The wind vane has turned, Amoy brand needs to seize the opportunity

2010-2012, these Amoy brand annual sales, are twice times, or even 5-10 times the speed of growth. But since last year, the brands that grew up through the Internet have faced the challenge of slowing sales and squeezing profit margins.

Amoy brand "Genan Shi" CEO Wuzhihu, only spent two years of time, the company's sales to achieve 150 million. Its 2012 years ago called Taobao "flow dividend era." "At that time, Amoy brand can be quickly successful, and offline traditional brand early electrical awareness of the weak has a direct relationship." When the traditional brand is indecisive, it leaves the space for the rapid development of Amoy brand. ”

But with more brands deeply involved in the Internet, Amoy brands are clearly feeling the pressure. The distribution of flow is severely squeezed, and the effect of conversion rate is greatly reduced. And with the rising cost of labor and materials, the customer unit price of 100 yuan can not keep the profit space at a healthy level.

Have the same feeling, but also include Spokane, love Ken Cowboy, etc. also developed on Taobao brand body. These annual sales in 70 million ――2 billion around the brand, encountered growth problems.

According to the data provided by Taobao, the number of Amoy brands, from 2010-2012, is 108, 121 and 121 respectively. Although no obvious growth in 2012 years, but survive the Amoy brand, are in the positive adjustment and transformation.

What factors should be driven by these "small and beautiful" businesses? In the world of strong-arm brands, where are their breakout paths?

The vane of the change

Before 2012, Amoy brand experienced rapid expansion of the good times.

To love Ken Cowboy for example, in this brand before the founder, Taobao almost no mature cowboy brand, in addition to Levi ' s these foreign brands imitation goods, is a variety of cheap jeans.

Ken Cowboy was founded in 2010 with four other partners. By 2012, the love of Ken Cowboy in the cat's sales to achieve 70 million yuan. Simple category and style, the lower price and the sky cat flow of dividends, helped push the love of Ken quickly become denim apparel electricity commodity brand top three.

Like all the start-up Amoy brands, Love Ken Cowboy on the line at the beginning, sales few. Even if each cowboy product only produces one hundred or two hundred pieces, to Sheijan for the market to worry about. Reluctantly, he decided to open the market through a good deal.

In the promotion of group buying activities, love Ken at an alarming rate in the emergence of Taobao. Meanwhile, a group of like Ken's online cowboy brands are trying to follow, offline brand Levi ' s etc also began to test water e-commerce. In the second half of 2012 years, to Ji will feel the market wind began to sour.

"Traditional offline brands are taking up a lot of the resources on the line, and the overall macroeconomic downturn, from the second half of last year, we found the situation is wrong and we have begun to adjust." "We have cut down a lot of styles and we don't have too many stocks to fit the market by shrinking the size," he said. ”

Also changed, there are Spokane in Xiamen. The company achieved 200 million yuan in 2012 of sales, but in the past two years, with the rising cost of labor and materials, its pursuit of low-cost strategy has been unable to maintain the brand's continued operation.

Before doing Amoy Brand, Spokane CEO Wu Shihui owns a foreign trade factory, before the financial crisis for Armani and other luxury brands foundry, and then into Taobao to do their own brands, known as "BMW" the quality of making shirts Spokane Dili card, differentiated competition is the same low price, but to provide fabrics and quality for the best products. In order to adapt to Taobao bidding rules, it has to keep the price of products for a long time to maintain a relatively low level, but at a time of rising costs, it can only by reducing the fabric quality of products, to maintain relative gross profit margin.

But in 2012 years, with more traditional brands into Taobao, Spokane card sales are more impact. Wu Shihui realized that no brand accumulation caused by the lack of bargaining power is the Spokane, enterprises must adjust the strategy, such as the increase in customer price, such as the development of more new products to build their own brand, rather than into the death cycle of low-cost competition.

In fact, as traditional brands expand aggressively into the online world, consumers ' choices are widening. Not only is love Ken, a lot of Amoy brand feel the fierce competition from the traditional brand. Wuzhihu that the foundation of Amoy brand is not very deep, "if we compare with the offline brand, I think it is to touch the stone with eggs." "In his view, Amoy brand is now the first task is to find their core competencies, in the market segments to achieve differentiation, and not too much to compete with offline brands."

