Luxury Test utility traffic becomes the biggest obstacle

Luxury brands provide customers with not only the luxury products themselves, but also the history, culture, values of the brand, through the environment created by the physical store, providing services and other brands to be able to deliver these very good to consumers. Luxury brands to break the Internet sales restrictions, it is necessary to provide consumers with value-added services, as far as possible to give customers the luxury of experience

How hard is it for luxury brands to embrace online sales?

Sun Yafi's experience is deep. 2009 Sun Yafi founded the Fifth Avenue luxury network officially online, when she with the Internet channel can bring new consumers hope and brand business negotiations, 90% of the brand rejected her.

The remaining 10% told her that the brand is not allowed to sell the Internet now, but the future can try, wait and see. In the second year, only a few brand dealers are willing to give the tail goods to the "treatment". All luxury brands are worried about one thing: the Internet will affect the user's experience of the brand.

2011, Unexpected things happened: The brand of the initiative to call to find Sun Yafi, request to carry out online sales cooperation.

At that time, many luxury brands have been testing hydro-electric platform.

Now, as China's luxury market slows and many luxury brands slow or even stop the expansion of physical stores, Sun Yafi feels that the 2013 luxury brands ' online network construction in China will accelerate.

"Over the next 12 months, we will see a significant increase in the expansion of the luxury brand online channel," he said. "Angela Krapp, who now engages in multi-channel retail consulting and investment, has the same expectations.

Speed up online expansion

Sun Yafi Feel the feedback from the brand side. "Last year, when it came to the luxury brands, there were a lot of plans to expand online channels in 2013," he said. "Sun Yafi, founder and CEO of the five-avenue luxury net, said.

Only now is there more than 10 mainstream luxury brands that Sun Yafi to work with in 2013. And Angela Krapp expects a significant rise in luxury brands to expand on China's online channels over the next 12 months.

A number of fast-moving luxury brands announced plans to speed up online expansion in the new year. In February 2013, Ferragamo Group announced the formal entry of the third multi-brand E-commerce platform in China, which further expanded the Salvatore Ferragamo brand in the domestic online sales network.

The Ferragamo China online channel partner is Niemann Group (Neiman Marcus), which is the United States to operate luxury chain stores in the giant, not long ago, Niemann in China launched the online sales Web site.

HUGO boss is also speeding up the pace of e-commerce in the Chinese market. Hugo Boss has launched its first official online sales platform in the UK since 2008, and has been expanding to major markets such as Europe and the US. February 27, 2013, the brand announced in China's autonomous operation of the online shop officially online business.

"There's a lot of pressure on luxury brands, on the one hand, more and more open shop costs, coupled with the market uncertainty, the brand more cautious to open the shop, but also to complete a certain sales performance, and China's geographical gap is very large, the brand in China is difficult to meet the two or three or even four-line urban new rich class needs, These overlays are easier to complete through an online network. "Sun Yafi analysis.

"Online sales platform is a very important sales channel, which also reflects the trend of consumer shopping, on the other hand, it also allows more consumers to access our brand, in the past only through the physical store can not do this." In the next 5-10 years, we will expand our product supply and develop the market of three or four-line cities. "HUGO boss of China, managing director of the Chinese region.

The challenge of success

The history of the past decades and even hundreds of years of development has made luxury brands sober, luxury brands provide customers with not only the luxury products themselves, but also the history, culture, values of the brand, through the environment created by the physical store, providing services and other brands to be able to deliver these very good to consumers. But the internet, more often than not, presents a simple business relationship.

However, it is irresistible that the internet has changed the buying behavior and habits of more and more consumers. Luxury brands are becoming aware that, without changing old ideas, many new consumers will be lost in the future.

For luxury brands, however, the success of online channels seems to be a long way off. Chinese consumers ' online shopping is still a price-driven consumer mentality, and the impact of internet shopping on customer experience is a major obstacle to the development of luxury brands in China's E-commerce platform.

"The challenge is traffic, because Chinese online consumption is still price-driven, as can be seen from the largest online businesses such as Taobao and Cat." China does not yet have a real luxury online environment, "says Angela," and I don't think it can get a reasonable flow or gain in the short term, but it's important to show and learn. " ”

There is no doubt that the price of a luxury-branded, officially-operated sales shop or brand-authorized Third-party sales platform is the same as that of a physical store under a luxury brand line. In Angela's view, the future will gradually change the mindset of Chinese luxury consumers as many other businesses or luxury brands move in the same line.

Now, how can you increase the flow of online sales platforms? Ye Zhenghua, president of Map China, suggested: "The easiest thing to do is to make it easy for consumers to find the address of an online store, in addition to the introduction of online shop links on the official website, many digital technologies can bring ideas to brands, such as buying a brand area on a search engine, Even the use of consumers in typing input when the corresponding introduction and links, and so on, these methods have a high rate of hits. ”

Ying Peng believes that the main driving force of shop business is that the brand's sales staff must be aware that in this area, customer service is essential. So in addition to order execution (stocking and delivery) and IT services, the product management, management and trading are solely responsible for the brand, in order to better monitor the service, product, quality and supply range.

The other problem that the British Chi-Peng thinks about most is continuous innovation and localization, he cited an example, the tradition of collective purchasing and reciprocity is very important in Chinese culture, for which the brand needs to be beautifully packaged to meet the needs of consumers.

Whether it's a proprietary platform for luxury brands or a Third-party sales platform to work with luxury brands, the important revelation of these cases is that luxury brands must provide value-added services to consumers and lavish experience as much as possible to break the limits of Internet sales.

Finally, Angela stressed: "If you are a luxury, you should control your inventory." ”