Playing out the community: from the pet community to the pet brand electric dealer, how do I enter 200 million years?

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Original title: Le Pet holding Li dictation: from the pet community to the pet brand electric dealer, how do I enter 200 million years?

Source: Dark Horse Community Author: Wang Jingjing

This is the second article of the I-Dark horse vertical electric trader Observation series. In the previous article I Dark Horse to the daily net this vertical cosmetics were observed. Now vertical communities and vertical electric dealers are rising.

At the end of the battle of platforms, vertical communities and vertical electric operators around vertical interests, such as sports, pets, tourism, movies, homosexuality and so on, are becoming a new hot spot for capital chasing. Spring Hall, gifted man home textiles, every day orchards and so on have access to financing.

I black horse will be new eyes locked in the pet electric dealer This has been a few observation of a niche area. Dark Horse Camp students Le Pet Li Holding rely on the line, offline, Pet Hospital and other industrial chain is becoming a new vertical electric trademark, the following is the li of the music pet holding dictation in fact, from the community gradually across to the offline retail and the history of the electric business.

Pet Community: Play out the community

I actually belong to grassroots entrepreneurship, probably from 97 when the Internet, I graduated from secondary school, is the early webmaster. After starting to open Internet cafes, playing online games, the main purpose is to contact the Internet. After a period of time has also learned a lot of things, but there is no direction, and later even download stations have done, it can be said that the time has accumulated my early understanding of the Internet, experience, and real contact with the pet industry should be after 03 things.

At that time I was more hesitant, but has not been idle, then I clearly know to start a business, but do not know what to do. By coincidence, one of my uncles opened a pet park north of Beijing in 03, at that time I was very excited to listen to the pet park, because I like pets, basically everything has been raised, home at most when there are more than 50 stray cats, more than 40 stray dogs, because I have always liked small animals, I was so excited to hear about it and I was the general manager in that park. The pet park surface in accordance with the planning of about 40,000 square meters of indoor construction area, is the shop shop model, the most time the park recruit more than 60 pet shops.

Every weekend we will do the dog show, when the earliest dog show in the country I did. I ask the referee from abroad, the very good variety of people together, by the professional referee to determine which dog can win, the criterion is that the closer you are to a purebred dog, the higher your quality, so that every breed of dog wins the championship based on his mental state, and the event was very appealing and a lot of popularity. , so I did the current pet China Network, which is a pet's online community.

Why do I have to be such a community? Because I found that every weekend, 2000 or 3000 people brought their purebred dogs to our (pet) park, so I thought if I could do a community, get these people to the community, maybe a commercial project, And the pet park can play a better publicity role. In addition, I also think that this industry can become a future development direction, because there are many similar listed companies and large retail chain, so slowly from 04 to 05 through the community gradually into the industry.

Why are those people willing to come to the online community? Mainly because everyone has common interests and interests. These people are willing to communicate with their dog-keeping experiences, including showing off their own dogs, the other having a common lifestyle and common interests, which makes the community more likely to accumulate popularity. They are also human descendants in the community, which in turn brings more business to the park. When I was 05 and 06, I received about 2 million of the advertising fee from the community every year. At that time, the whole team has 8, 9 people, has been to the 08, has been adhering to the community, I also by doing this community has a very deep understanding of the industry. So by that time, I began to think, our industry in the future there is no development, how to make it bigger. , on the other hand, we also found that QQ group, happy net began to impact to the Community traffic, traffic slowly encountered bottlenecks. This is when I start thinking about possible business models.

Then I put the domestic and foreign markets are analyzed again. It turns out that American (pet products) chains can sell 4 billion dollars a year, so we wonder if it's possible to move the model to China. At that time, the power of this model is not so hot, so then determined to open a chain, the real direct chain to move to the country. This is the first pattern of change we think about.

