Independent Brand B2C Cannot Escape Loss Embarrassment

If we say "6 billion years" of all sincerity

Although Baidu index shows that customers' attention and media attention are increasing, such as fan Kai Cheng, NOP, and other private brands, but last year, the whole independent brand electric business rarely received financing news, and profits were impossible.

Even if insiders predict that the capital will be thawed in the second half of this year, it will be good news for the electricity supplier industry. However, whether the private brand can survive 2012 will become the biggest problem.

Status quo: hard life behind bright scenery

After VCG announced that it had realized 2 billion yuan sales in 2010, the entire electricity supplier industry has invested a lot of envy.

Among them, the most popular among their peers is the independent pricing power of their own brands.

It has been revealed that, because of the absence of middlemen, the gross margin of the e-commerce brand is between 50%-70%, while the general brand agency is only 20%.

However, Meishan, vice president of masa Marceau, has said that the high interest rate of its own brand is only "nominal."

She told reporters, "our profits are not as high as rumors. The highest markup rate of Marceau (the ratio of sales to sales cost after sales minus sales costs) is 2.5, while the traditional line brands generally reach 8-10".

Because private brands need to accumulate influence for a long time, selling profits by low profits has become the default method for the industry.

According to people familiar with the matter, "the 29 yuan T-shirt sold at once sold by fans is almost no profit after the apportionment of marketing, logistics and manpower costs."

In addition, the small brands control staff size to minimize labor costs.

Reporters learned that, like the original, NOP and other new on-line private brand, the number of employees is only about 40 people, not only that, the boss of micro-blog is also responsible for customer service and promotion.

For this scale, Chen Hu, vice president of Le Tao network, said that this is the lowest configuration of an electric business enterprise.

To this end, Chen Hu explicitly stated, "we will never launch our own brand. A new brand will not only fail to start a price, but also need to do a series of marketing and supply chain work."

And the embarrassment of private brand is more difficult than the difficulties mentioned above. It is the most obvious example of this industry.

Even so, each has its own

Choice: brand or scale?

"As far as clothing business is concerned, in addition to the sales volume of Mcglaughlin and the listed company, it has reached the 1 billion scale. Other brands are still in the pursuit of sales."

Electronic commerce expert, leisurely net CEO Li Daishan think so.

Reporters have learned that sales of private label brands are not satisfactory.

The data show that the monthly sales of independent B2C such as engraving, NOP and other independent Tmall stores in the Taobao store (Taobao) are only around 500, and the total sales volume of the brand is about 2 million yuan per month.

Xu Xiaohui, who was first engraving to CEO, said, "the size of the new company is not important, and we are now close to the balance of payments".

In fact, this problem not only makes the independent B2C brand distressed, but also becomes an important reason why Le Tao does not set foot in its own brand. "If we do" Le Tao "brand shoes, it will certainly not sell as high as NIKE and ADIDAS. Even if the high-end private brand is pulled up, the sales volume will never rise compared with the brand of the agent.

Chen Hu explains this.

At present, the question of brand or scale is already on the horizon of private brand electric business.

Tmall founder and Dangdang COO Huang said, "it is almost impossible to make a listed company by market segmentation, but it is absolutely reliable to make a profit of eight million companies."

In addition to the slow expansion of scale, private brand has considerable risk in product trend prediction.

"For example, last year's sales boom is not the basis for this year's sales growth. Many manufacturers are unwilling to take this risk."

Li Dai Shan said, "this requires a clear target brand positioning of its own brand, and voluntarily giving up some consumers".

At the same time, Liu Shuang, founder of NOP brand, said that because of its own brand design, manufacturing and sales, the whole supply chain is almost equivalent to a heavy company, which is much harder than channel sales.

For the creation of its own brand, Chen Shousong, an international analyst at Analysys, thinks there are two ways to "rely on time accumulation or capital accumulation".

Obviously, the sales myths of van Kok Pin are hit by capital, and now they do not have their time and place.

Xu Xiaohui did not shy away from this. He said, "the financial environment has become the first bottleneck in the development of private brands. We want to run faster, but there is no support for large amounts of money, so we can only take it slowly."

Liu Shuang also agreed that "the current environment is not as good as that of" fan Kai Cheng "in 2008, when the marketing cost was low, the competition between peers was small, the capital fever was also more active than before, and now it is just the opposite.

In addition to "stingy" in advertising investment, the expansion of its own brand in major e-commerce platforms is also very "careful".

Reporters learned that, compared with Tmall, the first quarter and NOP and the "old club" V+ and Jingdong mall development momentum is better.

People familiar with the matter said that at present, the development of Tmall network is very mature, resources have been monetized, and attractive traffic needs to be invested in corresponding funds, unlike other platforms.

Contrary to the conservative development strategy, another kind of private brand electric business adopts impulse and push the brand.

The joint Focus Media's personal clothing B2C large cotton is the representative of large-scale advertising.

Lin Wei CEO believes that it is worthwhile to promote high-profile brands, he told reporters. "Private brand should still follow the" everyone who can't break ", so that consumers establish brand concept is the primary task. Meanwhile, he said:" although high input does not necessarily have high output, there is no high input, and there will be no high output. There is no opportunity to expand at low cost. "

Whether the industry is static braking or fast winning, the industry's opinions vary.

Huang Ruo thought, "when the enterprise is not ready, it should not rush to the level, but only to enlarge the scale, in fact, it is likely to lose the best opportunity to exert force".

Trend: self + channel into direction

Reporters learned that, from the early entry, B2C and other independent Tmall entered the platform such as the Internet, to the Korean family clothing, cracks, silk and other Amoy brands to set up their own official website, private brand as far as possible to lay a comprehensive sales channels.

Chen Shousong said that the B2C positioning of its own brand is relatively narrow. It is an inevitable choice to promote sales of brands and expand sales through the whole network layout.

At the same time, its own brand platform has gradually begun to introduce similar brand products. Following the introduction of V+ business city to other brands, the reporter found in the official website of Mai Bao, and at present, it has also introduced more than 60 other brands of bags.

It is worth noting that, while the agent of private brand integration channels is in place, the major traditional channels have also set foot in their own brands. Li Guoqing, the founder and co president of Dangdang, is confident that "Dangdang will push its own e-reader in April this year, and its private brand sales will account for 10% of the total sales volume."

D1 excellent still net CEO Zou Yuanming also said, will push its own clothing brand "FEEL", the future does not rule out the possibility of making other products brand.

Li Daishan said, "it is not an accident that the electricity providers adopt this mode of mutual aggregation and intersection. There is only one purpose for each family: first, earn money."

He further said that loss is certainly not the goal of an enterprise, and the way to achieve profitability requires the pursuit of scale to reduce costs, or to enhance brand value by obtaining financing for blood pfusion.

At present, there are bottlenecks in the above two ways, and electricity providers can only rely on expanded fields to occupy a larger market share.

However, the future of its own brand is as slow as it can be said by the insiders in 2013. "In my opinion, there are still many opportunities for private brands in the future. For example, it is difficult to make certain subdivision areas of brands under the Internet." the long tail effect "with the help of Internet features also has the opportunity to make good brands.

Zhao Yingguang suggested this.