Xu Songmao: Let Big Brands "Curry Favor With" "Small Short"

Recently, there were rumors that Ma Yun Alibaba In the name of investment limited, the local well-known network merchants. Shoe store The funds were put in place more than a month ago. The specific amount is about 15 million US dollars (about 100 million yuan), and Alibaba will hold 20% of the famous shoe stock.

For a while, Xu Songmao, the founder of the shoe store, became famous. How can an unknown network operator get it? Jack Ma And how much money did you get?

In fact, Xu Songmao, who has always been low-key, has been the focus of investor and media attention since it launched the sky price domain name S.CN at the end of July last year. In 2010, the shoe store achieved sales of 120 million yuan. Xu Songmao claims that they are selling the speed of a pair of shoes in 3 seconds to create the myth of Internet sales.

Xu Songmao

Who is Xu Songmao? Why can he create such a sales myth? The 100 million yuan investment suddenly caused speculation and legend about Xu Songmao.

Who on earth is he?

According to public information, Xu Songmao, the founder of the shoe store, graduated from the Physics Department of Xiamen University in 1983. He founded 3 foreign trade enterprises and made shoes trade.

After the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, Xu Songmao, founder and CEO, invested 60 million yuan in the establishment of a shoe store. He said that his goal was simple: to enable young people to afford genuine brand shoes, and to serve as the task of the shoe store team.

In 2009, the shoe store's first year turnover amounted to 38 million 600 thousand yuan.

In November 11, 2010, the shoe store's daily sales volume exceeded 8 million yuan, creating a good result of selling a pair of brand-name shoes every 3 seconds. In 2010, the shoe store for second years exceeded 100 million yuan, ranking the top three enterprises in China's footwear B2C.

At present, the concept and achievement of the win win of the famous shoe store has been authorized by LINING, KAPPA, PUMA, NEW BALANCE, ANTA, FILA, SKECHERS, BELLE (including 10 brands of its own, ELLE, etc.), NINE WEST (including 6 brands such as its ELLE), Daphne and other more than 20 sports leisure and timely sales of women's shoes brand's official network sales authorization.

The rapid and healthy development of the famous shoe store has won the honor of "12315 consumer rights and quality service points in Xiamen", "the best growth Award for Lining's 2010 e-commerce partners" and "the best e-commerce website award of China in 2010-2011".

According to AI consulting, sales of shoe stores last year exceeded 120 million yuan. In less than 3 years, the company attracted the attention of many venture capitalists.

Xu Songmao did not deny the recent cooperation with Alibaba, but he told reporters that it was not convenient to comment on it. The other side of the cooperation, Alibaba Commissioner for media liaison, also said that it was unable to respond.

According to people familiar with the matter, the $15 million (100 million yuan) financing has made the shoe store the richest in the Xiamen Internet business.

These are Xu Songmao's achievements in the past 3 years. Now, in retrospect, Xu Songmao still can't forget the experience of "crossing the river by feeling the stones."

"Uneasy" entrepreneurial path

By the end of 2007, Xu Songmao felt that his long term foreign trade industry had to suffer 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. 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 pressure on the first class agents of brand shoes. A pair of shoes, even if calculated at 200 yuan, 50 thousand yuan is 10 million yuan of 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.

In doubt, the shoe store began to test the water. 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, and every day a large number of people search for Adidas, Nike and so on 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 50 percent off? This makes some investors who have seen the shoe store model have doubts. How big can the shoe store that sells the stock grow to?

"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. "Competition in the market", some people sell well, some people will not sell well, so 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".

The secret of growing up

As a mature businessman, Xu Songmao will not attribute all his achievements to "luck".

Xu Songmao summed up his achievements in this way - he believed that the rapid growth of the famous shoe store was due to the belief in honesty and credit, benefited from the "win-win" business model, and benefited from the increasingly mature online shopping market environment.

Xu Songmao disclosed that unlike many B2C companies that invested hundreds of thousands of yuan to $1 million development sites at the very beginning, the shoe store only spent 9200 yuan to purchase a full set of VIP technology services in December last year. It took only a week to start selling products at Taobao and patting open shop. In addition, Wangwang, QQ and 53 customer service chat tools provide low-cost and reliable technical services for the shoe store.