Famous Shoe Store CEO Xu Songmao: From Shoes ODM To Online Selling Shoes.

Xu Songmao: Fukien, with a round face and a pair of black frame glasses.

The appearance of Sven Wen Chao often conceales the strong logic of graduates of nuclear physics.

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But the reality is still more than they expected, "the daily volume from 0 to 400 only took 3 months", and initially they planned to be "one year".

The average growth rate of the shoe store has remained between 200%-300%.

In September 2008, the shoe store was formally launched, locating in the shoe outlets: selling the stock of brand shoes.

In just a year and a half, its sales have reached nearly 2 hundred million, and it has sold nearly 1 million pairs of shoes last year, based on the volume of around 200 yuan in the shoe store.

Xu has made a plan for his life: he will retire at the age of 45 and give the existing burden to others.

After graduating from the Physics Department of Xiamen University in 1983, Xu Songmao did not become a scientific researcher in nuclear physics, but did foreign trade.

The Eide group, founded by the local people, is a leading enterprise in Xiamen and even in the country's ODM shoes. It makes OEM for 78 brands in the world. In 2010, the total number of shoes exported was about 20 million pairs, and its revenue was around 100 million dollars.

This business is already running smoothly, but by the end of 2007, Xu Songmao felt that "foreign trade as a whole would encounter bottlenecks".

And in the trend towards domestic trade, he thought he could "do something".

But what exactly has been done? Xu Songmao, who has made foreign trade shoes for 20 years, decided to go for gold in his shoes.

But how did it happen? There was a disagreement among the core group of the shoe store's early stage: why does it not create its own brand on the basis of the ODM experience of Eide? Xu Songmao has his own understanding: how does the new brand compete with the existing brands in Jinjiang? How much is the cost? In fact, the late research also verified this point: more than 1000 respondents said they preferred the former brand name brand to the unknown brand.

Amid the uncertainty, the financial crisis has brought new ideas.

Because of the financial crisis and many brands preparing for the Olympic Games and other factors, there were 400 million pairs of shoes in the market in that year, and there were only 50 thousand stocks in one region.

This is a great deal of pressure for the first class agents of brand shoes: a pair of shoes, even if calculated by 200 pieces, 50 thousand pieces are 10 million cash can not turn around.

Moreover, if these agents do not take part in the brand order, they are likely to be eliminated.

Brands have the need to distribute these inventories.

Soon after the name of the shoe store was licensed by Lining and other brands, 18 brands including Adidas, Nike, BELLE's miaari brand, Qi Le, and new brun were authorized.

"Since young people want to buy brand shoes, why can't they sell these shoes at low prices?" but Xu Songmao's idea was initially widely questioned. Many of his friends said, "this is a thankless job."

First of all, the shoe store is buying a buyout system. "If you turn someone else's stock into your stock, you will sleep". What can you do if you can't sell it?

Because it is stock shoes, plus a large number of shoes procurement, so its sales price comes up to less than forty percent off.

Low price is still a trump card, "daily single volume from 0 to 1200 pairs, almost a straight line up", up to now its peak sales reached 1 million 100 thousand, that is, the daily sales volume reached 10000 pairs.

Can stock shoe business last long?

In doubt, the shoe store began to test the water.

The initial 20 million start-up fund was drawn by the ED group. "If the 20 million shoes were used up, they would not be done."

This is Xu Songmao's bottom line for himself.

So far, Ed's investment in the famous shoe store has been increased to 60 million. "We have not opened the financial investment to the outside world".

Although VC/PE has been coming to the door since 2008.

The shoe store put the sales platform on the Internet, "because it can sell all parts of the country," for example, shoes that are not sold well in Xiamen are not necessarily sold elsewhere.

But the original shoe store's own website made investors feel cold: it only spent 30 million yuan to make a very simple master station.

"As long as there are lots of people, you can open a shop."

Xu Songmao said that the location of the shoe store is a retailer rather than a platform.

For example, Taobao, patting and even Tianya community are all their goals.

Almost all the new B2C have chosen this path.

