Where does the customer fall in love with a third party brand?

Van Gogh executives found that their 44-Year-old boss was caught in a passionate "extramarital affair": He fell in love with the "third party brand". At the end of May at a meeting of the head of the business department, where the CEO of Customer Prudential Products, the founder of aging again stressed that each business department to accelerate the introduction of external brands, "We just want to wolf."

He seems to be reminding those who fear that the introduction of Third-party brands will hurt the VANCL brand, and not underestimate the boss's determination.

Aging is driving a transformation that will revolutionize the business model of the company. The introduction of the outside "third party brand", where customers will be from VANCL own brand stores, into a collection of the KAPPA, Tang Lions, Senma and many other third-party brands of supermarkets.

For consumers, a short period of two months, where the official website of the customer Prudential has become unrecognizable. These external brands are mostly VANCL competitors, but in old age, more important is that they can bring sales to all customers. This early summer I have been on the outside. In the middle of May, he visited clothing manufacturing companies in the Yangtze River Delta, and in early June he came to the PRD to lobby local brands to co-operate with customers.

Xu Xiaohui, vice president of the company, said that at present, every customer's sales, already 30% from Third-party brands. This year, the guests will continue to expand the introduction of Third-party brands, to become a cat, the Beijing-East and other integrated electric platform competition platform.

3 years ago, every customer had set the target of annual sales to tens of billions of dollars. Looking back, this may be the worst strategic mistake in the 6-year history of the guest. This directly led to every customer in 2011, nearly 600 million yuan in losses, more than 1 billion of the inventory, once closed rumors.

After 2012 years of cleaning up the stock, the company finally survived. However, compared to the same main parity of the basic model of Uniqlo, where the initial price of customers is too low. In this round of expansion, due to product quality decline, brand damage, where customers have been very difficult in a short period of time to improve customer price. Liu Xia, the senior executive who left the office earlier this year, even thought it had lost confidence.

The majority of consumers who are concerned about the consumer can feel that the surrounding people in the past year, the number of shoppers on the decrease. This intuitive feeling has been confirmed by a person who insiders, he revealed that, although every customer low-priced products still maintain a certain amount of sales, but in fact from the background data can be seen, the user volume and user viscosity are continuously reduced.

Now, the most important thing for every guest is to live first. For the development of the company in 2013, aged after the spring festival with the internal more than 50 high-level 3 days of the meeting said, must ensure the annual profit.

To make a profit, the introduction of external brands is clearly far more effective than promoting VANCL brands.

But it's also a risky game for old age. Inside the company, not everyone agrees with the old choice, and even some investors do not recognize the platform, after all, in the previous few years in the brand building and promotion of the heavy money, and open platform will suppress the rise of VANCL brand space. An executive who declined to be named said that, in their view, the open platform was to sacrifice the brand for short-term profits.

Do it at a loss

In every guest insiders view, in order to enlarge the platform as soon as possible, where customers in the investment show the greatest sincerity. According to Xu Xiaohui introduced, in the choice of investment object, and will not particularly emphasize and VANCL complementary. He said that the VANCL products more biased in favor of the main foundation of the Uniqlo, and the style of the different styles of Korea are sold very well after the house, but this does not mean that all customers will not introduce the goods and Vancl similar brands. "If there is no competition, the introduction of the wolf, but the sheep." The shirts like the shark brand are also very cheap, and our position is consistent, then the contest. "Excellent shark is a main selling shirt of the men's brand, in the days of cat sales reached 600,000 per month."

At that meeting at the end of May, aging told subordinates that the introduction of Third-party brands can test the viability of the VANCL brand. "Your competitiveness cannot be formed behind closed doors," for another possibility--after the introduction of external brands, vancl some of the categories may not survive, "that's You damn." "he said.

At the same time, the customer also unreservedly to the third party brand open traffic.

