Targeting the demand for high-frequency small orders, Wangcai taps into the blue ocean of instant building materials delivery.
Wangcai Building Materials Delivery within an Hour: Making Renovation Transparent and Efficient
A personal experience made Lu Wangyong aware of the chronic problems in the renovation industry. In March 2025, Lu Wangyong rented a space in a shopping mall in Shanghai for renovation. Although his family had been deeply involved in the building materials industry for a long time, he couldn't directly access the existing resources in this unfamiliar city. He had to visit building materials stores one by one offline and find renovation workers and designers on his own. Facing the generally inflated quotes of up to 20,000 yuan from traditional renovation companies, Lu Wangyong, based on his own experience, finally completed the renovation for less than 8,000 yuan. However, he encountered many troubles during the process - inconvenient building materials purchase channels, non - transparent prices, and difficulties in efficiently connecting with renovation workers and designers. These pain points made him personally feel the "renovation anxiety" caused by the information asymmetry in the industry and the multiple mark - ups in the intermediate links. Meanwhile, the scale of the Chinese renovation market is as high as 7 trillion yuan, but the demand for high - frequency and small - scale renovations has long been unmet. Especially in first - tier cities, 45% of the rental housing renovation demand has created new market space, which the traditional model has difficulty covering. Therefore, "Wangcai Building Materials Delivery within an Hour" came into being - by adopting a decentralized model to form a closed - loop for building materials procurement, worker matching, and waste recycling, redefining the consumption logic of the renovation industry.
Model Innovation: Disassembling the "Centralized" Chain
In the traditional renovation industry, renovation companies are the core nodes, and users have to pay multiple premiums for design, materials, labor, and other aspects. Wangcai's model innovation lies in completely breaking this structure and building a C2C platform centered around the owners: building materials suppliers are directly connected to users to meet the material procurement needs, workers/designers can accept orders independently to reduce service costs, and recyclers can process second - hand building materials to achieve resource recycling. Under this model, the platform only provides credit endorsement, instant delivery, and transaction matching, and does not participate in pricing or charge commissions.
Its core scenario is disassembled into three sectors: instant building materials delivery (after users place orders on the App, nearby building materials stores will deliver the goods to the construction site within an hour, and the average price is 30% - 50% lower than the market price); direct connection between workers and the platform (individual workers such as plumbers and masons can accept orders online, and the platform establishes service standards through the user evaluation system); building materials recycling network (old floors, second - hand doors and windows, etc. will be sorted and then re - circulated, reducing the owners' costs for demolition and renovation). This "disintermediation" logic is similar to the way Didi disrupted the travel industry in its early days - replacing the traditional service chain with transparent prices and instant responses.
Market Prospect: Tapping into the Dividends of the Sinking Market and Stock Renovation
Data shows that the growth rate of the instant building materials delivery market reached 142% in 2023. Behind the GMV of over 100 billion yuan on platforms such as Tmall and JD.com is the awakening of the Z - generation users' awareness of renovation autonomy. The differentiated opportunity that Wangcai aims at is the high - frequency small - order demand. According to the team's research, 38% of young users will participate in basic projects such as wall painting and floor laying by themselves, and the proportion of old - house renovation orders in first - tier cities exceeds 60%. Compared with the bulk transactions on traditional platforms, Wangcai focuses on the long - tail market with "low single - purchase amount but high frequency", such as the instant replenishment demand for scattered consumables like screws and paints.
In addition, the platform attracts small and medium - sized building materials suppliers to settle in by adopting the "no - commission" strategy. On the one hand, it avoids the problem of orders being taken elsewhere, and on the other hand, it enhances the suppliers' enthusiasm for settlement. The platform's main profit - making model does not rely on the price difference in building materials sales. Instead, it charges commission fees from renovation workers after they complete renovation orders, from the recycling of building materials waste, and from providing high - unit - price furniture extension services. After the project is launched, it is expected to complete the settlement of 1,000 building materials stores within 6 months, and drive the growth of the two core businesses of renovation and recycling through high - frequency building materials purchases.
Future Plan: From an Efficiency Tool to an Industrial Closed - Loop
Lu Wangyong divides Wangcai's evolution path into three stages: in the startup period, through the "zero - commission policy" and traffic subsidies, quickly expand to 1,000 stores in the Yangtze River Delta region; in the growth period, introduce AI design tools (such as 3DHome and Kujiale) to help users visualize the renovation effects and develop the intelligent calculation function for building materials (automatically generating material lists); in the mature period, focus on connecting the industrial chain of renovation and recycling, establish a standardized circulation system for second - hand building materials, and gradually extend to supply - chain finance.
Insights from the Entrepreneur: The Determination to Break the Industry Deadlock
"When everyone thinks the building materials industry is 'too tricky', it actually means there are opportunities for change," Lu Wangyong summarized. His family's 15 - year experience in the building materials industry has made him well - aware of the pain points in the upstream and downstream of the industry: in the wave of closures of renovation companies, workers and material suppliers are in urgent need of new channels; owners are troubled by the time - consuming price comparison and temporary shortages. Wangcai tries to become the "infrastructure" connecting multiple parties - not only providing digital tools to improve transaction efficiency but also re - establishing service standards through a credit system.
Currently, the team is promoting the first - round financing of 2 million yuan for regional expansion and technology development. For the future, Lu Wangyong has a clear vision: "Just as takeaways have changed the catering industry, we want to make renovation a transparent, instant, and traceable basic service." In the renovation industry, which has long been criticized as "difficult and complex", Wangcai is trying to launch a full - dimensional revolution from the model to the experience.