Internet crowdfunding dead? Jingdong Crowdfunding suspends operations, these big factories have not yet exited

JD.com closed its crowdfunding business.

Recently, JD Crowdfunding released the "JD Crowdfunding Business Adjustment Announcement", stating that the JD crowdfunding business will suspend operations from October 10 this year. On September 30, the Jingdong crowdfunding portal has been offline, and projects that are still in crowdfunding will continue to be crowdfunded, and will ship normally after success.

JD Crowdfunding was once one of the nine business sectors established by JD Finance. Other businesses include securities, supply chain finance, consumer finance, wealth management, payment, insurance, and rural finance. JD Crowdfunding is a business platform with Internet financial attributes. However, the subsequent Jingdong crowdfunding was transferred to the retail division, which was mainly responsible for new varieties of grass and water testing.

However, the crowdfunding business has always been full of ups and downs and controversy, and ultimately failed to usher in a turnaround. It was not until the suspension of JD crowdfunding that this once-hot industry once again attracted the attention of the outside world.

The concept of "crowdfunding" originated from abroad. It was once popular and now it is cold.

"Crowdfunding" refers to the mode of raising project funds from netizens in the form of sponsorship + return, including equity crowdfunding, debt crowdfunding, commodity crowdfunding and donation crowdfunding. The concept of crowdfunding originally originated abroad, and it is more about "generating electricity with love", which is similar to donating money for beloved things.

However, as the crowdfunding industry enters the country, it has gradually become the norm for project sponsors to provide returns. For example, an entrepreneur who has invented an instrument but lacks the funds to mass-produce it can raise funds through crowdfunding. When launching a crowdfunding project, he needs to set up multiple return tiers. For example, donating 100 yuan can get an instrument after the project is successful, donating 300 yuan can get a gift box set and so on.

The returns obtained through crowdfunding will generally be less than the cost of normal purchases. It is precisely for this reason that the crowdfunding model is more like a marketing behavior in China, and it is essentially closer to "pre-sale at a discounted price".

However, crowdfunding gradually fell into the cold after the initial boom. According to data released by the Prospective Industry Research Institute, the number of crowdfunding platforms in operation peaked in 2016, with a total of 532. Since 2017, the number of various platforms has begun to decline. As of the end of June 2019, the number of crowdfunding platforms in operation reached its peak. There are only 105 crowdfunding platforms.

As the leading crowdfunding platform in China, JD.com was launched in July 2014. In the early stage of development, it also experienced a "golden age" and incubated the first domestic crowdfunding project that exceeded 100 million yuan: the PowerEgg drone. According to public information, in the first half of 2015, JD’s crowdfunding transaction volume accounted for 56.3% of the entire commodity crowdfunding market. Among the top 15 commodity crowdfunding projects in the first half of 2015, JD.com has 9 crowdfunding projects, making it the largest equity crowdfunding platform in China.

However, in the process of development, Jingdong crowdfunding has also been questioned as "swiping orders". In 2017, according to a report from Beiqing.com, some netizens broke the news that through the internal information of JD.com crowdfunding, there were at least 1,000 projects that had fraudulent orders, including the "PowerEgg" drone that set a new domestic crowdfunding record.

At that time, Jingdong Crowdfunding responded that "there are at least 1,000 projects in Jingdong Crowdfunding that have fraudulent orders" and other contents are seriously inaccurate. JD Crowdfunding has always adopted a zero-tolerance attitude towards fraudulent behavior, adopted multiple technical means and risk control measures to combat fraudulent behavior, and actively advocated the healthy development of the crowdfunding industry. The platform will take serious measures, including terminating cooperation, for project sponsors who have fraudulent behavior.

In addition, Jingdong crowdfunding was also questioned as "high price" and "slow delivery". Some netizens said on the black cat complaint that the goods purchased on JD.com crowdfunding were not shipped overdue, and the store customer service shied the blame, neither giving accurate delivery time nor compensation for delayed delivery.

"From a business point of view, crowdfunding has actually always been a major controversy. Many people think that there are many problems in crowdfunding, such as false crowdfunding reasons, such as defrauding money, etc., so the crowdfunding business itself has huge problems for JD.com It is also understandable to shut down the entire business line because of the risks," Pan Helin, co-director and researcher of the Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center of Zhejiang University International Business School, told reporters.

Where is the crowdfunding business of big factories now? Some people retreat, some people enter

After Jingdong Crowdfunding first announced its closure, are the crowdfunding businesses of other big companies still around?

