In recent years, it seems that the key words in the e-commerce industry are only Ali, JD.COM, Pinduoduo, and short-sighted goods (Jikuai). "Vipshop, a website dedicated to sales." Such a slogan that brainwashes countless young people has not been heard for a long time.

Vipshop (NYSE:VIPS), how is it now?

On February 23rd, Vipshop released the fourth quarter and annual financial report of 202 1 as of February 3rd. In 20021year, the net revenue of Vipshop was RMB 1 17 1 billion yuan, an increase of 14.9% compared with RMB10.90 billion yuan in 2020. The net profit was 4.7 billion yuan, down from 5.9 billion yuan in 20 years. Especially in the fourth quarter, the total net revenue was RMB 34 1 billion, compared with RMB 35.8 billion in the same period last year. Revenue has begun to decline, with a net profit of RMB10.40 billion yuan (about 222 million US dollars), compared with RMB 2.4 billion in the same period last year.

At the same time, Vipshop expects that the total net revenue in the first quarter of 2022 will reach 27 billion yuan to 28.4 billion yuan, down about 5% to 0% year-on-year. On the day of financial report disclosure, the share price fell by 1 1.89%. This result is considered to be that Vipshop has fallen into a growth bottleneck.

The reason is that customer growth is stagnant. In 20021year, the number of active users increased by 12%, from 83.9 million in 2020 to 93.9 million. Total orders increased by 65,438+04% year-on-year, which made orders increase from 692.4 million points in 2020 to 786.6 million points, which was basically the same as revenue growth. In the fourth quarter of 2026, 5438+0, the number of active users was 49.2 million, compared with 53 million in the same period last year. The total number of orders was 2,654.38+0.69 million, compared with 227.3 million in the same period last year, and the number of active users and orders decreased.

Looking back at the growth of Vipshop, we can find that before 20 18, the revenue growth was mainly the double growth brought by the number of users and ARPU; Since 20 19, the growth has basically come from the growth of active users, and the stagnation or even shrinkage of the growth of active users is the main reason why Vipshop has fallen into a growth dilemma.

Faced with the bottleneck, Vipshop first gave up the option of expanding new users by increasing fees, but focused on customer retention and expanding the company's svip. Facing high-value core users such as super VIP, on the basis of providing value-added services such as free post, free return, free freight, 15% discount on self-operated goods and 24-hour uninterrupted manual customer service.

In 20021year, the number of active SVIP users of vipshop increased by 50% year-on-year, and the net online transaction volume accounted for 36%. The ARPU of SVIP users is 8 times that of non-SVIP users. It can be inferred that the company's net income from SVIP in 2 1 year is 42 1 billion, accounting for 4.5% of active users. According to the calculation of 93.9 million customers in 2 1 year, svip reached 4.22 million, and the per capita ARPU was about 1 10,000.

The SVIP project began in 18. At that time, Vipshop, which repositioned its business focus on clothing categories, had the development idea of increasing customer unit price and focusing on high-value users. However, since 18, the arpu value of Vipshop has not been significantly improved. What is even more worrying is that the gross profit margin of this group will be lower than that of non-svip due to the high discount rate and excellent service of svip itself, and the policy of free return will also lead to a higher return rate than that of ordinary users.

As can be seen from the company's operating data, the company's net revenue /gmv has continued to decline in recent years, indicating that the company's rate of return is rising, which will inevitably make the company maintain a high performance cost. At the same time, due to the reduction of investment in non-head customers, it will also reduce the appeal to ordinary users to a certain extent, resulting in a decrease in active users.

The clothing and cosmetics sale platform ("brand discount+limited time snapping+genuine insurance") positioned by Vipshop obviously does not match the high ARPU value. For users who buy clothes, cosmetics and other supplies on a single platform, it will cost 6,543,800 yuan per year, and the ceiling is not expected to be very high.

From this point, we can see that turning to SVIP is essentially slimming under the background of peak traffic, e-commerce and live broadcast, and it is a conservative strategy to lay the foundation for the business and user focus of Vipshop. And from the current point of view, it is difficult for Vipshop to realize its original idea.

The company's choice of conservative development strategy also shows that it has passed the period of rapid development and entered the mature stage of development. The reaction of the market share price to the company, the current pe of about 7 times, is precisely the embodiment of the transformation from growth stocks to mature companies.

Then, can Vipshop maintain a low-speed and stable growth in the future?

Vipshop will rely on the e-commerce model of "brand discount+limited time snapping+genuine insurance". Sell the overstocked inventory of this brand at a lower discount (1 to 30% off). Originated in the United States, this model is called outlets, and the "factory direct-sale store" specializes in handling factory tail goods. Later, it gradually gathered to form a large outlet shopping center similar to Shopping Mall, and gradually developed into an independent retail format.

