Channel Decides Success Or Failure -- How Clothing Enterprises Build Sales Channels

One of the series of marketing talks

"Who has mastered the channel, who has mastered the market" has been passed through countless tests in various industries.

Mastering the channel also mastered the market.

The clothing industry is a typical dumbbell structure, brand and marketing are the two ends of dumbbell.

For most of the garment enterprises in China, a sound and stable sales channel is the foundation of all marketing activities.

Clothing industry and fast moving consumer goods demand different channels. Fast consumer goods channels are basically in the hands of enterprises. Enterprises have a large number of sales personnel to maintain and manage the market. Especially for some well-known enterprises, such as Coca-Cola, Kangshifu and so on, distributors have basically become logistics distributors. They only undertake Logistics and distribution work, and even many large retail systems have been directly operated by enterprises.

Local daily chemical enterprises set up several hundred branches in China to conduct direct operations.

Compared with these fast moving consumer goods, garment enterprises rely very much on channels. They mainly rely on provincial agents and distributors to operate the market. Although some enterprises have established direct stores, they are slow to make progress due to their own financial strength, management ability and human resources.

How can clothing enterprises build their own sales channels?

How can we build a sales channel quickly and at low cost?

What issues should be considered when constructing sales channels?

How should management be done after construction is completed?

I think this is a problem that all clothing industry people are thinking about.

Channel analysis

Sun Tzu's art of war "knows one's own knowledge, one hundred battles", the mall is the battlefield, and the art of war is also the treasure of commercial warfare.

Of course, we should first understand the existing channel situation, analyze the advantages and disadvantages of various channels and the applicable conditions.

The huge sales system of the wholesale market has promoted the rapid development of garment enterprises, and has made a great contribution to the development of China's garment industry.

The advantage of wholesale channels lies in the concentration of markets and the wide range of radiation. The wholesale markets represented by Guangzhou, Dongguan, Humen, Wuhan, Shenyang, Changshu, Zhejiang and Zhuzhou have a pivotal position in China's clothing industry, covering almost the entire Chinese market, and even many foreign customers are also getting goods in Guangzhou and other places.

The product flow is large, and the enterprise development cost is low. Only in these major wholesale markets, the products can be sold to all parts of the country. Basically, there is no need for personnel management and maintenance.

However, the wholesale sales mode requires the products to be popular, low price, small profits but quick turnover. With the principle of fast turnover, the brand and quality requirements of the products are very low. There is hardly any service. Basically, it is a kind of buying and selling relationship.

Moreover, the biggest problem facing many wholesale clothing enterprises is the payment of arrears. A large number of garments are spread to wholesalers by way of credit, causing great cash flow and capital chain pressure to enterprises, and also bring great operational risks to enterprises.

The emergence of the total generation appeared with the emergence of brand clothing. Their appearance changed the traditional wholesale mode of China. With the help of the total generation, China began to enter the era of brand clothing.

For enterprises, the advantage of the total generation is that enterprises can use the channels and networks of the total generation to sell the brand clothing of the company throughout the country, and can pfer the stock of enterprises, speed up the withdrawal of funds, stabilize the capital chain of enterprises and maintain relatively stable cash flow.

At the same time, the main generation of the market management functions, the enterprise only needs to invest a small amount of human resources to train the total generation and market supervision.

Similarly, because the regional market is basically managed by the general manager, and the control of the market is limited, the marketing policies of the enterprises can hardly be effectively implemented.

Moreover, the market management level varies from place to place, because the market share and sales volume of different regions are quite different.

In particular, some enterprises are eager to expand the blank market, and find a wealthy but not dressed, or business philosophy inconsistent with the enterprise, then the market can not be done well, such examples are too many.

The total generation sells clothing to consumers through its own stores, into department stores, stores, franchisers and other retail formats.

Department stores and stores can support a certain brand image. For enterprises that want to enhance their brand image, shopping malls are the most valuable terminals. Many high-end newspaper sets will set up special counters or exclusive stores in high-end department stores.

For example, Hang Lung Plaza in Shanghai, many famous brands such as Chanel, Dior and other famous brands in the world have their own stores.

But now there are a lot of expenses in the shopping mall and sales activities organized by shopping malls to gather popularity, so that many garment enterprises and the general generation complain incessantly. In addition to entry fees, shop fees, public relations fees and high rebates, sales promotions such as discounts, buy gifts and cash returns are endless, leading to the extremely high cost of operating the shopping malls.

It is understood that the total cost of operation of shopping malls in some areas has reached 35%-40%, which seems to be very high in gross profit, but in practice, the net profit of operating the shopping mall is very small.

The main sales terminals of the brand clothing enterprises of the exclusive stores, compared with the shopping malls, have a higher demand for the brand, and the brand must be well known, and at the same time, the products have more styles, so that they can basically grasp the trend of the market.

Franchised stores can display enterprises, brands and product images well through unified signboards, unified decoration styles, unified product displays and unified corporate publicity.

However, at present, the threshold of clothing business at the grass-roots clothing business is very low. Too many domestic brands want to quickly expand their shopping malls and increase their sales volume, so they are very low in demand for dealers. Many people want to start their own businesses only if they want to start their own businesses.

