Unveiling The Marketing History Of "October Mommy"

"Go away.

In the noisy cafe, the sound of a charming drink, though decibel was not high, still attracted people's attention. Only a middle-aged and elegant man was tinkering with iPad, and a HipHop style music flowed in the air.

That charming drink and HipHop dynamic music are the first domestic maternity dress brand "October mommy" in Shanghai's happy industry limited company, which has been popular in the subway of major cities.

Someone is singing along with the music, someone will smile.

People do not know that this middle-aged man is Zhao Pu, chairman of the Shanghai hi hi industry limited company and the founder of "October mommy" brand.

Zhao Pu laid down iPad and drank a cup of coffee. He was obviously quite satisfied with the brand promotion of "October mommy".

He grew up in Yiwu, studied in Nanjing, started in Hangzhou, and developed in Shanghai.

A friend likened Zhao Pu to Zhang Sanfeng in Jin Yong's writings. They believed that they shared the common ground of "doing things in their own hands and becoming one of themselves".

The United Nations has issued a report that pregnant women and baby products industry is the sunrise industry in twenty-first Century.

Although the market prospect is expected, the Chinese market is relatively chaotic.

After studying and exploring, Zhao Pu redefined the maternity dress, stripped the gestation products from the baby products area, put it into the fashion field, and welcomed the white-collar women with younger, fashion and collocation, and launched brand marketing with unique creativity.

My marketing "pregnancy process"

Dick / Chairman of Shanghai hi hi Industrial Co. Ltd. and Zhao Pu, founder of "October mommy" brand.

I do maternity dress is actually a coincidence.

When I grew up in Yiwu, I had a deep sense of commodity consciousness.

In 1991, I graduated from University, and began to do foreign trade in 1993. I earned the first 1 million yuan in my life in 3 months.

When I do foreign trade, I do not take the usual route.

Every year, everyone goes to Guangzhou to participate in the two Canton Fair. The export staff basically learn foreign languages or foreign trade, and speak very foreign languages.

I am a science student. My foreign language is weak.

I analyzed with my wife that liberal arts students are generally somewhat poor in mathematics and physics.

Then we will be involved in the chemical industry, which is their weak place, not necessarily pick up at once.

After analyzing the chemical industry, we cut into a very isolated profession: veterinary drugs.

Soon we became the top of the industry.

Because there are few people in this industry, and the profits are good.

At the same time, we do teaching instrument business.

Most of these products are made by local run factories, and each place mainly produces one product.

In many places, the Education Commission has teaching equipment department, which provides teaching instruments to schools.

These people are mainly teachers and children. I am also a teacher's child. I am very familiar with the education system, so I have done a lot of integration in this area, and the profit has always been very good.

This experience from the market segmentation has much to do with the pregnant women I chose to subdivide.

In 1997, a friend in Guangzhou had a number of pregnant women's clothing exported in Shanghai.

I took eight or nine pieces back to Hangzhou.

Some friends and colleagues are pregnant. I will give them to them.

Because the market lacks such products, they feel very good, and many of their friends come to me and ask if they can provide them with some.

In fact, pregnant women are easy to gather and have strong adhesions. After buying something, they feel satisfied and will continue to buy it.

In the "pregnancy baby child" apparel industry chain, maternity dress is at the forefront.

My wife has always wanted to open a shop near West Lake.

We opened two stores on the side of West Lake, registered and operated "maternity moon" maternity dress, and opened shop in Nanjing in 1998.

Nanjing University is my alma mater. I have feelings for Nanjing. I often go back and I want to do something in Nanjing.

At the end of that year, I stopped the foreign trade business because I was really busy.

When we entered, the development of maternity dress was still very elementary in China. Taiwan brand was the main market, and the concept of Japanese maternity dress was extended. It is not very fashionable, but partial functional.

I knew a lot about the market at that time.

Chinese women's clothing is basically an imported product, pforming the European and American fashion into Asian fashion culture.

The Japanese and Korean systems are all the same.

In the process, Japan first interpreted very well, and later Korea did better and cheaper. Fast food style made the concept of fast fashion.

Maternity dress is quite different from Asia and Europe.

Asian maternity dress combines fashion culture and fertility culture.

People in European and American countries think that the body curve is very beautiful when pregnant, and the Asians are covered up.

Especially in southern China, the first 3 months of pregnancy can not be told to others. They are said to be afraid of being evocation.

This is true in Taiwan, according to our brand spokesperson, S. S.

In addition, many Chinese women do not want to be known at the beginning of pregnancy, for fear of losing their jobs.

China's maternity dress is mostly large, only functional pursuit, no bright spots in shape.

This industry threshold is too low, how to establish the threshold, fashion is a way.

In this case, I want to redefine maternity dress.

The function of maternity dress is the first, and the second is aesthetic feeling.

Clothing should bring beauty.

Especially after the 1980s, women grew up in the growing period. Most of them grew up in relatively prosperous environment. They only focused on design, quality and brand.

