How To Build Fast Supply Chain For Shoe Enterprises

"Speed" is becoming a key factor in the competition of clothing and footwear enterprises.

How can local enterprises improve their response to market demand?

It takes only half a month for a pair of shoes to be listed from the definite style to the market, and the time required for clothing is shorter.

How did this work?

What are the clothes sold in stores that do not replenish goods?

Fashion week in Paris, New York, Milan and London usually releases the latest fashions six months in advance.

For most fashion companies, they take months to turn design into finished products.

Take a skirt, for example, after the designer has finished the design, the fashion company needs to complete the raw material purchase, printing and dyeing, fine weaving and fine embroidery, and then enter the production and pportation links, so the cost can be imagined.

But the skirt may reach the high end shopping mall, and the shops next to it are hung with styles and materials that are very similar, but the price is much lower.

The barrier of Pyrenees seems to make Spain far away from the fashion center of Europe.

But in recent years, the fashion industry has been blowing up a "Spanish tornado". A group of fashion brands represented by Zara quickly swept the world.

The main reason why such brands can grow in a short time is that they have many fashionable smelling buyers all over the world.

Buyers collect fashionable styles and fashion elements all over the world. They are rapidly processed into garments through imitation and minor modifications, and are pported to customers from all over the world through their fast supply chain system.

It takes only 12 days to design and sell Zara.

Driven by "fast fashion", a fashion that people look at in Paris fashion week may appear in Zara stores in less than two weeks.

While Zara is rising, the elegant and lengthy traditional fashion design and supply methods are being abandoned.

After studying the clothing industry, Lang Xianping found that the success of the newly rising enterprises after 2000 is not innovation, but a rapid response to the market.

GAP in the US and UNIQLO in Japan reached their peak in 2000, but by 2006 they were overtaken by Spain's INDITEX group (with Zara brand) and Sweden's H&M.

"Less money and more economies of scale" has been a common feature of GAP and UNIQLO. Now they are starting to change and speed up the reaction.

Now that "speed" is becoming a key factor in the competition of clothing and footwear enterprises, how can local enterprises improve their response to market demand?

The practice of hot wind brand chain management (hereinafter referred to as "hot wind") is worth seeing.

Although compared with Zara, the hot air which was founded in 1996 has a considerable gap in terms of enterprise scale, reaction speed and meticulous management, but it also relies on "buyer mode" operation.

The hot air has no own factory, and even a fixed foundry does not have the advantage of using the resources of China's huge clothing and footwear production base (2478.297,67.54,2.80%, bar), through buyers to collect fashionable styles and products, and then directly place orders to factories to achieve rapid reaction - less than 15 days for clothing.

As we all know, China has a wealth of costume design and foundry resources, but there are few achievements in the field of brand. It is often the manufacturing enterprises that give others the OEM and the retail enterprises to act as agents for others, or else the two or three line brands plus street stores.

Against this background, the hot air buyer mode provides new experience.

Hot wind is a retail chain enterprise with its own brand. It mainly deals with fashion shoes, and specializes in outdoor sports shoes, fashion, casual wear, bags, outdoor tourism products, etc. the product line is very rich.

All these products revolve around a common position: fashion.

Customers can always find the most popular fashion elements in the stormy stores.

New and unique design styles, personalized materials and accessories are all chips that motivate fashion people to shop.

Positioning in fashion means adapting to the critical and capricious changes of the target audience.

More importantly, we must occupy a leading position in the speed of updating products, otherwise the same or similar styles will soon appear on the market.

This is a very big challenge for traditional fashion enterprises.

The hot air of chain stores can also catch up with fashion and create brand personality by buying the popular styles.

Due to the existence of a large number of foundries, hot air has not encountered bottlenecks in production. Finding the most popular products is the buyer's experience and vision.

There are 8 buyers of hot air at present.

At ordinary times, they come into contact with fashion news from fashion magazines, pictorial, TV programs, exhibitions and fashion shows, so as to grasp the prevailing fashions and varieties and the trend of next season. Sometimes they also go to department stores and brand stores to find inspiration and catch consumers' interest in buying.

These people spend half of their time attending exhibitions and ordering meetings, patronizing the wholesale markets of clothing and footwear, communicating with suppliers, analyzing the data in the other half, understanding the sales situation of the products they purchased, and observing the customer response to the stores to improve them in the next purchase.

Whether a pair of shoes or clothes will sell well in hot air stores will largely depend on whether the buyer's work is in place and whether he can find a unique product or style in such a large market.

Chen Xin, the founder of the hot wind, is an old buyer.

Before he founded the hot air, he was a quality manager of a shoe company in Guangzhou, and was later sent to Shanghai to open up the market.

Chen Xin found that there was a great distance between the company's products and market demand, so he simply resigned and started his own business. He opened a small shop on the Huaihai Road, and procuring from Guangzhou and other places some high-quality and cheap foreign shoes sales. It was in this process that he built the hot air brand.

In addition to grasping the product's outward appearance, Chen Xin is responsible for the specific purchases.

Almost all of them grew up with hot air, some started from the first line shop assistants, so they knew the market situation very well and knew the brand positioning of hot air very well.

In this way, the commodities they choose will not deviate from the style of the "hot wind" brand, and they will always become new.

