ofo small yellow car used to be a star project of the sharing economy, and the founder Dai Wei was also known as a talent. However, with the emergence of problems such as difficult deposits to be refunded, vehicle damage, and market competition, ofo gradually declined, and Dai Wei was also burdened with huge debts and pressure. In the first half of this year, Dai Wei went to the United States to start a second business and opened a coffee shop called About Time Coffee, trying to make a comeback. However, according to domestic ** reports, only one store of About Time Coffee is open on Madison Avenue in New York, and the remaining four stores all show that they have "permanently closed". This is another failure of Dai Wei's entrepreneurship in the United States.
About Time Coffee is a new coffee company with a simple belief: specialty coffee shouldn't slow you down. It sees itself as a magician, introducing modern sensibilities into traditional café offerings. This means that it often creates unexpected combinations of coffee drinks and brings innovation to the mobile coffee experience – like its 100% remarkable** about time bottle, a freshly sealed container that allows users to take custom orders anywhere.
About Time Coffee opened in Gramercy Park in New York, followed by a chain of four more stores in downtown Manhattan. It focuses on cold brew, pearl coffee, taro coffee and other products, and the price is generally around $4 to 5, which is lower and cheaper than Starbucks. It has also launched a kind of Boba Coffee with Chinese characteristics, as well as the function of **APP to place orders and pay for reservations, which has attracted the attention of many young consumers. New users of it get free coffee upon registration, and consumers can order coffee on the app** and pick it up instantly. In addition to its four existing permanent storefronts, it also has mobile pick-up points around the city.
It is reported that up to now, About Time Coffee has raised more than $10 million at a valuation of $40 million, and the investment institutions behind it include IDG Capital, Zhen Ge** and Weili Capital. Some of these investors have also invested in ofo small yellow cars. Dai Wei, a minority shareholder of the company, was not involved in the day-to-day operations of About Time Coffee, but he helped assemble the company's team and arrange meetings with investors.
However, the bustle soon came to an end. "China Entrepreneur" learned that Only one store of About Time Coffee is open on Madison Avenue in New York, and the remaining four stores are all shown to be "permanently closed". An Instagram search by China Entrepreneur found that the last tweet on the About Time Coffee account was in September, and the last time a consumer posted a picture was last year. These signs indicate that About Time Coffee's business situation is not ideal, and it may face multiple pressures such as capital, market, and competition.
Dai Wei's family is good. His father provided him with the best educational environment since he was a child, coupled with Dai Wei's brain, good family background, and excellent educational background, so that Dai Wei has high-end contacts and forward-looking thinking. The entrepreneurial idea of ofo shared bicycles gradually had a framework in his mind.
In 2014, Dai Wei and several other founders founded Ofo Little Yellow Car. In 2015, the project was first operated within Peking University, and soon rolled out quickly in the city. On the official ** of ofo, they introduced the project as follows: "ofo small yellow car is the world's first dockless bicycle sharing travel solution". As long as you pay a deposit of 99 yuan, you can use the small yellow car. For white-collar workers in big cities, it is simply "beneficial but not expensive". In 2017, the deposit for the small yellow car was raised to 199 yuan, but there are still users who have registered. Dai Wei's ofo small yellow car has become a representative of the "sharing economy" in the limelight, and some people even praise the shared bicycle as one of the "new four major inventions" in contemporary China.
However, the good times were short-lived. The ofo little yellow car came too fast, like a "tornado";Walk fast, too, leaving a mess behind. Just three years later, the little yellow car "flourished and declined". First of all, Dai Wei's concept of sharing is new, but he ignores the most important point: product quality. The quality of the ofo small yellow bike is not good, and it will be damaged soon after being "shared", which seriously affects the customer's riding experience. In the early days, they were all brand-new cars, and users were naturally very satisfied, and the market size expanded rapidlyBut as the vehicle depreciates rapidly, the user experience suffers greatly, and all sorts of complaints follow. In a market economy, customers vote with their feet. Since ofo is so difficult to use, then simply return the deposit, no need!At that time, other bike-sharing products had appeared on the market one after another, forming a fierce market competition for ofo and seizing the original market share of ofo.
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