All major electric business platforms are planning a new round of promotional activities

Mid-Autumn Festival before and after the national day, the major electric platform are planning a new round of promotional activities. However, compared with the previous confrontation of the promotional war, this year, the electric business enterprises in the excavation of their own advantages of each have a focus: Jingdong Mall began through the activities of the Home Decoration Festival High-profile launch of their own household decoration category, Dangdang combined with more than clothing companies to take the show to push new clothing, and the cat from the brand point of view will brand flagship store upgraded to Brand station ... ...

Domestic front-line electric business platform, category expansion has been basically completed, whether it is Jingdong, the cat, when or Amazon, its category basically covers the user's life needs of all aspects, in addition to the cat, self started the electric business platform, more through the open platform of the way will not do or do not do the category to pull to the line.

However, the key to the category expansion is not to pull the category from the line down to the line, but the depth of mining category characteristics, to clarify the characteristics of the category supply chain in order to turn the category into a source of profit. In this regard, Jing dong and when all began to carry out a deep exploration.

Beijing east: billion Yuan coupons deep into the furniture category

Jingdong's large logistics will work with many landing service providers. The way is to recruit some local service providers open platform, users can choose to purchase by Third-party service providers to provide distribution installation services.

Home is a broad range of categories, including home textiles, home furnishings and other soft-loaded products, but also includes cabinets, sanitary ware, tiles and other hard products, as well as furniture, home appliances category products. This is a huge category, but also a very low brand concentration category. Beijing East Open Platform Home Business Department general manager Sinlijun will this household industry is divided into two categories: heavy home and light decoration. Light Home Products due to the convenience of its logistics, has been done on the Internet. Re-decoration, such as furniture products net difficult than the larger, now do a good electric business platform almost no.

In this category of furniture, there is no brand more than 1% of the share, but this is a trillion-dollar industry. In such an industry, even a small share of the entire size of the East Jingdong plate contribution is also quite large. "This industry is a ' big cake ', do not do well at present, this is a ' heavy ' industry, the platform can not do." A vertical website has 38 companies on its platform last year, leaving only 33 this year. Want to do furniture home decoration category must have a gross amount. Sinlijun said that the current volume of jingdong in this area is suitable for increased investment. In the immediate arrival of the home improvement season, Jingdong plans to issue 100 million yuan coupons to push homes to install category.

Sinlijun is a traditional furniture industry origin, he told the "China Business newspaper" reporter, furniture industry threshold is very low, China registered and unregistered manufacturers more than 100,000. Plus the large volume of furniture, non-standard degree of high, which led to furniture products themselves difficult to cross regional sales. Those trans-regional sales of brand freight can account for 20% of the cost, solid wood products transport costs will be higher, these characteristics determine the furniture industry, the national brand is not much. In this way, in the traditional market, the right to speak in the hands of the channel, such as the Red Star of the United States Kai-Lung, incredibly the home and other channels will be very strong, channel costs accounted for the 20%~30% of the value of furniture. That is to say, 10,000 yuan of furniture, have 3000 yuan to be taken away by the channel merchant. In this case, the willingness of businesses to do E-commerce is very strong.

However, as a "heavy" category, businesses focus on sales, and only a large platform, large flow of business can be attractive. Users care about the quality of products, delivery and installation is smooth and so on. The user buys the furniture on the net not to be fresh, but the Trans-region sale causes the last kilometer logistics problem, the door installs the question, the pre-sale waits for too long the question has affected the user experience. How to expand this category while taking into account the business needs and user experience, Beijing and east and other large platforms face one of the difficulties.

"We in the investment, furniture category for the region-oriented investment." For example, Beijing's furniture manufacturers, in Beijing to have landing service capabilities, Guangzhou users click on Beijing's products will show no goods. "Sinlijun introduced, some cross-regional brands often want local distributors to provide support, but because of the distribution of the interests of manufacturers, local distributors are often unwilling to undertake distribution tasks, in addition to promoting the brand and its distributors to establish an interest distribution system to solve this problem, Jingdong is also developing its own distribution system, Large logistics will work with many landing service providers. The way is to recruit some local service providers open platform, users can choose to purchase by Third-party service providers to provide distribution installation services.

It is understood that Beijing east to this end to establish a 80-person home Furnishings category team, the Merchant to choose. Sinlijun that, home decoration products because of brand diversification, product selection is extremely important to choose the quality of good cost-effective products. To make users accustomed to online consumption of furniture, product quality is very important. Jingdong Investment team are traditional furniture home decoration industry origin, their work is to inspect enterprises, users from the class page came in, the first three pages of goods we will be manually to the factory to see. In addition, in the order of selection, the original products from the bed, mattresses, sofas and other categories began, the purpose is to use this easy to install the category to cultivate users with a class of confidence.

