Luban Daojia founder Deng Wei: The penetration rate of flexible employment is less than 10%, and the blue-collar gig economy has entered the 3.0 era | WISE2024 Future Consumption Conference
On November 29, the WISE2024 Future Consumption Conference was officially held in Beijing. This conference is hosted by 36Kr Future Consumption, with the theme of "Always with You", focusing on hot topics in the consumption industry. It invites more than 20 executives from investment institutions, platform providers, brand owners, and service providers to jointly explore new trends and opportunities in the consumption industry.
Driven by the digital economy, new blue-collar occupations and new forms of service-oriented consumption have emerged, including emerging blue-collar occupations such as food delivery workers, Didi drivers, and couriers. Currently, there are 400 million blue-collar technicians in China, and the penetration rate of flexible employment is less than 10%. Compared with developed countries, the blue-collar market has huge growth potential.
As a leading domestic blue-collar technician service sharing platform, Deng Wei, the founder of Luban Daojia, believes that with the rapid development of digital technology, intelligent AI algorithms, etc., blue-collar part-time workers have entered the 3.0 era - the skill delivery stage. The emergence of this stage naturally requires a corresponding service platform to match. Luban Daojia can improve service efficiency through digital control, help enterprises reduce labor costs through flexible employment methods, and solve the problems of opaque fees and service processes in traditional employment.
The following is the speech record of Mr. Deng Wei, edited and sorted out by 36Kr:
Deng Wei: Hello everyone! I'm Deng Wei from Luban Daojia.
The theme of my sharing today is the rise of service-oriented consumption and the new wave of the blue-collar part-time 3.0 model.
In recent years, the proportion of the tertiary industry in China has been continuously increasing, and the proportion of service-oriented consumption in total consumption has also been continuously increasing. Over the years, we often hear people say "consumption downgrading", but we can also see that some service-oriented consumption demands are increasing. People may become more rational in the consumption of tangible goods, but they are also increasingly willing to pay for "services". In the future, service-oriented consumption will become the main force of residents' consumption.
We also see that driven by the digital economy, many new forms of "service-oriented consumption" have emerged, and some leading platforms have emerged in various fields, as well as a large number of emerging blue-collar occupations. We have also given these occupations some familiar nicknames, such as food delivery workers, Didi drivers, courier brothers, furniture repairers, furniture installers, etc. As an important support for the service industry, with the rise of "service-oriented consumption", the blue-collar employment economy has also entered a growth period.
First of all, China has up to 400 million blue-collar technicians, and the scale of blue-collar flexible employment is increasing year by year. However, from the perspective of the penetration rate of flexible employment, the penetration rate of blue-collar flexible employment in China is less than 10%. Compared with developed countries, the penetration rate of the blue-collar part-time market in China in the future still has several times of growth space.
As just mentioned, the blue-collar track we are in is a blue ocean, but we also see some pain points in this blue-collar field. So we call the track we are in the lemon blue ocean market - the market size is very large, but it is also very difficult to tackle. From the three dimensions of enterprise operation, blue-collar employment, and consumer experience, enterprises now urgently need to reduce labor costs and improve service timeliness; at the same time, we also see problems such as unstable income of blue-collar part-time workers, lack of industry employment standards, and single professional skills; from the perspective of consumers, opaque industry service pricing, arbitrary charges, and lack of standardized service processes are all reasons for poor service experience.
Based on these problems, the blue-collar part-time field has actually been developing forward in recent years. We divide it into three stages. The most primitive 1.0 stage is the "traditional employment stage". In this stage, the supply and demand of labor are not yet matched. The common forms are mainly offline labor dispatch and business outsourcing, with low efficiency; thanks to the development of the Internet, blue-collar part-time workers have entered the 2.0 "information matching stage", that is, the era of obtaining information yellow pages. The industry employment has shifted from offline to online, greatly improving the employment matching efficiency; with the rapid development of digital technology, intelligent AI algorithms, etc., blue-collar part-time workers have entered the 3.0 era - the skill delivery stage, which is oriented towards service results to meet the needs of different users and ensure the service experience of consumers.
