Buyer &Nbsp; Behind The Brand.

Buyer, shuttling fashion People who release the show and all kinds of professional clothing exhibitions are the audience of the first row seats of the top show. The real decision makers decide whether the conference is successful or not.

However, this busy crowd in foreign fashion circles is rarely seen in China. Is this determined by the historical process of the development of China's garment industry? Or is it because of this pattern in China?

At CHIC2010's China clothing buyer forum, Wei Lin, vice president of China clothing association, said: "China is a big garment country, but not a strong garment country. There are great advantages and great difficulties. "

　　 clothing The advantages of great powers have been well understood by many costumes, and the great difficulty is to easily become targets. Therefore, for the safety of the industry, the upgrading of the garment industry has become inevitable.

Industrial upgrading is not simply the introduction of advanced equipment, cutting-edge technology, the most fashionable fabrics, etc., it should enhance the mode of operation and learn from advanced experience abroad.

For the clothing industry, the brand symbolizes its strength in the world fashion industry. If China wants to become a strong garment country, it must have the brand recognized by the world fashion industry. And getting onto the international fashion stage and gaining the recognition of fashion buyers is the only way.

Showing up on the stage of fashion week of the five world fashion capital does not mean that it is truly recognized by the international fashion industry. Only getting orders from buyers can mean real acceptance. Therefore, it is the rational way for Chinese clothing to move from "big power" to "strong country" to understand buyers and introduce the buying system into China.

Proper name

　　 Buyer What kind of people are they?

The duty of a buyer is to provide the most appropriate commodity to consumers at the most opportune time and at the most appropriate place.

Fashion buyers should be rational and emotional people. Sensibility lies in being passionate about beauty and new things as designers, and rationality is sufficient and objective and calm when analyzing and judging.

Yao Xiaoyun, who once received a professional education in the UK and worked as a buyer, said: "there are various discussions about buyers in China. Some voices are very one-sided. Some people describe the buyer as "running around the world, seeing beautiful things and buying lots of money on the basis of feelings". This is a very unprofessional saying. To see "beautiful things" is not to buy casually, but also to look at the aesthetic habits that are not suitable for their target customers. It depends on whether or not the price can be accepted by consumers. Buyers must not simply place their orders according to their feelings, but also rely on a series of scientific analysis and statistics to match the past sales data, together with the experience of the market to decide the order. There are also people who interpret buyer behavior as "Taobao". This is only a very elementary personal act. Brand buyers are far more complex and professional than Taobao.

Three interpretations

According to the type of enterprises, buyers can have three levels of definition.

Shop buyer / agent buyer

With a large number of foreign brands entering the domestic market, shop buyers have quietly sprung up in recent years. Some top luxury brands (such as GUCCI, CHANEL, etc.) train experienced salesmen or salesmen in their stores as buyers, who are responsible for replenish the goods to meet the needs of local markets. This retail store only sells its own brand, and the buyer is only responsible for the purchase of his own brand, coordinating retail, marketing and visual merchandising. Because of the high cost of single store buyers, this mode of operation only applies to luxury brands.

There are many independent designer brands abroad, and its designers will launch new product lines every season, then buyers will place orders for them, then they will produce products to manufacturers. This is a designer brand ordering system, which is popular in foreign countries. Buyers of these designer brand products are usually strong retailers.

The other is agents selling a brand of a region's sales business, or acting as distributors to sell multiple brands, and managing multiple market retail businesses. The buying function of the agent system is the same as that of the former buyers, both of which are already designed brand products. Buyers do not organize production, nor are they responsible for product development, but buy orders from brand headquarters. At this point, the buyer's work mainly includes group goods, merchandise management and sales tracking, and sometimes marketing, shop display and so on. Buyers in this mode do not need to know the process of product design and development, but need knowledge of retail store management.

There are also small retailers or agents who, because of their limited scale or human cost, will be held by the owners themselves as buyers.

Brand business buyer

Buyers who directly or indirectly control the production process and retail system are called brand buyers.

Nowadays, the brands in the domestic market can be classified into two types: supply type and direct type.

The supply type brand mainly depends on agents to develop regional markets. The production and processing links of brand enterprises or factories, or the processing and processing of orders, most brands in China rely on this form. In such enterprises, because the right of ordering is in the hands of agents, the responsibility of brand buyers is limited to commodity planning, style development and organization production. The buyer needs to coordinate the work of all departments in the company, including sales, marketing, logistics, and external needs to coordinate the processing and production of garment factories or traders. This type of buyer only works in the company headquarters, responsible for the whole product development and production process. It can make up for the lack of product planning ability by designers or designers instead of designers.

