Customers pay 100 RMB, but merchants only receive 60 to 70 RMB in their settlement accounts: Doukunyou leverages the "lucky bag unpacking" mechanism to convert customers into free promoters, returning both customer traffic and profits to merchants.
In recent years, the local life service market has continued to grow, but a large number of brick-and-mortar merchants have fallen into the dilemma of "not fewer orders, but thinner and thinner profits". A startup team named Doukun Lightyear Digital Technology Co., Ltd. tries to return customer flow and profits to brick-and-mortar merchants with a set of "lucky bag unpacking" fission customer acquisition system. Its product "Doukun Youxiang · Lucky Bag Unpacking Customer Acquisition System" has completed development and entered the trial phase for seed merchants, and is seeking angel round financing of about 2 million RMB.
Profits siphoned off by commissions, brick-and-mortar merchants trapped in "high customer acquisition cost"
The profits of brick-and-mortar merchants are being drained layer by layer. Taking an in-store consumption of 100 RMB as an example, customers pay 100 RMB in total, but merchants usually only receive 60-70 RMB in actual account — the difference comes from platform commissions, promotion bidding, influencer commissions and labor costs. Many interviewed merchants reported that the actual received proportion fluctuates with categories, regions and promotion input, and 60%-70% is the common range in the industry.
At the same time, customer acquisition costs continue to rise. Some merchants said that the price of purchasing one accurate lead is between 120 and 200 RMB, one ad click costs about 30 RMB, and less than 5% of the leads actually enter the store; once the traffic investment is stopped, the customer flow drops immediately. What makes merchants more troubled is the ownership of customer data: customers are precipitated in the platform accounts, so merchants cannot reach them repeatedly, and it is difficult to carry out old customer referral and repurchase.
"Merchants spend money on traffic, but cannot retain customers. Their profits are continuously siphoned off by the platform, and they gradually become the fulfillment tools of the platform." Zhu Xiankun, founder of Doukun Lightyear, summarized the core contradiction of the industry. In his view, these contradictions are particularly prominent in high-frequency service categories such as catering, beauty industry and retail. Although the local life market is huge — public data shows that the scale is about 35.3 trillion RMB, and the online penetration rate is about 30.8% — the online rate of service retail is only about 9%, and among the about 125 million individual industrial and commercial households across the country, a large number of small and medium brick-and-mortar merchants still lack their own exclusive customer acquisition channels.
The timing is also notable. Merchants' dissatisfaction with high commissions and high customer acquisition costs is breaking out intensively, and new entrances such as WeChat Channels, Mini Stores and Nearby Mini Programs are opening a number of free traffic channels. In Zhu Xiankun's view, this is exactly the window period for the "no commission deduction, traffic diverting" model to enter the market.
Turn customers into "free promoters"
The solution provided by Doukun Youxiang is: let every customer become the "free promoter" of the merchant. After users enter the same-city lucky bag square, they can receive a 688 RMB consumption coupon red envelope given by the platform — this red envelope is issued by the platform by default, and users can get one for each friend they share, the more they share, the more rewards they get, and there is no need to invite five people to unlock it. When consuming in the store, the red envelope is deducted proportionally, and the deduction ratio is independently set by the merchant: for example, if the merchant sets a 20% deduction, the customer can deduct 20 RMB when consuming 100 RMB, and pay 80 RMB actually. Customers who enter the store can also receive merchant red envelopes, everyone can win the first, second and third prizes, and the amount is also set by the merchant themselves.
The core of this mechanism lies in the cycle of "sharing — verification — rewarding": after the friend receives the coupon through sharing, actually consumes in the store and verifies the order, the system will automatically send another reward coupon to the original sharer to encourage him to continue sharing. Merchants only pay for customers who actually enter the store, and do not pay for invalid sharing, so the customer acquisition cost is greatly reduced. A cross-industry cycle is also formed in the square — customers of Store A can go to Store B, C and D to receive coupons, merchants divert traffic to each other and share customer sources, the higher the merchant density, the larger the cyclic customer flow.
For merchants, the background operation is completely self-service: red envelope setting, sharing rewards, group buying listing, verification and order data dashboard are completed in one background, rules are set by themselves, costs are calculated by themselves, free exposure in the square, nearby stores are displayed preferentially, and customer data is precipitated as the merchant's own private domain assets. When customers pay offline, the funds go directly to the merchant's account, the platform does not participate in revenue sharing, and there is never any commission deduction offline.
