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Weekend weekends, overtime dinners, full Apple computers, ergonomic chairs… On the social platforms like Pulse, Zhihu, Weibo, you can see many “show off” posts from Mushroom Street employees.

Such good benefits are not common in Internet companies. However, in addition to envy, the message is more of a worry.

In 2018, after the bloodshed, Mushroom Street fell from a market value of 1.497 billion US dollars to 257 million US dollars today. The former star e-commerce company fell out of the head echelon, ushered in the biggest challenge since its establishment.

Mushroom Street is one of the first platforms to try social + e-commerce model. Its content community and focus on female users have once made Mushroom Street a new species, and the media has become the “fourth pole of e-commerce.”

At the completion of the D round of financing in 2016, Mushroom Street was valued at US$3 billion. As a platform with community attributes, from the perspective of user activity at that time, it is the fourth largest social platform in China after WeChat, Sina Weibo, and Momo. From the perspective of e-commerce, according to the TrustLogic letter at the time of 2016 According to the statistics of Novo Data, Mushroom Street’s monthly coverage rate of 2.99% has become the fifth largest mobile e-commerce platform in China after Taobao, Jingdong, Vipshop Shopping and Mobile Tmall.

Today, the mushroom street situation is not optimistic. The product category, commodity price advantage and brand awareness are not as good as those of the platform. At the same time, with the new competitors such as Xiaohongshu, Vibrato, Fasthand and other self-contained traffic, the activity of the mushroom street users is declining, and the platform’s cargo capacity is also It’s hard to compare a small red book with a multi-billion dollar valuation.

On August 26, Mushroom Street released the Q1 financial report for the 2020 earnings report, in which the loss narrowed. However, after the opening of the day, the mushroom market value fell by more than 20%.

At present, Mushroom Street still focuses on women’s wear and live broadcast business. “To make the quality of clothes more than one hundred yuan better, I believe that retention will be better, and this aspect continues to be done. If I want to do a big flow today and sell everything, it is actually another One way.” Fan Yuming, vice president of the mushroom street marketing department, mentioned Zinc Finance.

The founder of Bailian Consulting, Zhuang Shuai, has different opinions. He thinks that Mushroom Street has fallen behind, because he is not in the status quo and has not adjusted his strategy in time. “From the perspective of business innovation, cooperation, and growth, we don’t want to innovate, and we don’t have offensive awareness and wolf culture. Jingdong developed more than 2,000 small programs last year. Ali kept on doing activities to grab traffic. What did Mushroom Street do?” Shuai mentioned.

Chenjie Street founder and CEO Chen Qi mentioned in an interview with the media that Mushroom Street was born as a paratrooper and was surrounded by competition. Competition could never be avoided.

In fact, although Mushroom Street has been at the forefront of social, content, live broadcast and other businesses, it has also innovated many new gameplays in the industry. However, in the later period, they lost their fighting power and tend to be mediocre. It is also difficult to compete with the industry’s head players by simply pulling out any business line.

Mushroom Street is a big early but it’s a late episode.

Bet live

After listing, the live broadcast business is the key to saving the decline of Mushroom Street, and it is also the most eye-catching part of the financial report.

Financial report shows that the live broadcast business GMV was 1.315 billion yuan, up 102.7% year-on-year, accounting for 31.5% of the platform’s total GMV, which was twice that of the same period last year (16.0%). The average mobile monthly active user (MAU) of live broadcast business year-on-year Growth of 40.6%. During the 12-month period ended June 30, 2019, the number of active buyers of Mushroom Street was 2.7 million, an increase of 90.4% year-on-year.

In 2019, including Taobao and Jingdong, major e-commerce companies have increased the weight of live broadcasts. The mushroom street that has been laid out in the early stage has already had a first-mover advantage. According to the latest Q1 earnings report, the live broadcast service has become one of the most effective forms of mushroom street users’ participation and sales conversion.

In March 2016, Mushroom Street became the leading e-commerce platform for the first live broadcast business, earlier than today’s Taobao live broadcast. Fan Yuming told Zinc Finance that the idea of ​​live telecoms originated from a conference. When everyone was hesitant, Chen Qi patted the table and decided: “Be sure to go, the intuition is right, go on and say.”