Because the platform like Taobao has attracted 90% of the traffic volume, a Taobao seller in Shenzhen said.

This strategy also reduces the promotion cost of the shoe store: every day, a large number of people search for "Adidas, Nike" on Taobao.

It is relatively easy for the shoe store to import these traffic into its own website after establishing a certain brand awareness in the buyer's mind.

But in the first 3 months of the test, the shoe store's life was not easy.

"Everywhere is full of questions about whether we sell fake goods."

Han Buyong, a shoe store CMO, recalls that the premise of these questions is: how could Nike and Adidas less than half off?

Its counterattack: who will bother to do the fake products that have passed the season and correspond to SKU with only a few pairs of shoes? "We started out claiming that the shoe store was selling stocks."

This allows some investors who have seen the shoe store model have doubts: how long can a shoe store be sold? According to a footwear B2C, the total production of brand shoes is based on orders from agents at the ordering meeting and a certain proportion of floatation.

That is to say, the stock of each category of brand shoes is "certain".

If there is no stock in the upper reaches, what does the shoe store sell? In fact, Xu Songmao himself acknowledges that such a year like 2008 can not be met.

"We thought about these problems at the very beginning."

Xu Songmao explained that, first of all, the stock of brand shoes will not dry up. "In the market competition", some people sell well and some people sell badly, so the inventory must be the same.

Secondly, although the shoe store is cut from sports shoes, its shoes brand will increase gradually.

This avoids the fatal blow to the shoe store when the "single brand stock shortage" is avoided.

"Fortunately, after the shoe brand's own brand has been gradually established, the brand owners are more willing to open our stock."

For example, Lining, the shoe store is currently its biggest Internet seller, "no worse than its official website".

Lay a good foundation for climbing the stairs.

In the Huli District of Xiamen, an old industrial area in an old industrial area, the headquarters of the shoe store is on the third floor of the house.

If you are not familiar with it, you will miss it by mistake.

Xu Songmao does not have his office here. He is more accustomed to sitting in the middle of customer service staff.

His employees say Xu manager likes to stand quietly and watch them work. "I want to observe the specific needs of consumers and whether there is room for improvement in the process settings."

For example, in response to customer complaints, customer service personnel first of all have the right to admit mistakes, and then solve the problem.

Xu Songmao, who was in the five term of the year, said he did not know much about computers, and the efficiency of himself would be very low.

This is to improve the process, on the other hand, in order to "find internal talent".

For the famous shoe store, "the most important thing is not to maximize the daily volume", but to lay the foundation for continuous climbing.

At the beginning of the on-line shoe store, the biggest seller of shoes in Xiamen had predicted that the whole system would collapse if the number of daily shoes reached 500 pairs of shoes in the shoe store: from the customer service reception to the warehouse to the shipping process, the whole system would be paralyzed.

At that time, there were fewer than 10 customers in the shoe store.

At the beginning of the increase in orders, "some people will not come back tomorrow," and computer pages continue to jump out of Ali Wangwang. "At that time, most people took 80 Wangwang numbers a day."

The original customer service only left 5, and now these people are the backbone of the shoe store.

The backstage pressure also rose suddenly: at that time, the name shoe store was also made by hand.

"We have always thought that the shoe store and Zappos are two different business models."

But Xu Songmao admitted that he learned the whole Zappos customer service.

Even the staff of the ED group were brought in at the height of the tension.

"We have no problem with the daily volume from 1000 pairs, 2000 pairs or even 8000 pairs."

The shoe store launched the ERP system at the very beginning.

It also intends to choose holiday festivals such as singles day, and sales reached 10 thousand pairs on that day.

At that time, Taobao's on-site supervision was very surprised: there was no unexpected bustle, "no one spoke, just heard typing."

This is both for "enhancing system flexibility", and at the same time, the improvement of efficiency also means the reduction of operating cost and the growth of customer satisfaction.

According to its warehouse personnel, from the order to the product outlet, the speed of the shoe store is 1 hours.

"Even on singles day, we get off work before 8."