Journalist Recruitment | Training Navigation Promotion Advertising | Conference Complaint Rights Protection (China E-commerce Research Center News) In the 1.0 era of e-commerce products, it was an era centered on selling goods. This was a pure sales approach, an art of marketing persuasion based on understanding consumers;
In the 2.0 era of e-commerce products, it became an era centered on the consumer. E-commerce companies began to pursue closer relationships with customers. They not only provided functional needs but also emotional value needs. Therefore, both companies and products started to seek unique market positioning in order to provide consistent value combinations for consumers, beginning to master the art of product understanding;
Now we are about to witness the third stage, the 3.0 era of e-commerce products, or the "era of product reorganization." Companies no longer merely view e-commerce users as people who consume products, but rather as individuals with independent thoughts who participate in the evolution and shaping of products. The shadow internet provides rapid support for enterprises to timely perceive demands, understand orientations, discover directions, and respond. The supply chain offers quick realization.
If I were to explain all this, it would be monstrous behavior. Let's get to the point.
Product Interpretation: Your Supply Chain Code
Selling goods, stripping away the complexity, everything comes down to product performance! For a long time, e-commerce companies have competed on the advantage of goods integration. So how this batch of goods is realized reflects your current supply chain status. Over the years, helping e-commerce companies realize their products, I've summarized that there are basically three ways to play: spot purchase - production orders - inventory products.
Spot purchase has no cost advantage, styles are hard to unify, but the product resources are rich;
Production orders have high risks and thresholds, but strong product realization capabilities;
Inventory products have great limitations and low sustainability, but offer high cost-effectiveness and strong risk resistance.
Even if you excel at one particular way, it's still difficult to break through in today's e-commerce environment. Our e-commerce product supply chains are usually a combination of two or three methods.
1. Spot purchases are made for market selection to test market reactions and control risks.
Often, product managers tell me: "Mr. Li, I'm planning a special event, help me put together a batch of spot goods, like Uniqlo's Taobao flagship store." Playing with spot goods, especially those with high cost-effectiveness, branded sources, unified styles, but top-tier suppliers won't give you goods, second and third-tier ones may offer private labels, but brand suppliers don't stockpile goods, neither do factories. Such wholesale market resources have no advantages in the e-commerce market. Therefore, spot-purchased products can only serve as project preparation or product supplements.
2. Production Orders
A. Many merchants only love copying new models from official websites, disdaining Taobao models. It's an undeniable fact that official website models are at least 1-2 seasons ahead of Taobao models. However, daring to sell Taobao-selected models means having confidence in your own operations, especially in your supply chain. And these are data tested by others' investments, so why not make good use of them? Choose models suitable for volume sales and competing with similar products. Don't underestimate this strategy of ants defeating elephants, which can cause headaches for many large e-commerce companies. Conversion rates around 5% for non-personalized style stores, copying one model after another successfully, just avoid copying those models built on traffic stacking, which won't make money. Carefully analyze the market dynamics of Taobao. A previous client found a wooden collar cardigan, tested well by others, cleverly changed it to a mid-length version, tested with traffic, followed by mass production for large traffic events on Paipai and Taobao, selling over ten thousand pieces across the network. On the product side, changing cotton yarns to higher-end 37% wool, and selling it cheaper by three to five yuan, already makes them very uncomfortable.
B. Models that perform well offline will definitely perform well online. If they don't, it's your operational problem. So many people can't understand why many hot-selling models online are considered outdated by physical stores. Actually, the audience within a few kilometers differs greatly from my audience of hundreds of millions of users. Seasonal clothing only lasts one season per year, and a cycle every one or two years is normal. We often take some well-performing regular models from physical stores and evolve them for e-commerce companies. Adding embroidery to the front of basic T-shirts or printing patterns on plain cardigans according to our style evolves them well too.
C. Designer brands, independently designed, factory produced. D2C is a purely aesthetic unilateral wish, the favorite fantasy product realization method of Beijing-style e-commerce. Especially for new Taobao Mall teams, registering a brand and confidently designing and producing a batch of goods, I feel sorry for them. Even if you're an amazing designer, you need to give customers a buffer period, a recognition period. Selling goods is what makes a brand, who will give you traffic support? Polyvia has been running for two years, and only recently started to show some results. Ask yourself how long you can endure loneliness. So don't start with this, you can't afford it.
This time, I won't go into detail about how supply chain factories specifically cooperate deeply with e-commerce, just a rough outline.