Direct brand is the brand that is directly controlled by the brand enterprises themselves, and does not depend on agents or franchisees to expand the market. Nowadays, white-collar workers, YOUNGOR and so on are all enterprises of this type. In this kind of enterprise, brand buyers should not only have the functions in the supply brand, but also the important work of the sales department to monitor the sales data and make quick response so as to maximize sales and minimize inventory. In this mode of operation, buyers should not only have the function of product development, but also need to take account of the late sales coordination. This type of buyer can work in a large division company (the premise is to distinguish the company from having the right to collect goods independently), and to purchase the brand according to its regional characteristics.

The most fundamental difference between the brand buyer and the shop buyer is that the brand buyer is responsible for the design and development of the product, and the shop buyer buys all the products that have been designed, so it is not responsible for product development.

Department store / supermarket buyer

There are two kinds of buyers in department stores and supermarkets. One is to buy mature brands for department stores or supermarkets, and to buy buy-out buyers. Its main task is to communicate with various brands of manufacturers or agents, decide what brand to buy, what kind of goods to buy, and how much to buy. They also do not need to know about product design and development.

The other is buying goods for department stores or supermarket brands. The functions of this buyer and brand buyer are similar, and we should give consideration to the functions of product development, commodity planning and clothing purchasing. In the United Kingdom, HouseofFraser and its own brand Linea and Platinum are adopting this model.

Three kinds of misreading

After the definition of the buyer, we will find that there are still many ambiguities in the understanding of buyers in China. There are basically three kinds of generalization:

Confused with purchasing

Both buyers and purchasers have the function of purchasing, but procurement often stays at the executive level, and buyers have the functions of management and operation. Moreover, the purchase in China is mostly the purchase of raw and auxiliary materials, and buyers are aimed at the purchase of ready-made garments, to understand the market demand and commodity planning.

Confuse with product manager

In clothing enterprises, buyers and product managers are similar. Product managers are mostly set up in production enterprises, whose main function is to supervise and execute product production schedule and material organization. The buyer is a functional department set up by the brand operation enterprise and the virtual operation enterprise which is not only processed by production means, mainly for the finished product segment, but only plays a supervisory role in the production process.

Confuse with commodity planning

The English titles of buyers and merchandises correspond to buyer and Merchandiser. The difference between the two is that the buyer is responsible for organizing the entry of goods, and the merchandise planning is responsible for organizing the sale. In short, it is a buy, a sell, so constitute a supply and marketing cycle in the process of operation, and buyers should participate in some of the sales process, only in this way can we buy rationally. Now the domestic commodity planning system is a set of models derived from Japan and South Korea's clothing enterprises after studying FashionBuyingandMerchandising in Europe and America, and the buyer is Merchandising+Buying. It is not a set of systems for Chinese clothing enterprises to use commodity planning and commodity planning in Japanese and Korean enterprises. Most garment enterprises in China have adopted the production and R & D functions of the merchandising panels, but the subsequent sales function has been passed to the sales department. That is to say, China's commodity planning is not a purely commodity plan.

Buying is the successful mode of brand operation.

After understanding the function of the buyer, we can understand that in the process of producing the big country to the brand power, brand operation capability is the key factor, and the buyer system is one of the successful modes of brand operation.

In the process of transformation from a production enterprise to a brand and design enterprise, the management and operation management of the brand is very important. If only the design is the leading brand and the operation of the brand is in a weak position, it is only from the original OEM to ODM that we still can not become a big brand country.

A successful brand enterprise should coordinate the flow of goods, logistics and capital flow. Someone should professionally operate these processes. If the operation is not coordinated, it will not become a strong brand.

A strong brand needs a strong market control capability. First of all, there must be strong products, followed by strong operation of goods, and finally have a strong ability to control the capital chain. The buyer system is the solution to supply chain operation, which can reduce the operation cost of the enterprise and reduce the inefficient operation in the operation of goods.

Of course, the reality of the industry determines the particularity of the domestic buyer system. Let's see how buyers can drive brand development under different business models.

Agents and buyers

Many people in the industry use alliances to describe the cooperation between agents and brands. At the initial stage of the brand, because of its insufficient strength and insufficiently understanding of the new market, the market share will often be expanded by the strength of the agents. With the development and growth of brand, this pattern is changing. The current trend is that the intensity of direct battalion is increasing. Some powerful agents will gradually move towards brand management. The brand of agents will gradually appear in the near future.

Bu Hong, director of Xi'an fashion dress merchandising department, said that as a multi brand agent in the western region, Xi'an Liang Dian dress began to set up departments and positions with buyer functions in 2001. For beauty, the most important thing is to choose the brand. Choosing a brand with good products is half the battle. Choose the function of Brand Company buyer.

