The Myth Of Luxury Buying System: A New Channel To Eliminate Electricity Suppliers?

At the end of 2010 in Paris fashion week, the famous British luxury goods website Net-a-Porter and many traditional retailers and department stores sat side by side in the first row of T.

In the top fashion conference, the seating is often significant.

After 10 years of growth, the e-commerce website, which started with the "buying system", has been growing up for a long time.

The story of China is also quite appropriate.

For a couple of months, the show got KPCB $20 million

The electronic commerce of luxury goods and fast consumption brands has quickly led to a domestic "buying system" boom.

As a smart intensive profession, buyers are by no means simply buying goods.

In fact, in Europe and Hongkong, the traditional retail department store industry has developed a set of mature buyer models. The best model is the one hundred year old store, Crawford.

But in the field of Chinese e-commerce, which is being influenced by the "buying system", is the so-called "buyer model" worthy of the name?

Can it pform from individual channels to large-scale operations?

Is there any future for domestic electric business buyers?

Luxury business misconception

In the traditional sense, there are two main forms of buyers, and the plation of these two forms to e-commerce is portrayal respectively.

One is the "fashion buyer", the fashion buyer.

It can be said that in the name of the buyer, this group of people is the most pure breed: they must go to the forefront of fashion and have a good knowledge of classic luxury goods; they usually serve department stores or a high-end selling platform; these buyers often participate in the fashion week and attend the fashion show of top designers; their job is to judge the fashion trend of next season, choose a series of new and fashionable products, decide the order quantity, and follow the order details.

These people don't need to know about product design and development, they just need to get the finished products.

They communicate with various brands or agents every day to make purchases. Note that their purchasing methods are usually futures.

Because in the industry, very talented and experienced buyers have priority.

Some people in the industry explained that such priority can be seen earlier than others, in advance, and in priority.

As a result, the turnover rate of goods will undoubtedly be very high.

Take department stores in the United States as an example.

Their gross margins are relatively high, mostly in 35%-40%, thanks to the buying system.

Because when you buy, you have to pay in advance. As a futures brand, it will give you a good discount.

If the buyer has a good sense of fashion and judgement, the better the goods will be sold, which means that the money will be fast enough and the gross profit will be high.

Net-a-porter is the model that successfully pplanted the entity model to the electricity supplier.

But with the example of Net-a-porter, can the buying system of luxury e-business succeed in China?

Insiders told reporters that the "buyer system" represented by the current luxury electric business website is mostly just a gimmick that a website creates "picking".

Although there are many boutiques in the open web pages, few companies are really taking the agency power of the big brands. The upstream of the supply chain is still prepaid to the domestic and foreign brand agents, or the settlement is mainly based on the actual paction orders, and the gross margin is not so high.

The important variables come from these luxury brands. In fact, these international brands are not backward in e-commerce thinking. Many of them have opened their own online channels, and they have seen the strong consumption power of the Chinese market.

But are they willing to put the agency right in China's electricity supplier companies?

From the integrity of the Chinese market, the value of luxury brands and the awareness of brand protection, it seems hard to see the optimistic news in the short term.

"All the categories of luxury goods are those, you can't talk with the Brand Company at first. At present, few people in China can get the agency power. They can only find resources from agents and wholesalers. The goods of the agents are bought, and you order them again, especially the products sold in the website, watches, cosmetics, sunglasses, perfume and so on. All of them add up to those few items. There is no concept of buying the products and futures."

The person

This is also the plight and myth faced by many luxury websites.

It is said that a mother and baby e-commerce website used to buy nearly 20 million of the luxury goods, but because of its own DNA and the buyer's mode of acclimatization finally failed.

Although this wave of buyer's fever is largely a derivative of luxury electric business, but for luxury electric business, it is more similar to the traditional sense of "procurement". At the very least, there are a lot of fashionable factors -- there is still a big gap from the real "buying system".

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The story of China is also quite appropriate.

In a few months, the company got KPCB $20 million in financing, and IDG1000 million invested in the Korean brand clothing house. It is understood that the third round of financing is still in progress.

Many e-commerce companies with "buyer's label" are attracting much attention; the news of luxury B2C, Amoy brands, all kinds of buyers and hoarding buyers is even more.

The electronic commerce of luxury goods and fast consumption brands has quickly led to a domestic "buying system" boom.

As a smart intensive profession, buyers are by no means simply buying goods.

In fact, in Europe and Hongkong, the traditional retail department store industry has developed a set of mature buyer models. The best model is the one hundred year old store, Crawford.

But in the field of Chinese e-commerce, which is being influenced by the "buying system", is the so-called "buyer model" worthy of the name?

Can it pform from individual channels to large-scale operations?

Is there any future for domestic electric business buyers?

Luxury business misconception

In the traditional sense, there are two main forms of buyers, and the plation of these two forms to e-commerce is portrayal respectively.

One is the "fashion buyer", the fashion buyer.

It can be said that in the name of the buyer, this group of people is the most pure breed: they must go to the forefront of fashion and have a good knowledge of classic luxury goods; they usually serve department stores or a high-end selling platform; these buyers often participate in the fashion week and attend the fashion show of top designers; their job is to judge the fashion trend of next season, choose a series of new and fashionable products, decide the order quantity, and follow the order details.

These people don't need to know about product design and development, they just need to get the finished products.

They communicate with various brands or agents every day to make purchases. Note that their purchasing methods are usually futures.

Because in the industry, very talented and experienced buyers have priority.

Some people in the industry explained that such priority can be seen earlier than others, in advance, and in priority.

As a result, the turnover rate of goods will undoubtedly be very high.

Take department stores in the United States as an example.

Their gross margins are relatively high, mostly in 35%-40%, thanks to the buying system.

Because when you buy, you have to pay in advance. As a futures brand, it will give you a good discount.