Chenjie, founder and CEO of Mushroom Street

At the time, at a management week at Mushroom Street, executives had different views on the live mode.

“At that time, the wind and water played by the show was live broadcast, the man watched the female anchor show, the more the clothes crossed; the live mode was moved to the mushroom street, it must be the woman watching the female anchor, the clothes crossed More.” Fan Yuming analysis.

Many people are not optimistic about this anti-going strategy.

At the same time, for Mushroom Street at the time, the cost of the trial was high. Because the data traffic at that time was not cheap, it was not a simple decision to gamble on such a new form.

Chen Qi finally relied on “intuition” to annihilate the controversy.

Chen Qi’s judgment is not wrong. Three years later, live sales have become the standard for several e-commerce and live broadcast platforms.

Mushroom Street also made a long-term accumulation for the live broadcast. “The reason why Taobao can do live broadcast is because of its huge supply chain and massive goods. We rely on people.” Chen Qi said in an interview with the media.

From the beginning of the establishment of the mushroom street to the people, to the net red shop owner, graphic bloggers after the transformation of e-commerce, and now to the live broadcasters, this platform is rich in Kol and selected content. Mushroom Street is good at selecting and evaluating users and interacting with users, and Kol has built a strong sense of trust with users. This platform is naturally suitable for e-commerce sales.

“Kol has always existed, but the form and content of their output have been constantly changing, and they are also trying new forms.” Fan Yuming told Zinc Finance, based on the phenomenon of video and short video replacement at the time, they judged that the content was output through live broadcast. Will become the next trend.

The mushroom street anchor Demi settled in Mushroom Street in 2014, and has accumulated more than 200,000 fans in the graphic era of Mushroom Street.

After the live broadcast of Mushroom Street, from the part-time live broadcast, Demi has more than 400,000 fans and started full-time live sales.

Demi’s Mushroom Street Homepage

She told Zinc Finance that when the mushroom street traffic support was strong, she lived a fan that could rise by 700 to 1,000, and the new powder repurchase rate reached 89%.

In general, e-commerce platforms mostly “develop rules” for e-commerce live broadcasts, but Mushroom Street has a large package of links from supporting anchors to matching supply chains and traffic.

In 2019, Mushroom Street’s support for live broadcasts was further strengthened: the first live supply chain pool on the line, intending to store 1,000 brands this year, and incubating 100 quality anchors with sales exceeding 10 million.

An industry insider told Zinc Finance: “The initial form of Taobao live broadcast is based on the live TV commercial of Mushroom Street. It is similar to most live broadcast platforms. In the early days, a large number of anchors flowed out from Mushroom Street and entered Taobao Live. .”

Now, Chen Qi also hopes to be pinned on the live broadcast business.

“Mushroom Street plans to continue to accelerate the development of live broadcast business through three key initiatives: First, continue to strengthen the infrastructure construction of live broadcast services; second, rapidly increase the total number of active anchors and the length of live content that can be viewed; The monetization method to better play KOL’s talent and creativity. In the future, the mushroom street live broadcast business will contribute more and more to GMV.” Chen Qi mentioned in the Q2 financial report.

Get up early and get up late

However, the road to differentiation in Mushroom Street is not smooth.

On the one hand, Taobao’s powerful traffic advantage has attracted many mature anchors.

The above-mentioned industry insiders mentioned that before the Taobao live broadcast rules were perfected, some mushroom street anchors tried to broadcast live on both sides. At the end of 2016, Taobao Live has opened the right to sell goods and has a slight improvement. Some of the mushroom street anchors have chosen to be more suitable for their own Taobao live broadcast, and even achieved the head.

Mombus Street Live Room just finished live

As a mid-waist anchor, Demi can sell about a thousand for a four-hour live broadcast, with daily live sales ranging from 80,000 to 100,000. Although Demi lived on the mushroom street and opened the company lively, it was a bit more common than the Taobao live broadcast with over one million sales.

The anchor is running away from the pursuit of traffic, and Mushroom Street is powerless for this part of the loss. <