"Online Warehouse" -- Xu Songmao'S Brand Shoes

Founded in the autumn of 2008

Xu Songmao's business idea is that inventory is a big worry for brand manufacturers, which seriously affects their capital flow.

But for consumers, the fact that "outlets" is everywhere in China's first tier cities shows that many people are scramble for "brand discount".

He realized that this bitter, tired and risky business is a big business to survive.

Thus, a business model was born in his brain, and became the "online discount footwear retailer", that is, "cash buyout" mode, with the quality of "one by one inspection" and the control mechanism "underwriting" inventory products from the hands of shoemaker.

3 years later, he founded the brand shoe online warehouse, becoming one of China's largest footwear B2C providers. Its flagship store in Taobao mall has set a record of 25 million yuan per day sales.

However, like many Chinese electric providers, the shoe store has to face the harsh reality of China's electricity supplier entering the severe winter from the second half of last year.

However, he believes that this is not the real electricity supplier in winter, but from the cooling of venture capital.

"Because the demand of Chinese netizens to electricity providers is still there, and the overall scale of e-commerce market is still rising."

He used an image metaphor: "at present, the domestic vertical platform electricity supplier's status is almost" two sides ".

One knife is cost pressure and the other is price war.

In the past 3 years, the traffic cost of e-commerce websites has increased by 10 times.

On the other hand, in order to seize the scale of customers, most electricity providers are losing money.

He pointed out sharply that "at the end of last year, some Chinese electricity providers failed to list in the US. Overnight, we realized that the listing could not depend on the scale of users, or on the profit model.

Internet outlets

"I was 45 years old when I created the shoe store.

At that time, our whole team was struggling in the foreign trade industry. Before the financial tsunami hit, everyone realized that there would be problems such as the decline in orders and bad debts. The foreign trade industry is facing great difficulties.

I was thinking that such a large group of people had to find another way out.

We have been working in the shoe field for more than ten years.

It can be said that we know shoes well and can only make shoes.

Subsequently, Xu Songmao led a brotherhood to set up "Internet outlets" - the shoe store.

In December 18, 2008, the shoe store was on the line.

Main brand shoes.

Initially, the company did not introduce VC, and 60 million of the funds were raised by the entrepreneurial team itself.

Just on the line, Xu Maosong first greeted the employees and friends who made shoes around to come to buy and experience.

Because the quality of shoes is good and the price is cheap, it is generally the four or half off price of the market, or even lower, so the initial word of mouth is done.

Xu Songmao also made two "iron rules" for the "shoe store": one is "one by one inspection", each shoe product must pass the "pipeline" rigorous inspection, identified as "good quality", can be sold into the store; two is the "genuine product protection", the first shoe store is the first 12315 dimensional power supplier in Fujian.

In the short span of 3 years, "shoe store" has grown into one of the leaders of China's footwear B2C. Xu said, "we mainly aim at urban white-collar, students and other groups. We want to make those young people who have insufficient financial resources can afford genuine brand shoes."

In 2011, Alibaba injected $15 million into the shoe store.

In fact, underwriting the business of stock products from shoemaker hands.

Shop where there's a stream of people.

Xu Songmao described the status quo of China's electricity supplier: at present, most of the business enterprises are in the early stage of rapid expansion of the industry, and huge production and logistics construction costs can not be avoided.

In this case, survival has become the absolute principle.

The unique business model of the shoe store is that the whole network layout has not only opened the official mall, but also entered the major B2C platforms such as Taobao mall, QQ mall and Jingdong mall.

Different from the strategic focus of colleagues who also sell shoes on the Internet, such as "good le", "Le Tao" and so on, the shoe store will mainly focus on the online shopping platform.

"About 60% of our sales come from platform sales rather than vertical websites."

Xu Songmao said, "for vertical electric providers, they should go to the places where people have the most stream of people. To sell the large platform such as Taobao, Jingdong mall, which occupies 80% of China's B2C market, is conducive to controlling costs.

The cost of operating independent vertical electric business is too high. "

For the design of business mode, Xu Songmao said, "the first consideration is very simple, the first is the customer; the second is where the customers are, and then how to satisfy the customers."

I thought from the beginning that what we need to do is to make young people afford all kinds of famous brand shoes at the most affordable prices.

Next, when most young people stroll around the Internet, they first choose shopping mall like Taobao and Jingdong.

It is like the long tail theory to describe the place where people flow most, that is, as long as the storage and circulation channels of the product are large enough, the market share that the products with undesirable demand or poor sales can compete with or even larger than the market share occupied by those few hot products, that is, a large number of small markets can converge into market energy that can compete with the mainstream.

Retailer's blood

AI Consulting survey shows that following clothing and 3C appliances, footwear has become the third major subdivision of vertical B2C.

In 2010, the sales of vertical footwear B2C enterprises exceeded 100 million, including 3 brands, such as good Lok, shoe store, Lok Tao and so on. In the past 2011, the development of footwear B2C obviously accelerated, and competition intensified.

"Many domestic electricity suppliers rely on advertising to earn traffic, pursue scale growth, and then attract investment and seek listing. Venture capitalists and e-commerce providers all hope to win by sprint."

Zhang Kai, partner of intelligent road consulting, pointed out that last year some large electric business advertising reached as high as 1 billion.

Worries from VC are also deepening.

Ni Zhengdong, CEO of the Qing Ke group, said: "venture capitalists invested a lot of electricity supplier companies in the second half of 2010 to the first half of 2011, but these companies suffered serious losses. In 2011, the total electricity industry losses totaled about 2000000000 US dollars."

Under such circumstances, the financing of many electronic business is becoming more and more difficult.

The growth rate of e-commerce has slowed down due to the influence of wind surrender temperature. In 2010, China's B2C grew by more than 300%. In 2011, the scale of China's B2C market reached 238 billion yuan, an increase of 128% over the same period.

Xu Songmao thinks, business enterprise is burning money, the business mode of heavy capital and light business of horse race enclosure type, will be difficult to maintain.

"The electricity supplier's winter will eventually change the industry's rules of the game, the VC driven e-commerce development mode will end. Next, every electricity supplier can only survive by practicing internal skills."

He pointed out that electric business is a game of moderate struggle with its own desires. "With the gradual development of the shoe store, the original situation such as" brand authorization has been blocked "has changed. The products provided by Adidas, Lining, kappa, New Balance and other companies all come from the e-commerce warehouse of their head office, point to point warehouse.

Some brands also offered to offer "limited edition new products".

In fact, doing business and doing tradition on the Internet

"What is the real skill of a retailer? Like an old customer entering a store, you can identify him immediately.

You can see which product he is most likely to buy, which will test whether you can immediately pfer a series of data, through analysis, understand his interest, purchase ability, and then initiate communication.

He said, "the electricity supplier's body must be injected into the retailer's blood to complete the real pformation."