Selection, national purchase, and speed shooting provide users with a total solution: our algorithm can price used cars. If the car conditions do not meet the strict selection criteria, we can also help him to do the auction, which will help the car owners sell them. The buyer’s choice is also, in addition to the car in our venue, as well as all the online sources, we recently made a national purchase, the buyer may only see a few hundred cars in a city store, now hundreds of thousands The car can be used for him to pick.
At the same time, we have the logistics to transport the car, to ensure the quality through the whole, to provide the entire inspection, quality assurance, insurance, maintenance, these are a comprehensive experience. The establishment of these capabilities and services requires time and capital, and requires organizational capabilities.
: Not long ago, the national five to the national six switch, many new car prices cut half, the algorithm pricing is still useful?
Yang Haoyong: In May, the switch from China to China 6 was really a big impact on our algorithm pricing. Many domestic manufacturers sell cars at very low discounts, and keep handling before the July deadline. The price has a very big impact on our pricing. Because some people will think that it is not necessary to buy a used car, you can buy a new car, and some used cars of the new car may be more expensive than the new car.
So we were nervous at the time, such a price, our algorithm is not able to adapt. This is a bit like a black swan in the traditional industry. A product cuts the price by half, what needs to be done?
But the principle of the algorithm is that if a car turnover is faster and the price of a new car on the market changes, it can quickly feel the change. We will feed back the price of the new car to the algorithm pricing system to monitor the cars that are more expensive. What is the inventory?
: If you have a lot of stock, do you directly open the position? Just cut prices directly?
Yang Haoyong: The system monitors inventory sales and buyer demand. If many cars are not sold, the price model will start to float immediately, and the price of the car will go down.
: How much have you lost in the Black Swan incident?
Yang Haoyong: The overall situation is good, because the market volatility is actually a gradual process. The discount for 4S stores is not a 50% discount. Before the 50% discount in May, it has already lost 30% and 20%, and the price model has already had feedback. It’s just that the market reached an extreme situation in May, which caused some consumers to feel that they no longer need to consider buying used cars.
So we have started to adjust the price in the early stage because of the fast turnover. Some 4S stores are constantly adjusting their prices, and our prices are changing and adjusting. So instead of saying that there is a 50% discount on a batch of cars, we will lose half of it, but it may be that these cars are earned less, or the time of sale is longer.
: You just said that some stores are already profitable. How long does a store open, and can a single store be leveled?
Yang Haoyong: Last December, the instituteSome of the strictly selected stores have basically been flattened. Some stores lose money, some stores earn, together, basically have made money.
The retail business model is basically this, revenue-cost = profit. Among the costs, the first is the personnel cost. Our efficiency is higher than the traditional channel. We sell 15 units per person. The traditional channels may only sell two or three units. Secondly, the cost of capital is used. If the vehicle turnover is fast, the capital cost is occupied. It will be relatively low; plus traffic comes from the line, so the cost of rent accounts for a very low total income, while traditional retail sales account for 20%.
Revenue is the trading commission plus financial income. These structures give us the opportunity to have a greater profit advantage than the traditional channels, but now we need to collect more cars from the rhythm of competition. Our quotation will be better, let the profits out, and make small profits. pin.
: Nowadays, in the automobile circulation industry, everyone is more afraid of inventory and capital occupation. The strict selection of the seeds of the melon seeds needs to drive the car. How is this piece of funds solved?
Yang Haoyong: One of the key points of our technology investment is the balance between vehicle circulation efficiency and profitability. This is one of the most critical applications of the genetic map library and many brains. Through the balanced increase in bicycle revenue and turnover efficiency, the pressure on inventory and capital will be greatly reduced. In this respect, the speed of technology advancement is much faster than traditional manual optimization of retail sales.
At the same time, the experience of strictly selecting stores to consumers is much better than before. We quote the sellers, the owners accept, the cars can be put into the store; the people who buy the cars can see a lot of cars in one place, enjoy one Stationary experience. In March of this year, we launched a nationwide purchase. Buyers can watch cars from all over the country. The strict selection of the store is our offline service terminal and a key component of the Trinity used car pyramid.
