Good News on Listing | Frost & Sullivan Assists Xiamen Yipin Weike Network Technology Co., Ltd. to Successfully List on the US NASDAQ (NASDAQ: EPWK)

Xiamen Yipin Weike Network Technology Co., Ltd. EPWK HOLDINGS LTD. (hereinafter referred to as "Yipin Weike") successfully listed on the US NASDAQ through a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) on February 7, 2025.

During the process of listing in the US this time, Frost & Sullivan mainly undertook the following tasks: helping the issuer accurately and objectively understand its positioning in the target market, using objective market data to discover, support and highlight the issuer's competitive advantages, cooperating with the issuer, investment banks and other intermediaries to complete the writing of relevant parts of the prospectus (such as overview, competitive advantages and strategy, industry overview, business and other important chapters), assisting the issuer in communicating with the SEC and investors, helping investors quickly understand the market ecosystem and competitive landscape, and assisting the issuer in completing various feedbacks from regulatory authorities on industry issues.

• The company is a leading digital intelligence creative design transaction service e-commerce platform;

   

• The company's crowdsourcing business has strong comprehensiveness, covering seven major fields including design, software development, marketing, and business services;

   

• The company's business model based on the digital economy and serving crowdsourcing provides impetus for the growth of small, medium and micro market entities;

   

• The company has a leading number of platform users, platform task volume and order volume in the industry;

   

• The company has professional teams in creative design, intellectual property rights, maker services, etc.

According to Frost & Sullivan report:

• As of the year ended December 31, 2023, in terms of GMV, the company ranked second among online platforms focusing on comprehensive services for Chinese crowdsourcing, with a market share of 9.3%.

Crowdsourcing platforms, as a bridge connecting individuals and enterprises, provide task posting and undertaking services respectively. Their main profit model relies on diversified value-added services. For example, promotion services paid by service providers (such as "task placement") can enhance the visibility of tasks and services on the platform to increase the buyer conversion rate. In addition, VIP store services empower merchants to achieve efficient supply and demand matching, brand exposure and personalized store display. Some crowdsourcing platforms also obtain revenue through transaction commissions, but this model accounts for a relatively low proportion in the overall industry revenue structure. Different platforms adopt differentiated profit strategies based on their own business models and market positioning to optimize monetization ability and enhance the sustainability of the platform ecosystem.

Business Model of Enterprise Service Crowdsourcing Platforms

Some high-traffic crowdsourcing tasks are directly operated by the platform, among which intellectual property services highly related to design tasks have formed a relatively large scale. Derivative services focus on the front-end and back-end links of enterprise task needs, providing one-stop comprehensive solutions. For example, based on logo design tasks, the platform has derived intellectual property services such as trademark registration and copyright application to meet the needs of enterprise brand building and legal protection.

Maker spaces (Makerspace) based on crowdsourcing platforms are professional communities customized and created for the Witkey group on the basis of traditional maker spaces. Through professional training and business guidance provided by the platform, the space helps Witkey quickly start or expand their crowdsourcing business. Within the community, Witkey can achieve growth and monetization through experience sharing, creative exchanges, etc. At the same time, crowdsourcing platforms can also use this model to cultivate a more professional and competitive Witkey group, thereby further enhancing the sustainable development ability of the platform ecosystem.

The booming development of the Chinese enterprise service crowdsourcing platform market is largely due to the rapid rise of the sharing economy. According to the market segmentation of the Chinese sharing economy, the main contributing fields include life services, production capacity and knowledge skills, accounting for 48.4%, 22.3% and 12.5% of the total market in 2022 respectively. Correspondingly, the market scales of these three major segments in 2022 were approximately $262.5 billion, $177.6 billion and $68 billion respectively. Among them, the knowledge skills field has witnessed remarkable growth rate, driven by strong market demand, and is expected to have broad growth potential.

Market scale of the Chinese sharing economy, by type, 2018 - 2027 (forecast)

Among them, the knowledge skills field has become a relatively mature sector in online crowdsourcing platforms, and its market scale reached $68 billion in 2022. As an important segment of the sharing economy industry, the knowledge skills sector has achieved rapid growth in the past five years, mainly benefiting from the continuous increasing market demand for the sharing of knowledge and skills as a social resource circulation method. Driven by this, the market scale of this sector calculated by total transaction amount increased from $33.3 billion in 2018 to $68 billion in 2022, with an average annual compound growth rate of 19.5%. In 2023, the number of new market entities nationwide reached 32.7 million, a year-on-year increase of 12.6%.

The rapid growth in the past five years was mainly due to the rapid development of the sharing economy model in 2017. However, affected by the same factor, as the knowledge skills sector gradually matures, it is expected that the growth rate of this field will slow down, and its average annual compound growth rate will drop to 6.1% between 2022 and 2026, reaching a market scale of $105.8 billion in 2026.

The booming development of the sharing economy, policy support and technological progress, among other factors, have jointly laid a solid foundation for the growth of enterprise service crowdsourcing platforms. At the same time, the development of downstream enterprises in the supply chain has also promoted the growth demand of crowdsourcing platforms. The pain points faced by enterprises in employment (such as high rigid employment costs, high employment risks, social security and individual income tax burdens, and employee management costs) have prompted them to seek more flexible employment methods. In addition, the labor shortage after the epidemic and the development of China's "Industrial Internet" have further increased enterprises' demand for crowdsourcing labor. In terms of GMV, the market scale of China's crowdsourcing platform market (focusing only on creative design and software development fields) reached $3.8 billion in 2022.

Market scale of China's crowdsourcing platform market, calculated by GMV, 2019 - 2028 (forecast)

In the next few years, driven by the above market development driving factors, coupled with profound changes in public concepts about work and lifestyle, the expansion of the crowdsourcing market will have greater possibilities. It is expected that the demand for the crowdsourcing model among Chinese enterprises will continue to grow, and its market scale is expected to increase from $8.1 billion in 2024 to $24.3 billion in 2028, with an average annual compound growth rate as high as 46.3%.

With the increasing diversification and complexity of crowdsourcing task types, the business scope of crowdsourcing platforms will also expand accordingly. Compared with crowdsourcing platforms focusing on a single field, comprehensive crowdsourcing platforms have stronger market competitiveness due to wider business coverage and richer task types. In the future, they will attract more participants and accumulate more obvious competitive advantages.