Today’s tourism industry is the same, Ctrip, Flying pig, Tuniu famous, the halo effect is significant. However, in addition to these head enterprises, unknown countless, and outdoor travel affinity zhang Chu is one of them. Recently, Beipiao Zhang Chu revealed to us that he had encountered a not very friendly entrepreneurial experience. We need to restore the whole picture of Zhang Chu’s outdoor travel business before we take the whole thing apart.
Zhang Chu’s metamorphosis: twists and turns
March 1, 2012, should be just another day in the early spring of Beijing, but Zhang Chu’s Beijing Leisure Outdoor Club was born on that day. And that year, the pattern of online travel or Ctrip, Elong and tongcheng under the world, flying pig’s predecessor Ali travel is also in the pipeline, Tuniu is losing 113 million yuan, market changes continue to clean the industry.
Time to push forward two years, is the beginning of Zhang Chu and outdoor travel encounter, she did not realize that she has been quietly into a twists and turns “outdoor travel”. In 2010, zhang Chu, who just graduated from college, came to Beijing alone and officially became a member of Beipiao, and began to cultivate his dream.
No accident, Zhang Chu chose to enter the booming real estate industry, do a battle in the front line of sales. At that time, it was not unusual for Zhang to learn sales skills and real estate as quickly as possible. Fortunately, the industry trend is very optimistic, coupled with Zhang chu’s own efforts, the annual salary has climbed to 300,000 to 400,000 yuan.
The first bucket of gold was so heavy that Zhang Chu undoubtedly chose a gold-inlaid rice bowl. But the huge pressure of the high-paying job made Zhang Chu gradually have the idea of giving up, and promoted the idea of landing is an outdoor tour, leaving the city to suppress the cage of Zhang Chu for the first time so real feel the beauty of nature.
How long does it take to develop an interest into a business? Zhang Chu’s answer is a moment. After embarking on the road of entrepreneurship, life has not been kind to Zhang Chu. Zhang Chu still needs to consider the problems of customers and promotion, otherwise how to lead a group? What if there is no income? At that time, a number of online travel platforms were already flourishing. So Zhang Chu naturally thought of using the power of the Internet to obtain customers.
Then, Zhang chu went to major forums and platforms to write posts, hoping to share outdoor travel tips and experiences in the form of a breakthrough in his own business. Taking advantage of online travel, Zhang Chu received his first tour, but things did not go as well as expected, or even worse, Zhang Chu also faced the first and biggest blow since the start of the business — customer complaints.
As it was the first time for Zhang Chu to lead a group, he made some mistakes in his performance, which was probably due to nervousness or lack of experience. Some members did not buy it. Not perfect for the first time let Zhang Chu realized that outdoor travel entrepreneurship is not a success in a day, Zhang Chu wanted to beat back.
Fortunately, Zhang Chu practiced the belief of measuring the world with his steps and persevered. But Zhang chu decided to make up for his outdoor experience, and in the next two years, he spent all his savings and became a devout learner. Go around Beijing, jiuzhaigou in Sichuan, Kanas in Xinjiang, Potala Palace in Tibet and Kathmandu in Nepal.
People, in the interest of learning new things incredibly fast. By a magic grip of Zhang Chu suddenly grew into a senior leader. Up to now, the number of members of Beijing Leisure Outdoor Club is 6395 every year. Zhang Chu has his own company, no longer a person, with customer service and more than 20 leaders.
After all this really happened, Zhang Chu summed up his experience of starting his own business in one sentence: we have always been a small ant climbing Mount Everest. Zhang Chu’s entrepreneurial experience is not very prominent, or even not exciting enough, but Zhang Chu at least reached the stage goal, and zhang Chu’s outdoor travel entrepreneurial experience can bring what enlightenment?
First, although zhang chu3’s’s entrepreneurial era is the era of giant infighting, but at that time the online travel market is in a high-speed growth period, zhang chu3’s into outdoor swimming segment may say a better choice, one is the outdoor YouJianLi in reach of zhang chu3’s offline scenarios, the second is when the population of tourism demand tendency of personalized, outdoor travel and outbound tourism is booming. Even the giants have long hands, but not enough.
Second, Zhang chu’s first clients had a lot to do with the Internet, which was a turning point in zhang Chu’s unwitting move towards online travel. Zhang Chu without connections, offline site only in the network can fully show a person’s power. And at the height of the Internet demographic dividend, Zhang chu’s online promotion became the best matchmaker.
Sudden unripe misfortune, Zhang Chu falls into human nature trap
From the moment of zhang chu3’s become entrepreneurs, is the sixth year, now back to see zhang chu3’s business, also don’t like that kind of pain, all the wind light cloud light already, but let zhang chu3’s never thought is, really is a blow to their is not trapped chu in career, but the sudden “spy” — floret (flowers).
In 2014, floret into Zhang Chu’s company, and Zhang Chu became a struggle together. Perhaps Zhang Chu saw his own shadow from the flower, perhaps Zhang Chu felt that if the company wants to develop and grow, it needs more experienced leaders. As a result, floret became the focus of zhang Chu’s training.
The growth of the flower did not let Zhang Chu disappointed, perhaps walking and Zhang Chu was similar to the road, the flower gradually grew into an experienced leader. On October 31, 2017, Floret quit her job and became a customer service employee of the company. It is a completely strange field, perhaps Zhang Chu realized that floret has a very strong desire to improve, still patiently teach her about the knowledge of operations, to help floret achieve the growth of their own needs.
