Gome hard "Metamorphosis": Department store strategy late

Gome, which has also been plagued by a sharp reduction in gross profits, has vigorously launched its "Suningyun" strategy following the old rival, the 002024.SZ.

As its first in the second half of the year to introduce the strategic category, Gome online-related FMCG products have been officially on August 26. The first line of this batch of FMCG SKU (inventory unit) The number of more than million, the cooperation of the brand more than 20,000 companies.

It is noteworthy that within the United States is named "K1 Plan" of the Department of general Merchandise expansion strategy, in fact, is the group to build Gome online and its 80 million members cover the whole shopping category of the advance strategy.

It is reported that the rapid elimination of this category on line, Gome Online will also be in one months to invest 300 million promotional resources to push its family plan. Gome Online chairman Guixian revealed that in addition to the official line of FMCG, the company will have a new category in September, and the next few months will have similar plans.

But the industry has mixed feelings about its high-profile foray into department stores. Gome online under the market share is constantly being eaten by suning, while online business is more unsatisfactory, and the team is not perfect. Ding, an analyst at the Institute of Rapid Research, said to reporters, "compared to the 1th store behind the Wal-Mart support such a combination, Gome line mainly based on home appliances products, the rapid elimination of products will not be able to convert its offline advantages, so the sales of its FMCG is not too optimistic." ”

Sticky short board for users with bad complements

Since 2010, after the dispute over the holding power, Gome's performance has been unable to "slow recovered." In the second quarter of last year, Gome appeared to be the first loss in eight years of listing. Also because of this, the urgent need to seek new profit growth point of gome, finally determined to enter a large number of competitors of the Department of Electrical business.

Gome Online senior Vice President Pengliang said that since August 26, Gome Online began a 26-day "Fast Elimination festival", including a protection, mother and child, beauty makeup, food, drinks and so on overall let scale exceed tens of millions. "In the main food drinks, a protection, beauty makeup and the four major areas of mother and child, such as Yili, Huiyuan, Beijing Tobacco and Wine sugar, Guizhou Maotai, Olay, L ' oreal and the personal care products of Procter and Gamble are all settled in Gome online." ”

Gome said that the rapid elimination of such high purchase rate products can not only enhance the user stickiness, but also help it to the whole category of retail transformation to enhance the category competitiveness. "Gome Online can subsidize other categories by optimizing the structure of the distribution of goods, the high operating costs of hedging platforms, and providing consumers with more affordable prices to meet the growing demand for diversified online purchases by consumers." ”

However, the experience of Gome in the area of home appliance 3C retailing is not easy because it wants to replicate its experience in department stores. FMCG product itself short sales cycle, low profit margin characteristics and home appliances 3C products are completely different. For Gome, which is accustomed to high profit and big household electrical appliances, how to do well in the FMCG will be a very difficult challenge.

Shen Yuede, an analyst at the Institute for Rapid Transit Research, points out that unlike traditional businesses, E-commerce's customer transfer costs are low and can be moved from one platform to another with just a few clicks of the mouse. The development of loyal users is not simple, the need to repeatedly purchase through customers, build trust and form a dependency and loyalty, so the major electric dealers will be through the category expansion to increase the number of users purchase.

By industry-accepted standards, the cost of developing a new customer on a platform is almost as many times as the cost of maintaining an old customer.

A difficult attempt at electrical appliances

At the end of last year's corporate strategy conference, Gome removed the original logo "Gome" among the "electrical" two words, since the Gome "to the electrical" process is beginning to reveal. And now, the United States to choose at this point in time to test the water department store strategy, compared to Su Ning actually was late for a full four years time.

Suning Appliance 2009 years to put forward the marketing change, try the whole category of management, to Suning and Tesco as a platform to expand the category of non-electrical appliances, in 2012 Suning easy to complete the mother and infant vertical electric network of children after the merger, the current sales category extends to department stores, books, mother and child, virtual products.

Not only that, last July 5 suning easy to buy further announced open platform, large-scale introduction of non-household electrical appliances suppliers, and issued a "free of charge, platform-free use fee, free margin" series of preferential investment policies.

Unfortunately, the forerunner Su Ning still seems to have been unable to find the knack in the department store category. According to the data released by Suning, Suning easy to buy 2012 annual sales of 18.336 billion yuan, failed to reach the beginning of the 20 billion yuan sales target. One of the department stores category losses accounted for a considerable proportion.

In this respect, Guixian explained that the United States is holding a learning attitude analysis of peers through the road, "do not necessarily do a good job, the company plans to use a year of time to build consumer goods demand purchase circle."

"In the short term, Gome's online business will have a negative impact on Gome's overall profits, but it could be a strategic loss for the group to expand its sales volume." Independent electric business analyst Shou sent to reporters.

Gome, Suning successively "go to electrical" a big direct result is will be in a more extensive field to usher in a new opponent, to Jingdong, No. 1th Shop platform class, vertical type of electric quotient most representative.

3C products started in 2010 after the establishment of the whole category strategy, first into the daily necessities, and then the book audio and video, the establishment of "as long as the Su Ning, Gome, Wal-Mart have to go on" the ambition, of which Jingdong and No. 1th Shop has entered the fresh sales of the line of action can be seen.

has not been able to effectively transfer the advantage of the offline Gome online, how to win the line department store this battle, now seems to be a large unknown factor.

According to the Rapid Research institute data show that in the first half of 2013, the market share of consumer network of Zhongtian Cat accounted for 50.4%, Jingdong Mall accounted for 20.7%, while the traditional 3C store transformation of Suning and Gome accounted for 5.7% and 1.7% respectively. Even its main 3C products market share is not optimistic, in the 2nd quarter of 2013, Jingdong in the consumer market 3C category Market pattern of 40.6% accounted for the first, Suning easy to buy accounted for 8.8%, Gome online accounted for only 5%.