After analyzing the demand of the market, I decided to combine fashion with pregnant women, and set "October mommy" as the "middle and high-end fashion maternity dress brand". The target group is the white collar class with middle and upper income.

We introduce Taiwan designers, change the conservative traditional dress, and add bold colors such as red, yellow and green in color.

Since 1999, we have sent samples to Taiwan for filming.

The professionalism of Taiwan is stronger than that of China.

Every year, we look for a coffee shop on Yangming Mountain and shoot it with scenes.

In general, 1000 catalogues are produced, and domestic women's clothing brands are usually between 30 thousand and 50 thousand yuan, and we have to invest 100 thousand yuan.

At that time, our sales volume was not high, it was a niche brand, but we invested much more than others, but it also benefited greatly.

In terms of product differentiation, we add a lot of functional things at the same time as the integration of fashion elements.

In Japan, a woman wears a different pair of pants after 3 or 6 months of pregnancy.

Chinese pregnant women want to buy a pair of trousers to wear from the head to the tail, which means that the waist of the trousers should be made very large at the beginning, but when the stomach is small, a belt is lashed. It is very ugly.

We have made some innovations, and we split the upper part of the pants into two kinds of fabric, with full elastic fabric, and the stomach is small when the stomach is big.

This innovation is highly recognized by the market.

Later, we applied fashion elements to our jackets. The so-called fake two layers looked like two layers of clothing, and the top layer was opened to feed.

We have done a lot of research on consumers. We have developed a banquet dress for the needs of modern pregnant women in social life.

Such innovation is more humane and closer to the needs of consumers. "October mommy" soon came to the fore.

I often go to the store with my wife to listen to consumers, constantly thinking and changing, and the new product market is very good.

Although we want to pretend that pregnant women are like fashion fashion, we can not advance too much, otherwise the market will not keep up with them, so we must advance two or three steps ahead of others.

Generally speaking, maternity clothes are lagging behind women's wear. We use the buyer's eye to draw fashion elements from women's clothing, and make a few women's brands as our reference objects, and integrate the fashion elements of women's clothing into maternity wear.

Because women's clothing belongs to the fast fashion competition, some brands just like to please customers and dealers, lose their personalities, and are hit hard by fast fashion.

In the field of maternity dress segmentation, we gradually become the boss, and the market space is very large. We can constantly innovate, make it richer and more beautiful, and meet the needs of users.

The trend of fashion is enhanced, the elimination rate is raised, and the design ability of enterprises is higher. Some enterprises without design ability are eliminated.

In this way, we have more opportunities.

Channel reform

Over the years, we have been less involved in factory management, because this is not our strength.

Due to China's overcapacity, we have outsourced other sectors in addition to keeping the proofing factory against urgent chasing orders.

In the short term, it seems that the cost is higher, but our growth and expansion are limitless.

We decided to become a light asset company very early.

At the beginning, many businesses joined us.

The earliest pregnant women in China are agents of the baby industry.

Because of the underdevelopment of the maternity industry, maternity clothes are sold in baby products.

Dealers are used to baby products, such as milk powder, bottle, and so on. They think that the sale of maternity clothes into their shop is very good. We have to pay for a poster.

But our understanding and they are totally two concepts.

We hope that women will sell maternity clothes in accordance with women's clothing, giving them a larger profit margin.

Sales of maternity clothes and selling bottles cost almost the same energy, but the profits of maternity clothes are much higher. The profit of selling dozens of bottles is worth the profit of a maternity dress.

The concept of businessmen is hard to change.

Moreover, from visual image to management and service, franchisees are far from direct stores. Random purchase is very common.

In 2002, we made a decisive decision and failed to clear the standard for the half year consolidation period of the unsuccessful franchisees.

As a result, only more than 30 of the more than 300 franchisees were left.

At that time, the whole industry was talking about us, saying that water can carry boats and overturn them.

But after three or four years, they think our strategy and strategic direction are right.

We realized that we should first do a good job in a direct store, and then join a franchised store, and the right to speak is in our own hands.

In order to re establish norms, we will show them to ourselves.

Through the analysis of the sales pattern, we insist on direct marketing in the mall stores and street stores in the first tier cities. The first tier cities are always the main display windows of the brand. The display, layout, decoration and daily cleaning of the stores need to be invested; in the two or three tier cities, we adopt the franchise mode.

Store design is critical.

We opened the store in a more prosperous area, hired Chen Yifei's chief designer to create a life concept store, decorated beautifully, and unified the store's visual identity to enhance the brand experience of consumers.

Later, we talked about the cooperation with the brand in Italy. They agreed that our shop was very beautiful, especially the egg shaped sign representing "breeding", which explained the pregnancy culture very well.

When our outlets were profitable, many people joined.

We do not accept the franchise fee, but it is more rigorous to sign a contract with the franchisee. Once a year, it is renewed once a year, and the shortest sign is half a year.

Time cost is expensive for everyone.

