as Qing Ning Entertainment Company have purchased a large number of high-end drone products, which are mainly used to shoot film and television dramas, eliminating the cost of using large aircraft.
The other is the agricultural field. Tianji Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Company and Baiwei Food Company have purchased a large number of agricultural drone products. Other domestic agricultural and animal husbandry companies are also making attempts in this area.
There are many reasons for this situation. First of all, the drone technology used by this company that specializes in drones is lower than the drone technology used by Shangtong Trading Company itself.
The drones used by Shangtong Trading Company use a large number of artificial intelligence technology, background scheduling technology, satellite communication technology, etc., and basically achieve the level of unmanned management.
Companies that specialize in drone products have adopted the path of the previous life, which requires human control. Viewing and operating on the central control platform are not unmanned.
The main reason for doing this is because drones with artificial intelligence actually have good military uses. If they are sold externally, they are likely to be used for militarized operations, which is not allowed by commercial trading companies.
And this is also due to the need for confidentiality. Although the drones used by Shangtong Trading Company use artificial intelligence and are highly unmanned, the outside world does not know clearly, and this information is also kept confidential.
Secondly, the price is relatively expensive. The price of any new technology will not be very low when it comes out. Even if the production cost of Shangtong Trading Company is very low, the price will not be reduced to the limit at the beginning.
Now the price of their drones starts at 50,000 yuan, and the prices vary depending on the function and size. The highest drone price even reaches 1 million yuan, which is not affordable for ordinary people.
Then there is the temporary low market acceptance. After half a year of preparation, Shangtong Trading Company only officially sold drones to the outside world in the second half of the year. It only took about half a year to fully plan.
In such a short period of time, it takes a lot of time to identify the market demand. In addition, as it is an emerging industry, many people do not know the specific uses of drones. This is the main reason that troubles the development of the market.
The current technical level of their drones is enough to meet the needs of most civilian markets, so technological castration is not a fatal problem.
The price is expensive only for individual consumers. If the market pain points are accurately identified, it can help enterprises save costs and improve efficiency. No matter how expensive it is, it is acceptable.
For example, the drone shooting system purchased by Qing Ning Entertainment Company costs up to 1 million yuan per unit, but compared to using helicopters directly, the price is still very cost-effective, and the cost of use is also much lower.
More importantly, in order to meet the high-altitude shooting needs of film and television companies, a lot of work has been done to optimize the shooting equipment and related software. The shooting results are much better than using helicopters.
Companies like Qing Ning Entertainment, which needs to shoot a large number of films every year, directly ordered 50 of these drone products, with a total price of 50 million yuan.
Domestic film and television companies saw that Qing Ning Entertainment was doing this, and the effect was indeed good, so they also placed orders to try it out. Although the total is only 20, it is still a good start.
In the field of agricultural drones, which have higher load requirements but lower requirements for other ancillary functions, the price is not that expensive. Each unit only costs about 100,000 yuan.
For example, Tianji Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Company and Baiwei Food Company found that after the trial, they found that work efficiency was indeed improved, so the first order was very large. Tianji Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Company placed an order of 10,000, and Baiwei Food Company placed an order of 10,000 yuan. 1 thousand orders.
As mentioned before, most of the land in the hands of Tianji Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Company is hilly land with undulating terrain. Although high-standard farmland has been established and mechanization can be moderated, the use of large machinery is still rare.
Not to mention the use of aircraft to spread pesticides and sow seeds in the air, which cannot be used at all. Drones just make up for this shortcoming. They are more flexible than agricultural aircraft and are very suitable for use in hilly areas.
Because they are all their own industries, Tianji Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Company can completely make the decision, so the first order is relatively large, while Baiwei Food Company mostly recommends farmers to use it, or leases it to farmers, and lacks autonomy. Much less.
In order to be suitable for the forest environment, the drone has added many special functions, such as automatic anti-collision function, and is also equipped with other ancillary hardware.
The state-owned agricultural and animal husbandry companies also followed the trend and purchased some, all wanting to see the actual use effect. If the effect is good, there will naturally be another order. If it is not good, there will be no further orders.
For a newly established company, being able to obtain orders of more than 1 billion yuan is already a good start. At least Shangtong Trading Company is very confident in the civilian drone market.
However, at the meeting, Zhao Yi said that their current price is too expensive, and it is basically impossible to enter the personal consumption field at this price.
In fact, individual consumers do not have high requirements for drones. As long as they can carry out aerial photography and can withstand strong winds, the overall configuration does not need to be so high-end.
