The privatization price has depreciated by approximately 75% from the issue price.

Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “AI blue media exchange” (ID: lanmeih001), Author: Han Xiao Huang.

Luxury e-commerce Secoo has not experienced a share price increase of more than 20% for a long time. In the past two months, Secoo’s share price has been almost unaffected by the overall fluctuation of China’s concept stocks and has fallen all the way.

Until the close at 4 pm Eastern time on January 11, Secoo reported $2.96 per share, an increase of 22.82%, and the market value returned to $209 million.

Obviously, the stock price surge is related to the news of privatization.

On January 11, Secoo issued a statement stating that it had received a privatization offer from its founder Li Rixue. The share price of Secoo’s proposed privatization was US$3.27 per share, a 35.7% premium to the company’s closing price last Friday.

But even so, this price has depreciated by about 75% compared to the issue price.

Once the privatization is completed, this former luxury e-commerce first stock will also complete a two-and-a-half-year journey to the U.S. stock market and exit the market with over 70% of the market value. In addition to the losses suffered by investors in US stocks, Qudian, which has just become a major shareholder of Secoo in the first half of last year, also lost more than half of the investment in this investment.

It is a fact that Secoo is not favored by capital. Obviously, the story of luxury e-commerce is not so good.

To this day, Secoo, which may be leaving the capital market sadly, also seems to need to re-examine the basic logic of business-what does Secoo sell? Who is using Secoo?

Behind the Internet

What does Secoo sell? The problem is obvious, selling luxury goods. Even with the help of capital during the years in which it is in urgent need of expansion, Secoo should not simply position itself as a luxury e-commerce label.

But no matter how the management talks about expanding boundaries and positioning high-end lifestyles, from the perspective of the business layer, Secoo still gives the outside world the impression that it is a pure luxury e-commerce platform. Even the word e-commerce is not accurate. Even though its official website reads as Asia’s largest online comprehensive high-end product and service platform, its financial report contains few data that can reflect Internet attributes.There are few.

The 2020 Q3 financial report shows its quarterly performance highlights. GMV reached 4.1 billion yuan, an increase of 12.5% ​​year-on-year; the total order volume was 1.109 million orders, an increase of 7.11% year-on-year; the number of active buyers was 520,000, an increase of 7.5% year-on-year; Total revenue reached 1.37 billion yuan and net income was 20.8 million yuan.

Regardless of whether this figure is up to standard from a retail perspective. Only the evaluation dimension can see that Internet companies’ most important mobile terminal monthly livelihoods, the number of buyers and other data are basically missing.

How does Secoo perform on the mobile terminal? Third-party data can give the answer.

Data from Analysys Qianfan shows that as of November 2020, the monthly activity of Secoo’s luxury app was 1.48 million, an increase of 19.39% month-on-month and a year-on-year increase of 9.5%, ranking 995th on the entire network.

The growth of numbers may be related to the Double Eleven marketing drive. The last time it ranked among the top 1000 on the list was in June. At that time, it may be related to the 618 e-commerce marketing drive.

Data from Qimai shows that as of the time of AI Blue Media Hui’s press time, Secoo APP ranked 794th in the overall list of Apple App Stores and 55th in the shopping list. The two ranking peaks in the past year also occurred at 6 Month and November.

In other words, in addition to the biannual e-commerce marketing festival, Secoo APP has almost fallen behind the monthly competition of the mobile Internet.

The volume is not optimistic either.

The Baidu Index shows that in the past six months, Secoo’s average search index is 1479, which is 85% behind the upstarts in the trendy brand community and 93% behind the high-end lifestyle community Xiaohongshu.

The lack of sound volume is not only detrimental to the stability of the capital market, but also affects the basic market of core users.

It is hard to imagine that Secoo, as the first stock of Chinese luxury e-commerce, has not completely seized the minds of users. This returns to the core question of this brand-who still uses Secoo?