Every year "6 18" originally is Jingdong Mall [micro Bo] of the shop celebration activities, since the Beijing East in 2011 rushed to the self-employed market first, has evolved into a routine promotional festival for the electric business. Last year, Su Ning easy to buy, when, Xun, the cat and so on to join the price war, where the guests were absent because of busy. June 5 This year, where the guests announced the beginning of the creation of the largest promotional efforts, early opened the "6 18" curtain.

And where the customer's own brand to do a big promotion, there are also its V Mall and cooperation brands. In every guest home on the "June really great promotion" of the section prominently across the entire page, the left side of the third party brand, the right side of the shutter-type picture includes VANCL and Third-party brands.

Xu Xiaohui said, such a page layout, is equal to the third party brand 1/3 of traffic. Baidu [micro-blog] on the search for "the", "KAPPA", "Tang Lions" and other brand names, search for the first place is the entrance to the goods. This means that customers will not only bring the original advertising marketing the huge flow of diversion, but also in the money for these brands to purchase traffic.

Xu Xiaohui revealed that, then there will be a separate Third-party brand activities, "Now this stage, is completely we are subsidizing the third party brand, mainly to cultivate users in every customer to buy Third-party brand habits and businesses to this platform recognition." ”

At the same time, the customer's profit model is only a 5% commission on sales of third party brands, and Xu Xiaohui admits the business is not making any money yet.

But the idea of aging is not hard to understand. Eric Consulting [micro-blog] analyst Zheng Liying that, where customer prudential products as a vertical field of electricity, product range is relatively narrow, can only meet the needs of consumers on the one hand or several aspects, now to the platform development, not only can cover the original customer different consumer demand, can also bring new customer growth.

In the "2012 China Business Market Scale Report" published by Eric, the market share of customers is only 1.2%, located in the cat, Jingdong Mall, Suning easy to buy, Amazon [Weibo] China, when, Gome, only after the goods will be ranked tenth. Where customers are the first 10 of the only independent brands of electric Power, the other nine are platform-type or channel-type electric dealers.

Although every customer is willing to pay a loss for investment, and the cat, Jingdong Mall, Suning and other large platforms are still not dominant compared.

For the supplier, the advantage of the big platform is the flow, take the cat as an example, the day of November 11 last year, hit a record of 13.2 billion yuan sales, the 2012 turnover of more than 200 billion yuan. Moreover, many large platforms and suppliers have exclusive terms, can only be settled into a platform.

At the same time the brand into a large platform operating costs are also higher. The largest and most mature electric business platform of the cat, by virtue of Monopoly and Taobao mall times accumulated shop display system, credit evaluation system, such as eight system, to the merchant charge of entry fees, advertising fees profit. The charging mode of other platforms is similar to that of the cat. And every customer so far in addition to 5% Commission, no longer charge any fees.

In Liu Xia view, electric business platform has been a few world, where customers do platform is too late. If you want to rob the site with them, where customers need in technology, services, promotion and other aspects of investment in a large number of resources. Unfortunately, "there is no customer-prudential product itself and not too much money to burn, it is difficult to break the hope." "Liu Xia said.

He believes that customers can only use external brands to improve sales in the short term, but can not really ping Taiwanese transformation. The problem is that such haste is not a long-term benefit for any customer. In his view, those big brands that are priced higher than VANCL will surely depress Vancl's brand value.

More importantly, every guest has successfully portrayed himself as not following, not blindly pursuing material "people's fashion." This brand is too strong and unique. And what the guests do now seems to be to use "every guest" to unified "Sen Ma", "the" and other diversified brands, including the risk is self-evident.

Origin only product will

The idea of an old open platform has come a little bit, even for the employees inside. And most of the interviewees believe that the real cause of aging determination is this spring, where the guests joined Li Ning launched a special sale activities.

This April 7 18:36, aged on its microblog message: "11 o'clock in the evening, look forward to." "The old look forward to IS, where the customer sincerity goods Union Li Ning's first special sale." 2012, Li Ning, the horse, Anta and other sports brands are affected by the economic situation of a large backlog of inventory. Every customer sincerity goods to do, is helps Li Ning to clean up the stock.

