Still, square dancing platforms have to the overcome the following two obstacles to meet the needs of two million so-called active users first of all and seek to make as much profit as possible.

In earlier days, many square dancing teams to rush to participate in square dancing competitions. However, as people have become quite familiar with such competitions, many competition organizers (local governments excluded) have to be paid to participate in similar competitions.

As an early entrant in the Chinese square dancing market, I am often asked by friends if everything is okay recently. They would often send me news reports saying that one square dancing platform has raised another round of financing, the other platform has also raised several million yuan, etc.

In 2011, Tangdou Square Dancing launched the PC version; in 2012, aiwudao.com launched its BBS version; in 2014, Qiaqia Square Dancing launched its APP version; in 2015, Dafu Square Dancing started its hardware project, Quanmin Square Dancing launched its APP version, Galloping Age entered a new area via WeChat Official Account, and Yiting Square Dancing music streaming platform evolved into 99 Square Dancing; in 2016, Choreographer Center launched User and Teacher version of 1758 Square Dancing, while lipian.com started providing step-counting service... All these companies have made several attempts to find a proper entry point.

3. It’s quite tricky in terms of holding square dancing competitions

Two major obstacles

This area is still not explored fully yet. After all, high-quality contents are still lacking in. For example, we did a party rock activity on the West Lake Square last year. Although we didn’t spend any money promoting the activity, the video was viewed for 3.7 million times and the related article read for 1.68 million times.

We believe that alternative products of video players for the middle-aged and aged people will emerge in the next two years. Users can get access to the internet and easily choose to watch or read contents they like. Such products could become the the most widespread tools for middle-aged and aged people to surf the internet.

Therefore, it’s comparatively speaking easier for high-quality square dancing videos to become wide-spread. In fact, more innovation and new ideas can be brought into square dancing. For example, Qiaqia Square Dancing gave up maintaining the APP, developed a smart television box-based APP instead and successfully became the first company to achieve profitability in the industry.

Secondly, the major function of these APPs should be to watch the latest videos released by popular square dance choreographers. It is unlikely that people would turn from WeChat to these types of APPs to contact with each other, or leading dancers of square dancing team would notify other members in the team via these APPs. However, smartphones are too small for popular square dance choreographers to watch and learn at the same time.

To wrap up, it’s not that the middle-aged and aged generation don’t want to use the internet, but rather there’s still short of products that fit them.

Thus, it’s not feasible to make much profit by selling products directly related to square dancing. What about other types of products, such as health products, tourism packages, financial services and education projects, etc.? Many entrepreneurs have already tried to sell these products and services but their efforts turn out in failure. Therefore, I suggest that entrepreneurs in this market focus more attention on attracting more users and raising financing, instead of making profit in the next two to three years. It’s not that we don’t want to make profit. The harsh fact is that, maybe, the time is just not ripe enough yet.

This is also why many companies are hold offline promotion activities to sell their products and services to middle-aged and aged people. Besides, television commercials, teased by young people, are very popular among this group of people. Many companies have already managed to make huge profit by attracting users to place orders through telephone calls and pay the bill when the packages are delivered.

With over 2 million square dance teachers, 100 million dancers and 500 to 600 million middle-aged and aged target audience, a rather “interesting” supply chain has already emerged in this market.

2. It is always recommended to develop hardware products