The honey bud APP stopped service, the market value of the baby tree fell 90 %, why is it difficult to make money in the mother and baby market?

Recently, the news of the mother and baby e -commerce industry came out. First, the tens of billions of unicorn companies, Mi Na, announced that it would stop the APP service on September 10 and shut down the shelves. Later, the all shares of "Please Bei", the Morima Clothing Officer Xuan Dingbu's Maternal and Baby Products Platform.

The trillion -level maternal and infant market has attracted much attention and attracted a number of companies nuggets, but most of them leave the field. Why have maternal and infant e -commerce companies have fell in recent years?

Honey buds

When it comes to honey buds, many people will think of Qi Qi said the debaters and net red CEO Liu Nan.

In February 2011, Liu Nan gave birth to his daughter. In the process of communicating and studying maternal and infant supplies with the mothers, she paid attention to the general anxiety of Chinese mothers, and founded a Taobao shop called "Honey Baby" at the end of the year. This small shop subsequently set a two-year championship and sales of 30 million sales. With this momentum, Mi Na entered the highlight period from 2014 to 2016.

During the period, Mi Na received five rounds of financing, with a cumulative financing amount of 2 billion yuan. In the investors, the famous institutions such as Shiji Fund, Sequoia China, and Baidu. In particular, the $ 150 million round D financing completed in 2015 was the largest financing record for maternal and infant e -commerce. Honey buds became "darlings of capital" and stood under the spotlight.

At the same time as Gao Ge's rapid capital expansion, it is the horizontal development of business. The capital of the melted capital gave Honey buds a more solid confidence. In 2015, with 500 million stocking and 100 million yuan user subsidy, the price of diapers of the well -known Japanese brands from 180 yuan to 68 yuan was directly aware. At that time, Liu Nan publicly stated: "Diab trousers must not only fight a price war, but also continue to fight. Do not make profits throughout the year in 2015."

In the same year, Honey Bud launched two brands of Honey Bud Paradise and Rabbit's Mother to carry out the horizontal layout of the business. From a simple maternal and infant e -commerce platform, it expanded to possessing online retail, offline experience and joining, self -employed brands, infants, babies, babies The children's industry investment in the four major business segments of the child industry.

But the strong development momentum suddenly ushered in a large brake in 2016. Since the completion of the E -round financing in 2016, the honey buds have not made any investment progress. At the same time, the lack of funds quickly curbed the business expansion. Lost the price advantage, in the rapidly changing e -commerce market, defeated.

However, Honey buds are still working hard to save themselves. In September 2017, the honey bud launched the honey bud PLUS to join the private domain traffic battle in the way of saving money and sharing money. The commercial value of private domain flow has long been verified through the rise of perfect diaries and other brands, but the member system of the members of the honey buds and multi -level distribution commission returns has been questioned "suspected MLM." Moreover, its product quality problems have been criticized and ordered by relevant departments for many times. The "Big Data Report of Maternal and Baby E -commerce Complaints in 2021" shows that the number of complaints for honey buds ranked first, and the content of the complaint was mainly "false promotion, fake goods, and sales rewards were invalidated." Among the disputes, the honey buds pioneering the private domain traffic hindered, but the outbreak of the epidemic caused the live broadcast to bring the goods to the emergence, and the honey buds began to pursue public domain traffic again.

In September 2020, Liu Nan, the founder of Mi Na, opened the first show of Douyin live broadcast. She has a halo on the top of her head. In recent years, she has frequently appeared on the stage of the company on the stage of "The Story of Qi Qi". Public data shows that Liu Nan's premiere premiere viewers exceeded 3.46 million and sales exceeded 42 million yuan. Not only did the Douyin live the first place in the live broadcast of the live broadcast, it also became the "top flow" of mothers and infants. As of now, Liu Nan's personal account number in Douyin is 4.404 million, which has been praised 18.985 million. Among the many founders, Liu Nan has become a rare anchor with the ability to bring goods.

However, Liu Nan's scenery failed to bring the decentness of the honey buds. Many people teased that they knew the company. And the decline of honey buds is an example, or is it the "sentient beings" of the mother and baby e -commerce?

Is it a pseudo -proposition for maternal and infant e -commerce?

In recent years, not only honey buds, the entire mother -to -child e -commerce industry does not seem to be very prosperous. Back to the development process of the industry, from the launch of the 1999 Lucky Online, domestic maternal and infant websites have sprung up like rain. By 2016, companies such as parenting network and Mom.com have been listed, and the industry has ushered in a peak moment.

However, the good times did not last long. There were successive maternal and infant e -commerce companies from the New Third Board, and the industry soon started to decline. In recent years, the baby tree and the children of the children who have been listed in recent years have been a few good news, but the former has fallen 90 % compared to the market value compared to the listing, and the net profit of the latter first year has decreased by nearly 50 % year -on -year. It seems that the future is not optimistic. And the once red -fire mother and baby e -commerce platform, the lotus parent -child closure, the red children selling Suning, the maternal and baby home run, the Babe.com fund chain breaks off the shelf, and then the honey bud shutdown APP. It can be said that the mother and baby The stars of the e -commerce track fell.