Speaking of this, I would like to share a video with you. This is the daily life of a large number of blue-collar people in China, and it is also an ordinary day for each master of Luban Daojia.
Let me briefly introduce Luban Daojia. We are a blue-collar technician service sharing platform based on the S2B2C model. We have aggregated 3 million blue-collar technicians nationwide, providing one-stop blue-collar skill services covering furniture and building materials, home appliance equipment, project engineering and other fields for millions of enterprise users and tens of millions of family users. The blue-collar masters of the Luban Daojia platform currently cover more than 99% of the regions in the country, and the services can easily reach more than 30 kilometers from the county.
Luban Daojia deconstructs the employment needs of users through the gig economy model. On the one hand, it solves problems such as high costs of self-supporting teams and mismatched labor costs in peak and off-peak seasons for enterprise users, reducing the operating costs of enterprises by an average of about 30% to 40%; on the other hand, it avoids problems such as opaque charges, low service efficiency, and non-standard service processes for family users. Deconstructing traditional employment and defining a new standard for blue-collar delivery.
In terms of service control, the digital service control system built based on big data algorithms realizes the visualization of service process control, greatly improving the control efficiency of the service chain, and making the entire process from service contracting, service undertaking to service delivery of blue-collar part-time workers more guaranteed.
In terms of blue-collar training, we have developed a training system for the entire life cycle of the blue-collar group, from the blue-collar entry period, novice period, maturity period, advanced period, to the professional period. The blue-collar group is an important cornerstone of the service industry. We hope that through the platform-based training system, we can cultivate more professional and standardized skilled service talents, and also enable the blue-collar group to master multi-category and emerging industry skills, achieve skill growth and value enhancement, and also solve the situation of a serious lack of after-sales technicians for emerging industries.
As we mentioned earlier, under the development of the new consumption format, a large number of new blue-collar occupations have rapidly derived, but the professionalization process of blue-collar workers has not kept up with the speed of economic development. At present, there are still a large number of blue-collar positions lacking job standards, skill level certification systems, and service process specifications, which conversely restrict the development of the industry. Luban Daojia took the lead in starting from the service field of the post-home furnishing market. This year, it launched the blue-collar vocational experience certification of 7 major categories in the industry, calling on all sectors of society to pay attention to the professional development of blue-collar workers.
Ultimately, Luban Daojia hopes to be able to link the three-terminal users and continuously create diversified values. Help enterprises reduce costs and increase efficiency; help family consumers improve the service experience; help expand the breadth of skills and increase income levels. Finally, in terms of social value, by helping to solve the employment of the blue-collar group, promoting the development of service-oriented consumption, and driving economic growth.
Our enterprise users cover half of the home furnishing industry, as well as the well-known mainstream e-commerce platforms and logistics platforms. At the same time, we also directly reach tens of millions of C-terminal family users by entering the community property management and undertaking the after-sales maintenance of manufacturers.
In terms of performance, Luban Daojia has maintained a contrarian growth in the past three years. Including this April, it has also completed a Series B financing of several hundred million yuan, led by Innovation Works, and our old shareholder BinFu Capital oversubscribed.
In the future, Luban Daojia will continue to deeply cultivate the family service scene and unlock the full life cycle of users' family services. For example, it includes the needs of the infant and toddler period, the needs of youth services, and the needs of the elderly. We believe that with the changes in the industrial structure and population structure, the family blue-collar service will usher in a new growth curve.
Currently, Luban Daojia has achieved full-category business coverage of the home furnishing (such as furniture, home appliances, building materials, etc.). After forming a mature model in the "living" segment, we will gradually cross-cut from the home furnishing to more blue-collar service fields (such as charging pile equipment, intelligent security, outdoor advertising, etc.), replicate the model and cut into a wider blue-collar skill sharing service market to achieve continuous business expansion and open a new growth engine for Luban Daojia.
Thank you all!