Electric Quotient vs Entity store: Who is the best channel for tea sales?

The electric business is undoubtedly the brightest star in the field of industrial economy in the 2012.

At the 2012 CCTV Economic figures awards ceremony, Alibaba Group chairman Ma Yun and Wanda Group chairman Wang on "Whether the electricity dealers can replace the traditional shop management" debate. Wang said, "Although the electricity business is very strong now, but will not be able to account for more than half of the share, still have time to test." Ma Yun stressed that, although not the caller can not completely replace the retail industry, but will be basically replaced. Wang also disclosed to the outside, he and Ma Yun privately "have a bet", 2020, if the electricity business in China's entire large retail market share accounted for 50%, Wang will give Ma Yun 100 million yuan, on the contrary, Ma Yun lost to Wang a billion.

A stone stirred thousands of layers of waves, Wang and Ma Yun's "gambling" triggered the "electricity quotient" and "entity" management of the fierce discussion and the formation. This discussion in the tea industry is no exception, some people think that the electronic business of tea is a trend, to the traditional tea management brought about a huge impact, even issued "electrical business is to find death, not electric business is dead" speech; some people have doubts and concerns about the electrical business, and always adhere to the entity shop, that the tea electricity business "Just look beautiful", If the management of the channel conflict, no standard products and network docking, personnel training and other issues will likely self-destruct the Great Wall.

New thinking on the weakness of tea market

The slowdown in the economic growth, consumer market weakness in all walks of life increasingly exposed, the tea industry can not be spared, consumer weakness early in 2011 began to appear, 2012 further weakness. According to industry insiders believe that the 2012 tea market unsalable phenomenon is mainly caused by strife, both the market under the circumstances of consumer weakness, but also tea negative news on consumers caused by psychological fear.

Generally speaking, the tea wholesale market activity degree, has been to judge the price of tea market direction indicators.

The reporter visits the big tea city of Fangcun to understand, many tea shop sales coldly. In a tea shop operating, there is no customer, the shopkeeper Mr. Wang saw reporters on the big spit, said business difficult to do, last year, tea sales fell 1/3.

Since many tea companies have received such information, the market weakness has led to a decline in the tea market this year, and the traditional tea companies are almost impossible to escape the fate of shrinking sales. Nowadays, tea merchants are facing two big headaches. First, the tea market apathy directly leads to a continuing decline in turnover. Second, the operating costs are getting heavier, rents, manpower costs are rising.

The terminal mode of Chinese tea market is still the mainstream of traditional tea shops. The boom in real estate bubbles in the last few years has pushed commercial property prices to the top, in addition to the rapid rise in store rents, the store's "transfer fee" is outrageous; In addition, the increase in human resources costs is another reason for the cost of the tea shop, now the staff of the tea shop is not low wages still difficult to recruit employees.

The weakness in market consumption has led to a fall in aggregate demand, and who in the remaining market share will win a slice of the pie?

Most tea makers still love physical stores

The big companies in the tea industry have opened the shop, while the small tea merchants are very calm, many people choose to stick to the "entity shop."

Mr. Lin is the shopkeeper of a tea house in the south. Like many tea sellers, Mr. Lin's body also exudes a faint "tea gas", do not float not impatient.

Mr. Lin operates tea business for many years, to the wholesale, these years business is good, old guest many, to take the goods are mainly distributors. When chatting to Taobao, Mr. Lin play with the mouse, "In fact, I also opened a Taobao shop." There was a hint of disdain in his tone. "But open shop to spend money maintenance, but also spend money to promote, there is vicious competition, I am powerless." ”

His idea is the same as many tea shop dispensers: Tea is a need to sit down to the product, the main purpose of the tea shop is not to make money, but from the heart like tea, to tea members. "I have a few customers from my store and then to Taobao shop to sell, but the business is also general." "said Mr. Lin.

Of course, with the rise of the electrical business, Mr. Lin also realized that the electric business has a real impact on their own businesses, although the impact is not big. Many people in the market have opened Taobao store, but the shopkeeper is generally lazy to take care of or do not have time to take care of.

