Pillow of the road is the Qingdao Crown Hua Hengyuan Technology Co., Ltd. 's high-end sleep Pillow brand

Pillow of the road is the Qingdao Crown Huayuan Technology Co., Ltd. 's high-end sleep Health pillow brand. Pillow of the road sleep Health Pillow has now formed the four series of 30 balance product perfect system, not only for the elderly, adults and children groups of exclusive pillow products, but also for friends gifts, corporate welfare, Business contacts and research and development of special gifts pillow, as well as business people design suites.

The idea of Internet products as a pillow

Huchangzhi uses a model similar to the Internet Software development to do the pillow of the way of product development. Before the advent of the Internet, each product before the market will have a long process of research and development, not within the company to achieve absolute maturity will never be displayed in front of consumers. But in the Internet age, product innovation and consumer experience of the interaction between more closely, so, in fact, do not have to wait until the product has the ability to put into the market, in the process of research and development has been able to absorb a part of the consumer "inside", the consumer experience and opinions directly absorbed into the product development process.

According to this idea, pillow of the road in the process of research and development to adopt a rapid iterative strategy, each time only design and implement a part of the system, a phase of an iteration, each sell a product, give consumers 60 days experience, if the consumer is not satisfied with unconditional return, in this mode, Each generation of new products before the large-scale market will be directly tested, and will receive a large number of product improvement from the consumer opinion, to help the next product development.

The first generation of products from 2011 to large-scale promotion, in a very short period of time to iterate 5 times. The first generation of products directly followed the Japanese material model, air permeability elasticity is no problem, but hard, not very comfortable; the second generation of products after the addition of soft, washable, anti-bacterial mites, using a part of the newly developed bamboo charcoal nanotubes and tourmaline nanotubes; the third generation of products began to improve the color of the pillow fabric, Based on the original standard version of the pillow to increase the type of style, the extension function of the pillow began to be subdivided; the fourth generation of products will be the application of the pillow segment for the elderly, children, adults and women; The fifth generation product is the product which marks the development of the pillow's product into the mature stage, according to the further understanding of the consumer's demand, The entire positioning of the product from the focus on the prevention of cervical spondylosis maintenance function upgrades to pay attention to all aspects of sleep health, at the same time the number of product categories to control, from the 4th generation of research and development, subdivision expansion model to create each series of boutique mode.

In the 2011, after the first products came out of the pillow, Huchangzhi began to think about a new problem--the product was there, but who did they sell it to? How to sell it?

Pillow of the road initially adopted the marketing idea is "first shed after the" mode

So who are the potential customers for the pillow path? Huchangzhi and the management team locked three groups after a discussion of their own product positioning:

First, the pillow of the product in the treatment of cervical spondylosis is a significant effect, therefore, first of all to let the product to obtain the recognition of doctors, in hospitals and pension institutions to seize the need to treat cervical spondylosis customers;

Second, the modern social work pressure, many white-collar workers will be affected by the problem of cervical vertebra, especially a lot of business guests, the hotel's pillow too muggy or soft and hard problems often affect their sleep quality, can be found in the hotel free trial to find this group of customers;

Third, the pillow is a very suitable for gifts as a gift products, there is a "start from the beginning", "open a good head" and other good moral, but also health products, pillows and food supplements than the shelf life, there will be no safety or the risk of allergy, to find those who need to buy a large number of gifts to customers every year, is equivalent to finding a number of potential customers for large orders.

Pillow of the road of the product why the customer group in the recognition of this high? One of the important concepts of Huchangzhi is called "The whole process experience". In Huchangzhi's words, "we sell more than just products, we are offering a range of services." Pillow of the road products sold at that moment, our service has just begun. ”

"We are not selling products will be all right, we must let users truly achieve product value." Before the purchase we will be based on the customer's recommendations, the arrival of the telephone we will remind the use of pillow method, the use of 7 days after we will call a visit to use the effect, the use of 30 days after we will have someone to follow up. The company's customer service departments to ensure that and each customer contact, the company's marketing departments to complete the provision of free experience indicators, customer satisfaction is our most important indicators. "Huchangzhi said.

Online Marketing: Quick trial and error, constant adjustment

"I am the Internet Business-to-business E-commerce origin, very clear e-commerce for the importance of the brand, although this two years pillow most of the sales are from the offline customers, big customer orders to come over thousands, a batch of production, than on the line to buy a pillow money to earn too much, but, I still insist on online brand. The internet age, online consumption is the future trend, even now pillow of the road shop temporarily no way to achieve profitability, but in the future, it must be our most important sales channels. "Huchangzhi said.

Two years of development under the line to pillow the way of the product more mature, more abundant customer resources, Huchangzhi feel, the start of E-commerce strategy, the pillow of the road to the operating position of the transfer to the Internet conditions have been more mature. June 2013 began, Pillow Road in the days of the cat, Jingdong Mall, when the Mall and shop No. 1th store opened the business site.

Despite years of industry experience in Internet e-commerce, however, there is a considerable difference between business-to-business business model and consumer-oriented business model, and from June 2013 to May 2014, there are three major adjustments to the online business model of the way of time pillow in less than one year. Find the right development model in the fast trial and error process.

In June 2013, the beginning of the operation of the shop, as the pillow of their own team does not have the relevant work experience, in Qingdao Local also did not find a very good service provider, so chose a services company in Ningbo on behalf of the operation of the platform, agent from the publicity to the delivery to customer service, such as a

Because the pillow of the road line operating more focus on brand promotion, valued by the consumer to establish a product recognition after the long-term market benefits, and agents are more value for the short-term sales volume, the brand understanding is not in place, not grasp the selling point of the product, can not play out the characteristics of the brand, spent a lot of money advertising lead flow, But the conversion rate is very low.