According to the reporter's search, Suning's crowdfunding business portal seems to have "disappeared". On October 11, the reporter called the customer service number of Xingtu Finance (formerly Suning Finance), but the extension number for the crowdfunding business provided by it failed to get through. On the APP and web pages of Suning.com and Xingtu Finance, there is no entrance to the crowdfunding business.

The relevant person in charge of Suning.com and Suning Finance said that the crowdfunding business has long been out of their company's business sector.

According to public information, Suning Crowdfunding was launched in late April 2015, with product crowdfunding, public welfare crowdfunding, revenue-based crowdfunding, and agricultural crowdfunding. Different from the existing crowdfunding platforms at that time, Suning Crowdfunding focused on the "O2O" model of online crowdfunding and offline experience.

According to previous data disclosed by Suning, Suning’s crowdfunding raised nearly 200 million yuan half a year after its launch, and a total of 302 projects have been expanded. The projects involve technology, design, entertainment, craftsmanship and other fields, supporting 700,000 people. In addition, according to media reports, from 2015 to 2017, Suning Crowdfunding has launched a total of 2,902 projects, raising a total of 2.467 billion yuan.

Although the crowdfunding business has generally withdrawn from the public eye, the crowdfunding business of some major manufacturers is still operating normally.

Alibaba's current crowdfunding platform "Making New Products" was upgraded from Taobao crowdfunding. It is a business of Aliyu, an IP trading and innovation platform under Alibaba Pictures Group. After that, "Making New Products" entered a period of rapid development and entered the homepage of Taobao APP for the first time in 2020.

In the past two years, "Making New Products" has rarely announced its development to the outside world, but judging from the data provided by Alibaba, so far, "Making New Products" has launched nearly 3,000 IP projects, including Sword and Fairy. Legend, Transformers and other well-known IP products. Taking the crowdfunding project of the official series of derivatives of "Agarwood is like crumbs" as an example, "Making New Products" has launched 25 products, with a cumulative amount of more than 3 million yuan.

The "Xiaomi Crowdfunding" in the Xiaomi Mall is also in continuous operation. The latest crowdfunding is a kitchen tool set, priced at 179 yuan, which will start in 21 hours. Historical data shows that Xiaomi launches crowdfunding products almost every week, and the number of participants ranges from 1,000 to 10,000.

It is worth noting that Xiaomi's original independent e-commerce platform "Xiaomi Youpin" was initially positioned as a product crowdfunding platform, and was later upgraded to an independent Yanxuan e-commerce platform. In November last year, Xiaomi announced the integration of Xiaomi Youpin and Xiaomi’s retail business in China through an internal email.

Although Xiaomi founder Lei Jun and Xiaomi senior officials have not mentioned the crowdfunding business in public for a long time, according to the data, there are still many consumers willing to pay. Take a shaver as an example. In April this year, this shaver was launched on the Xiaomi Mall. In less than half a month (the 14th day), the Xiaomi crowdfunding transaction volume record (282,852 units) was refreshed. The amount raised reached 11.25 million yuan, and the completion rate was 14,142%.

There are even new big companies that have entered the crowdfunding industry in the past two years. On May 1 last year, Station B launched the "Linglong Official Crowdfunding Tower Campaign", crowdfunding 10 million within 17 days, setting a new record for crowdfunding in the Chinese animation industry. On June 26, the crowdfunding of "Time Agent" attracted more than 40,000 people to participate in more than a month after the membership purchase went online, setting a new record for the number of people in the country's derivatives crowdfunding. In the eyes of analysts, "crowdfunding" has become one of the future strengths and breakthroughs of Station B's e-commerce business.

Earlier in March, the Tianyancha App showed that Shanghai Xunmeng Information Technology Co., Ltd., a related company of Pinduoduo, applied for the registration of the "Pinduoduo" trademark. The outside world generally speculated that Pinduoduo may enter the crowdfunding industry, but Pinduoduo has not disclosed this. respond.

Pan Helin believes that when a large factory is a crowdfunding platform, it needs to screen the crowdfunding projects to a certain extent, or it needs to invest manpower and material resources, and it needs a set of project verification system. "But for many large factories, this verification system means increased costs. Therefore, a platform that can form an efficient project verification system through data elements may still have the ability to try in the field of crowdfunding, but most others do not have this ability. platform, may have to shut down the crowdfunding business.”