The distribution of clothing dealers is not good. Many dealers have no experience and lack of management ability. They are short-sighted, so the marketing decisions of enterprises are difficult to carry out effectively.

Channel selection

How can the existing sales channels of clothing be selected for enterprises and which kind of channels are suitable for their own enterprises?

Is it focused on doing a certain channel or operating in multiple channels?

Is the national market operating multiple channels at the same time or using different channels for regional operation?

Is it a direct franchise or a franchise?

Whether we can choose a suitable channel mode suitable for the operation of our enterprises is the most important link in the marketing strategy of enterprises. If we choose correctly, the development of enterprises will enter a sustained and rapid development. If we choose the wrong ones, the enterprises will have a difficult time. The high-level enterprises will also become a firefighter, and the fire fighting everywhere will be exhausted, but the fire will burn up more and more until the enterprises can not support it.

It is precisely because of the importance of sales channels that we should be very careful when choosing.

However, some people will say, we all know, but how do we choose the sales channel?

What criteria should be applied to choose?

These are the principles of channel choice I want to analyze below.

First of all, sales channels should be consistent with brand positioning.

Why am I talking about brand instead of product?

That is because many Chinese clothing enterprises have many brands, and each brand positioning is different, the target consumer group is different, the sales channel is obviously not the same.

For high-end products, brand image, product quality, product style, product display effect is a key concern of consumers. High-end products are an image, which represents a lifestyle and status status for consumers, and they have to show their identity and status when shopping.

So they went to high-end department stores and high-end brand stores.

For example, YOUNGOR, a famous brand in China, has brand stores all over the country, and there are stores or counters in the major department stores.

Therefore, high-end products should focus on some high-end department stores, strong consumer spending, high grade business district stores, such as Nanjing West Road, Shanghai, in these locations to open stores.

For the mass consumer brand, it depends on quantity. Therefore, how to accurately convey the brand information to consumers, how to gather more popularity and how to make consumers buy more clothes is the focus of channel setting.

Popular consumer brand clothing is also mainly based on special counters and exclusive stores, but there is a big difference between such counters and exclusive stores.

The popular brand counters can be opened in the general department stores, and can also be opened in the clothing stores such as Baleno, Zhen Wei Si and AI Ge. They have counters in many stores, and brand stores should usually be in the largest area of traffic in every city, usually in the pedestrian street or next to it.

The famous brands such as mus and bang Wei are mainly pedestrian streets.

Another brand with relatively high brand positioning, such as Qipai and Li long, will have more brand stores in non pedestrian streets.

Because the first thing that people wear on the street is the cheap, the public, so the brand layout is improved through the layout of the store.

For those products with low brand image and low price, they can be sold to the self-employed and retail stores in all parts of the country through the wholesale clothing market in Guangzhou, Zhuzhou, Shishi, Changshu and other places. Most of the domestic unknown brands and products sold to domestic markets are sold to all parts of the country through such channels.

Secondly, enterprises should consider the internal resources when building sales channels.

Which channels can be built under the conditions of existing resources of enterprises?

Clothing enterprises are mostly operated by the general market, and the resources of the total operation area market are not too large for the enterprises. Most of the late marketing expenses are borne by the total dealers and the following dealers. Enterprises only need to establish a strong marketing team, train and instruct the distributors and distributors all over the place, supervise the implementation of marketing policies, and coordinate the problems in the regional market in time.

This requires more powerful human resources in the enterprise as a guarantee.

Specifically, there should be trainers, fashion display planners, fashion designers, excellent business people, etc.

In the past, due to the improvement of people's living standards and the increase in domestic demand, the garment industry was also in a period of rapid development, creating a large number of domestic brands such as the seven wolves and seven cards. But most of the enterprises in this process took the industry's ride and developed rapidly under the background of the development of the whole industry, so they did not invest too much internal resources of enterprises.

Now the market environment has been very different, and the competition is becoming more and more intense. The newly entered enterprises no longer have a free ride. The test is whether the resources and market demands of the enterprises are matched, and whether the good steel can be used on the knife edge.

How many direct stores should an enterprise set up?

Should all the franchised stores be run directly?

Is there a direct retail store in each district?

Is there only a model store in the key market?

The establishment of Direct stores requires a large amount of capital invested by enterprises, such as rent, decoration fees, personnel salaries, inventory and daily operation expenses. The more direct outlets are, the more funds the enterprises need to invest.

Direct stores can better carry out various marketing policies of enterprises, but with large capital investment and slow opening up, it is difficult to meet the needs of enterprises to rapidly expand the market.

The franchisees can quickly replicate, the network development speed is very fast, and can well meet the needs of the rapid development of enterprises. Therefore, enterprises should consider their own resources and build suitable sales channels instead of blind expansion.

Third, enterprises should also consider the difficulty of management and maintenance of channels.

The management and maintenance of the channel is the management and maintenance of the general generation, the distributor, the direct franchise store and the special cabinet.

Some enterprises are not prudent in choosing the total generation because of their own brand and capital pressure. In order to be able to quickly return the funds, they only need to be able to get money from the total generation. It is totally unnecessary to consider whether the total generation has experience in the clothing industry, whether his business ideas are consistent with the business ideas, whether his sales network is built, whether he has certain management and training capabilities, and so on.

Under such circumstances, many of our enterprises have found