Entering the Internet finance has almost become a standard match for large enterprises at present. The difference is that some people come first and some people come later. In the retail field, alibaba, JINGdong and Vipshop were the first to enter the market, followed by Gome.

In September 2014, Gome invested 500 million yuan to set up China Dollar Control, but it began to fully operate its financial business in 2016. At that time, the market has brought together a lot of Internet financial strength players, by contrast, just entered the United States of the country appears to be some of the latter. Rather than seeing the new trend in the development of Internet finance, Gome panicked.

Falling behind will not necessarily be beaten, but will certainly lose the first-mover advantage. In fact, this is not the first time gome missed the Internet opportunity.

Hindsight of the Internet

On the history of development, founded in 1987, Gome is the founder of China’s home appliance retail giant, is the industry pioneer of the domestic retail industry. But gome has been somewhat late in its ability to follow Internet trends.

Gome’s missed Internet opportunities can be divided into the following two directions:

First, when the retail industry was embracing the Internet, Gome seemed low-key and Buddhist. It missed the opportunity to compete for the demographic dividend of the Internet with E-commerce platforms such as Alibaba and JINGdong, and failed to keep pace with its old rival Suning when it was actively transforming the Internet. Gome, whose main business is home appliance retailing, has come under pressure from both rivals and e-commerce platforms since the battle. Although there is no sign of a major downturn in its performance, the success it accumulated is no longer there.

Second, gome, a laggard, failed to keep pace with retail giants’ aggressive foray into the field of Internet finance. Fortunately, in 2014, Gome finally noticed the power of Internet finance to retail, and took the first step. In terms of business construction, GOME Has created six product systems, including consumer finance, supply chain finance, wealth management and insurance.

At that time, The Internet financial business was also gome as a “new outlet” to drive its future growth. However, the development of the opportunity has passed, in gome has not touched the development of the Internet finance for its sweet, the financial business of other giants has formed a strong momentum.

Even so, years of retail struggle accumulated more than 1,000 offline stores, or gome layout of the Internet financial business has laid a strong scene cornerstone. In the future, with the further expansion of Gome’s offline stores, its financial services will naturally extend to more areas and serve more people.

In terms of performance, gome financial development in the last two years is also relatively strong performance.

Data show that gome’s total financial transaction volume rose from 26.436 billion yuan in the first half of 2017 to 100.58 billion yuan in 2017, revenue growth of 509%; The cumulative registered users increased from 4.42 million in the first half of 2017 to 10.23 million in 2017, with a year-on-year increase of 281%. Loan issuance has also been buoyant, up 885 per cent year on year in the first half of 2017.

In the first half of 2018, Gome Financial GMV reached 68.7 billion yuan, up 69% year on year, while registered users also increased 171% year on year.

It should be noted that in the first few months of 2017, the asset transaction scale of GOME Finance was only over 10 billion yuan, which was far behind the top 10 online loan platforms with an average transaction scale of over tens of billions of yuan.

In addition, Gome may not have thought of their overall layout of Internet finance, may have encountered a development bottleneck.

Circle the territory

Like other similar enterprises, gome, a physical retail giant, has to start its financial business from consumer finance and supply chain finance.

It is obvious to all that Gome finance has the offline channel advantage that makes Internet new economy enterprises covet. At the front end, GOME has more than 1,000 offline stores and 180 million members. At the back end, GOME Finance has a supply chain system that has been deeply engaged in the retail industry for 30 years. It connects with a huge supplier network and provides rich flow resources for the development of its supply chain finance. And these two big advantages, will become its batch transformation customer’s natural entrance.

In terms of achievements, Gome finance has also made outstanding achievements in consumer finance and supply chain finance. Data show that gOME financial business in 2017, the two business transaction volume achieved a 403% and 122% growth respectively. But from another point of view, the high growth of gOME’s consumer finance business is also reasonable, after all, consumer finance business is the strength of e-commerce and physical retail. In particular, Gome has digital 3C, home appliance scene and other consumption scenes, equivalent to master the innate flow resources.

With the support does not represent gOME financial can rest easy, in contrast, home appliances consumption is a low-frequency scene, the user’s re-purchase rate is not high. Accordingly, the traffic conversion rate is not very high.

On the other hand, the strong scene advantage is the key to gome’s financial door, but it will inevitably become a natural barrier for its development.

In addition to rich offline scenes and supplier resources, Gome seems to have no other advantages in Internet finance. The weakness of acquired strength and the shortage of advantages will bring a big development obstacle to gome financial, that is, business expansion is difficult.