Reflections on Community Transformation: doing retail and chain

Thinking clearly about this step, I began to want to contact investors, I almost the Beijing ranking of the first to 40 of the contact of the investors to make a phone call, and then get a 100-page business plan. With the business plan I went knocking on investors ' doors, and I was hitting a wall in the first few investors ' places. Because they do not have a dog or a pet, and they think that the industry is only billions of a year, the scale is very small, simply can not hook up his interest point, saw a few after the discovery I want to continue to introduce them to the industry. At that time I want to open a chain store, the results found that I said after a long time did not have any results, so I told myself that I might as well start slowly, and then look for opportunities. I've been introducing the industry for more than a year. Kung Fu not negative, the last king of the capital Ouyang Xiang Yu did our angel investment, and this investment is also very coincidence, we were a colleague to participate in a roadshow, just by a reporter saw, and later this reporter went to June Lian Capital, so was recommended to Ouyang total, plus his own dog, So got the first angel investment, officially began to start a direct chain.

We opened several stores at that time: including two community stores, an animal hospital, the other two are shopping mall open Pet shop, positioning also go the more high-end, because at that time did not do this, there is no experience, so, I also want to try what is better. Because I do not know if I opened the shopping mall shop, there will be a better effect, so we just want to try, we believe that the existence of the pet food retail stores are facing the low-end, and its services and products in all respects, are not very good. So we opened shopping mall shop is still relatively distinctive, because we think that shoppingmall people are relatively large, we will go shopping on weekends, so generally will stop to shopping mall store pet products also bought.

We're quite prepared. Before I opened the shop, I first set up a team of about 10 people, all of whom were engaged in retailing, including purchasing, pet beautician, and talent in charge of supply chain systems, almost all from scratch to build a spite retail team. In addition, the community also let us know more about the outstanding suppliers in this industry. Because many are in our website to advertise some customers, through the accumulation of these years we have knowledge of these suppliers, which products are better, they have their own clear judgments, including the community, the user's Word-of-mouth feedback for our products to choose to give us a great advantage.

Pet retail chain Pit: Actually it's really hard.

But in the process of doing this physical store, we found that we made some mistakes and made our process very tortuous. For example, after our community store opened, we found a problem, the community store it's smaller area, but at that time, if the retail area is too large, the service area will be relatively small, community shop in fact, many people go to do services (for dog beauty, etc.) more convenient, but you can not retail this piece, so this piece has a hard game. In the end, we have to open the size of the retail area, or the service area to open even greater. If the service area is bigger, there will be a service bottleneck. For example, a shop, it's two beauty stations, and a dog's beauty you need to do two hours. One day a shop can only serve six dogs. So you need to constantly plan its size, in the end which is the most appropriate, and this process we have been adjusting several times the area of the store, you have to know exactly which proportion of the distribution to be more appropriate, it is through this repeated adjustment, finally we have identified 40% to do service, 60% to do retail. In addition to these aspects of the selection, we also have to calculate, such as labor costs, including the entire store rent, similar to this kind of things to be counted, after the completion of you have to find a suitable, there is no possibility to many large-scale profits, these need to explore.

Even after these patterns and twists and turns, so far we have not made money, no matter what factors, this is a small failure of us, although most of the time we opened to more than 20 direct shop, but now basically become a franchise shop. Then I thought for a long time and found out why the business was hard to make money.

First of all, it is because when we started to open the shop, are mainly shopping mall. As a new brand, often with Shoppingmall signing time will be relatively short, pet shop for shopping mall in fact, it is not necessary but later we found that shopping mall actually have their own positioning, so you can not make this brand into a people with the flow, Not like dining and some luxury brands.

So in the first three years, a number of stores have expired, and from 08 to now, all commercial real estate rents are increasing, many of them are rent up one times, we originally that store just started to profit, the result immediately a rise in rent profits went back, this is a big problem.

Another point is the company after the scale of the problem, because we need to formalize, so after normalization you need all the staff, social security, a few risks a gold, are going on. At the same time, the core is that you have to meet the eight-hour work system, but like our surrounding Fulin they 24 hours in the store, he does not have to hire any staff. And we do not, we formalized, because meet 8 hours of work system, so I need to double the shop, such as our service needs two people, retail also need two people, double out a shop will be 8 people. So for a small store 8 people cost too much, which increases the use of, and you simply can not be compared to the price of these street stores.

And the most serious problem is the impact of E-commerce in recent years, the entire online this piece, from 10 to now, the pet E-commerce sales of these products are doubled every year, the whole big industry trend is also here. So the combination of these factors, now if you go to open such a heavy asset store is really a problem. So I began to turn the direct shop into a franchise store, give him supplies, training for him is good for the shop, or sell the shop directly off.

