The traditional clothing industry encounters inventory crisis, can the network provide effective sales channels for it?

A wave of crazy discounts on Chinese clothing (000902, shares bar) fashion giant Mattel (hereinafter called the United States) to the stock crisis in the whirlpool of public opinion. It is rumored that the U.S. state has been trapped in the inventory crisis, capital pressure soared. The US state denies that the sale is merely a promotional form and is not related to inventory.

This justification is feeble. U.S. state-provided corporate research shows that in 2011, the relative improvement in inventory pressure, four-quarter time for 2.56 billion yuan (2011 three quarter, reached 2.98 billion yuan inventory size). Wanguo Securities released a report that the United States at the end of 2011 inventory has fallen to 2.56 billion yuan, but more than 1.5 billion yuan of goods for the past quarter of goods, which has exceeded the U.S. state's operating profit.

To manage inventory is to make money. For the apparel industry, inventory is the most worthless, so the inventory to a reasonable value has been the clothing industry assiduously. The ideal state inventory management is such: on the basis of ensuring the operation of the enterprise, keep the inventory at a reasonable level, grasp the dynamic changes in inventory, timely purchase replenishment, reasonable arrangement of inventory occupy space, reduce inventory management costs, control inventory capital occupancy, improve inventory turnover. Of course, in addition to apparel enterprises, inventory management is also very important for retail enterprises.

Problems to be solved

In the apparel industry, such as the United States and the stock problems of the enterprise is common, but the degree of difference. According to unnamed industry insiders said: "2012 Apparel industry inventory is very large, not huge, but huge." Many companies have more inventory than risk control lines. ”

For the situation in the United States, engaged in the garment industry in the whole process of management work for many years Dong Jiming to reporters that the main reasons for four: first, 2011 Years of global economic environment is not good, directly affect the confidence of personal consumption, sales have a certain impact. Second, the 2011 warm winter, as a seasonal product of clothing, its sales are naturally affected by the irresistible decline. Third, the United States are OEM enterprises, there is no master production capacity, the need for supply chain node coordination to optimize the integration of supply chain, so as to meet the market risk of rapid adjustment capacity, at this stage of the United States for the supply chain optimization and integration of a lot of work to do. It also reflects the need for many companies to integrate supply chains. Four, the United States and state marketing innovation is not enough, now not by the spokesperson and advertising bombing of the era, in the material life is more and more abundant, the enterprise must have a certain marketing innovation ability.

The traditional clothing industry encounters inventory crisis, can the network provide effective sales channels for it?

"2011 China Apparel Industry E-Commerce application Report" shows that the second quarter of 2011, China's online retail market transaction size reached 192.4 billion yuan, of which apparel goods sales reached 44.5 billion yuan, the chain growth of 8%, year-on-year growth of 68.9%; clothing as the most favored by users of the net purchase products are more and more attention. At present, almost all of the brand name clothing enterprises have been "net" to build or shop in the form of online marketing.

Then enter the field of E-commerce apparel enterprises, the survival of the situation?

The answer is not optimistic. Online, offline sales of the conflict, the difficult inventory management, difficult to find efficient marketing strategy, and so are plagued by clothing electric dealers.

Online, offline sales "Fight"

At present there is a phenomenon: people in the market to try good clothes, note the item number, and then go online to search for the same product and purchase. "Shopping malls are almost one times more expensive than the Internet, and you can buy them online at the mall. Although not every clothing can be found on the Internet, but sometimes can see the style is similar, it is better than in the mall to buy strong. A friend of the reporter talked about the way she used to do it. Although the mall sales staff are very dissatisfied with this, but very helpless.

Clothing Enterprises Open Shop, the first is the physical store sales, which is also a lot of enterprises before entering E-commerce most worried or began to be troubled by E-commerce. Therefore, most enterprises do not regard the network as an important sales platform, only as sales discounts and the platform for the season, in fact, this way is to waste the platform and opportunities. Because of this, in order not to affect their physical store sales of goods and not to put their main push clothing on the network sales practices, equivalent to other online sales of the same style of clothing manufacturers to provide more sales opportunities, weakened their network sales competitiveness.

In fact, the physical store and network platform can walk two legs, the industry more typical two cases are gap and Uniqlo. "When I buy clothes in the mall, I usually go to the site to compare prices, but in the gap or Uniqlo buy clothes will not, because Gap online, offline products are not the same, there is no need to contrast." and Uniqlo online, offline prices are basically consistent. "Fashion girl Lily said in an interview.

Gap is an old American clothing manufacturer, its brand has enough visibility, and has achieved consumer trust. Gap in the physical store and website sales coordination is very good, and the entity store sales of the site has played a positive role in promoting. Gap Shop and physical stores are not coincident with the merchandise, and often in the physical store for the site to play ads, and a very intimate service is, the customer on the site to buy goods can be changed in the real store or modify, etc., which increased the consumer's goodwill towards the network platform.