The hot wind has opened more than 90 stores in 16 major cities across the country (reaching 100 in 2008).

These stores do not take part in the franchise.

For hot air, buyers and stores depend on the competitiveness of the company. They control both ends of supply and marketing.

There is a consensus in fashion industry that fashion products depreciate by about 0.7% a day from the date of listing.

Selling 10 days in advance can reduce the value by 7%.

From this perspective, the speed of sales determines the success or failure of an enterprise.

Hot air has increased the perception of "fashion" through the buyer's mode. Considering sales as a race, it must also shorten the supply chain to speed up the market.

The traditional clothing brand from product design to surface accessories procurement, production and processing, logistics and pportation, to the final product shelves and sales, often takes 2~4 months, high-end fashion brands will take longer.

In contrast, in order to achieve rapid delivery, hot air in the organizational structure and process settings are flat and simplified, and only through the buyer to connect the suppliers and stores, shorten the process and time from source to terminal.

Every season, the company's management will have an important communication with the purchasing department, and determine the next quarter's purchase plan, which is basically a consensus on the trend and the total quantity and budget.

Some new stores should be opened, and the sales of new stores should also take account of procurement.

Some new products will also be developed.

Hot air started its own brand in 2000, and gradually developed from main footwear products to apparel accessories.

Now there are more and more products, involving many outdoor travel products, notebooks and accessories.

Buyers have great autonomy within the procurement plan.

They are fully responsible for the selection of commodities, adjusting the design plan, negotiating with suppliers, placing orders and quality control.

Usually buyers buy fancy styles and negotiate with manufacturers directly.

They may directly place orders, or negotiate with vendors about materials, styles or accessories.

All these are judged by the buyers according to their experience and market information.

Chen Xineng, general manager of hot wind, said: "buyers are the closest to consumers, so they should be the best customers.

They can decide their styles, materials and prices according to their own judgement.

Hot air buyers are mainly looking for the right products in Guangzhou and nearby.

Because the main products of the hot air are all kinds of fashion shoes, and there are 5 footwear production bases in Foshan, Dongguan, Huidong, Heshan and Shenzhen near Guangzhou. Many famous international footwear brands are almost produced in these 5 bases. Guangzhou is a trading center. Guangzhou and Shenzhen and Hongkong nearby are also the places where all kinds of garment enterprises are concentrated.

Buyers and manufacturers should be responsible for monitoring the production schedule and product quality after determining the style, raw material, price, quantity and delivery time of the product.

After the completion of the manufacturer, a professional logistics company will be directly pported to the hot air stores and distribution centers.

The number of products in each store is provided by buyers.

Shanghai is the most concentrated city in hot air stores, and now there are 28 stores.

Due to the limited storage capacity of stores, hot air has set up a distribution center in Shanghai.

After the supplier delivers the goods to the distribution center, the distribution center is responsible for sorting the goods, and then through the information system to understand the stores' stock and arrange delivery according to the need.

Relying on buyers to directly connect suppliers and sales terminals shortens the process of product listing.

As long as half a month is short, the shoes that are bought by the buyer will appear on the shelves of the hot wind chain stores, and the supply of clothing will be faster.

At the same time, due to the elimination of distributors, agents and other intermediate links, hot wind products can also gain advantage in price.

　　多款式、小批量

Currently, four brands are registered under the hot wind: Ned.nedy, located in exquisite and elegant fashion. The products mainly involve women's shoes and women's clothing. Hotwind represents the natural and leisure fashion. The products involve men's casual shoes, casual wear and outdoor dress equipment. Offcos, the fashion and personality of fashion, the shoes and clothes of men's and women's shoes. Londo Rode represents the classic and professional fashion. The products involve gentlemen's men's shoes, professional men's shoes, professional wear and so on.

Because there is a distinction between brand personality, in an average 150 square meter store, products are arranged on the clothes rack neatly according to the four big brands, and all kinds of shoes are lined up. The folding bicycles and outdoor travel products seem to be displayed at random in a certain corner.

In order to achieve rapid turnover of products, hot wind has adopted the principles of multi style and small batch.

Take shoes as an example. Usually a shoe in each store is equipped with only one set of codes, and the distribution center will have a small amount of stock that sells well.

Hot air is not afraid of shortage, because there are constantly new styles to add.

If the customer really likes a product and stores do not, hot air can query other stores' inventory to deploy. If there is no city, it can even pfer goods for different customers.

Information systems are very important to buyers' businesses.

The sales department, distribution center and purchasing department can learn about the sales data of each store, the inventory situation of the distribution center, and the sales state of a certain product.

Weekly hot air purchasing department, marketing department, sales personnel will have a meeting to discuss information that can not be displayed through the information system, such as customer's new needs.

Multi style and less batch speed up the update of store products.

Usually there are new products on the shelves every week. Generally, the hot wind does not restock the style of the broken goods. Only a small amount of replenishment is made for the very popular style.

The replenishment time of the shoe is about 10 days, and the buyer will contact the supplier ahead of time according to the sales situation.

In contrast, clothing updates faster.

Tang Xilin, the head of clothing and accessories purchasing, said that a new product might have just been on the shelves on Friday and broke out on Sunday.

But for clothing that is out of stock