We wrote about 36Tuan changed its course from group buying site to online cosmetics retailer Zhiwo.com yesterday. And 55Tuan was also reportedly couple months ago trying to swerve from daily deals to become a online platform for local businesses as its founder Xu Maodong pictured the company as a Taobao in the realms of local life services.
As a matter of fact, 55Tuan already stealthily launched its 55 Mall. However, last we check it’s still a group buying service – at least looks like so.
screenshot of 55Mall
And now it’s Lashou’s turn. The daily deals site which just postponed its IPO roadshow due to accounting issue is said to add a new ‘Lashou Mall’ section on its website soon. Local merchants need to pay a varied sum of upfront fee to get featured in the Mall.
Lashou Mall differs from those traditional B2C or C2C services in that it requires the merchants have their offline presence. And all the commodities/items are suppose to consume in the same city, no outbound delivery though.
These three are not alone in what they’re doing, cosmetic-centric Jumei.com also showed its intention to build a more comprehensive online shopping mall by adding categories including healthcare products, food and apparel. In a time when mounting competition leads to low or almost none income in group buying industry, these who’re still struggling – which is a good thing as compared to those in the deadpool, more than 1000 group buying sites shut down in the previous months – need to either pivot into new direction or raise new round of financing to weather the winter. And as raising is getting harder, pivoting seems the only choice for them.
This is a new E-Commerce mode,Lashou is planning to become a online platform for local businesses ,this is a great act,because it doesn’t like the traditional B2C or C2C services,It is mainly to provide services for the local business.I think it is convenient for the local business.
Changing an existing busines model means, they have lost hopes about future sustainability of the existing business model. Well almost exactly an year ago, these were the people who were saying Group Buying is future of world commerce. Also all the VC’s were saying the same prayers with the promoters and pumped millions of Dollars.