For the first trial production order, don't place too much to reduce risks. Distribute among different platforms like Taobao, JD.com, Dangdang, or group buying sites, generally three to five hundred pieces. The initial order shouldn't have too many colors and sizes, generally two colors and two sizes. With a sales foundation, consider building a pyramid stack. This requires your factory to be flexible and tough when needed. We can't rely long-term on group-buying tools like JuHuSuan for market expansion, but such group-buying is the best tool to test supply chain pressure. If you're purely preparing stock for JuHuSuan, humanity can't stop you from entering a harmonious society. Taking a client's sweater that sold over ten thousand pieces on JuHuSuan as an example, the conservative approach is to prepare up to 30% before the final review, then produce after the final review, delivering the first batch on day seven, and finishing by day ten. If using a previous foreign trade order assembly line, even the workers would struggle for two weeks. This is because we integrated seven or eight external knitting factories, focusing mainly on sewing, finishing, and total inspection, ensuring quality control at each step, greatly accelerating production progress. Transform your factory's business philosophy, as e-commerce sales fluctuate greatly, a single factory can't meet your needs, and multiple factories are beyond your capacity to sustain. Let the factory integrate peer resources, outsource procedures, similar to KD structure. After the group sale, it's time to sell high-value overflow. Subsequent production replenishment depends on specific activity needs.
3. Inventory product strategies. Here, inventory products refer to stocks caused by poor operation or channel issues, not defective goods. Nowadays, most physical brands going online sell mostly inventory goods, which is already an open secret. Products go online, hang for a few weeks, then 5-7 discount promotions clear the inventory, enhancing user experience. Another way to handle inventory is rebranding. Channel-restricted or poorly operated premium products might otherwise be wasted, so we rebrand them to sell. Helping e-commerce find goods and rebrand them, I've almost become a professional rebranding expert.
Product Style Trends
Uniqlo's market strategy is to seize the development trend of the M-shaped society, capturing consumer trends, which every e-commerce marketer wants to achieve. Undoubtedly, the first wave of e-commerce products hottest sellers are the teenage Japanese-Korean style targeting 18-22-year-olds, still dominating e-commerce market sales. But if Xia Yuhe from the past has turned into Grandma Rong, we must think about whether our products are also changing. On the other hand, if you're sharp enough, you'll notice the recent extremely successful marketing campaign of "Ordinary Youth, Artistic Youth, 2B Youth." Everyone isn't ordinary, nor wants to be 2B, so we all choose artistic. Without specific market data, but judging from the growth of my client orders and current market positioning battles, Chuke, Chuyu Mianhua, Suoran... all these are e-commerce brands playing the artistic style card. It's not hard to see some signs. If artistic style currently represents a niche, I believe it's a niche with explosive potential. The fresh and simple style evolved from European and American styles.
Finally, emphasize the importance of product PDCA
The most important content for a product manager is planning, procurement, and inventory model construction. What struck me most is that very few e-commerce apparel companies actually do product planning. It's not about needing a certain scale of sales to conduct product planning, nor about predicting what to sell in the next one or two months. Fast Retailing President Tadashi Yanai said in an interview that collaborating with Sander meant Uniqlo embarked on an important challenge. By September 2009, when the collaboration had progressed for a year and a half, conflicts in work began to surface. "Sander is used to overseeing everything, every small detail must be personally handled. She is too focused on details, from fabric materials to the shooting of +J advertisements, she participates in all aspects." The CEO's words already revealed some dissatisfaction. "We have disagreements, but through these disagreements, we understand each other better, which is the most important."
Uniqlo described the +J series launched in October 2009 as "widely accepted by passionate customers worldwide," but Fast Retailing has yet to disclose the specific sales figures of the +J brand. Tokyo's top asset management company, Daiwa SB Investments Ltd., retail analyst Toshikazu Nishimura said that although it's hard to estimate the specific sales figures of +J, he believes the number should be negligible for Uniqlo. "I don't think +J will have a huge impact on Uniqlo's global business. Industry-wise, this sales figure should be very small. Therefore, even if this series stops selling, it won't significantly affect sales in the coming quarters." he said.
Fast Retailing attributed the decline in brand sales in the first half of the year to the warm winter climate, stating that it directly led to the lag in autumn-winter product sales. The impact of the earthquake certainly exists, forcing Uniqlo to cut its annual sales target to 836 billion yen, equivalent to $10.42 billion. However, from the company's stock price perspective, terminating cooperation with Sander did not significantly affect the stock price.
Fast Retailing's news spokesperson said that as this season was nearing its end, the company reduced the sales of +J spring-summer series, trying to allocate the remaining goods more effectively. However, she explained that this strategic change was not due to the end of Sander's term, and refused to provide any relevant details. According to the spokesperson, Fast Retailing has not decided whether to carry out special market promotion activities for Sander's +J swan song series. Meanwhile, Sander's spokesperson simply mentioned that the designer worked with David Sims and Jo McKenna to shoot the advertising campaign for the +J autumn series. (Translated by Amanda Kaiser / Edited by xixi Gu Chenlu)
This article originates from: Uniqlo Taobao Flagship Store, Women's Spring and Summer Fashion on Taobao, Women's Summer Fashion on Taobao Original Address: http://www.baiduhou.com/uniqlo/60.html Please indicate the source if reproduced!
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