On March 9, 20 18, Tianhai Investment, a subsidiary of HNA, which was suspended for two months, announced that it was negotiating with Dangdang on the purchase of equity, but the specific plan was still under negotiation, and its control right would not change after the transaction was completed.
This announcement caused a sigh in the media. From being called "China's Amazon", to delisting, and now being acquired, Dangdang's trajectory seems to be a parabola, from ordinary to brilliant, and then to calm.
Dangdang was listed in the US stock market on 20 10. At that time, Dangdang became the largest online bookstore in China, with annual book sales exceeding 10 billion yuan, accounting for more than 50% of the domestic online book retail market share. However, when the privatization was completed in 20 16, the market value of Dangdang was only $536 million.
After privatization, Li Guoqing, the founder of Dangdang, once reflected that it was miserable for couples to start their own businesses. First of all, it is difficult to convince each other in management, which leads to inefficiency in decision-making and execution, and even damages life. Now, being able to sell yourself at a valuation of $654.38+0 billion is not the best destination for Dangdang, nor is it the best relief for Li Guoqing.
Looking back at the failure of Dangdang, among them, in addition to the main reasons of Dangdang itself, many companies actually played a key role. In the more than ten years of Dangdang's growth, these rivals have either created a new era or caught up with it. In short, in these seven or eight years, they walked very fast, but Dangdang fell behind.
Which pushers have changed Dangdang's trajectory, let's take a look.
Pusher 1: digital reading
The competition between Joyo Amazon and Dangdang is fierce, and the exchange time is 20 13. After the Kindle entered China, Amazon set a benchmark for digital reading for the first time, which is a closed loop of taste+Internet plus terminal. Today, it is still a fascinating business model.
One year after the Kindle entered China, Li Guoqing finally took that step in the field of readers. At that time, Li Guoqing was very confident. In his view, Dangdang readers will surely succeed. "Dangdang has publishing house resources, so it can convert classics and bestsellers into digital formats and attract more users who are willing to read deeply to buy readers."
But looking back, Amazon has long been a symbol of tasteful reading, and Dangdang is still just an online book sales platform. If Amazon changes the reading environment through paper books+readers, mobile phone reading companies change reading through mobile phones+apps. The enterprises here have panda reading and multi-reading in those days, and palm reading with the largest share now, followed by book flags and QQ reading.
Although I don't know how many users of paper books turned to read e-books, with the popularity of smart phones, the application of mobile phone reading has undoubtedly exploded. Based on the disclosure of 2065 438+07a-share listing, this company was established in 2008. When it went public in China, the monthly active users had exceeded 1 billion, and the cumulative registered users were higher.
Obviously, mobile phone reading enterprises have undoubtedly attracted hundreds of millions of users to read e-books, which has enlarged the overall reading market and given copyright agencies a new stage. When the Kindle reader and the handheld reading APP broke ground, it was obvious that Dangdang reader and Dangdang reading APP failed to keep up and missed the big ship of digital reading.
Pusher 2: Network Literature
If we calculate the market value of the two largest online literature enterprises at present, we can see that the total amount of Reading Group is about 57 billion yuan, and that of Palm Reading Technology is about 654.38+07 billion yuan, which adds up to 74 billion yuan. It can be seen that the market of online literature and digital reading can not be underestimated.
On the other hand, the data shows that there are 378 million users of online literature in China, the total number of original works is 65.438+06467 million, and the number of words per day is 65.438+500 million, with 2.336 million new original works every year ... There are hundreds of overseas websites that translate and disseminate online literature in China in different languages. Visible, the development of network literature, not only attracted a large number of users, created a large number of writers, and produced economic benefits, but also became a successful example of China people's cultural originality.
For this industry related to reading, culture and market, it is actually possible to enter the Dangdang of books and Internet genes, but it may be because it has not developed in the field of digital reading as mentioned above, so it has not entered the field of online text and missed a good opportunity.
Some people say that the readers of the published books sold by Dangdang and the readers of online literature are not very coincident, so it is not convenient to start. However, we should also see that with the younger readers, online literature has become a popular and mainstream reading content. To put it bluntly, without online literature, the reading service provided by book companies for the public is incomplete.
In 20 17, the Kindle, which only sells published books, adjusted its strategy in time. Migu launched the online version of Kindle, which shows that the online version is also the general trend. Regrettably, Dangdang has not had a suitable platform to undertake online texts until now.
Pusher 3: e-commerce giant
In 20 10, JD.COM, then named JD.COM Mall, entered the book market. By 20 17, according to the data of China B2C Market Quarterly Monitoring Report 20 17 released by Analysys, in the third quarter, the turnover of publications in China B2C market was 6.84 billion yuan, up 22.4% year-on-year, including JD.COM. COM's market share is 36.2%, which exceeds Dangdang's market share of 35. 1%.
Of course, we can't judge who is the number one by the statistics of a data organization, but the position of JD.COM and Dangdang in book sales should be relatively close. The problem is that book sales are only a small part of JD.COM, but they are the core business of Dangdang. This involves a question, who has the advantage of integrated e-commerce and single-product e-commerce? Of course, Dangdang is not a single category of e-commerce platform, but after all, the impression given to consumers can not be changed in a short time.
On the other hand, in 20 12, tmall announced that tmall bookstore was officially launched on June 14, which started tmall's online book sales tour. By the beginning of 20 18, Tmall's own data showed that Tmall had occupied half of the country with a market scale of 35 billion yuan ... And Tmall Books also announced the layout of new retail with traditional bookstores, creating smart bookstores and 24-hour unmanned bookstores, reading +AI+ new retail, which brought people a lot of imagination.
More interestingly, Tmall's report shows that since 20 12 officially settled in Tmall, Dangdang has won the Tmall book sales championship for many years in a row. At the same time, in Tmall's "Best Book of 100 Societies" program, Dangdang Tmall flagship store only created millions of sales of the series of novels of Big Ice. From this point of view, the biggest book sales platform may be Tmall, and JD.COM may have a chance, but Dangdang certainly has no chance.
In fact, under the attack of two e-commerce giants, and under the repeated bombing of 6 18 and 1 1, Dangdang, like most medium-sized e-commerce platforms, has been unable to return to heaven.
I missed the popularity of digital reading and failed to catch up with the tide of online literature. At the same time, in the field of e-commerce, Dangdang's imagination is really limited, having encountered the pattern of two-level hegemony between JD.COM and Ali.
"Jiangshan has talented people and has been leading the way for a hundred years." Perhaps it is a good choice for the founder and the future development of Dangdang to consider quitting at this time. In 20 18, the trend of rapid rise of cultural consumption has become more and more obvious. The combination of Dangdang and Xindu may bring new opportunities.
For many old Dangdang users, they will never forget the satisfaction of receiving Dangdang Express and smelling the ink of a new book. That's a storable memory.