Perhaps floret does not like the work of customer service, perhaps floret is not suitable for operation. During the attitude of the floret began to change, negative signs also began to break out at this time, Zhang Chu did not know why the floret so, she even forgot the master leader of the floret when skilled and active.
What will come will come. Another manager of the company suddenly dismissed floret, Zhang Chu temporarily do not know what to do, even in order to ease relations, also suggested that the company managers to apologize to floret. Perhaps as fate would have it, Xiaohua finally left Beijing Leisure Outdoor Club on January 3, 2018 after staying intermittently for 4 years.
But the thing did not end at this point, Zhang Chu is found to be bad 316 yuan when checking accounts after two days, right now encounter floret to zhang Chu to ask for the 316 yuan remaining sum in working mobile phone. Zhang chu’s sense of crisis was triggered, last time in 2012 when he wanted to give up his startup.
So Zhang Chu immediately checked the relevant transfer information, in the case of no transfer record, Zhang Chu had to directly ask the outdoor tour members to understand the relevant situation, and asked them to show the transfer record. After this, Zhang Chu also found that floret handled a ski group less pay part of the funds, repeatedly questioned, floret admitted the rest of the money in their own alipay.
Zhang Chu at this time understand, floret changed heart, that used to be familiar with floret gone. But in line with the principle of good reunion, Zhang Chu did not pursue too much, who will make mistakes, and did not cause great losses to the company. But what happened next made Zhang Chu break out in a cold sweat.
Floret announced the establishment of his own outdoor tour brand – Youke outdoor, and according to the micro official website information, floret uploaded photos as early as December 20 last year, at that time, floret is still a leisure outdoor club customer service. That’s the end of the matter. Everything seems to have come out.
Objectively, Zhang Chu is to fall into the human nature trap buried in a pair of mianmianmianzhizhong. On the one hand, As the founder of an Internet company, Zhang Chu naturally attaches great importance to the cultivation of talents and regards Xiaohua as his own. He not only teaches professional experience in outdoor tourism, but also becomes a springboard for xiaohua’s career. On the other hand, floret’s change of heart is difficult to fathom, one of a road comes to become educator eventually by pedagogue, gave Zhang Chu a lesson well.
Where is the life door of Internet tourism entrepreneurship?
A glimpse of the leopard can be seen. Zhang chu’s story is small, but it should serve as a warning to entrepreneurs. In fact, many big companies have seen similar incidents, such as executive defections. But for a startup, an exodus of employees combined with a loss of customer resources is much more serious, because it can be devastating to the startup.
Behind Zhang Chu’s experience, there are actually three keys to Internet tourism entrepreneurship.
First of all, the development of online tourism up to now, due to the impact of the fading of the Demographic dividend of the Internet, is generally considered to have entered a stable stage of development. The iResearch report shows that online travel has shown a declining growth rate since 2014. On the one hand, users have become more rational and demand better quality and personalization of tourism, leading to a slower growth rate. On the other hand, there are still many chaos in the tourism industry, and information asymmetry in the online tourism industry continues to plague the whole market.
So up to now, online travel is more or the ability to tap into the existing market, simply put, is the rate of repeat purchase and word of mouth. Floret know outdoor tourists source is the golden mountain, so it will suddenly turn to customer service to do operations, because the cost of outdoor tourists has been very high, to re-expand their may be difficult.
Second, we should learn to value the power of differentiation. Assuming that xiaohua replicates all of Zhang Chu’s customers, Zhang Chu must consider the possibility of differentiated competition. In the past, Zhang Chu’s differentiated ability to attract visitors was his rich and unique experience in outdoor tourism. But now that advantage may be gone, and the only advantage left may be word of mouth.
However, this is far from enough. Considering the favorable factors of the policy for outdoor tourism, if Xiaohua is regarded as a strong competitor, what Zhang Chu needs to do is to embark on the differentiation route as soon as possible, or to further improve user stickiness and loyalty. According to the “Wild” report 2016-2017 released by Tuniu, the rapid development of the Internet will promote the standardization and structuralization of outdoor tourism products, and outdoor tourism will gradually break the limitations of acquaintance economy and small circle after easier access, and eventually become a mass consumer goods.
From this point of view, Zhang Chu must establish a sense of crisis as soon as possible and establish his own advantage barriers, such as stratifying customers and providing optimal solutions according to their different needs.
Finally, the most immediate lesson of xiaohua is that startups should establish oversight and management mechanisms to protect their core business. Xiaohua can contact all customers in one position, obviously shows that the company lacks the ability to protect core data. Like Zhang Chu such entrepreneurial companies have been calculated to achieve phased success, the negative impact of floret events still have to see follow-up. But for other startups that are starting up or have a moat yet to be built, protecting their core business is about staying competitive for the long term, so it’s important.
From the north drift Zhang Chu fell into the human trap this event, floret this time bomb eventually exploded, Zhang Chu also draw lessons from it. Be in “100 regiment big war” era, the Zhang Chu that entrepreneurship is not easy is time should fill fill lesson well, also want to be prepared for next stage while mending life door. After all, Zhang Chu is still only halfway up Everest.
Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110