Later, European companies moved this model online. In 2008, the domestic limited-time snapping mode rose. Among these websites, Vipshop will land on NYSE on 20 12 to distance itself from its competitors. Online sale of brands with "authentic products", "famous products" and "discounts" as the main highlights to attract users, each brand sale lasts for 7- 14 days. At the same time, there is no reason to refund the postage for 7 days, and the courier will pick it up at home, which is obviously favorable and gives Vipshop users a better customer experience.

Based on this, Vipshop can get customers at a lower cost by introducing customers to each other. In addition, buying and selling itself is also a good business. Since its listing, Vipshop has maintained a gross profit margin of around 20% and a sales expense ratio of around 4% for many years. As of June 30th, 20021year, Vipshop has made profits for 35 consecutive quarters.

Naturally, vipshop is not the only one with good business. In the early days, there was competition among various flash-buying websites, such as Jushang.com's Qiaowu Qiao Yu and the discount of Buddhist products. At present, the scale of such enterprises is far from that of Vipshop. Later, there was Dangdang clothing tail goods sale channel "tail goods collection", which was homophonic with "Vipshop". JD.COM Mall launched a "flash group" business, Mall 1 launched a "brand sale", and Tmall also launched a "brand sale" in August of 20 1 1.

However, similar online e-commerce platforms failed to shake the competitive position of Vipshop. The reason is that Vipshop can do this business well depends on:

Resources: There need to be enough high-quality brand cooperation resources. In 2020, Vipshop will cooperate with more than 2 1000 brand partners, and these brands will account for no more than 3% of the total revenue. At the same time, it also cooperates with 500 brand partners to develop products specifically for the online platform of Vipshop.

Brand and product selection: 65,438+0,300 professional brand selection personnel have the ability to select products according to specific selection guidelines and consumer data preferences. We also have a professional marketing team to optimize the brand structure and product structure, as well as a complete CRM system and sales-based data analysis methodology.

Inventory management and quality control: For brands with long-term cooperation, we usually don't pay any down payment for the purchased products. Check all products delivered to our logistics center, and reject or return products that do not meet our quality standards or purchase order specifications.

Return policy: the right to return unconditionally within seven days. As long as the product is not used, washed, worn and damaged, and in the original packaging and original state. In order to facilitate the return service and improve the customer experience, we provide door-to-door collection and free refund, and do not charge any service fees and storage fees.

Customer service: a professional customer service team of 2000 people. 7* 15 hour service.

Therefore, the moat of Vipshop comes from its unique operational ability relying on online sales. At the same time, Vipshop will focus on the clear positioning of clothing sales. The natural characteristics of clothing products are low industry concentration and high gross profit. In customer orientation, Vipshop's customers are the new middle class who pursue cost performance, and pay attention to quality while considering price, which is difficult for other e-commerce platforms to completely replicate.

The hidden worries about Vipshop mainly come from two points.

First, the continuous development of digitalization has enhanced the ability of clothing manufacturers to directly touch consumers, especially the appearance of C2M, which has enhanced the ability of manufacturers to directly touch consumers, thus eliminating the tail list and tail list market from the root. So, is this true?

The author selects the inventory data of listed companies with key brands (due to the characteristics of the clothing industry, more than 90% are producing unsalable products, and accountants will prepare for future price reduction). From the data point of view, except for a few companies whose revenues are declining, the other companies have not shown the problem of reducing inventory and tail orders due to digitalization.

The second worry comes from the live broadcast:

Tik Tok's GMV sword refers to one trillion yuan, and Aauto Quicker's annual GMV target is 650 billion yuan. Among them, clothing is the largest category of live broadcast goods. In the face of the rapid growth of live broadcast products, will it affect Vipshop?

On this issue, I think returning to common sense, the core competitive advantage of Vipshop comes from its strong operational capability and brand positioning relying on special sales. So, in the era of short video, is this advantage still effective?

Algorithm push solves the problem of positioning and crowd. Live broadcast with goods is equivalent to distributing the selected goods to a large number of anchors, and the business of making tail orders by private domain traffic has long existed. Live broadcast with goods is more convenient for online introduction and supplements the platform operation ability. In addition, a key issue is that buying is an emotional behavior, and discount is not the final determinant of buying, but the proportion of impulsive sensibility cannot be underestimated. At this point, graphic e-commerce is naturally backward.

Back to the essence, live e-commerce has more advantages than graphic e-commerce in operation. Therefore, the increment of the tail order market is likely to be occupied by live e-commerce, which is reflected in the peak of the traffic and customer unit price it brings to Vipshop. In that case, it will be a great challenge for Vipshop.

So now is not the best time to discuss whether Vipshop will be expensive or not. Although about 7 times of pe means that the company is cheap as long as it can keep up with GDP growth, it is not expensive if it can maintain the current status quo; However, under the current circumstances, you need to wait for Vipshop to clarify its positioning and market advantages, or return to the original. Whether it can be realized by developing SVIP still needs to be questioned.