That night, where the customer prudential products and Li Ning launched a 48-hour limited-hours promotion, the lowest price to 10 percent, the highest price discount not more than 100 yuan. The sale was surprisingly good, and the planned 48-hour activity ended 30 hours earlier-all items were successfully dumped within 18 hours.

This time the special sale will open the curtain that the customer sincerity product and the third party brand cooperate. Two weeks later, Van Gogh's third party brand has increased rapidly, and time is stretching. In addition to Li Ning, Saturday, Sen Ma, and other traditional brands also joined in, the time has become 7 days.

Where the sales of goods launched by the special sale, in fact, the only product will be the copy of the business model. The only product will be a special brand to do sales of the electric business site, last year in the U.S. stock market, followed by a reversal of the "myth" of the rebound. In the fourth quarter of last year, the only goods net revenue 299.6 million dollars, to the first quarter of this year to achieve net profit of 5.8 million dollars.

Only the product will be the model of the recognition of the capital market, ignited the entire electricity market, the hope of rapid profitability, but also let all customers to see the "Money" scene.

It is doubtful that this is what its V mall originally did. is a customer-prudential products in the second half of 2010 set up the clothing electric business platform, initially with the main network division is very clear: where the customer is the brand, V is the channel, the third party platform, its SKU (product category) The total number is much higher than all customers prudential products, the highest ever reached 240,000 kinds of products from T-shirts, canvas shoes to Accessories, cosmetics, household items, etc. From the business model, the former profit model is the product difference, and the latter is the sales deduction point.

V Chief Operating Officer Tri Xiaoxi also think Impassability, early this year he on the open platform after the role of customer-prudential products and V wrote an e-mail, hoping to get the answer from the other side.

No one knows how old the reaction was, but later he explained in a media interview that he had a limited concern about the growth of the VANCL brand itself when he was founded. After 2012 years, he began to rethink the problem, "there is no single brand that can meet all the needs of 30 million users." "In other words, the idea of a customer platform is already in the old plan, and the role of V is to test the water."

Liu Xia said the email was a great shock to everyone because few people dared to stand up and question aging.

Along with the business adjustment, April 1 this year, every guest also to the company's organizational structure has been adjusted, just returned to the Xu Xiaohui responsible for marketing center and Planning Center, and brand Communication center, public relations, corporate culture and the new Media promotion department by Shen Prestige is responsible.

Then came the news of Wang Chunqi, a senior vice president, who was a member of the start-up team of customers. Wang Chunqi is the first entrepreneurial veteran, who was responsible for customers marketing and operation. Prior to this, there have been two major adjustments to the organizational structure.

A guest employee concludes that frequent business adjustments make it a vice president at least once a year. In the eyes of many interviewees, it has become a habit to think about new directions at the end of each year in recent years.

Sometimes there are unexpected gains. 2007, where the guests of Shanghai warehouse was stolen, responsible for warehousing van Li Hongyi vice president of the goods were forced to leave, he took the company invested 100,000 yuan to create a courier company, which is the later such as Wind Tatsu. Today, such as the wind Tatsu employees have more than 2000 people, hundreds of sites covering 8 provinces 23 cities. In addition to all guests, such as wind Tatsu has more than 200 customers, including China Merchants Bank, GF Bank, Citic Bank and Everbright Bank and other fixed financial customers, has achieved a break-even.

Leap

In Liu Xia's view, the root of the problem for the guests is the Great leap forward two years ago.

2007, when the founder of the old, the so-called to do the Chinese PPG, that is, selling men's shirts Internet clothing brand. Prior to that, he was a literary or editorial editor who had founded a publication, book Review Weekly, and participated in the creation of a network of excellence in 2000, primarily responsible for writing book reviews. Every guest soon obtains many tradition investment, and quickly grows up. 2010, the establishment of only 3 years of the total sales to 2 billion yuan, this number is 5 times times 2009.