According to the current market component prices, the cost of producing a personal consumption-grade drone is less than 1,000 yuan. In the future, as the industrial chain is further improved and the production scale is further expanded, the cost will be reduced by half.
In this era, drones do seem high-end, but to say that companies in other countries cannot produce them is to deceive oneself and others. If the price remains so high, other capital will definitely come in to grab a piece of the pie.
Perhaps in the enterprise-level market, due to the many additional functions, higher technical levels are required and higher prices can be maintained to a certain extent, but in the individual consumer market, competition is definitely much more intense.
Instead of letting other companies see that there is profit in it, it is better to take the initiative to lower the price of the product so that other companies feel that there is not much profit in it, so there will not be many companies coming in, and the intensity of competition will be much lower.
More importantly, Shangtong Trading Company must establish its absolute market position and establish its own brand image in the minds of consumers before other people's products enter the market.
Therefore, he hopes that Shangtong Trading Company can launch consumer-grade drone products with a price of less than 5,000 yuan, so that it can quickly occupy the consumer market.
Hearing what Zhao Yi said, Jia Siqi was relatively calm, because Zhao Yi could think of this, and Shangtong Trading Company had naturally thought of it and was implementing it.
According to Jia Siqi's report, the price of their personal consumer drones starts from 1,000 yuan, and they will be promoted to the market after the year, mainly to meet the needs of individual aerial photography enthusiasts.
In addition, they will also conduct a more refined market classification of enterprise-level products, prepare to launch drone products that meet the needs of various scenarios, and provide products at different price points to meet the needs of different enterprise users.
Last year, because we had too much time, all drones were made with the highest configuration, so the price was justifiable. For example, the drone products used by Qing Ning Entertainment Company were equipped with a photography system that cost more than the drone. itself much higher.
In fact, even professional-level shooting systems have different positioning requirements. For example, the images required for shooting movies and the images required for shooting TV series are not of the same level.
Moreover, there is a huge difference in the technical content of the shooting system itself. There is also a big difference in price between automatic capture systems with images and automatic capture systems without images.
There is also a big difference between the use of satellite signal transmission technology and the use of ordinary wireless transmission technology. The former can carry out ultra-long-distance control, while the latter will cause the drone to be lost if the distance is too far.
The current 2G+ network cannot meet the high-standard drone control requirements. Compared with the wireless communication system of the drone, the transmission rate is lower and the delay is higher.
Finally, he was more concerned about the development of the service industry of Shangtong Trading Company and urged them to increase their efforts in this regard and expand the service industry market space.
For example, they have now begun to promote their own tourism service industry. Although it is not clear how the market will perform, he believes that Shangtong Trading Company can do a good job in this area.
In addition, the development of the sports service industry is also very lagging behind in our country. In recent years, our country's economic development has mainly focused on industrial and agricultural development to meet the material consumption needs of the people.
In recent years, people have indeed paid more attention to the richness of material life, and their demand for spiritual consumption has been relatively low. They still just go to KTV to sing with relatives and friends.
After these years of development, people's material living standards have reached a certain level, and their material needs have been basically met, and they must have higher requirements for spiritual needs.
In the cultural field, Zhao Yi has already made a lot of arrangements, such as Tianwen Bookstore, Qingning Entertainment Company, etc., which have met the people's needs for cultural products to a certain extent.
But in the field of sports services, it is basically blank. Although in various news, we know what sports achievements the national team has achieved, it has little relevance to ordinary people.
Therefore, Shangtong Trading Company must do a good job in the sports service industry and integrate sports services into people's daily lives. At the same time, it must also increase support and services for domestic sports events and revitalize the entire domestic sports market.
He had handed over the relevant requirements and thoughts to Shangtong Trading Company before. This time, he mainly wanted to know how well they were preparing and what specific steps they had reached.
Doing this not only shows that they attach great importance to this, but also serves as a kind of supervision to prevent them from taking these things seriously.
Judging from the current situation, if we do not do a good job in this area in advance, we are likely to be occupied by foreign sports and cultural service giants. Faced with such a large market in our country, some people are already ready to make a move.
For a country that is committed to integrating into globalization, it is actually impossible to completely prohibit relevant companies from engaging in commercial activities in this area. At most, it only comes with some requirements.
The cultural and sports industry is not just about making money, it involves many deep-seated things, especially as our country becomes more and more powerful. Internal unity is even more critical. Fortresses are easiest to break from the inside. (End of chapter)