Coupled with the issue of outsourcing services, often wrong hair leakage, the entire agent model cost, the effect is poor, less than three months, Pillow Road Team on the bitter experience, decided to end the third party agent, from the beginning of their own exploration business model.

October 2013, the pillow of the way back to the management of the shop, Self-built team, began to operate independently. As there is no experience, do not understand the market also do not understand consumers, the beginning of the 3 months is a new round of entanglements. Entanglement is mainly in four aspects:

(1) The so-called "SKU trap": SKU refers to the inventory units (stock keeping unit), is the unit of inventory in and out, for the electrical business is the identification code for each product, "SKU trap" for the electrical business is a product fine classification, leading to the entire brand product structure confusion, the focus is not prominent , specific to each product sales is very low.

(2) The pain of multiple platform layout: Pillow of the road at the same time in an electric business platform opened shop, not primary and secondary operations, directly leading to the one hand through drainage and promotion, such as the flow is too dispersed, sales did not pick up, at the same time the management team pressure is too big, energy

(3) The effect of marketing means is not good: the previous pillow tried many similar free trial, low-cost drainage and other activities, but because the customer positioning is not accurate enough targeted, temporary effect, but the repeat purchase rate is not high, brand promotion effect is not significant, the latter effect is not ideal.

(4) The problem of team building: Business network business needs the accumulation of experience and professional talent, and in Qingdao, Pillow Road is difficult to find like Jiangsu and Zhejiang, such as experienced full-time shop operators, and their own online shop operators do not have enough experience, the company does not have the ability to start training employees from scratch.

January 2014, after the first 3 months of groping, pillow of the road platform summed up earlier failure experience began to optimize the business model of the shop, this adjustment is mainly reflected in five aspects:

(1) Targeted development of key products: Pay attention to the user experience, from the user's feedback, to determine the best experience feedback several products for the master, to template as the basis for the development of products, has focused on the promotion of targeted;

(2) To determine the key platform: to Taobao Department (Cat +c Shop), Beijing-east, Haier Day Shun mall three platform as the core.

(3) Clear product positioning: highlighting the health and health function of products, starting from the positioning of consumer education, highlighting the "repair of the cervical spine", "pillow washing" and other differences in the concept of competition, planning the page organization selling points and copywriting, while in the pricing of the more mature memory cotton material Health pillow as a reference standard, the conversion rate to achieve a significant increase.

(4) Optimize the delivery process: directly from their own manufacturers, to achieve error-free, fast, at the same time from the user's needs, will be replaced by the independent development and production of pillowcases and washing pillow bags, more intimate, customer satisfaction significantly improved.

(5) To strengthen the online customer service full process services: Customers before consumption by customer demand inquiries and product recommendations, and provide 60-day experience, the probationary period of any dissatisfaction and unconditional return, and after the full follow-up service after consumption, at any time to provide advice and services, with the service in place, basically eliminated the return.

In this process, the pillow gradually set up a relatively perfect shop support team staff structure, while allowing team members to use all types of electronic communication platform open learning, and constantly find inspiration and self-improvement, with constant trial and error, rapid adjustment of the model to formulate future development strategy.

Facing the future: on the fan effect, personalized customization and online linkage

Although so far, the pillow of the brand development of all parties have relatively smooth on the right track, but Huchangzhi brand's future is still full of crisis awareness.

How to make full use of the first advantage of good pillow, in this one or two of the time to quickly establish a market for the pillow of the brand identity, will directly determine the future development of the brand's destiny. To establish consumer recognition of the brand, the first thing to do is to effectively grasp the consumer demand for products and purchasing psychology, and closely follow the development trend of the Internet economy on the business model of the enterprise to adjust, which has three important development direction:

(1) The use of social marketing, that is, the so-called fan effect, community effect. On the internet, the traditional advertising effect from enterprise to consumer is declining, especially after the emergence of micro-blogging and micro-credit platform, it becomes more and more important to promote interactive promotion with consumers. The current pillow path has more than 1000 active "pillow powder", on Weibo, there are already 30,000 fans, 3 accounts in the micro-letter, 50,000 fans, will be launched and fans of effective interaction, effectively mobilize the enthusiasm of fans, in which to find, cultivate and make use of active fans of opinion leaders, good word-of-mouth spread.

(2) Personalized customization, that is, in the product production and sales process of c2m mode. Internet economy is a kind of personalized economy, consumers pay more attention to the overall experience of the product, especially the young consumer groups represented by the group, the product personalized customization has a stronger demand and recognition. How according to the personalized needs of consumers, to provide "private exclusive pillow" product customization services, on the one hand, according to the height and weight of sleep habits such as custom-made pillow shape and specifications, on the other hand, according to the emotional demands of consumer custom pillowcases fabric, design, product packaging is a systematic project, Need a strong user data based product segmentation and software backstage, pillow path has been earmarked for this project and has begun to collect basic data.

(3) The effective linkage of O2O under line. After all, the pillow is an entity of the product, consumer experience of the product must be completed online, pillow of the road has been opened throughout the country under the line of the sleep experience to spread the experience of the channel, and has been in their own direct experience in the pavilion to achieve a preliminary O2O attempt.

Wen/Youwei (Associate professor, Fudan University School of Management)