Aging decided to do the pursuit. At the end of 2010, a few days before the annual guest management meeting, most management learned from their leaders that there would be a great leap forward next year-aged from 4 billion to 6 billion in 2011. "My boss said, let me according to this 6 billion goal, think about next year's work budget, mainly to increase staff, capital investment and so on." "Basically, all the departments in the company have made similar preparations," Liu Xia said.

At the end of each year, in addition to holding the annual meeting of all staff, there will be an annual management meeting, basically the level of participation of the director above. 2010 Annual Conference address is located in a hotel near Xiangshan.

But aged at Xiangshan annual meeting, the second year's performance goals can be raised to 10 billion yuan. As a result, this shocking figure was endorsed by almost everyone, "at the time there was an outrage, and someone immediately echoed, ' Yes, we're going to do billions of dollars ', ' no problem, we can certainly do billions of dollars ' ..." Liu Xia recalls.

The speech is more and more specific, "someone stood up and said, ' I want to change cars next year, for BMW ', everyone immediately said, ' Good! Then someone said, ' I want to change rolls ' ... Old in the company can not hear the truth. "Liu Xia said.

In the next 2011, all the guests in the tens of billions of targets running.

This year, every customer expands their own human resources, warehousing, especially supply chain. In the same year, where the passenger received the sixth round of 230 million U.S. dollars in financing, in this round of financing, where the customer valuation peaked at 5 billion U.S. dollars. Six financing amounted to 422 million dollars.

The huge sales plan was distributed to various divisions, and some of the employees ' tasks were even more than a hundredfold in 2010. A large number of new employees rushed to the visitors, the first in charge of tens of thousands of contracts. Liu Xia said that there is a division of the director even signed a 100 million yuan contract, this matter due to the backlog of goods in the warehouse was found.

"The problem is that the Director-level can sign billions of contracts that he shouldn't have." "In Liu Xia's view, every guest has always had management problems, but at that time in the ascent of all management problems are not a problem, are the performance of the light to cover up." "The company has a inertia, in the process, management problems accumulated, and then exposed." "he said.

The director was later criticized and demoted. In addition to business permissions, in Liu Xia view, where the customer also lacks a clear KPI assessment system, "old think which department is good, on the grant of a certain amount of pay." This kind of talk is usually carried out secretly, then the department head to take back to the following people.

In the expansion process, the original supplier is far from enough, the staff can only go to find new suppliers, the control of quality testing began to decline. Liu Xia said, this is also why many consumers feel that the quality of goods is inferior to the former reasons.

Excessive expansion of the end of 2011, where the inventory reached 1.445 billion yuan, the total loss of nearly 600 million yuan, and 10 billion of the sales target only completed 3.8 billion yuan.

Big rout

To boost morale, January 15, 2012, guests at the Beijing National Convention Center held a "every guest ceremony" of the company's annual meeting. Among the performance guests, including the Japanese AV actress in the Chinese gas extremely high empty, the annual meeting therefore appears lively and extraordinary.

However, a guest employee recalls that, in fact, when every customer is vigorously compressing costs, even in the procurement of annual candy, "the executive departments are strictly according to the participants counted, only two or three per person."

As early as the second half of 2011, where the customer's self-help has begun, mainly to adjust the category structure and organizational structure, cut off the expansion period of clothing products, and reshape the company's organizational structure.

At the end of 2011, the original "new product Department" and "basic product department" were divided into five major divisions, and the marketing center and Production center were set up. At the same time, the warehouse from 30 to 6, its own such as the Wind Tatsu Express sent directly to the city to reduce to 6.

After a few months, aging again adjust the structure, the newly separated marketing center back to the division.

This year, every guest's management of the annual conference scope is rarely extended to senior managers of all management. Before departure, participants were informed that each person was required to prepare a 5000-word self review. It is clear that every manager is responsible for the 2011 problem.