When: Abandon clothing own brand focus on the platform

Dangdang's search rankings are set according to the brand, not money can be ranked in the front, nor is the price is very cheap can be ranked in front, but around the characteristics of the brand and user characteristics to rank.

As a listed company, Dangdang and other electric platform for the positive competition does not prevail, if the price war, profit damage, financial results on the ugly, directly affect when the stock price, if not hit the prices war, it faces the risk of segmentation of the market share.

In fact, it's not just a way to compete with other platforms to look good. This year, when the strategic adjustment began to force on the profit contribution category.

August 16, Dangdang (Nyse:dang) released the second quarter of fiscal year 2013. The report showed that Dangdang's total revenue for the second quarter was 1.4935 billion yuan (243.3 million U.S. dollars), an increase of 24% per cent, and a net loss of 63.9 million yuan (10.4 million US dollars) that fell from 72.7 million yuan in the first quarter. Through the past data comparison found that Dangdang 5 quarters, net loss is continuously narrowed. Some analysts believe that the reason is mainly from when the type of product expansion, this year when the launch of a number of fashion and clothing areas of the brand advertising and precision advertising activities, due to fashion and clothing category of higher profit margins, which also promoted the overall gross margin of dangdang level.

Dangdang CEO Guoqing in an interview with reporters also said that Dangdang gross profit margin is quickly due to the rapid growth of clothing categories, this kind of purpose of trading water added to the gross margin. "Put aside the book, clothing department stores last quarter average is 85% of the growth rate, than the Chinese electricity market a little higher." "Guoqing revealed that Dangdang open platform growth, especially clothing and fashion category growth brought about by the contribution of commission income to profits, profit is imminent." However, Dangdang is still expanding the market, hoping to speed up a little faster, so it will be in the expansion of the speed and profitability of a balance between.

When it comes to choosing clothing for deep ploughing, guoqing points out, "the retail industry is particularly difficult to select categories, and Walmart's additions must be second-in-command level approval." Every year when we start a strategy meeting, focus is the selection of categories, we choose a category each year to enter, the choice of the category needs to consider more than 50 factors, of which the most important factor is certainly profitability, even if now do not earn money, next year can make money, to what scale can make money is to be considered. Choose the first fancy clothing is its profitability, from factories to consumers in the hands of the line under the price increase rate is very high, we can give customers, but also to make money, is really a good category. ”

Taste the clothing category expansion brings the sweetness, guoqing to when the future planning more clear: when or positioning "comprehensive shopping center", but there must be a prominent category, such as clothing. The next step may be exercising and outdoors. At the same time, when the self gave up the clothing, the free brand also gave up the clothing category. He believes that the apparel industry's existing brand and supply chain has been very mature, and is very test of professionalism, so abandoned the self and its own brand, but the clothing category is entirely on the open platform.

Dangdang mainstream users of books to buy people, these users are basically reading the middle class, have their own obvious consumption orientation, and to tap this part of the needs of people, when the selection is very important. Guoqing said that Dangdang selling clothing must be the original purchase of the book customers with them in the mood when the purchase of clothing, including the brand of tone. Therefore, when in the operation of clothing for the purpose of not all clothing brands and a variety of price products are listed, search ranking is not sorted by price, when the key page, focus on what not push what when, completely in accordance with the brand, and the rationality of the price to push.

According to Dangdang clothing general manager Deng Introduction, Dangdang's search rankings, is in accordance with the brand-oriented settings, not to spend money can be ranked in the front, nor is the price very cheap can be ranked in front, but around the characteristics of the brand and user characteristics to rank. Although when also in the end of the product sinks, in the clothing brand in the end of the collection is not to enter the search rankings.

In addition, when also with the brand more in-depth cooperation, such as in Dangdang to push the exclusive new products, "look at the production capacity of brand manufacturers, we require each of no less than 20 new products, and other sites are not." "Deng Introduction, a certain line under the brand is not online sales of the new Year, and this year began to Dangdang to do new."

According to Guoqing introduced, when the goal of the clothing category is 10 billion yuan, and when the clothing breakthrough 10 billion yuan, may push the designer brand, because the volume is too small designer to make money, will not have the power, when the scale reaches 10 billion yuan, the designer brand if can occupy 10%, at this time for each designer, It would be a decent business and they would be motivated.

When digging deep into the needs of apparel brands in order to make this category in addition to the most advantageous category of books. The picture is when the Union clothing brand launches the new product release show.