According to a report by Analysys International, a Beijing-based market research firm, Taobao, 360buy and Joyo (Amazon China) sit in the top of a Q2 2011 B2C transaction volume chart. While Suning Yigou, the online shopping initiative by the Chinese appliance franchise, unexpectedly replaced Dangdang coming in fourth on the same chart.
Excellent Financial Results
Suning Yigou posted over RMB 2.5 billion yuan (US$ 401 million) revenue in the first half of 2011.
And it seems Suning isn’t totally satisfied with that, the company is reported to acquire a soon-to-be-licensed 3rd party online payment solution to enhance its online presence. As of this month, Suning Yigou boasts an active customer base of over 8 million with over tens of millions of pageviews per day.
How’s that happen? From an outsider’s view, what most people saw was a series of campaign and promotion by Suning and ever-improving services including “half-day delivery”, “50% off coupons”offerings and so on.
The insider part is, Suning Yigou’s aggressive growing comes on top of its offline retailer business. The company currently has 1500 chain stores scatterred around China with a solid logistics base and wide distribution channel.
Platform Transforming
Lin Guosheng, the general manager of Suning Yigou remarked that the financial results “could be better”. He expected the revenue would cross RMB 8 billion yuan (US$ 1.25 billion) in this year, it seems Suning Yigou needs to be more aggressive to achieve that financial goal.
As a matter of fact, that’s what Suning Yigou has been planning for a while, according to Lin, Yigou will be featuring books, sportswear as well as other inventories. In the future 3C products will only account for 50% of its total stocks. Given Suning’s core business, Suning’s latest move is stunning.