In this respect, Taobao platform is also changing, leading sellers to develop new products, brand connotation of the direction, to adjust their own strategy. Wuzhihu For example, Taobao used to "popularity + sales" of the weight to sort, leading to many Amoy brand to create a "bomb" mainly, is usually a good sale of clothes, enterprises all the resources to the clothing tilt, did not spend great effort to develop new products. Now, Taobao is brewing changes in the rules, the search for new products will increase the weight-this is to encourage corporate innovation, but also means that the past "flow dividend" era is nearing the end.

Supply Chain challenges

As far as Ken is concerned, the company hopes to consolidate its network status through the rapid renovation of its style. After all, "in the face of the constant loss of customers, we need to set the alarm clock for him, tell him that every time there will be a new product online," said Ji, slowly, customers will form a regular browsing of new products habits. Because of this, love Ken will have three new online every week.

Shang admits that "new weekly" is indeed a challenge for Ecken. Imagine that there are 52 weeks a year, 3 new products a week, a year to design 156 new products. For the jeans category, it's hard to turn out so many tricks.

On this basis, the new weekly means that the supply chain needs to be quickly tested and wrong, but at the moment, traditional clothing factories are more difficult to meet the needs of rapid online response. In the traditional apparel industry, the brand is held two to four times a year, the factory only needs to be delivered on a quarterly basis before new delivery. But to the Internet, factories are often required to produce 5 products, each one hundred or two hundred pieces, once a good sale and then carry out the Chase list.

How to let the factory jump from the traditional supply chain mode, to create a new fast supply chain, Amoy brand is generally facing the confusion.

In the constant running-in, love will gradually find out some laws: "Factory to do a batch of products time is very short, often a week can be made, the key is the early development of the rhythm and production scheduling is reasonable," to Ji said, "The factory's production plan one months, we just one months ahead of the demand to provide the factory on the line. "Ideally, love will be able to control the time from the next production order to the online sales cycle within 20-25 days, which does not include the fabric reserve."

It's just that traditional factories tend to get used to the step-by-step process, and it's hard to adapt to the online sales rhythm. In addition, the traditional brand overdue delivery of fines is very serious, but Amoy brand requirements are not so strict. This has also led to a frequent delay in the delivery of love.

In this case, to the hope that through the "pre-sale" model buffer the uncertainty of the delivery period. Before the product put into production, Love will be some style of pictures on the Internet, by the customer vote, and to 80 percent of the price of pre-sale. For those with a high degree of popularity, love is expected to advance the arrangement of the list and add orders.

At present, love Ken has 15 or so processing plants, mostly distributed in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Anhui region, the company's inventory is divided into several grades, respectively, 300, 500, 800, 1200 and 2000 pieces. Although the scale of production is small, but the good news to Hebei is that many factories are deliberately looking for electrical goods licensing cooperation. "At present, traditional brand orders are difficult to connect with, and the electrical business growth faster, the factory also want to find long-term partners." ”

In addition to the supply chain, the establishment and cultivation of the team is another challenge to the JI. In fact, for most Amoy brands, the growth of the team can not keep pace with the growth of the performance-if the situation is not improved, the growth of performance will soon be dragged down by the lack of staff. In this respect, Han's deputy president Jia Peng said that the company should have 30% of "idler", these employees are not necessarily to achieve the level of 90 points, do sixty or seventy points also may not be. After all, the rapid expansion of the company needs sufficient talent reserves, and the market is lack of ready-made talent, so the "idler" is a kind of strategy.

Relative to the expansion of scale, the price is low. Price war is a lot of Amoy brand has always been unable to avoid the embarrassment. In this respect, Spokane has begun to adjust in 2012. Wu Shihui said, "Now in the spring, our customer unit price than the same period doubled last year, the company also entered a focus on internal governance, improve operational efficiency of the stage."

Ecken also adopted a similar strategy. To Ji said, in more and more competitors squeeze, the company is through the design, fabric, workmanship, services and many other links to the threshold of competition. For the brand's consideration, today's love will not easily participate in the gathering cost-effective activities, "other brands may not dare to increase prices, but we dare to price competition, this year, love Ken's products have been the overall price increase of 30%".