First day, the company's 6 vice presidents turn on the stage to read their own Self-criticism manuscript, the following a gang of people to refute, pointed out that his reflection is not deep enough, did not touch the soul, and some vice president on stage crying can not speak. Because of the overwhelming opposition of the majority, the criticism will stop for a day. Originally planned to open a 3-day meeting, a day and a half after the hasty end, the deputy under the vice president of all dissolved returned to the company.

The vigorous criticism and self-criticism farce stops at this. The tough 2012 followed, this year, where customers have been optimizing the supply chain, and through one after another promotional activities to clean up the inventory of funds. Aging also declared that every customer prudential products have been returned to the rational, will rely on fashion brand management, with inventory turnover efficiency to balance the scale and profit, pay attention to build brand.

In the fall of 2012, after a concentrated visit to Anta, Sen Ma and Nine, and other traditional clothing brand manufacturers, aged aware of the importance of efficiency optimization of the supply chain. Soon, the number of suppliers from 200 to 100, high-quality suppliers concentrated in Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Beijing Three, while increasing the speed of low-cost small suppliers.

At the same time, in order to control costs, streamline, aging began to reform the management structure of the bloated mess.

This year, there were several rounds of layoffs. For the heads of the various business units, every layoff is a very headache, because the number is prorated down, those who only a few people's small team, can only share their own shares to many departments. So the most people in the warehousing and logistics departments are the focus of layoffs every time.

Inventory is always the key word throughout the year, for those who are in a tight cash flow, this is directly related to survival.

2012 first on December 12, launched a "double 12 promotion" of the crazy sale, and then carried out nearly 20 days of "winter clothing 0", including "9 yuan snapped" sweater, shirts and "99 yuan buy price" down jacket. Great promotion effect is good, the activities of the daily orders exceeded 1 million per cent, the average customer unit price of about 200 yuan, one-day sales amounted to 200 million yuan. At this time of 2011, the average daily order was only 130,000.

Last year's big promotion finally will the backlog of the inventory empty, returned a billion of yuan in cash.

But the big sale also exposed the problem of proportional layoffs. The last round of big layoffs just ended, the warehouse ushered in a "double 12", because the lack of manpower caused warehouse burst, can only from various departments to deploy staff to warehouse help, including the boss of all departments to work personally, these inexperienced personnel although help some busy, but also greatly increased the order of wrong single rate.

At the end of 2012, where the guests did not convene the annual management meeting, that period of time, including aging of all management in the warehouse packaging, processing orders. The company, which had been so long and utterly defeated in the victory, was in a mess.

Fortunately, the company's desperately needed cash has finally landed. "A narrow escape, a rebound from the bottom, 2012 is indeed a year." Xu Xiaohui said that this year he actually did not in the company, but left the van to set up his own electric business clothing brand first carved.

Swing

Although the customer prudential products have passed the critical crisis, internal management and business model problems remain unresolved. At the end of this year, at the beginning of 2013, aged has been interested in strengthening the identity of the brand.

January 21, every guest fashion women's channel on-line, the head of the business, said that every guest in the past learning object is Uniqlo, to produce a large number of basic clothing mainly, and the women's Channel learning is H&m, ZARA, Topshop and other international fast fashion brand: Fashion design, quick response, A variety of small, customer unit prices are also upgraded accordingly.

This is interpreted by outsiders as an attempt to form a model of Uniqlo +h&m or Zara.

One months later, where the customer announced the cash-for-stock purchase of a wholly-owned vertical commodity brand, founder Xu Xiaohui also back to the van.

However, he did not really make up his mind as to what the future of the guests was, and he just said, "Take a look." "At this point he may have realized that after this great leap forward to the big rout, every guest brand has been greatly damaged."