So after this volume is measured, it accounts for a large amount of our income. Currently, strict selection is one of our most important sources of income.
: How many businesses are there? Such as maintenance, finance?
Yang Haoyong: Different businesses at different stages, first of all, financial, we have financial business in the first year of creation. So far this year, finance is lower than trading income in our used car income. A lot of people say that we rely on finance to make money. In fact, this is not the case. We mainly rely on trading to make money.
Zhuzi is the most mature business of the car. Its trading volume and scale are also the largest. The growth of soybeans is relatively fast. At the beginning of the two years, its scale is still far from the maturity of melon seeds and finance. Edamame has tapped a new consumer market.
: Is the selection of the business a key point for the next step?
Yang Haoyong: Certainly, strict election is our stronghold. It is a very penetrating business. From the direct feeling of consumers, when you look at the store, you will feel that this should be used cars. future. dryWhy go to that small retail store, husband and wife shop? That kind of three cars, five cars, no service. Real retail is to meet the needs of users, and more and more users demand for quality and service, which determines the core position in the used car business.
: If the smashing of the used car e-commerce platform is almost finished, is it going to be followed by the car dealer?
Yang Haoyong: I don’t think it’s a problem with the car dealers. If we do it too big, we can’t eat the whole market. It can be good to get 10% or 20% in the market.
: Is there no anti-car dealer?
Yang Haoyong: We have always had cooperation, there is no anti-car dealer, just that we start to stand out and do not make a difference, in fact, car dealers can not make a difference, we hope to promote the industry more transparent. Including the C2B platform speed shooting we have done before, in the second half of this year, we also launched the open platform vehicle source in the national purchase business. The car dealers who meet the standard can also conduct business through the platform of the melon seeds and obtain the seeds. The empowerment of technology and services at all levels is a win-win situation.
In the future, we will be a more open platform. The owner will not exclude any merchant. He still thinks who will sell the price to whom, and the consumer who buys the car also has a good car and good service. Where to buy, not to say that our car is the best, the car dealer is not good. In the future, our strictly selected business, national purchase business, and speed shooting business will give consumers with different needs different choices. This is a diversified market model for retail that fully satisfies consumers’ needs.
A lot of mid-to-high-end cars are now available. In fact, car dealers can offer more choices. Our algorithm has a relatively small amount of data in the middle and high end. This ability has not been fully built yet. Although there are occasionally a few million cars, we will be very cautious in this piece.
Cut into the sinking market
: The overall car market is declining. The huge group is still bankrupt. Have your edamame new car business been affected?
Yang Haoyong: Our car price averages between 80,000 and 100,000 such a Volkswagen model. This kind of crowd and positioning allows us to infiltrate more in the fourth and fifth tier cities. This model has basically run through today. This year’s sales will be quite large, and in December it is likely to enter the top five dealers nationwide. Moreover, this year, Maodou is also doing refined operations and using technology to reduce costs. We have seen that the losses of edamame have been greatly narrowed, and profit can be realized in the fourth quarter.
When we first started, the host manufacturers were also cautious because we had a small transaction volume, the hot models would not give us, and we also asked for cash. This year, apart from some luxury car brands such as the head BBA, there is still no cooperation, and most of the remaining joint ventures and independent brands have cooperated.
The huge event is an inflection point, and everyone seems to be off.It’s faster than before.
: Will the income from a business like car maintenance be counted in a new car or a used car?
Yang Haoyong: The amount of car maintenance is not small. More than 100 stores have been opened. The monthly income is growing at a high speed. There is also a team of thousands of people, so we are already an independent business unit. It is.
This business was born out of itself, because these carefully selected cars can not be dirty or bad on the site, and all the repairs have been repaired. Now the whole center of the huge group outside the Fifth Ring Road has been put down by us. There are several thousand square meters. After all the cars are collected, they will be pulled over there to do the whole process. This is a complete process.