As Li Li said, Uniqlo in the site and physical store prices are basically the same, although the site has no price advantage, but sales are also very good. Because Uniqlo has taken the line, offline linkage marketing methods. First of all, the current Uniqlo shop and physical stores can cover the consumer groups are not exactly the same, so Uniqlo will be through the time slot, divided into channels (that is, online or offline) merchandise to promote online sales. In addition, the store stock also than the physical stores sufficient, such as physical stores broken code of merchandise, may be found in the shop. In addition, the shop also provides sales of seasonal products, which can meet the needs of some customers, and can effectively clean up inventory.

Gap, Uniqlo, such as direct-oriented enterprises have a strong control of the offline channel, for the lack of direct or comprehensive control of the channel under the traditional brand, for reference to Gap and the successful experience of Uniqlo may not be effective. So how does the clothing enterprise that has the distribution channel play the role of the network platform? Most people in the industry believe that the line and offline product areas should be separated. Xiamen Happy Fast Trading Co., Ltd. Electric business manager Shing in the "China Computer newspaper" reporter interview, said: "One is to differentiate product lines, online, offline products do not conflict, such as can be introduced for online shop goods; the second is to distinguish the time period, the same product does not appear in the same period of time online and offline, This allows the enterprise to fully control the channel, in addition, online can be used as a discount, seasonal or tail goods sales channels. ”

Advantages and disadvantages of different positions

Clothing is a seasonal product, and has fashion, seasonal, regional and functional, therefore, its inventory management requirements also have certain particularity, in some aspects of the inventory management requirements higher.

Unlike the traditional industry inventory management, E-commerce transactions across time and space, the speed of higher requirements, so inventory management is more complex.

The most difficult inventory management in the inventory of the forecast. "Apparel enterprises are usually based on experience, for example, according to the past three years of sales, under the assumption that the conditions are not changed to determine the number of production should be produced, and then take into account the conditions of change, so as to determine the amount of inventory." For oneself does not have the production factory the enterprise, may make the order to the manufacturer periodically many times, in the first batch of orders, the number can be slightly more, seasonal short or craft strong clothing can be more orders, lest the next time the next single when the manufacturer has no time to respond; for companies with manufacturing plants, this is a similar approach, Just place the order into production instead. Dong Jiming to reporters about the stock forecast method.

The brand director of Deng (China) Co., Ltd., in an interview with the China Computer newspaper, said: "The personalized needs of consumption, making a small number of features more and more prominent, the product update cycle is shorter, clothing companies and store management SKU (inventory unit) volume with the promotion." such as the United States rely on a large volume of goods, the pursuit of higher sales, new stores and the launch of products, also increased inventory risk. He also said that information technology would promote good inventory management. "Electric quotient, discount these channels will play a more important role, the multi-channel inventory management unified to a platform, to achieve resource sharing, benign circulation, the need for more sophisticated information technology." ”

Online brands pay attention to rapid delivery, so the shelves, storage methods, pipelines and other warehousing reasonable requirements. "Unlike traditional inventory management, E-commerce Inventory management is more complex." First of all, the inventory is large, in addition to the actual inventory in each warehouse, but also need to consider the amount of a single, available stock, frozen inventory, logic complex, management difficulties. Liang, a senior consultant, said in an interview with reporters.

In addition, the clothing electric business division in the warehouse in all parts of the inventory management requirements higher, warehouse due to geographical differences, its storage of clothing types, styles and so different. How to carry out the product category configuration and how to allocate effectively among the warehouses according to the characteristics of the warehouse are the problems that need to be solved.

As for the solution to the problem of large inventory and complex management, Liang expressed his opinion: "It is possible to correlate electronic orders with inventory effectively through information systems." "For example, the system can be in order generation and review, the inventory of real-time availability and based on a variety of factors in the future of the estimated availability of a point of time to take into account, according to real-time inventory changes, set up an abnormal cordon, feedback to the order execution system; The system can tell which are sluggish May consider the price to allow the larger discount; When the inventory changes, such as the arrival of the delay, the system will find out which orders will be affected, assess the scope of the impact.

In the era of fast fish eating slow fish, inventory management of the warehouse staff working speed and the accuracy of the goods to put forward higher requirements, at this time, can use it technology to complete the work of manual. For example, in inventory management, the introduction of positions and batches of inventory management concepts. "The storage of goods and the movement within the warehouse can be managed through a handheld terminal, in the commodity in the store when scanning the bar code, the system automatically recommended storage area, warehouse keeper only need to confirm warehousing, goods and warehouse positions that corresponds to, when the demand for order delivery, scan orders, handheld terminals will obtain the location of picking suggestions, This can be quickly positioned, accurate. "Liang said.

