This is the second round of financing completed by the “number of factions” this year.
It is learned that several parties in the textile industry SaaS have recently completed multi-million dollar A round of financing, and this round of investors is the real fund. This is the second round of financing completed by several parties this year. The previous round of Pre-A round financing was exclusively invested by BAI (Betasman Asia Investment Fund). He has reported on the textile industry and several business models.
There are several SaaS management tools that provide software and hardware for the large textile industry. In the textile industry chain, from upstream to downstream: manufacturers – first-level wholesalers – secondary wholesalers – stalls, for the different links in the industry chain, different sizes of enterprises, there are several schools have corresponding products line.
Through the opportunity of this financing, I interviewed a number of people who have invested in this round of investment. Sun Wei, an investor who led a number of investment projects, shared with us her understanding of traditional industry innovation. In addition to a number of factions, Sun Hao has also invested in accessories such as accessories and air castles. At the same time, the company began to pay attention to the direction of the industrial Internet at the beginning of its establishment, and also invested in beautiful vegetables and steel nets.
Our first question is, why invest in the textile industry?
Sun Wei said that from the perspective of industry volume, the food, clothing and housing industry is a big industry closely related to people’s livelihood, and the textile industry is one of them (Note: China’s textile industry production value reached 6.89 trillion in 2017), at the same time, The textile industry also retains a very traditional production method. The factory and the merchants transmit information through traditional means such as telephone, WeChat, and handwritten documents, including a lot of opportunities for efficiency improvement. Large industry, low efficiency, this is the two basic conditions for the textile industry to nurture innovative enterprises.
The change of macro environment is also a factor that cannot be ignored. Sun Wei said, “We are concerned about a phenomenon, and the growth rate of all walks of life is slowing down. During the field visit and inspection, many textile enterprises have feedback on business. Years are not as good as one year, which will force business owners to think about how to improve efficiency.”
Corporate willingness to pay and ability to pay are important issues that SaaS companies must understand when targeting their target markets. SaaS companies serving the SMB market often face problems such as weak payment ability and short life cycle. Small and micro enterprises naturally die every two to three years, resulting in LTV/CAC accounting; in turn, serving the KA market It will face complex customer needs, difficult to standardize products, and low acceptance of annual subscription fees. Sun Wei said that the threshold for the textile industry to enter the market is higher than other industries, which means that players in the industry chain have sufficient ability to pay for the tool-based SaaS products. In addition, the cost-effective products can be truly Reflecting the value, the customer will have the willingness to pay.
The textile industry also has a distinctive feature. The Chinese textile industry manufacturers and wholesale trade points are very concentrated. The benchmarking effect in the marketing process is obvious. Once the benchmarking companies are recognized, other companies will learn to follow up; Centralized location, customer operation support and customer maintenance are also more convenient.
The information penetration rate of traditional industries is still improving, and there are widespread problems of inefficiency. If the pain points of players in all aspects of the industry chain cannot be communicated, the big opportunity for industrial upgrading will be cut into small and small markets. However, in the textile industry, the circulation of cloth connects all companies together. Cloth detection is the entry point for several companies to open up different enterprises in the industry chain, but the products of several factions are not limited to the efficiency improvement of individual links, but provide the solution of All in one solution, which is the basis of the quality inspection data of the cloth. Provide other value-added services to customers. For example, with a database of cloth patterns and materials, textile companies’ sales and designers can quickly find the corresponding cloth in the form of map search, which is much more efficient than manual retrieval.
Our second question is, why is there a number of factions?
“In fact, we have been in contact with a number of factions since last year,” said Sun Wei. “At the time, we were slightly concerned about the fact that young people in the 90s were starting businesses in the traditional industry. After all, they served a group of traditional entrepreneurs. The degree of acceptance of the Internet by policy makers is not too high. This year we have contacted several factions and found that the whole team’s understanding and understanding of the industry has been far better than last year. This round of investment is also an acknowledgement of the growth of several factions during this period. After Yu is 95, Qiyang is 93 years old, but the two founders are not typical of the 90s. There are several factions stationed in Keqiao (located in Shaoxing, China Textile City), it took two years, noSee investors, only product development, they showed enough patience in this matter, which also proves that they have great expectations for themselves. After internal discussion, we think this is an industry, willing to bend over A patient team.
Sun Hao gave an example. During the project investigation process, the warehouse managers in the 50s and 60s, the financial staff in the 30s and 40s, and the small business people who are carrying the brothers are very familiar with Wenyu. There are several apps in the bottom bar of the phone as a common software. These details show that the team is solid in the user needs research, and the product has been integrated into the daily work of the user.
In the logic of Zhenge Fund Investment, “Team 2” is an important plus item. Sun Wei introduced: “In addition to the founder itself, we will also pay attention to whether there are cattle in the team as the number two. The existence of ‘Niu Er’ can explain two problems. First, the entrepreneurial direction is recognized by other outstanding talents, and the second is to explain the founding. There is a set of people in recruiting talents.” It is understood that there are several R&D teams stationed in Shaoxing Keqiao, China Textile City, but most of its development teams come from Internet companies in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.