Most domestic agents (except a few agents who cooperate with well-known domestic brands) are mostly multi brand agents. As an agent of channel operators, in order to maximize the efficiency of the channel and maximize profits, multi brand agency is the inevitable choice. This is actually a prototype of agent brand. Agent brand is similar to SelectShop (International buyer's shop) abroad. China has already seen such an international buyer shop in small quantities.

Chen Peng, the first fashion buyer who brought Y-3, OnituskaTiger, RARE and other brands to China, believes that the buyer brand agent is a very mature model abroad. Although this mode has not yet been established in China, it has gradually gained some signs.

Only by similarity can we understand each other. China's acceptance of the international operation mode is a key to China's recognition by the international fashion industry.

Sun Jiayu, the manager of Jaceve luxury dress brand store, shares the same view: "with the development of the garment industry, the introduction of the buyer system is inevitable. China is a huge market, many brands in Europe and America want to enter, and brand buyer shop is a very easy way to cooperate. France's largest public relations company once contacted Jaceve, hoping to bring more brands to China through Jaceve.

Brand and buyer

At present, most domestic brand enterprises have not set up such positions as buyers. Although many brands carry out some functions of buyers through similar departments like commodity department, product department or sales department, it is extremely rare for enterprises to set up specialized buyers department. The reason is that a lot of China's powerful leading brands are gradually moving towards brand management from the beginning of processing. They are more accustomed to the operation mode of production enterprises. On the other hand, although Chinese brand operated enterprises have developed for nearly 20 years, they haven't entered the buyer's market for a long time, and they are not very well recognized for the sale of the buyers.

The famous brand "seven wolves" has introduced the position of buyer in recent years. Liu Yong, director of the brand merchandise, said: "the seven wolves have set up a buyer for two years. The buyers of R & D system are professionals who are divided into groups according to the overall planning. They not only need to understand the needs of the market, but also need to know how to design and develop. Buyers are more important to the brand that does not emphasize the sense of design, and the function of the buyer will weaken relative to the personalized designer brand.

Liu Yong also said that the buying system is a very common mode in foreign brand enterprises. ZARA is the team model of "three designers + a buyer + a sales manager". This pattern organizes various products, and its rapid reaction speed makes ZARA a pioneer of fast fashion.

ONLY is another brand of fast fashion in the Chinese market. Gao Rong, deputy general manager of the brand operation company, Tianjin Fashion Co., Ltd., speaking of buying hands, said: "Only owns the design resources of the headquarters, so the large framework of products sold in China has been ordered. Only has not set up a buyer's position at present, but it does not rule out that this position will be set up in the future. At this stage, the function of the buyer has been broken down in all links. Both the procurement, design and sales departments have the functions of the buyer, so as to play a complementary role in product structure. Now is the time for fast fashion to rise. Only fast can take the lead in the market. Therefore, in this development process, the function of the buyer can not be ignored. Of course, each company has different stages of development and resources, so it can not be generalized; but the general trend should be that the role of buyers will be bigger and bigger. "

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Shopping malls and buyers

Buyers originated from foreign commercial enterprises, but they are hard to see in Chinese commercial enterprises.

The current mode of China's commercial enterprises is joint venture. The advantages of joint venture are obvious. First of all, they do not occupy the capital. Secondly, they do not have the pressure of inventory. They also reduce the cost of manpower and material resources, but at the same time, they also reduce the space for commercial enterprises to operate independently. In today's increasingly fierce competition between commercial enterprises, change has become the main theme of business operators.

Ding Yao, general manager of thousands of department stores, said: "China's department stores competition has become increasingly fierce. In today's increasingly serious commercial homogenization, how to differentiate business is the best way to strive for greater development space. The buying system is a way to produce differentiated competition, and it is a way for business enterprises to undertake more division of labor. The first enterprises to adopt this approach must be a competitive enterprise. For those commercial enterprises in the mainstream business circle, the timetable for adopting the buying system remains to be determined.

Sun Jiayu talked about the advantages of the buying system in department stores. He said, "most shopping malls abroad use buyers. Paris's spring buyout agency brand accounted for 60% of the total business, which made Paris's entire shopping malls more uniform in location, more precise and professional in service. The business model of Europe and the United States will enter sooner or later. China's department stores are facing many challenges.

