Micro -League, difficult internal and external trapped

Author | Chen Tao

Source | Insight New Research Society

The first micro -League stock price, known as the Chinese e -commerce SaaS, has fallen from a high point in February last year and has declined all the way. As of July 28, 2022, the closed stock price has fallen to HK $ 4.3/share, compared with the 33.5 Hong Kong dollars/in early 2021/ Stocks have a decline of more than 87%.

We all know that as early as 2020, the micro -alliance caused a "deletion incident" due to poor management. The micro -League encountered a crisis of trust from the capital market and merchants. The entire network is talking about the large air outlet of digitalization. Instead, the stock price is still rising, and there is a lot of money in the capital market.

Then, the mule was always the original shape. With the start of the Internet platform "interconnection" and the digital dividend was divided by the giants. The outside world has begun to re -examine the business model that the Micro -League has worked hard since its establishment.

In the Overnight Wealth Weimeter Stock Bar, a large number of shareholders' complaints and shortcomings of the Micro League expressed the emotions of "anger" between the lines.

As a "industry brother" of Chinese e -commerce SaaS, the micro -alliance has gone out of the market for ten times a year. After touching the ceiling of the stock price, the glory of the high point is fleeting. The second growth curve was not available. This magical rise and fall made people can't help asking, what happened to the micro -League?

01 External trapped, "back thorn" from interconnection

The micro -alliance can become a "one brother in the industry", which is completely created by the times.

In 2013, WeChat, which was just launched for two years, launched the 5.0 version, which successively launched WeChat payment, service number and other functions, which aroused Taobao's alertness.

Taobao took the lead and refused to share the link to WeChat. In response, WeChat also quickly shielded all Taobao links.

At this point, the two major ecology of WeChat and Taobao have been separated by a high wall. The merchants complained that they had a large number of fans on WeChat, but they could not jump from WeChat to Taobao transactions.

Focusing on traffic handling and operation, the opportunity of Micro -League is here, focusing on helping merchants to build their own shop applets in the WeChat ecosystem, and providing e -commerce SaaS services. The micro -League has eaten this wave of dividends and harvested Tencent "Father's Father's Father's Father Love the care of gangs.

However, the impact of the new crown epidemic in the past two years has amplified and exposed to issues such as resource distribution and market competition between the platforms of the Internet industry due to data occlusion. Under the complex context of the continuous affected by the event, how to provide a better business environment for enterprises, promote the steady and orderly development of the real economy, and become one of the key tasks of the country. This has also opened the prelude to the Internet antitrust rectification work. Essence

In November last year, WeChat issued an announcement saying that the external link management measures will be adjusted today, and the access to external links will be opened directly in the point -to -point chat, and the external links of e -commerce are opened under the group chat. The blocking is opened, which can also be regarded as one of the results achieved by the relevant national rectification work.

From the perspective of the broader market, Ali, which focuses on e -commerce business, realizes "interconnection and interoperability" with the Tencent and other traffic giants, which is the main social operation. It will have positive significance at the efficiency and innovation level of the commercial market, but it will be highly dependent on a single ecosystem like Tencent. For the system's e -commerce SaaS Enterprise Microcodian, it is not good news.

The development of the Micro -League, whether it is WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou and other new traffic platforms. They all want to be e -commerce and are willing to invest in resources as e -commerce. Solution one by one, so it is necessary to help merchants open stores and manage SaaS service -oriented technology. Therefore, the micro -alliance at the time could be described as the source.

However, the most critical "customer acquisition" element of Micro -League's business model requires "parasitic" in the traffic ecosystem of Internet giants such as Tencent, Ali, JD.com, and Douyin Kuaishou.

When the traffic of these platforms connects with the e -commerce business, the platform party only needs to work hard to work well, but now it is not only to keep their own territory, but also to attack outside. Over the end, so we can see WeChat pushing small stores in person to help merchants from developing and quickly generating a small programs for selling goods. Tencent's financial report also shows that the penetration rate of merchants in WeChat ecological applets is constantly rising. Similarly, Douyin has already launched a store opening tool.

The positioning of Micro -League in various platform e -commerce ecosystems has become very subtle. Before, it was a partner of the platform, and in the future, it may become competitors.

On the other hand, in the past, the merchants opened stores on different platforms and needed multiple sets of operating tools. After interconnection, the merchants will inevitably become simple. Obviously, the operation of all platforms has lost a large number of incremental demand, and the function of Micro -League as a store and store management tools has also been weakened.

Moreover, on June 29th, Alibaba announced the establishment of a subsidiary of the Smart Services of the Corporate Wisdom Service, the Sheep Smart Service Company. , QUICK AUDIENCE, Quick BI, Business Staff, and Managing Staff. Even if Ali emphasizes that he does not do SaaS, it is obvious that the head e -commerce platform takes the initiative to start counting wisdom services.

It is foreseeable that when the interconnection enters the "deep water zone", WeChat, Kuaishou, Douyin, Tmall, and Taobao will continue to make efforts on the e -commerce ecological closed loop, and even actively launch their own products to cater to this trend. The micro -League is this kind of micro -League. If a third -party e -commerce SaaS platform cannot run a new model, it is difficult to tell a better story.

02 Internal worry, doing traffic business is also anxious for traffic flow

Another business of Micro -League, digital media services are also affected by interconnection.