In 2017, the penetration rate of GOME Financial in Gome stores has reached 100%. This should be a good thing, but may also be the beginning of gome financial development node. Since the penetration rate has reached the maximum value, this lack of other advantages of GOME financial, the industry ceiling also seems to be faintly visible. This is not surprising, GOME financial is still lack of technical basis, large-scale business expansion is difficult to achieve, thinking can only turn in their own scene territory.

Is the addition of Mutual gold to compete for nutrients or regurgitate retail?

In 2018, Gome is trying to expand more scenes, focusing on home decoration, auto finance and other fields.

Little imagine, these fields are all the key that each big Internet magnate people contend for, the capital joins also dyed these fields already red sea. On the other hand, Gome financial, compared with the giants’ years of experience, it is much weaker, not only lack of natural scenes in these areas of expansion, but also suffer from no resources. The only thing gome can count on is its brand power.

Can brands serve as food? Maybe. Just think from another perspective, auto finance, home decoration and other scenes of expansion which is so easy, although Gome has accumulated many years of traditional retail experience, but it does not mean that it can be everything. In the face of these unfamiliar areas, plus so many powerful competitors, GOME financial has to form its own core competitiveness in scene development. Otherwise, you’ll end up doing everything and doing nothing well.

There is a point of concern here. Gome financial joining, in the end is to provide nourishment for its retail business, or fighting for the nutrition of retail business?

As early as 2016, when GOME Financial launched the overall layout of Internet finance, some people raised doubts. According to its traditional offline decentralized expansion mode, there is an obvious drawback, that is, it may eventually cause the negative situation of multiple interests entangling, and it is difficult to form the centralized effect.

It is well known that Internet finance has the role of promoting consumption, which naturally cannot be refuted. Just looking at the business layout of Gome financial, the fragmentation phenomenon between the platforms is a little protruding, and appears to be a little scattered and disorderly, business and business did not form a unified mutual cooperation effect. In addition, from the perspective of its financial performance, all businesses seem to be developing in a one-way direction, snatching the superior resources of Gome together, but there is no feedback effect on its retail business. So this amounts to an unsustainable supply model.

It is not impossible to understand gome financial’s business expansion. At present, the competition of retail industry has risen from simple scale expansion to ecological competition. The reason why Internet giants frantically expand their business scope is to build their own industrial ecological closed loop, consolidate the land they have built over the years, and finally “make money” behind closed doors. Perhaps Gome is also driven by this consideration.

In the end, it is unclear whether Gome’s business layout will benefit its retail business or drain it.

Good beginning, gome financial curve overtaking is not easy

On the whole, gome, as an “underachiever” in the Internet finance industry, has not been able to grow into an Internet finance giant or successfully get out of the spell that its business is surpassed by rivals, but it is another good start for gOME to actively embrace the Internet.

Gome is now well past its peak in traditional retail and faces more competition ahead. Combined with the above analysis, the main reason why Gome does not have many advantages in Internet finance is that it lacks Internet gene and Internet fintech gene. Obviously, to do Internet finance, the first thing is to have a strong underlying structure, otherwise, no matter how luxurious the superstructure is, the foundation will easily collapse in the end.

At the moment, Gome’s “one step behind” pace of development does indeed deprive it of good development opportunities. Too much condemnation will not help. What we need to consider in the future is to exert the radiation effect of financial business to the utmost and strive to achieve overtaking on the curve. However, in the field of Internet finance, the former is preceded by giants like Ant Financial and JINGdong Finance, while the latecomer Gome Finance is under the pressure of a series of giants, so it is not easy to stand out.

However, in order to vigorously develop financial business, GOME finance is indeed in its own scene advantages up and down enough, and retail business as gome’s foundation, is naturally the focus of its layout. After all, the radiation capacity of giants is also limited, and the stock space of consumer finance and supply chain finance is so large that GOME Finance can make the financial scene deep and thorough as long as it makes breakthroughs and innovations in technological development.

In a comprehensive view, Gome financial, the “underachiever” in the mutual finance industry, looks like a stone pushed forward by the flood of the general trend, without priority, without the technical strength to resist the flood, but full of passion. But there is no doubt that the consumption scene and finance are closely combined, and the scene is also the core of gOME finance’s future development. Perhaps as long as this advantage is played to the extreme, gome Finance’s dream of regaining retail business can be realized as soon as possible.

Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110, this article first leek finance