The rise of Shoppingmall makes the department stores feel the pressure of competition. Foreign businesses are also eager to try. Of course, because they are not familiar with the Chinese market, it is unlikely that they will enter the Chinese market in the short term, but they can not exclude their entry in the form of acquisitions. The entry of foreign merchants will make domestic department stores face greater challenges. At that time, in the transformation of China's department stores, the buyer mode would be the choice of many department stores. "

obstacle

Who blocked the buying system?

The buying system has been mentioned in China for a long time, but the pace of adoption is very slow. If the buyer system is a more advanced way of management and operation, what hinders its development in China?

Constraints 1: Education

Lack of education is the key to shortage of buyers. Enterprises need professional buyers, but they can not find them. This is one of the reasons why the buying system can not be implemented. Most of the people in the clothing industry believe that the comprehensive quality of college graduates is still high, but the application is not strong enough, and the enterprises can not use it immediately, so they need a longer adjustment period.

In view of this, Bian Xiangyang, director of the Department of clothing department of Donghua University, said: "enterprises believe that the applicability of graduates in clothing colleges is not strong because China's higher education advocates wide caliber, and its aim is often not too strong. If the profession is too divided, it will create new employment problems. Therefore, clothing colleges and universities are trained to adapt to many positions in garment enterprises.

Bian Xiangyang also believes that enterprises should also undertake part of the task of cultivating students into talents. Only with the joint efforts of colleges and enterprises can we cultivate more talents who are in line with the actual needs of the industry.

Speaking of the training of the buyers, Bian Xiangyang said: "Donghua University has relevant contents in the course, but it does not have this profession. Colleges and universities should not set up majors because of their short time demands. The adjustment of schools is to increase the proportion of relevant courses.

As for the problem of buyer education, Zhao Ping, Dean of the school of fashion design of Beijing Institute Of Fashion Technology, said, "a buyer is not a theoretical professional, but a practical professional. It is difficult for the students who are trained by the simulation concept of the school to do the work of the buyer. The Institute has not yet established a buyer's profession. We are also short of practical cases and teachers. The current way of training is to invite graduates who are buyers in the enterprises to teach students in the classroom. This way of teaching has achieved good results.

At present, there is still a big gap between China's clothing colleges and foreign countries. Foreign clothing education is mainly to cultivate practical talents, while domestic clothing education is cultivating talents. As a result, the training of professional talents such as buyers has become a short board of domestic clothing colleges and universities.

Restrictive elements 2: operation mechanism

For the buyer system, the Chinese clothing market is still at a relatively elementary stage, and there are still difficulties in introducing the buyer system.

In this regard, Yao Xiaoyun said: "many domestic enterprises have been doing production and processing, market sales have always been led by the nose. It should have been the decision of the market to produce the product. Now it is Motomai Ki. "

In addition, at present, domestic agents do not adopt the buyout system to cooperate with brands. In the current mode of cooperation, agents and brands take risks together. The pressure of agents is relatively small, and for their own business safety, it is impossible to buy buyout system at this stage. It may only apply the technology of buying hands at a certain level.

For commercial enterprises, because of the oversupply of brands, they have long been in a dominant position, and have become more commercial real estate developers and operate in a risk-free manner. This pattern will still be the mainstream for a long time, so the implementation of the buying system in the strong commercial enterprises has not yet been included in the timetable.

Constraint element 3: accumulation

When it comes to how to become a good buyer, many people mention their vision. What is the vision? The vision is the comprehensive expression of aesthetic quality and market sensitivity.

"I am most familiar with the understanding of buyers," said Bu Hong, director of Xi'an fashion dress merchandising department. Aesthetic taste and market sense are indispensable. In our company, buyers are the bridge between the market and the design. They keep close to the sales line while communicating with the design department so that the design department can design the products that the market really needs. Of course, buyers need rational thinking when they have perceptual vision. This thinking needs data support. When we order, we need accurate sales quota. Orders need to be guided by various data. Even if the order is successful, there is also need for internal promotion, and training of salesmen is one of the jobs. "

For China's agents, brands and business enterprises, their perception of fashion and market experience have not yet reached the level of perfection. They also need to constantly broaden their horizons. Only by constantly accumulating market experience can we have a better market sense of smell.

Future

Buying into tens of millions of homes

With the continuous increase of labor and manufacturing costs, the low value-added and low tech scale manufacturing industry is losing more and more advantages. China's garment industry is experiencing a transformation from manufacturing to market. The business pattern of consumption decided through production will be gradually clear. Circulation will play an increasingly important role in the supply chain. The advantage of the market oriented vertical integration capability of buyer's market will be more and more obvious. The buyer model will be applied by more enterprises to the management system. This will be realized with the development of garment industry.