The reasons for exploring the depression of maternal and infant e -commerce, some analysts believe that the maternal and baby vertical e -commerce may be a pseudo -proposition. On the one hand, there are fewer maternal and infant e -commerce users, not only the cost of obtaining high customer, but also low operating efficiency, but it is impossible to compete with comprehensive e -commerce platforms. Even the "content -e -commerce" path that was proud of in the past, under the impact of social e -commerce platforms such as Xiaohongshu, its competitive advantage is gradually disappearing.

Questmobile "2021 Mother and Child Industry Insight Report" shows that in February 2021, the active penetration rate of the shopping channels for maternal and infant products was the TOP10 APP, respectively, Taobao, Pinduoduo, JD.com, and idle fish. The figure of the e -commerce platform is enough to explain the problem to a certain extent. With the comprehensive e -commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.com, the maternal and baby tracks, the major e -commerce anchors regularly open the "mother and baby festival", and the cake left to the maternal and baby vertical e -commerce will only be smaller. Image source: QUESTMOBILE "2021 Maternal and Baby Industry Insight Report"

On the other hand, maternal and infant products have its own particularity. No parents are willing to take their children to adventure. For maternal and infant supplies, many parents still believe in "seeing the truth." Offline physical stores have always been competitors of maternal and infant e -commerce. Offline stores bring consumer sensory experience and after -sales service, which is difficult to replace online e -commerce. In order to make up for the disadvantages of offline channels, Mi Na tried to set up a joint venture with red, yellow and blue in 2015 to deploy the mother and baby O2O, but in the end, it was not available. There is no simple imagination on the line and offline. When layout offline business, the mother -to -child e -commerce platform is somewhat "dissatisfied".

Moreover, in terms of the most basic quality control, maternal and infant e -commerce needs to spend more strength. When the limelight is flourishing, the honey buds have been in disputes many times. As the head platform of maternal and infant e -commerce, the honey buds are still flipping frequently, which can reflect the gap between the overall product control capabilities of the vertical e -commerce platform to a certain extent. Moreover, maternal and infant products are mostly imported, so fakes will have a greater blow to the platform, and it will also bring a greater test to the platform's quality control.

Under the double pinch of comprehensive e -commerce platforms and offline physical stores, the internal power of the maternal and infant e -commerce platform with weak internal power is already at stake.

Self -employment, community, content, the next step of mother and baby e -commerce

It is reported that the next step, honey buds tried to change from the platform to the brand. This time, the disconnection from the APP may be to tilt more resources to its own brand. Over the years, Mi Na has been exploring in the field of self -operated brands. In 2017, it began to build its own supply chain. At present, it has brands such as rabbit head mothers and Peilido.

According to data disclosed by the company, since 2019, the sales of Honey Bud own brand exceeded 1 billion yuan for two consecutive years. CEO Liu Nan's profile in Douyin's personal number also mentioned "specializing in children's division of age and nursing" and "rabbit head mother", but did not mention Honey Bud Group. Last year, Mi Na and Rabbit's mother had been split at the board level, belonging to two completely independent companies.

The transformation direction of the head platform may give some inspiration to the mother and baby e -commerce platform. However, there are still some controversy in this direction of transformation. Support views say that the advantages of doing their own brands are prominent, such as having more rights to speak in terms of price, can better perform product control and after -sales. Moreover, under the blessing of Liu Nan's personal aura, the road to the brand will go easier. But there are also worries, such as brands and platforms are completely two ideas. Making brands require more considerations in organizational processes, product research and development, quality monitoring, etc. This is a new proposition for honey buds. The transformation of the maternal and baby e -commerce platform may not be as smooth as the imagination.

In addition, the combination of online and offline community operations is also a direction that can be tried. Taking the honey buds of the "honey buds" as an example, the mother -to -child e -commerce has the accumulation of community content, and the online advantage can be further consolidated and strengthened. However, it is worth noting that the mother and baby crowd is naturally offline group, and the operation and maintenance of offline users cannot be ignored. In addition to focusing on products, using parent -child activities and other forms to increase the distance between users to enhance user stickiness, and can continue to feed the platform and products.

It is said that if the vertical e -commerce platform is better than the comprehensive e -commerce platform, it will only grow faster and more successful than the latter. Now it seems that it is difficult for the maternal and baby e -commerce platform to win this "gambling." However, the East is not bright and the West is bright, and the Ai Media Consultation data shows that the size of the mother and infant market in 2021 reached 4.8 trillion yuan. If the mother and baby e -commerce can maintain the existing traffic and maintain an increase, in this trillion -level track, the opportunity still exists, and the story is far from ending.

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