In addition, consumers who buy a car will definitely buy insurance. Our monthly premium has already exceeded 100 million, so we will cooperate with insurance companies. We have so many premiums that we can help the insurance company to carry the repairs. This profit is quite high, the insurance company originally had to send the factory repair, they also hope to integrate this offline channel, so that the insurance is more efficient, just we are part of it.
: With so many lines of business, how can your organizational skills keep up?
Yang Haoyong: This is actually the most worrying thing. The biggest challenge in organization may come from the team. Many things have not been done because the team is not good, not that the direction is not selected.
Internet companies that do a certain amount of money today will basically diversify, but the team has boundaries. If your team is not strong enough, you can’t do the level of these great companies. Companies like Ali and Huawei are called Liangjiang Farms, because only in such a strong organizational system can they support a diversified structure.
Our management team has just begun to make seeds and go to a single field, which is very advantageous, but it is especially difficult when the company faces a lot of business to do.
So I think that the organization has to train these people. The big thing in the first half of this year is that the company is making big rotations, and the rotation can bring new vitality.
: Now the leader of each business is mainly pulled up from the inside, or is it outside to find it, airborne?
Yang Haoyong: Yes. In the future, it may become more and more inclined to cultivate in-house, but every year, one or twenty percent of the “squid” of a company must come in. Whether it is the middle or the upper level, there must be some fresh blood to join.
“Today’s capital market is not a problem”
: There are some rumors about the car in the market. It is said that Softbank has a lot of investment. It is subject to a lot of challenge. For example, LP will challenge. They said, “Why should I spend so much money on you?”
Yang Haoyong: Actually the challenge is not from LP, the challenge comes from competition.
Current competitors and potential future competitionsCompeting for the opponent, they have done a lot of work in this round of financing. To be honest, if it weren’t for the noise, we would finish it in January.
Softbank saw a lot of cars in July and August last year. We just came in November when we started financing. Some of the actions of the competition still made them more cautious. We did a lot of explanation work, and Softbank also made two rounds. The financial balance. The final understanding of the business and the strict selection of the store’s visits made them more comfortable with the car, and also decided to finance the landing.
: There are rumors in the market that you have a gamble with Softbank. Is there such a thing?
Yang Haoyong: No, absolutely not. Because they have a large amount of capital investment, most of the investment in enterprises is basically divided into two. Our second stroke is unconditional, that is, there are no additional conditions, and the second one has already arrived. They invested not only in our family, but also in the global investment in this way, so we also accepted the discussion at the time, anyway, it was a few days.
We also had some agencies in the A, B, and C rounds that were scored in several strokes.
And, at the time we had a new and old stock setting that helped Softbank make a share, and they wanted a bigger percentage. If it is short of money, then why do I sell old stocks? Only take new shares, even if you take half of the seven or eight hundred dollars, so selling old stocks is not because of lack of money.
: It sounds like you need money for every business. After the money comes from Softbank, are you going to find the industrial capital or go public?
Yang Haoyong: I still tend to slow down again. To this volume, I can say that I started today (IPO), basically three months later.
But I think it still needs some flexibility. In the face of potential competition in the future, we hope to be more determined and not interfere with the capital market.
For example, a new edamame car can obviously make money, but for a larger scale, we can earn less or level off. This is a big thing for listed companies. Why do you not earn money when you earn money? what is the reason?
: Is there any bigger and better money in the market than Softbank?
Yang Haoyong: I think there will always be. You look at the headlines, the US group, they are in a much higher valuation stage than the car, went to get a lot of money, and did not go to find Softbank. I think that capital always supports good projects. All investors can’t wait for a good project to be a big one. This is the easiest.
There are countless funds that make their own volume five times and ten times larger than that of the current year. Today, when you go to the market to find out, there are no fewer than dozens of investors who can come up with 300-500 million. Now many fund funds run. Going to the front end to do direct investment, so I think today’s capital market is not a problem at all.
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