Duozhuayu: Surfing the trend of sustainability

13 Dec Duozhuayu: Surfing the trend of sustainability

Posted at 18:29h in China Insights, Sem categoria by Niska Yu

As a leading symbol in the industry, Duozhuayu (dé jà vu) started as a second-hand store in 2017, focusing on recycling used books. They opened their online bookstore first on WeChat Mini Programs before establishing their offline presence. Currently, Duozhuayu is also gradually expanding to other categories such as clothing and small electronic devices.

Fabernovel Key Takeaways

The consumer consciousness on sustainability is awakening. Duozhuayu as a leading symbol achieves success by:

Standardizing the transaction process online to enhance transaction efficiency.
Launching the C2B2C model and using digitized tools to improve transaction credit.
Setting O2O initiatives to target more consumers.

History of Duozhuayu

In the beginning, Duozhuayu was just a WeChat group with second-hand book seekers. Group members would enter their used books and desired books onto an excel sheet, and Duozhuayu would act as a “book broker”, handling the transaction process and shipping books to corresponding members.

However, due to increasing demand, Duozhuayu decided to establish a proper trading process by moving to WeChat Mini Program. At this time, a great number of well-known writers became users of Duozhuayu which drove traffic and started to make notable influences among fans of these writers.

*Screenshot of WeChat group and records sheet*
*(Photo credit: YiXi Video)*

Afterward, Duozhuayu turned into a recycle store to develop more categories and opened offline stores in Beijing and Shanghai. They now have more than 4.5 million registered users and sold over 20 million books as of November 2021.

*Duozhuayu in Beijing*
*(Photo credit: Duozhuayu)*

*Duozhuayu in Shanghai*
*(Photo credit: Nowre)*

Unique C2B2C Model

In order to resolve the uneven conditions of books Duozhuayu received, they chose to launch a C2B2C model, creating an authentic identification & cleaning process to build the trust of consumers before selling to them.

Standardized Transaction Process

Nowadays, the whole transaction online is backed by WeChat Mini Program. Consumers can place orders for both purchasing and selling needs in a short time. The buyers only need to search the target book to check storage. The sellers only need to scan the ISBN code back on the book to check whether it is accepted or not and its price.

Digitalization

Duozhuayu developed a smart scanning system that helps to drive the decisions whether to accept or reject books and set their price in a few seconds.

Receive or Reject?

Following certain principles, Duozhuayu input instructions to the AI regarding which book to receive and reject during the manual book selection process. When a new book comes, Human staff and the AI machine drive the decisions at the same time. Now the accuracy of AI scanning is highly compliant with human decisions.

How to set a reasonable price?

Powered by the Algorithms, the system gives a real-time reasonable price for transactions according to the Supply and Demand. “Best selling author lists” and “Wish list” functions are good references for collecting demand needs as well as the latest books storage as supply credentials.

All the transactions are real-time. The price changes accordingly if the supply exceeds or is inferior to the demand. Normally, Duozhuayu receives books with a 90% discount and sells books with a 70% discount to maintain profit. For unsalable books (unsold after three months), Duozhuayu will no longer acquire additional inventory and remove them from the shelf.

O2O Initiatives in the Offline Store

O2O initiatives can be spotted in Duozhuayu’s offline stores. In the Shanghai store, you can find QR codes linked to the Mini Program everywhere in the store. The wall, the price tag, the bookshelf, etc.