Where customer old age: success can not be copied

Fanke founder and CEO: Chen years

When the PPG is booming, it mimics the PPG; until the PPG is down, it is still alive.

From a set of 150 square meters of commercial and residential, 15 staff, and later to the four-story office buildings, more than 800 employees; from millions of registered capital, daily sales of only 15, reaching 600 million yuan in annual sales Amount, daily sales of more than 40,000 ... VANCL (where customer Eslite) entrepreneurial track in the past, even in the age of its founder seems to feel "incredible."

In fact, as a retail network of apparel companies, VANCL entered the time, not to see the competitors, "Blue Ocean", and "Pioneer" PPG's success also inspired a group of entrepreneurs overnight, almost similar sites almost Grew up dozens of. But over the past few years, after a few ebb tide, only VANCL left behind, even the original model PPG can not be spared.

Aged, the elite B2C elite in China's e-commerce market once wrote "sell books" at Joyo.com. After I had a net selling game coins, I now sell clothes online again.

"The sales say it scares you" For journalists want to know the current sales and growth rate of VANCL day, euphemistic old said can not be disclosed, "Say it may scare you," he said half jokingly.

However, the years of aging and VANCL are evident from the company's relocation history. In August 2007, "VANCL van customer Eslite" was born in Zhongguancun Westinghouse West a set of commercial and residential dual-use room, office area of ​​150 square meters, 15 employees.

A month later, with a team of tenants rented a 500-square-meter office in Changning Building in Fengtai District of Beijing. Although the location was remote and the office buildings were not high-end, they finally had more formal office space. In October of this year, VANCL website officially launched, with 41 employees.

A year later, in September 2008, VANCL moved into Spark Technology Building, a hundred meters from Changning Tower. According to the situation at that time, it was enough to rent a half-storey building, but the old-age rented out a whole lot Layer, and later gradually rented three ... ... more than 4,000 square meters of office space, nearly 800 employees.

"Next year's New Year, we will move to the International Center of Double Happiness in East Third Ring Road," said Chen Nian, an Grade A office located in the heart of Beijing's CBD.

In the eyes of many VCs, the 1475.48% average annual growth rate since its inception has made VANCL a rare "new star" in recent years. "We expect this year, our user base and sales growth should be more than 100%." ​​Aged revealed.

In 2008, VANCL's sales of nearly 600 million yuan. According to iResearch recently released "2009-2010 Chinese clothing (000902, stock it) online shopping research report" shows: in self-service apparel B2C website, VANCL ranked first with 28.4% market share. In all B2C websites, VANCL's sales ranked fourth, the top three were Jingdong Mall, Joyo and Dangdang.

From imitation started

Today's old age naturally appears as a successful businessman, but he was a thoroughly literary man. Prior to founding Joyoung.com with Lei Jun (former CEO of Kingsoft), Aged is a well-known book reviewer, a print media reporter, and a magazine editor.

Lei Jun later recalled that in 2000, the reason he pulled Lao Nian together to create a "sell book" Joyo because he only knew technology did not know the book, and aged was the most person he knew.

Since then, "Chen teacher" slowly turned into "President Chen."

In September 2004, Joyo.com was acquired by Amazon for $ 75 million and aged eventually left. Since then, he has run websites, wrote novels, and spent some time at home.

Change appeared in the day 2007, a website called PPG attracted the attention of old age. PPG no stores and distributors, through the network to sell mid-priced men's shirt, was already made the second largest Chinese men's shirt retailer, second only to Youngor (600,177, stock it).

Many years of experience in e-commerce led to Chen's strong interest in this model. After several months of research, Chen decided to study the PPG model and start a new business. In October 2007, Aged, with several older men with Joyo, founded VANCL with millions and sold online a men's shirt in a style very similar to PPG.

VANCL is a mature wife of French, VAN is the vanguard of meaning, C and L, respectively, on behalf of the old and Lei Jun. Aged translated this word into "Every Eslite", which means "Everyone pays their customers sincerely."

However, the PPG model is not only old age, almost overnight, a similar site pops up thirty or forty. And many start-up capital sites much larger than the old. Although it seems that the old "clothing business" has done a great job, but in retrospect of all kinds in the early days of business, the old man said with a smile: "It was naive to think of things too simple. In fact, it was very risky."

Chen said, when he and Lei Jun have a friend, took their own expensive shirt to find a very good garment factory inquire, asking how much such a shirt to be, "After listening to other people's quotations, we forget My gross profit margin was shocked, and this made more money than selling a book, so we took 4 million to build a shirt, and the other did not know anything about it. "

Who saved every customer Eslite

It was not long before VANCL was run that the industry had changed a lot. Boss PPG plunged into the chain of funds, the huge advertising costs in the scandal, many senior officials left, CEO Li Liang fled to the United States ... ... Then, there is no news of similar sites shut down.

"There were so many bad news at the time that my heart was still suffering some minor twists and turns," recalls Chen Nian.

In fact, at the beginning of 2008, PPG has been "imitating" the aging of the PPG to find a fatal weakness in PPG operations - PPG too much investment in advertising, many invested in expensive television ads, and these inputs bring The actual income did not imagine so much, which means the company's capital chain is likely to break down.

As a result, VANCL did not choose PPG and almost all PPG followers believe in the promotion of the path, but rather to focus on Internet marketing. "It's low cost because we're dividing by ad effectiveness, paying little or no advertising," says Aged, which is actually a great and dangling vehicle.

In this way, VANCL not only with the PPG shorter time to achieve the size of the daily sales of 10,000, but also beyond the PPG get on the net sales clothing "boss" position.

However, "Boss" may not be easy. While VANCL is marching forward triumphantly, many entrepreneurs compete to imitate VANCL. They also promote Internet, build their own logistics and return goods unconditionally.

"Everything can be imitated, only the brand can not."

"We have to be a brand from the very beginning, rather than simply providing a platform that will lead to tremendous homogenization." Currently, VANCL has only started selling men's shirts and started menswear, Women, children's wear, shoes, home and other five categories more comprehensive product line.

For the future of VANCL, Aged said it wants to create a cost-effective fashion brand. "Cost-effective does not mean the cheapest, too many things on Taobao cheaper than us, we have to maximize the cost-effective." Aging hope that the future of VANCL can become both a GAP-shaped and ZARA God's brand.