For damaged goods or customers returned goods processing, Liang said: "Should be set up special damage and return warehouse to manage it." Can return to the supplier of the timely processing, can not be returned by financial approval, to take stock of the way to dispose of. ”

"Single winning" Challenges inventory response

Another characteristic of e-commerce is single winning, consumers in making purchase decisions are easily affected by other people's comments, some of the goods sold up to tens of thousands of pieces, some goods are no one, this is a real store rare phenomenon, which undoubtedly increased the number of the electricity dealer's inventory. Clothing electric Business enterprise also Valley E-commerce Co., Ltd. Rixu Jianhong in the "China Computer newspaper" reporter interview, said: "Now the stock rate of the electricity quotient is higher than the inventory rate under the line, mainly because the online sales are still in the burst section, 20% of the paragraph made 80% sales, and now the electric business blindly chasing the day, Immersed in a single day sales brilliance (such as "Double 11"), and for this glorious record, precipitation too many products, resulting in product dumping rate is not high. ”

GAOCU stock means high cost. "Inventory is the biggest cost of clothing electric business enterprises, because only the amount of clothing is large enough to do promotional activities on the Internet." The normal small electric business enterprise must have at least tens of thousands of items. "Shing to reporters calculate: to each item cost 70 yuan, 75,000 items is more than 5 million yuan inventory cost." Therefore, how to control inventory effectively becomes the problem that the clothing electric trader must pay attention to.

Xu Jianhong that the current E-commerce to effectively control inventory of a very important way is to change the traditional mode of production: "E-commerce needs to change the original traditional production mode, from the original production to the production model, reduce inventory to a reasonable value." Shing also mentioned this way to reporters: "In the way of new products to promote the promotion of goods, according to the order quantity, as appropriate production." ”

Easier, and in the specific operation also has a multitude of problems, therefore, many apparel enterprises are not very effective management of inventory. Xu Jianhong to reporters: "There is no particular effective way, now usually used in a better way is to use small batches for trial, and then add a single production according to sales." This requires the establishment of a stable and rapid response supply chain. Xu Jianhong said at the same time, "Everyone is optimistic about the future, for sales, performance, for the circle of customers, continue to invest in funds, is not yet to comprehensively solve the inventory problem stage." At present, the sales figures are very beautiful, the growth rate of the year, but the real money, can activate the funds are not much, most of the company left the money in inventory. ”

Hard to find effective marketing model

As Xu Jianhong said, the electricity business is not much to activate the funds. The biggest problem that the domestic electronic commerce enterprise faces at present is the profit problem. The electric dealer does not profit is not the secret, some electric business even falls into does not sell the thing no sales, sells the thing to accompany the money, sells more, compensates the more vicious circle. A large number of advertising investment is one of the reasons for its high cost operation, for large electric dealers, is still the stage of horse racing. But for small and medium-sized enterprises, how to Low-cost, quickly find customers is very important.

The biggest difference between internet marketing and traditional industry marketing is that it can track user behavior in real time and can predict and excavate its demand, which makes people see the value of precision marketing. In the long run, precision marketing may be a major trend of electric business marketing, but it is not yet mainstream. A well-known clothing electric business executives in an interview, said: "Now accurate marketing is too early, at present, a lot of electric dealers are still in the stage of looting site." Search engine in the current promotion of the proportion of the larger, precision marketing is only a supplement, but the major electric enterprises are doing. ”

For big electric companies, it is still a stage of looting, but small businesses can not afford to play the "Burn Money" game. "At present, the promotion of small and medium-sized clothing dealers mainly to SEO (Search engine Optimization), soft text promotion, telephone marketing, SMS marketing, member marketing, and other means." And for Amoy brand, then need in Taobao home, cat home to do hard ads, so you can get a lot of Taobao concessions, such as through the through train for sale and so on. "SEO works best, but it needs to be maintained every day," Shing said. ”

Technology development and application of more and more enterprises to new media marketing as a new marketing model, such as mobile marketing, micro-blog marketing. But at present these methods are only a supplement, the effect is very limited. "At present, traditional precision marketing is based on SEM (search engine marketing) + directory navigation +cps, EDM, social marketing, mobile marketing, etc. is a small part." Sheng, senior manager of Beijing Boya Cubic Technology Co., said in an interview with the China Computer News reporter. Sem is a more economical way of promotion, and the effect is fast, through SEM to the user's return on investment is very high, in addition to the new online site, clothing, electrical business in the SEM effect is good, For example, the ROI of the guest goods is already very high. ”

