Can the model of community plus business succeed?

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Feiyang has embarked on a new journey again. After losing Beike, he found Wei Yi, and as a tenacious entrepreneur, he has continued to persevere and remain strong, which is worthy of our learning. First of all, I would like to congratulate Feiyang on the launch of his new project.

Compared to Beike, which was once high and mighty, this time Wei Yi is rather pragmatic. There are no new concepts, no new bubbles, but instead, there is rationality. Wei Yi directly entered the business world through women's care products. On the other hand, Feiyang has always been unwilling to give up exploring community marketing, and indeed, Wei Yi has laid the groundwork for future community marketing from the very beginning. However, due to its limited scale currently, it cannot yet make an impact.

As for what Feiyang said, that Wei Yi follows a social commerce route, I dare not agree. The basis of social commerce is a socialized environment, namely the network of relationships between people, and commerce is parasitic on such a relationship network. However, Wei Yi does not have a socialized structure. In the entire community, people are weakened while information is strengthened. It adopts the mode mentioned by Wei O, where 2.0 serves as the body and 1.0 serves as the application. This is the most fundamental difference. Therefore, Wei Yi actually does not follow a social commerce route and there is nothing particularly innovative about it, but its notable advantage is being pragmatic. Of course, what route Wei Yi takes is not important; what matters is whether it can survive and thrive.

Whether or not Wei Yi will succeed is still unknown, but personally, I am quite optimistic about Wei Yi. I hope it succeeds because if Wei Yi can succeed, then B2C and C2C might have another retail outlet.

Let us consider the implications of Wei Yi's model from two aspects:

First, is the combination of communities and commerce the best model for conducting B2C and even C2C?

For enterprises to conduct online sales is essentially a combination of operation and sales. On one hand, "operation" brings traffic and positive product effects, vigorously occupying the user's mind, thereby directly driving "sales"; on the other hand, "sales" excellent products and active sales can bring many good reputations to the enterprise, but if there is a lack of amplification through gathering points and communication platforms, these reputations can only become fragmented and eventually disappear, which is quite regrettable for the enterprise. Conversely, if such reputations can be used as resources and gathered at the "operation" end, it would greatly supplement and strengthen "operation". The mutual complementation of "operation" and "sales" is naturally the best result, and the combination of communities and commerce is also a good model for realizing the integration of marketing at this stage, which enterprises should try. Of course, not all enterprises and products are suitable for such a model, for example, enterprises producing products with long update cycles, monotonous products, non-mass consumer goods, etc., are not suitable for adopting such a model. The reason why Wei Yi can adopt such a model is determined by the type of its products. From both the perspective of communities and commerce, women's care products are a naturally excellent entry point.

Second, what should be the positional relationship between people and information in the model combining communities and commerce?

When enterprises conduct online sales, they are often the more dominant party, which is caused by consumers' lack of trust in themselves. And this lack of trust is based on their own limitations in accessing information. On one hand, there are limited choices, and on the other hand, they lack self-confidence, leading to a weaker position. Therefore, the initiative in the sales process is often in the hands of the enterprise. Can enterprises use this dominant advantage to further highlight the weakness of consumers? I think the key lies in handling the positional relationship between information and people. My understanding is that strategically, people should be clearly defined as the core pursuit, while tactically, information plays the most critical role. Through artificial intervention in information to guide consumption behavior. Before consumers engage in purchasing behavior, they will actively seek out "information that supports the occurrence of the behavior," hoping to eliminate their own lack of confidence through effective information, at which point the enterprise gains the initiative. The most direct intervention is sending effective supporting information at this stage. In a successful community, the generation, aggregation, and dissemination of information can form a self-circulating loop, but how much value conversion such a self-circulating loop can bring is uncertain. For example, if the IPOD community has enormous traffic but cannot prompt users to engage in purchasing behavior, then such traffic resources are meaningless. Therefore, it is necessary for enterprises to conduct artificial interventions, simply put, management, control, and editing. While not denying the strategic core status of "people" among consumers, it is even more important to directly focus on the tactical execution of information.

Another noteworthy aspect is that the Wei Yi platform itself has a very close commercial binding with clients, which is worth learning from. Currently, Wei Yi has not yet made an impact, and clients' dependence on the platform is not strong enough. But assuming one day Wei Yi becomes China's largest female care products community and sales platform, then Wei Yi will have sufficient capital to challenge the clients. At that time, which client would be willing to abandon such a platform with immense marketing value and stable sales channels? Enterprises lacking the Wei Yi platform will not go bankrupt, but they will lose many resources and limit development. This is the core competitiveness of the Wei Yi platform itself.

The above are some thoughts triggered by Wei Yi. I welcome everyone to discuss together. Wei Yi is still moving forward, Feiyang is still striving, every entrepreneur is not easy, as a friend of Feiyang, I support him and admire him. Wei Yi is a simple model, but it is highly likely to succeed. I believe that if it succeeds, it will provide enterprises conducting online sales with a new idea and a new prospect. Let's support it.