In a big expansion, every guest has ignored the "people's fashion" and the design concept. "2011 We think we will quickly become a manufacturing enterprise, everything by our orders, what are designed by us, what category can be done, as long as the logo can be sold." "The age of reflection this year, has told the media, three times before 2010 every customer has a short profit, but he gave up to continue to profit, but let every guest run faster."

This has actually let every guest's identity from the brand to wholesalers, and other platform-type electric dealer is only the purchase of products affixed to the VANCL trademark.

Of course, aging still insists that every guest will not give up Vancl brand, but from the past a single brand of electricity, into the line of "Hundred Li."

Hong Kong listed companies hundred Li International has Belle, Tata and other more than 10 women's own brand, but also an agent, Agent Nike, Adidas and other international brands. At the same time, Belle is a channel business, with tens of thousands of retail chains.

"Belle Mode" is a mixed type of business model, on the surface, can be resolved to do the platform or brand controversy. In fact, every guest is far more complex than Belle, where the original owner of the brand Platform V, has now become a clothing, home, food, 3 C, home appliances and other categories, such as the online department store mall.

Every guest still hesitates between the platform and the brand, without making a choice.

Marketing to death

Brands and platforms are not the core strengths of every guest, and the company that owns the internet gene is best at marketing. At the beginning of June, a multinational marketing company for all customers to explain how to do internet marketing. ' The more they listen, the more boring they are, ' says Xu Xiaohui. ”

For a long time, the company has devoted too much resources to marketing. This may be related to the experience and interest of the aged, just resigned from the Wang Chunqi Vice president of the goods to his evaluation is: "Market sensitivity is very good, and this is innate." ”

When the guests first opened, aged had spent 200,000 in the "reader" to play a period of advertising. But soon the Internet founder was aware of the power of the web. As early as January 2008, old abandoned PPG's usual TV and print media path, and began to try to put click ads on the Internet. One months later, customers from the network orders to reach 50%.

Where customers have gathered too many marketing talent, including video network vice President Yang, has left the Shengchang and Xu Xiaohui and so on.

2010, where the sales of customer-prudential products focused on the outbreak of energy. The first round of Han and Dan endorsement of "where the object" plane ads launched on the internet a PS Carnival. After that, every guest began to pay close attention to the dynamic of the object, in micro-bo, watercress, forums and other interactive platform for linkage, in people to "where the object" is still not done, in the north of more than 10 cities, such as outdoor led, subway and public transport mobile TV and other media launch "I am a Guest" video ads.

This year, where the sales of goods for customers increased by 300% Year-on-year.

After that, where the introduction of xiaoming "Hang-body", Li Yuchun "born 1984", until Han's "Spring celestial Body", where the customer prudential began to use Word-of-mouth marketing, viral marketing, talent marketing and other ways to strengthen the spread of the brand.

Inevitably, every time the party behind the carnival goods also paid a corresponding price. From July 2010 to June 2011, the cost of customers in marketing reached 464 million yuan, close to 20% of sales. 2011 Every customer prudential product marketing costs reached 500 million yuan.

More importantly, the other side of the aging strong marketing shortcomings gradually emerged. Most people close to age think that he is not a product manager type entrepreneur. In every customer sincerity product long study object list, indeed has the designer and the star design together the H&m, also has by the quick reaction well-known Zara. The key problem is that, where the goods do not seem to be from the two companies to obtain the canon, but more like their original object ppg--into brand marketing, failure to product quality.

In early June, in the "financial World" Weekly interview, Xu Xiaohui said that he quite appreciate Jinshan Network CEO Fu Sheng "Grand triangle" methodology, that is, the Red Sea products-brand, products, channels to be even force. The problem is that the market does not leave too much room for the company to expand its platform after sacrificing the original brand and product, and the triangle seems far from stable enough.

In many people's view, the open platform of every guest is cutting itself this unique advantage. Condensed a number of marketing experts painstaking efforts to create a "civilian fashion" brand culture, will soon disappear in the brand new, large store-style visitors site.