Retail no myth, you insist on

If the 2013-year growth is not ideal, the company's Electric Corps team will basically give two explanations: first, the rise of mobile internet, crowding out the traditional network, the company needs to increase the amount of input, for the era of mobile power tickets. Second, the competition is too fierce, human resources are extremely scarce. More professional, it is the company either human or material resources, investment is not enough. Internet experts said that the electric business era is a 400m sprint run era, thinking that the profit can not do a good job, only to the top three of the industry have the opportunity to profit. These points of view, we often believe.

Good and bad, in fact, can find countless reasons. The essence of business, however, is to see if it has value in the business value chain you're engaged in.

Take the traditional department stores as an example, you casually open a domestic well-known department store online mall, see the site in terms of browsing structure, classification structure, goods and brand structure, etc. are similar, read 10 after watching any one can remember what family have what characteristics?

"No features" in the business sense of the rich connotation, the most intuitive means that marketing costs can not be saved, reduce the cost of delivery of traffic immediately down. The second is that the conversion rate is necessarily poor, operating costs must be relatively high. Because there is no characteristic means that they do not know what to buy, only to the heap of goods and brands, the cost of this action is believed that we can calculate.

In fact, from a commercial point of view, there is no characteristic of the essence of the problem is that there is no strong category. In short, in the traditional physical store system, department stores due to historical evolution and the choice of business district and positioning and other reasons, intentionally or unintentionally formed a certain strong category. Ordinary consumers know what to buy to which shopping malls are the most likely to be satisfied, so every surviving shopping malls have a certain category of operating capacity. In the real business age, the formation of a strong category needs many years, this law still applies in the Internet age. Therefore, when you put a strong category in the physical region to move to the Internet, you will find it immediately less powerful, sales effect is not good, also dare not insist to build a strong category. So the cycle, into the chicken state.

Forward or backward, the traditional enterprise think well?

Let's go back to the question of "abandoning" or "not abandoning". In fact, the answer is very clear, because there is no retreat. Statistics show that the growth rate of more than 70% retail enterprises has been declining for two consecutive years, the department store enterprises in the 2013 negative growth, with the current sputter industry average net profit margin to calculate, even if the growth of online retail sales back to about 30% Normal, The safety margin of traditional retail enterprises has been almost no, in a word: back to nothing.

Bite in history often some solemn and stirring, the traditional retail enterprises from the number, also have to be a bit solemn mentality. In particular, based on the joint-venture department store, once sales fall to a critical state, immediately enter the supplier to vote with the vicious circle, there is no one year down a few points of luck, but to a tipping point will appear after the cliff-style decline.

Therefore, the current choice becomes critical and there is not enough time to try it out.

From the decades of commercial prosperity and decline in North America, success and failure can be attributed almost to the deduction of core categories. So all the choices have to be made around this business core operating element.

First of all, the integration of the current strong category resources to establish a breakthrough direction, from the art of war, bite first task is to choose the direction of breakthrough. The breakthrough direction of retail enterprises must start from the strong category already formed. For the establishment of a strong category, can not stay in the current state, but need to integrate resources and supply chain upward. There is a simple example to consider: Anyone who has life experience in North America will often find a problem: the same vegetables and fruits, bought in the western supermarkets are usually better than the Chinese supermarket to buy a good quality and save a long time, the result of course is as long as the West supermarket some things as far as possible in the West supermarket to buy. The author inspected the logistics link, immediately knew the reason is: in the Third-party logistics providers there, the West supermarket inspection, cold chain requirements, delivery time and other requirements far higher than the Chinese supermarket, of course, this also means high logistics costs. However, the point that I want to explain is that if you want to form a certain strong category on the Internet, you must start from the source of the commodity, integrate every link of the supply chain, form a sustainable operation of the strong category of commodity resources, the main meaning of this resource is the uniqueness of goods and price.

Second, refactoring the current mobile, traditional internet, and physical business. On this issue, the author's greatest advice is to try to forget O2O, the whole channel and so on the fashionable concept, but concentrate on the use of the various technologies available to effectively combine to a normal treatment of new technologies and channels of the mentality and rhythm to normal operation, In the business can reach and influence the business circle, the formation of a characteristic and temperature of the commercial atmosphere. A strategy that can be considered is to "move to do dot, the Internet to do the line, the physical shop to do noodles", specific explanation:

"Move to do something." The mobile end, as a major entry point for future information and passenger flow, must not be abandoned. The reason why emphasis on the mobile side "do point", because the mobile device's screen and browsing characteristics of the decision, another core reason is that the mobile end of the category more "focus, extreme", even to reflect the level of a single product. The goal of mobile end is to become a can rely on word-of-mouth and social network from the promotion of the portal, of course, the initial stage of the promotion is necessary, but can no longer repeat the traditional Internet mall era of the mistakes.

"Internet to do noodles". Because there are several years of operational base, just because there is no feature. Therefore, the work to do is around the selection of a good strong category realignment adjustment, on the support of the mobile side of the operation, the refinement of the entity stores of the commodity portfolio characteristics, as well as the expansion of the physical store coverage, to meet the needs of some customers online shopping. Under the guidance of this operation idea, we can cut down the input of the traditional electric dealer and use it for mobile investment.

"Physical shop to do noodles." This is a good understanding, light rely on a strong category can not become a department store, but need a plump around the strong category of goods and brand portfolio. At the same time, the deep meaning of this "face" is to become a solid foundation of the above two levels of operation. This includes both the upward integration of the supply chain operations, but also including the basic data on commodities such as routine action, as well as the integration of new technologies into the current entity business, can make consumers convenient in the entity, mobile and internet three operating level at random jump. This content is more complicated, the author will write a separate description.

Last and foremost: Hold on! From ancient to ancient, business no myth, you insist. Of course, the prerequisite is to insist on doing the right thing. Do not see the dazzling things to give up their own right direction. Especially in the building of strong category, no years of repeated reinforcement and deduction, almost impossible to form.