Blog Entry 1a: Xiachufang

In my first blog post I will analyzing the business model and the revenue model of my favorite website, Xiachufang. https://www.xiachufang.com/

“Xiachufang” is Chinese word, it means go to the kitchen to do some cooking. “Xiachufang” advocates home cooking, a healthy lifestyle, provides copyrighted practical recipes and diet knowledge, and provides a platform for chefs and food lovers to record and share. Since the launch of the market in late 2014, it has become a food e-commerce platform that value-oriented suppliers and consumers value.

The functions in “Xiachufang” can be roughly divided into four sections: recipes, shopping malls, communities, and paid recipes. The recipe function is a core function of the “Xiachufang” and is the basis for users to use this website for a long time and to use other derivative functions. For example, functions such as market and community are functions that are developed based on the function of the recipe. Therefore, the recipe function is a key step in generating new users and maintaining old users in the kitchen.

“Xiachufang” is a typical UGC (User Generated Content)-type platform, in which the user-uploaded recipes occupy a large part of the recipes in the platform. The recipes in “Xiachufang” are widely categorized into a total of 6 big categories and 48 small categories. You can find almost any sort of recipe, and the variety of recipes and the number of recipes are also very large. According to my rough statistics, there are just over 200 recipes for cola chicken wings. This can meet the diverse needs of users. Therefore, “Xiachufang” uses customer to customer (C2C) business model.

“Xiachufang”receives commission from the cooperative e-commerce through the function of the market. The main purpose of the market function is to manage ingredients and kitchen utensils, and its function and interface design is more similar to Taobao. “Xiachufang”wants to turn the website into an e-commerce platform that specializes in kitchen products. At present, the sales volume and evaluation of this area are relatively large, and it can be seen that it has entered a state of stable operation. Moreover, “Xiachufang” also specializes in its own self-operated products. Its strategy is similar to that of Jingdong. It aims to create a brand of recipes, kitchen utensils and ingredients, and also cooperates with some food merchants of Taobao to further expand client.

Reference

Image 1, 2, 3: https://www.xiachufang.com/