If the buyer has a good sense of fashion and judgement, the better the goods will be sold, which means that the money will be fast enough and the gross profit will be high.

Net-a-porter is the model that successfully pplanted the entity model to the electricity supplier.

But with the example of Net-a-porter, can the buying system of luxury e-business succeed in China?

Insiders told reporters that the "buyer system" represented by the current luxury electric business website is mostly just a gimmick that a website creates "picking".

Although there are many boutiques in the open web pages, few companies are really taking the agency power of the big brands. The upstream of the supply chain is still prepaid to the domestic and foreign brand agents, or the settlement is mainly based on the actual paction orders, and the gross margin is not so high.

The important variables come from these luxury brands. In fact, these international brands are not backward in e-commerce thinking. Many of them have opened their own online channels, and they have seen the strong consumption power of the Chinese market.

But are they willing to put the agency right in China's electricity supplier companies?

From the integrity of the Chinese market, the value of luxury brands and the awareness of brand protection, it seems hard to see the optimistic news in the short term.

"All the categories of luxury goods are those, you can't talk with the Brand Company at first. At present, few people in China can get the agency power. They can only find resources from agents and wholesalers. The goods of the agents are bought, and you order them again, especially the products sold in the website, watches, cosmetics, sunglasses, perfume and so on. All of them add up to those few items. There is no concept of buying the products and futures."

The person was outspoken.

This is also the plight and myth faced by many luxury websites.

It is said that a mother and baby e-commerce website used to buy nearly 20 million of the luxury goods, but because of its own DNA and the buyer's mode of acclimatization finally failed.

Although this wave of buyer's fever is largely a derivative of luxury electric business, but for luxury electric business, it is more similar to the traditional sense of "procurement". At the very least, there are a lot of fashionable factors -- there is still a big gap from the real "buying system".

The team effect of fast moving consumer goods providers

But the 2/8 rule means that luxury goods belong to only a small number of people, and a larger market comes from the pursuit of fashion among young people.

There are also opportunities for e-commerce.

In traditional retail, the most typical models are GAP, ZARA and other fashion brands.

They buy a small brand or no brand product that meets the trend of this season and their brand positioning through a large buyer team, and redesign and improve a large number of "borrowed" designs or products. Some of them even sell labels directly on GAP or ZARA tags.

Domestic brands I.T and ONLY are also such models - undeniable, they greatly satisfy the white-collar's pursuit of fashion and shyness wallet.

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It is also this environment that gave birth to the second form of buyer, which is based on the "Fast Fashion" shop buyer.

Most of them belong to the "single fashion brand" which is very fast updating for the client. The responsibility of this buyer is to purchase and participate in the design and processing, not only need to know the needs and fashion of customers well, but also mix the products together, so that consumers can have the feeling of one-stop shopping.

Compared with the first "Fashion Buyer", this buyer mode is more down-to-earth in the e-commerce soil in China.

Unlike the "heroic" buyers needed by luxury websites, a group of buyers who rely on teamwork effect are emerging in the brand name.

Gong Wenxiang, an e-commerce expert, revealed in micro-blog that Taobao's women's gold crown shop "Mi Zi Zi" was 500 yuan.

Their mode is to adopt the clothing buying system.

It is said that there are only 60 employees in the whole company. At present, there are only 2 people in all clothing products, and the selection is mainly based on the boss and a buyer assistant, with an annual sales volume of 180 million yuan.

The growth of the Korean clothing brand "Han Du Yi house" is also to "team buyers" to the extreme.

Zhao Yingguang, CEO, said that the mode of Korea's clothes house is to imitate the fast fashion of ZARA - a lot of small quantities not to be exploded.

Relying on a large number of buyer teams, they specializes in sourcing and purchasing unknown brands, collecting various styles, and quickly responding to market trends.

The brand of Han Du Yi house gradually came into being.

Among them, 5 teams of buyers are divided into one group, tracking the corresponding brands every day, finding out the latest fashion elements, and discussing and making decisions independently.

From what design to use, decide how many items to be produced, and how much the price is fixed, the buyer group will decide for themselves.

Finally, through performance appraisal, such as inventory turnover and other indicators, it limits the risk of the buyer group -- fully scale the operation of the buyer model.

At the same time, the brilliance of the Korean clothing house is that, in order to better grasp the upstream supply chain, the buyers also talked about the cooperation with South Korea's net goods brand and stepped into the production link, forming a cooperative operation mode of "Korean design, made in China, and both countries sell at the same time".

Moreover, buyers now pay more attention to the data and sales volume of products on the Internet. These figures have become another basis for buyers to judge future trends and patterns.

"The future needs a team of young buyers who understand the Internet and understand the data and the Internet."

An Amoy brand buyer told reporters.

However, it seems that the scale effect of individual turn to team operations has also encountered various bottlenecks.

Many Amoy brands were born in the buyer's system, but because of the lack of manufacturing capability, they could not simply process products, and still had no good control over supply chain integration.

Further integration and innovation are still needed in the future.

With the help of the buyer system, the upstream supply chain resources are reversed from the user side, and many Amoy brands have explored a road that can be scaled up.

In the final analysis, the essence of the buyer system is still the battle for the upstream supply chain by e-commerce.

"Goods" is undoubtedly the top priority of e-commerce.

In the past two years of development, the electricity supplier industry has already started well, faster than other traditional industries, and the role of the buyer system in the electricity supplier has broken through the traditional design department and purchasing department.

More and more electricity providers are paying attention to buyers, making use of buyers to compete for more chips and competitiveness for their upstream suppliers.

But in this process, after all, there is still a certain distance from the traditional and mature European and American buyer models.

In the future, whether this model can be extended to the electronic business platform, the market obviously needs further cultivation and trial.