A day for fashion buyers

Yao Xiao Yun

The buyer, the mythical profession of many girls who aspire to fashion, is not too romantic, nor does it look so beautiful on the surface.

Being busy is the professional characteristic of a buyer. There are always things that can't be done. After a season and a season, goods are always being refurbished, and the reaction to the market must be quick. There are few routine practices that can be followed in the work schedule.

Every Monday morning, the buyer's job starts with discussing the sales figures of the previous week. Before the meeting, the buyer assistant will prepare the sample clothes, and the logistics personnel will summarize the sales and inventory data. Then, we will discuss together and formulate a plan for catching up with the best seller, as well as a promotion or discount plan for slow-moving sales.

After the meeting, the buyer assistant began contacting suppliers to inform them which items needed to be chased and began to make up for single contracts. The salesperson begins to inform the shop and arrange the specific matters of promotional discount activities.

Later, the buyer will discuss with the designers or craft technicians to develop new products for the next season, and organize the relevant confirmation work for product development. The company usually fixed a working model of a medium-sized figure, asking her to try on the sample one by one. The buyer makes changes, and technicians or assistant buyers record.

After seeing the sample, the buyer assistant will call the supply factory, inform them what kind of changes they have made, re examine the price, inform the order amount, quantity, delivery date and so on.

After lunch, the buyer of all kinds of goods also need to confirm the budget, delivery date and order quantity with the sales, logistics and financial personnel, so as to leave enough time for all relevant departments to prepare for the pre sale of goods.

Merchandising and marketing departments often discuss merchandising plans with buyers, so as to ensure that the relevant promotional materials for new products can be launched simultaneously, ensuring that the display items and window themes can be implemented as soon as possible so as to achieve the overall operation effect of the brand.

After three p.m., it is time for various categories of buyers to meet new suppliers. The assistant assistant will bring the visiting supplier salesman to a small conference room, and the buyer will glance over the face accessories or sample of the garment one by one, and discuss further cooperation. Sometimes, especially during the new season, the old manufacturers will also visit new buyers with new samples at this time, so as to provide buyers with ideas for the next quarter's product development so as to consolidate the foundation of their cooperation.

The last one or two hours before work are buyers' time to collect popular information. Buyers can either look at fashion magazines or search for the latest dynamic information on the Internet, cut out interested pictures and text materials or download them directly from the Internet.

After work, on the way home, the buyer will also take a tour of the nearby shops. On the one hand, he will look at the sales of his goods in the shop, collect some feedback information from the shopping guide, on the other hand, he can also see what new products on the market are listed on the market.

This is a typical buyer's day. Buyers always pay close attention to the goods they are selling, while they are prepared to sell the next season's products for the front line, so as to ensure that the right goods can be found in the shops at the right time.

Related links

The birth of the buying system

The early buyers (Buyer) are the buyers of department stores. They buy many kinds of goods for department stores, organize purchases and warehouses.

During World War II, the concept of Buyer was quickly adopted by Europe and the United States and widely used in chain operated brand enterprises and other fields.

The rapid growth of buyers was from 80s to 90s of last century. Because of the high cost of labour, the British garment industry shrank sharply during that period. Most garment enterprises are transformed into service enterprises, thus avoiding the main contradiction of low cost competition. They are strong in running fast commodity circulation, high quality design services and high quality added value.

These retained manufacturing enterprises are mainly concentrated in London, central and Western England and Manchester.

In the modern British apparel retailing industry, most of the enterprises have gradually imported garments from abroad as the main channel for purchasing. Southeast Asian cheap labor and the diversity of global purchasing varieties are not competitive for the British manufacturing industry.

With the convenience of international travel and communication technology, garment retailers in Europe and the United States seem to be no longer loyal to their local manufacturers. Southeast Asia, especially China's products, is now comparable to their domestic manufacturers in terms of quality and processing technology, and because of the low production cost, they still have considerable advantages in terms of price.

Developed countries, in order to protect their local garment processing and manufacturing industry, set up barriers to import goods, trade quotas, import tariffs and various import customs trade procedures through various means of trade.

With the process of Global trade integration, the call for abolition of trade barriers is getting higher and higher. International free trade will undoubtedly bring many benefits to the world economy. But for political reasons and worries about the loss of control of the garment industry caused by free trade, the removal of trade barriers is still a topic of discussion.

The earliest sourcing of Southeast Asian sourcing resources centered on mainland China, Hongkong and Taiwan, due to the development of local living standards, resulted in higher processing costs. Production and processing bases were gradually shifting to lower cost regions, such as Indonesia and Vietnam, while Hongkong and Taiwan gradually played the role of management and R & D Centers for these production and processing bases.