At that time I want to start to the direction of the electric business, although the store has begun to have a profit trend, but in the retail internet impact trend, I have limited resources in the case must be adjusted, if not adjusted now dead. So we began 12 years of adjustment and acquisition of a Taobao C shop to the line up.

The survival logic of chain to vertical electric quotient: User, cost, extreme single product

After we put the team in and added our retail experience and industry accumulation, we quickly got online for 3,000,001 months. Now we have almost all the platforms open shop, but also opened a variety of small stores, and then we do 15,000,001 months. Last year we did nearly 200 million of the line. Someone asked me whether the bet is right, in fact, is not a gamble, but I have limited resources in the case, in the interior to do a subtraction, gradually more focused on the electric business (I black note: At that time, besides having online community, Pet Hospital, also wired under the store). Then I thought about why I was able to survive in the so-called vertical electric business in the cold winter, but there are several reasons why it is important:

The first is my extreme cost control. The community can provide a lot of flow to our electric quotient platform, so we get the traffic cost very low. Our own media community can make our electrical goods card in the hearts of pet consumers as soon as possible to form a brand concept. At the same time our own brand profit margin is relatively higher, so our flow costs are lower than others, so the overall gross margin will be high.

Second, we can use the lower cost of the user can be firmly in hand. This is actually a very complicated problem, I give an example, the year before we calculate, there is a C store about one months sales is 700 to 8,000,001 months, he has 60 customer service. I found that 60 of the guests are convincing too much. The core difference lies in the product description, product presentation, including the product display, so we strengthened this piece smoothly to need 60 customer service into as long as 30, but also can complete sales (7.008 billion), how do we do? Actually, I just made some adjustments to the product performance. Because I think the simple you put a product presentation here will be very dry, and we if we go to dig deep each user needs to do after the product display is not the same. For example, we were pushing a clean-tooth bone. But at the same time it is helpful to its teeth, but also to boredom, how do you use three pictures of the product itself, which requires research efforts, and we now learn to each product to do a very deep product display, In this way, we find that the amount of customer service can be greatly reduced, and I found that this can greatly improve the user stickiness, because it is fun to do.

Third: Reduce SKU, the single product to achieve the ultimate. Our SKU is very large, and now it is greatly reduced. For example, if we have a new market for a dog chewing gum such products, we can use a very short time in Amoy to do first or second. Because the SKU is much more efficient will be greatly reduced, and you need to find out from the consumer he most need a point, because you find a point, internal efficiency will be improved, internal efficiency can be better to provide customers with services.

Four: Segment user group Open Shop. We will be in the Amoy for different users to open a number of niche shops, such as a special sale to the cat. In addition, we will make differences and subdivisions for the region. And our next step is to open a shop specifically for pet breeds. We put each store as a flow of the entrance, and then we have a system from the background direct hair goods, no matter whether 10 or more stores are unified into a system after delivery.

5th, we really have a deep understanding of the industry. Our core team of people are really understand pet, love pet, we choose a product we all know why choose, not that you all-inclusive is good. For example, there are many different breeds of dogs, and each species has a great variety of habits, but we almost know. For example, more than 140 kinds of European standards, the United States standard more than 150 kinds, as well as the domestic often raised more than 40 kinds of dogs, more than 40 kinds of dog each dog its hair color, its skeleton structure, survival characteristics we are very understanding.

Sixth: Be good at positioning. Pet breed has so many, age has so many, has the basic necessities, the sickness and death various products, depends on your localization how to decide. Like, but look at a clean-tooth bone, it is the main effect of cleaning teeth, but if you add an element in the inside, such as hardness, so that it can be bitten a long time to distinguish my products from other products, I pass this point to my customers to solve a problem. Another example is to sell dog food other people sell for large dogs, I may specifically target Uttedy.

Through these our product gross margin always maintain at a high level. At present our product customer unit price exceeds 150, the repurchase rate all maintains at the high level, this lets us after obtains the credit capital the A round financing, also obtained the soft silver investment. These explorations and twists taught me the most important thing is to focus on and use limited resources to start a business, which makes me more focused.