The barbaric growth of Micro -League in the first few years was the result of Tencent's flow nurturing. According to the Micro -League annual report, the digital media services selling advertisements for traffic platforms reached a historical highest 818 million yuan in 2020.

At that time, advertising customers facing Tencent's agents, Micro -League provided solutions and earned the return of returns, exceeding the total income of 21%.

Of course, the disadvantage of this model is also obvious.

Under the Tencent ecology, Micro -League can obtain traffic resources, but it is not a traffic entrance. I also have to spend money to buy traffic from the platform. , Micro -League is Tencent's "fighting workers".

What's more, Tencent also has its own small abacus.

First, any platform is unwilling to see a company's independence in its own ecosystem. Of course, Tencent is not an exception. The response given by Tencent is that after 4 years of investment in the Microcodian The competitors are praised. In addition to the micro -alliance, there are "spare tires".

Second, Tencent also has business demands.

On July 14, 2020, WeChat announced the launch of WeChat small store capabilities, which not only provides merchants with basic functions such as the release of product information release, orders and logistics management, marketing, settlement, and after -sales, but also comes with live broadcast capabilities. Digital business services are similar.

Although the service particles of the micro -alliance have been thinner, WeChat officials also replied that "all third -party service providers are still welcome to join the ecosystem to provide merchants with a variety of services." However, it has to be said that this is a hidden concern on the development of Weimeng.

On the other hand, Micro -League has always been unable to solve the problem of high loss rate of paid merchants.

According to Weimeng's financial report, the loss rate of paid merchants from 2018 to 2020 was 26.8%, 22.2%, and 26.1%, respectively. As of 2021, Micro -League paid users were 102,813, a year -on -year increase of only 5%. For new users, the micro -League increased by about 23%of sales expenses.

On one side of continuous expenditure, the customer is constantly losing. The micro -League said to help merchants operate in private domain traffic, but the water of its bucket can never be fully fully fulfilled.

Bain's investigation on the SaaS field shows: "5%of the merchant loss rate and 13%of merchant loss rates will lead to almost double the income difference in ten months." Too high, then it is meaningless to get new customers.

The micro -alliance in it is definitely better than us to understand the harm of this issue, but the characteristics of Chinese companies have determined that there is not much way to make micro -alliances.

Taking the US SaaS company as a reference, its customer loss rate is about 7%, but the customer loss rate of major SaaS companies in China is generally more than 30%. In addition, the average life expectancy of Chinese SMEs is 3.7 years, 5.8 years in the United States, and it is 5.8 years. The number of small and medium -sized enterprises in China and unstable development has further increased the difficulty of the operation of SaaS enterprises such as Micro League.

03 Breaking the game, the "second growth curve" is hard to find

In fact, the micro -League also wants to get rid of the current unfavorable situation. The prescription it prescribed for itself is the strategy of "great customerization, ecology, and internationalization". On the product side, by opening WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, Alipay, Baidu, QQ, QQ browser, video number, Xiaohongshu, Tencent Huiju and other platforms, provide users with sale SaaS system+service capabilities+traffic acquisition. Full -link marketing service, Micro League calls it TSO.

According to the data of Weimeng's financial report, as of December 31, 2021, the number of smart retail merchants of Micro -League reached 6,126, and smart retail revenue was RMB 426 million, an increase of 193.6%from RMB 145 million in 2020, accounting for the subscription solution revenue 36%.

Among the customer composition of the micro -alliance, there are 1003 brand merchants, and the average order income of each user of the brand merchant is 234,000 yuan. Micro -League Smart Retail accounts for 44%of China's Top 100 Fashion Retails, 40%of the top 100 commercial real estate, and 35%of the top 100 chain convenience stores.

The data seems to be pretty good, but if it takes a total of 1.715 billion yuan in sales in 2021 for sales and distribution, the growth of Micro -League seems to be not so sexy, especially to open up various traffic platforms to carry out TSO full -chain Road marketing layout, Micro -League can do it, other SaaS companies can do it, and Micro -League does not have different characteristics. Based on this, the Micro -League in March this year publicized the new business operating system WOS (full name Weimob OS) for the decentralized era. This system integrates SAAS business integration, ecological partner cooperation, and PAAS platform infrastructure. The king -level product of the "second curve" by the Micro -League is the powerful engine of the growth of the future growth.

However, an fact that cannot be ignored is that the micro -League has fallen into a vicious circle of "buying volume -acquisition of new customers -the loss of old customers -continues to buy".

With the increase of the coverage platform, the purchase of the full link of TSO will inevitably increase the purchase expenditure on different platforms, especially if it has lost Tencent's asylum. Whether the traffic buying and selling business of other platforms can also be observed.

As a new product, WOS has a market verification of how its effects, and how much returns can generate marketing investment such as user education and marketing before that. Dilemma.

Ma Huateng, the largest investor in the micro -alliance, has published a view on the topic of "preparing for the winter in Chinese Internet companies" this year: companies must adjust their posture, due to the changes in the external environment to reduce efficiency, and use bullets on key campaigns. "If No one is on the battlefield, and the bullet is still meaningless. "

I don't know how much the micro -League has to do this sentence.

Perhaps, the more realistic micro -alliance should be a leak, not adding water.

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