Compared with the mainstream group buying platforms, the difference of this model is obvious: traditional platforms have a comprehensive commission deduction of about 30%, obtain traffic through ad bidding, funds go to the platform first and then are settled, customer data is owned by the platform, and orders will decline immediately once the traffic investment stops; Doukun Youxiang has zero commission deduction offline, only charges 2%-3% information fee online, relies on red envelope fission to let old customers bring new customers for spontaneous communication, funds go directly to the merchant's account, customer data is precipitated as the merchant's private domain, and it also supports 30-day free trial. Four moats are thus established: city density, relationship asset precipitation, data moat, as well as model and first-mover advantage — the relationship of coupons, invitations and verification are all precipitated in the system, the migration cost of merchants and customers is high, the earlier you start and the higher the density, the harder it is for latecomers to catch up.
In terms of business model, Doukun Youxiang does not engage in "centralized rent collection", but builds a distributed merchant customer acquisition network, with revenue from four levels: merchant subscription or one-time purchase of advanced functions, charging effect fee according to the number of precipitated valid customers (about 1-100 RMB per customer), low proportion handling fee for online group buying and e-commerce transactions, and private deployment of SaaS general system for partners (unit price of tens of thousands of RMB). The platform only benefits from merchant growth and online transactions, and does not draw commissions from offline transactions.
The closed loop has been verified, first fully penetrate Xi'an
Doukun Youxiang is not just at the idea stage. WeChat Mini Program, H5 page and PC management background have all been developed and launched, payment and online group buying functions are ready, the closed loop of "customer acquisition — verification — collection" has been fully verified. At present, 20 seed merchants have signed up for trial, new merchants are continuously accessing, and a 30-day free trial is provided to let merchants quickly verify the effect. The main entity of the company, Doukun Lightyear Digital Technology Co., Ltd., is in the registration/change stage, and the trademark "Doukun Lightyear" is under application.
The offline gene of the team is the key to the successful operation of the project. Zhu Xiankun, the founder, is a serial entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience, covering three industries: beauty, automobile and catering, and has operated 14 stores in total: from 2008 to 2019, he co-founded and operated 10 beauty stores, the average payback period of stores is 3 months, and 7 stores continue to make profits; from 2019 to 2022, he switched to automobile retail, and fully experienced the process of rising online customer acquisition cost year by year; from 2022 to 2025, he co-founded a catering company and opened 4 stores, leading live streaming, short video and group buying investment, and personally experienced the high commission deduction of platform group buying. Since March 2026, he has been fully committed to Doukun Lightyear, and independently completed product design and system development. The team believes in Huawei's concept of "striver-oriented", and reserves equity for strivers who can create value.
The next path is to fully penetrate one city first, and then replicate it across the country. After financing, the team plans to quickly expand cities with the city partner system: partners can get 25% commission rebate for inviting merchants to settle in, 20% commission rebate for inviting subordinate partners, and long-term revenue sharing after local merchants renew, the headquarters outputs unified SOP, system and commission rebate system. For the longer-term second growth curve, the square will be upgraded to a "local life transaction square", where merchants can list group buying, vouchers, in-store services and e-commerce products, support in-store pickup or express delivery; after financing, AI capabilities will be implemented, connecting to Doubao large model, doing AI shopping guide for C-end, recommending merchants according to popularity, verification rate and reviews, doing intelligent customer service, marketing content and business analysis for B-end, and accessing public domain traffic entrances such as WeChat LBS Map, Douyin, Amap and Tencent Map, turning "people nearby" into new customers of merchants.
This round of financing plans to transfer 20%-22% of the shares, about 60% of the funds will be used for market promotion and city expansion, 15% for product and software improvement, 25% for team and operation, and will be invested in batches according to 12 months and four milestones: start volume expansion, achieve positive profit in one city, replicate to Chengdu, and achieve volume growth in three cities. According to the team's calculation, for the paid version, if 500 new merchants are signed every month with about 1000 RMB per merchant, the monthly revenue is about 500,000 RMB; for the metered version, if there are about 5000 stores with about 300 RMB per store per month, the monthly revenue is about 1.5 million RMB; plus 500,000-1 million RMB from the partner channel and general SaaS deployment, the conservative total is about 2.5 million RMB per month, and the target is about 3 million RMB per month — it needs to be noted that the above is the target calculation after financing, not the realized data.
In the view of founder Zhu Xiankun, the customer flow, customers and profits of brick-and-mortar merchants should all be precipitated in the hands of the merchants themselves. This is also the starting point for Doukun Youxiang to finally build a national local life consumption platform and realize the integration of local life customer acquisition and shopping.
(Project party information: Doukun Lightyear Digital Technology Co., Ltd., about 2 million RMB angel round financing, 20%-22% equity transfer.)