Although online shop is really good, low cost, small risk, but he still insists on the route of the tea entity shop, his second physical store has begun to decorate. He gave us a pot of good tea, "we often to friends, repeat customers or a lot of, a lot of tea lovers can become friends, doing business well but also have to do happy, a lot of things are not cold shop can have." ”

In fact, among the thousands of tea merchants in Guangzhou, they still love the majority of the physical stores. There are more concerns about the electrical business, such as tea in the online consumer goods is relatively high price, online consumer groups can accept it?

Electric dealers disrupt traditional tea market

According to the forecast of the Yi-Zhi-ku, 2012 tea consumer online retail transactions on the scale of 3.9 billion yuan, by 2014, tea consumer online retail size will reach 7.7 billion yuan. At present, the size of the online retail business of tea manufacturers, the days of the cat, Beijing East, when the integrated electric platform accounted for the entire transaction size of 90%, and vertical sites accounted for only 10%.

Alibaba Group Research Center released a report January 9, said the 2012 Alibaba platform of agricultural sales reached 19.8 billion yuan, sales of agricultural products, a total of 260,000. The report pointed out that from the specific agricultural products, tea in Taobao, the largest sales, daily turnover of more than 7 million yuan. From the whole electric industry chain, tea as an important category of agricultural products, with the rapid development of online shopping market is also quietly rising.

Reporter investigation found that with the physical store deserted form a sharp contrast is, Taobao and some online electronic mall Tea city is unusually lively, sales are also rising trend. 2012 Taobao ranked the top Ten Network business, in Fujian and Hong Tai in sales to create a new high, there are still guest tea and Sen Zhou Tea also due to the extraordinary sales performance into the network 30. From Taobao's trading records, 2012 tea network business Annual sales of tens of millions of dollars and many, into the network of tea enterprises more and more.

Reporters in the days of the cat browsing a few tea mall found that each tea companies have different degrees of blending fashion elements. Taobao data show that 25-35-year-old consumers become the main consumers of tea shopping. "Online purchase of tea is not strict on the taste of young people, for them, drinking tea represents a kind of urban life attitude, rather than professional tasting." "Taobao's analysis of this phenomenon is" on the one hand, consumers of this age level of health awareness in the enhancement, and they are more likely to accept online shopping.

At present, the main sales of tea products include black tea, green tea, white tea, black tea, jasmine tea, yellow six tea series, as well as fruit tea, health teas and tea sets and other peripherals. From the mode of view, the tea vertical manufacturers can be divided into two categories, one for the integration of the whole industry chain operation mode, from the upstream tea plantation picking, processing, and then to the line of product sales and distribution services, the mode of representative manufacturers for buying tea. Another for the focus on the online channel marketing, through cooperation with tea merchants to complete the supply situation, and the enterprise is mainly responsible for the operation of online shop and sales work.

The electronic business of tea enterprises in Guangzhou is still in its infancy

Taobao published "2011 Annual Taobao Hot Tea list," The data show that Guangdong became the first major province to buy tea, followed by Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The Cantonese people have the habit of drinking morning tea, consumption of tea more, but in sharp contrast to the tea in Taobao, among the top 100 of the merchants, incredibly can not find a businessman from Guangdong, this and Guangzhou as the country's largest tea consumption market is very inconsistent. The reason, in addition to the tea prices and the origin of the advantages, the Guangzhou tea merchants in E-commerce investment in the time and energy is not enough.

The importance of the electricity market is beyond doubt, many tea enterprises are enough to explain the problem, but the operating conditions are uneven, some daily turnover can be more than hundreds of, some but few transactions. Reporter learned from the industry, Guangzhou Tea Enterprises in the process of E-commerce, the vast majority of the initial trial stage, and mostly poor operating conditions.

"A lot of tea enterprises in the process of the electric shop opened abruptly, the next maintenance operations are lax management, turnover is very little." "One industry personage who declined to be named said that even a small number of the more mature electric business tea enterprises, in fact, not much profit."

Liming, secretary general of Guangdong Tea Industry Association, believes that E-commerce provides a new outlet for tea enterprises, especially in the current situation of high operating costs. Tea enterprises involved in E-commerce market, sell on the network, will undoubtedly reduce the intermediary circulation, reduce operating costs, so that the rationalization of product prices. However, selling tea on the internet is different from selling tea in the physical shop, and will also face difficulties, especially the domestic e-commerce market in the initial stage of price, therefore, the development of the tea industry e-commerce has a considerable way to go.