For the development of new users, SEM, SEO relatively low cost, and in the maintenance of old users, EDM, SMS, mobile marketing and other precision marketing obviously has a great role. "In the website of the first screen input banner advertising needs Guiwan or even hundreds of thousands of yuan of advertising costs, this price is quite high, the EDM only needs 1 cents per letter, sent to 1 million users only 10,000 dollars, and the customers who receive mail are selected, the purchase intention of relatively large users. "Beijing Pulse Exhibition Software Technology Co., Ltd. Product Director & Marketing Director Liu to reporters about hard advertising and EDM price and effect contrast." However, because of the current market environment is more chaotic, spam and spam messages are very objectionable to this marketing approach, often directly to their email address or phone number blacklisted. For this phenomenon, Liu also explained one of its main reasons: "The fierce competition causes enterprises to use improper means of marketing, such as the purchase of user information data, to those users to send EDM, mail and so on." ”

And for the effect of EDM, there are users do not buy. "After our evaluation, the EDM is difficult to monitor, the third party to provide a lot of data, such as the arrival rate, opening rate is not accurate, and now we do less." "Deng to reporters," We now focus on the online SEM and micro-blog and other social marketing. ”

But Liu is full of confidence in the EDM: "2011 years ago, the EDM is half dead, E-commerce can make the EDM fire." ”

SMS Marketing is also the same function, but not accurate EDM, it is based on the user behavior provided by the electricity provider, in the new release, promotion or other activities to the user to send text messages, MMS. The price is also very low in this way. "Each message is about six or seven cents, and the ROI is about 1:2, 1:3, or 1:5," he said. Wang, director of North China division, told reporters about the effect of SMS marketing. Like EDM, SMS marketing also faces the problem of harassing users.

In the end what kind of marketing model suits the clothing electric business enterprise? There are different ways in different periods, and even the same period may not be suitable for all enterprises, because there are too many uncertainties. It can be said that the electric business marketing a mature model can be set, two no ready-made books can move. Suitable for their own, is the most effective, the company's own creation, is the most feasible. However, a rule is unchanged, that is: E-commerce, the center of gravity in business, electronics is only means; electric business marketing, the key in marketing, the electric dealer is only the media.

Journalist Notes

Mingchi Undeterred

The traditional industry competition pressure is big, should take the electronic commerce platform as an effective sales channel. E-commerce should be the standard of every brand enterprise, the traditional enterprise should stand at the height of the strategy, see the electronic commerce with macroscopic overall view.

At present, the industry's consensus on the profitability of the electric Business Enterprise is: the use of effective marketing methods to attract more consumers, the establishment of effective logistics warehousing, rapid response to customer demand. Of course, this is the two biggest problems that are bothering the electric business enterprise at present.

In fact, the root cause is that E-commerce is currently in the early stages of development, market chaos, vicious competition is fierce, but this is an inevitable process of electrical business development. Since it can not be avoided, then let time slowly purify the market, eventually there will be a number of high-quality enterprises precipitate down to form a certain market pattern, into a benign stage of development.

It is still too early to talk about effective marketing, because at present the enterprise is in the stage of vicious competition: large electric dealers in a large number of advertising to compete for turf, the price war has become a major means of competition, this is not enough money for small electric dealers, but also lost the price advantage, and small electric dealers have to invest less in publicity, The Matthew effect is becoming more and more obvious in popularity. Even the well-known companies can not withstand the price bombing of large electric dealers, Masa Maso (Massamasso) Shop is an obvious example.

Journalists believe that the current traditional industries should use existing brands to promote network Marketing, in the entity shop for the network platform to do publicity, from a group of old users, to Word-of-mouth marketing gradually expand the user base, do not rush to rely on the site to bring huge profits, long-term training of customers, have the strength of the enterprise is to withstand the test of time.

It is not a short-term solution to the problem of logistics. The inventory management mentioned in the article can only be regarded as a link of large logistics. Logistics has been a major bottleneck hindering the development of e-commerce in China. At present, the domestic registered logistics enterprises have about hundreds of thousands of, but the logistics industry supervision system is not perfect, the quality of service is uneven, the industry has not formed a number of large enterprises, large-scale effect is difficult to be reflected. For large enterprises, can build their own logistics, but for small enterprises, or to borrow traditional logistics enterprises. This is a big disadvantage of the small electric business enterprise. However, small businesses do not be discouraged, after all, so many small enterprises survive. Improve the quality of products and services, for the purpose of customer service, pay a definite return.

Famous words "See changes early, quickly adapt to change, enthusiastic embrace change", used in the traditional clothing industry is particularly appropriate. For the market, technology, marketing model changes, the garment enterprises should be brave to face, bold imagination, careful practice, dare to try, avoid greed and aggressive, slow and steady to achieve a long green.