A parent from an international school in a second-tier city confessed to AI LanMediahui that he had never bought any products in Secoo, and the so-called “female” mothers in the parent group had not bought it in Secoo.Commodities, even most parents born in the 80s and 90s have never heard of this platform.

“I learned about it because of the physical store where I saw it when I was shopping. I didn’t even know that it had an app and website.”

As can be seen from the Baidu Index and APP monthly live count and download volume, this situation is not unique. An important reason is that the driving mode of luxury consumption decisions is changing. The above-mentioned parent told AI Blue Media Hui: “Now buying luxury goods is basically on Weibo, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, or word of mouth among mothers. If you buy, you must go directly to the counter or find someone you trust. Purchasing by purchasing.”

He said frankly, “No matter how rich I am, I dare not, and I am not used to ordering tens of thousands of yuan directly from the Internet.”

This reflects the limitations of luxury e-commerce itself. Due to the high price per customer, online or third-party agency channels are difficult to become consumers’ first choice.

Even today, when the mobile Internet penetration rate is high, luxury goods online basically complete the “planting grass” link, and the real transaction behavior is still mainly offline.

According to Tencent’s “2020 China Luxury Consumer Digital Behavior Insight Report”, social retail is further accelerating the change in the pattern of consumer goods retail and luxury retail. The data for 2019 shows that more than 80% of Chinese consumers will choose the “rational” way of online research and offline purchase when purchasing luxury goods, which is far higher than the global average.

In other words, online grass planting and offline transactions are the basic logic of the combination of luxury goods and the Internet, so the e-commerce model of pure online transactions has certain limitations.

Ignore social features

Of course, Secoo also realized the importance of offline transactions, so it launched a large-scale offline high-end experience store. However, Secoo may still not seize the social opportunities that influence decision-making online.

From the logic of the main site itself, since its establishment, most of Secoo’s strategies have focused on expanding sku, increasing high-end services such as cars and helicopters according to the price range, and expanding the low- and medium-range beauty, home, and video products. End services, not much fuss about horizontal social logic.

The whole revolves around retail, and the imagination has not been directly opened up.

A salesperson at Secoo’s offline store once told AI LanMediahui that from the company’s point of view, offline is obligated to conduct online diversion, but online is strictly limited to offline diversion unless Users take the initiative to propose offline self-pickup or offline payment of the final payment, and there are no other relevant policies to support offline store traffic.

A consumer who purchased goods in Secoo’s offline experience store also confirmed this statement: “During the purchase process, the sales staff will propose to add WeChat, but they did not guide attention to APP or mini programs.”

If there are any other attributes related to the mobile Internet in Secoo, it’sPrivate domain traffic in the salesperson’s Moments and live broadcasts.

In the public domain traffic platform Xiaohongshu, Douyin, etc., the voice volume of Secoo is also very limited.

Perhaps, Secoo doesn’t want to take the initiative to fall behind. It’s just that this e-commerce platform that trades high-unit-price luxury goods is not rich in nature. As of Q3 of 2020, Secoo’s marketing expenses were 58.07 million yuan, a 47.6% reduction compared with the same period last year. Secoo’s cash and cash equivalents were only 700 million yuan, a slight decline from the same period last year.

I want to promote marketing, but I am always shy.

It has to be mentioned that in June last year, when Qudian made a high profile stake in Secoo, it tried to promote the same type of luxury e-commerce brand Wanlimu through a tens of billions of subsidies. But at that time, according to AI Blue Media’s calculations, the combined cash of the two companies was only 2.2 billion yuan, and the tens of billions of subsidies were destined to become empty talk.

Facts have also proved that Wan Limu has lost its voice in the past six months.

Back to Secoo, dimensions such as revenue and net profit have even experienced a serious decline since 2020. Last year, Q3 revenue fell 29% year-on-year, and net profit fell 30%.

For the current Secoo, privatization may be a breaking path. The question is, what happens after privatization?