However, in the face of the current trend of the electric business, many tea makers are still eager to be afraid of their own too conservative miss Time.

Puer Zhang Zhaye General manager Zhang Zhijiang is planning to set up a professional electric Corps team in the near future, but he also knew that tea enterprises to be in the field of electricity to share a cup of soup is not easy, how to cut? By what means can the quickest and most cost cut into? These are the problems he is thinking about.

Among the tea merchants interviewed by reporters, there are a few people who hold similar views and are preparing to enter E-commerce, including the chairman of Guangxi Camellia Industry, Ong Rongbin, general manager of Li Yuanfang tea industry, etc.

Although some of the Guangzhou Tea Enterprises in E-commerce degree is not deep, the lack of understanding of network marketing and blindly follow suit, resulting in E-commerce has become an enterprise development of the chicken, but there are many traditional tea enterprises in the transformation of "entity + Shop" mode of tea enterprises eye-catching.

Lingchun Tea Co., Ltd. is a professional production and marketing of organic tea enterprises, two years ago began to "net", stationed in Taobao, Cat, a shop and other electric business platform. According to the company's chairman Chen revealed that the Lingchun Tea "entity + Network" Sales model, although the network sales turnover is not large, accounting for only about 20% of total turnover, but the trend of increasing year by month is very obvious. Chen attaches great importance to the network platform, to this end in the more concentrated it talent Tianhe set up a professional network operation team, from Art, planning, promotion to packaging, readily available.

Professional team is the key

Many traditional tea enterprises to enter the electricity business, not because the operation of the line is not good, the opposite is often the line is very good, but see the future development of E-commerce strong momentum, to seize the opportunity to enter the electricity business. But in fact, the development of e-commerce in the tea industry is not the wind. The outdated concept, the lack of talent, technical experience, the gap between the development model ... have become a stumbling block in the transformation of traditional enterprises. In this respect, Taobao cat food category experts suggest that the traditional tea enterprises in the entry into E-commerce, may wish to rely on professional third-party service provider's strength, "professional things to the professional people to do".

"Network selling tea is after all a new channel of technical content, tea enterprises if there is no corresponding talent, do not master the relevant technology or aggressive, there are a number of network promotion companies, tea Enterprises can choose some successful cases of promotion companies to conduct research and cooperation, in having their own team and master relevant technology, Can enter the field of network sale massively. "Practice has proved that the current in the tea industry platform and business to do the best, is often those who have a Cross-border talent team of enterprises."

Zhou Yongliang, deputy general manager of Guangdong Golden Sail Tea Co., Ltd. is deeply touched by this. Open a shopping mall in fact very easy, difficult is the later maintenance, operation, management, this is the tea enterprise E-commerce development of the most important, including docking, distribution, promotion and so on, is a complex integrated system. "Golden sail tea into the field of E-commerce has been a year, but limited by the talent is not in place, development has been tepid."

Overall, the tea industry lacks high-end talent, is generally family-run business, and network sales, network promotion needs to have professional talent. Therefore, some tea companies want to go to e-commerce direction, but suffer from the lack of suitable talent and put the plan on hold.

The combination of electricity quotient and entity is the King of Tea city

Electric business, although to a certain extent, the impact of the traditional tea market, but as the national tea industry leader Zhang Zeguo said, E-commerce is only the mode of circulation and one of the channels, it simply increased the consumer a way of buying.

The impact of the electric dealer on the traditional tea market is becoming the main driving force for the tea industry to realize industrial upgrading. In fact, in many tea business, Ma Yun and Wang Bet, who will win in the game is no longer important. There will be no replacement between the electrical quotient and the entity, and the trend towards convergence is the future.

As Wang said, although China has more than 4,800 electric dealers, but only one electric dealer in the money, that is Ma's Alibaba. Most of the others are losing money, so it is hard to say that the current model is advanced. In fact, the electrical business still needs to take a long road of development and innovation. In this process of change, the traditional tea enterprises with foresight consciousness seize the opportunity to transform themselves, and actively integrate into the electric business industry, it is possible to lead a step in the market competition.

Based on this, liming that the tea enterprises involved in E-commerce can be bold to try the line under the combination of the way. On the one hand, the use of E-commerce network platform to promote, on the other hand, the use of physical stores to carry out a variety of taste experience, closer to consumers.