After all these years, they were relieved.

In this case, e-commerce is more successful.

Many traditional enterprises have no way to start e-commerce, because they were kidnapped by franchisees and could not implement the pricing strategy.

We do e-commerce, franchisees have been confused, worried about the impact of their offline business.

We say two points to the franchisee: first, the goods are not good, the most affected ones are not you but us. Our stores are the most. You can't change a brand. Two, if the business mode is under the influence of the e-commerce, the most influential one is our store, not yours. We all dare to do so. What worries do you have?

Their worries were dispelled.

Because there are two lines, the products are different. At present, both online and offline are good.

By the end of 2011, we had about 600 stores in the country, of which there were about 230 Direct stores, others were franchises.

E-commerce, we have done Taobao and Jingdong mall flagship store, also with the public comment network and other group buying business, as well as shopping channels.

This year, we will expand to the whole network, and all consumers across the country can find us online and offline.

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Chinese women's clothing brands are basically imported from Europe and the United States, it is difficult to shape their own culture, and the concept of maternity dress is easy to shape the brand.

Chinese maternity culture is European and American fashion culture plus Asian fertility culture.

From the perspective of the Chinese market, we have made a lot of experiments on fertility culture in marketing.

From the perspective of communication, information is fragmented.

After 80 is not that you say I listen, but to interact, like entertainment content.

Our marketing idea is to show people with the public image, develop the market with innovative products, and disseminate entertainment.

Public interest, innovation and entertainment are the themes of our marketing.

From the point of view of public welfare, we can enhance the integrity of enterprises. Joining in innovation and entertainment can attract the attention of the 1980s.

People generally think that the songs of pregnant women are tender serenade, but we make it into rap songs, which is very attractive to the 80s.

It turned out that pregnant women are all obedient women, and we deduce them very personality and vividness, just like the "hot mother" of Xiao s.

We think that the post-80s pregnant woman is the fashion and frankness independent woman of Xiao Si, so she set the "moon mommy" as the image of "hot mother".

In 2006, we wanted to choose small s as spokesperson. Many people opposed it.

The spokesperson of China's clothing industry has been flooded. Almost all the garment enterprises in Jinjiang and Wenzhou have chosen spokesmen. The characteristics and essence of the enterprises are covered by the spokesperson. Consumers can not tell clearly who the spokesperson is, and the enterprise will advertise on TV, and then B2B will open the shop.

Our ideas are different. I hope that the spokesperson will do B2C mode in the future and use the new media to spread.

This is quite special.

When choosing spokesmen, there are two stars from Xiao Si and Cecilia Cheung.

I think Xiao Si is more suitable for our brand image. She was more rebellious than before. She became an elder sister in the chair by her efforts. Later she married into a wealthy family and became a good wife and mother.

Her pregnancy in the show can remind the audience of our brand.

In 2007, we talked with Xiao S. in the six round before she succeeded. She was very cautious and unwilling to answer.

In 2008, we put the flash public service short film on the Shanghai subway as the theme of "opening the door and getting pregnant on October 10". We changed the usual calming tune of pregnant and infant songs, HipHop style fashion dynamic rhythm, and humorous and commonweal color animation.

Why did we choose the subway? The Beijing Olympic Games just ended, and the second year was the World Expo of Shanghai. The theme was "better life in the city".

About cities, people usually see tall buildings.

In fact, tall buildings are not the real life of the city, and the subway has the mood of big cities and the plot of people's lives. So there are many movies with subway as the theme or background, so we go to the subway to find resources.

At that time, the TV screen of the Shanghai subway had just been installed, and no one had been advertising yet, only their own publicity.

Let's talk about it. The price is cheaper.

According to the media and the characteristics of the crowd it faces, we launched a flash short film to promote the delivery of seats for pregnant women. The songs were beautiful and hold lived in people's eyes and ears.

In order to be more close to users, we launched the first domestic baby baby book, including baby electronic microscope, four caricatures, Zodiac babies and maternal knowledge.

This book was planned by myself. It was written by our team. The first edition was priced at 46.8 yuan, and it sold 40 thousand copies in 9 months after publication.

The second version is repackaged and the paper is more environmentally friendly.

This is a good strategy not only for marketing, promoting brand culture and fertility culture, but also making money.

According to the habit of the post-80 pregnant women, we re interpreted the flash songs, more fashionable and more dynamic. Please sing Zhang Jindi, Tao Linzhu and MV, play the list, and participate in the production of the couple's drama.

This TV drama tells the story of pregnancy, which is very popular. It was exclusively bought by Hunan radio and television and broadcast in June 2012.

Not only our songs, but also our books, shops and scenes are embedded in this TV play.

Our communication strategy is to take north, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou as a high-end point to focus on the main resources. When recognized by these markets, other markets will be easy to recognize.

The purpose of our books and TV series is to extend the brand to the two or three line market.

Like the ripples in the pond, I threw a small stone into it, because the energy decay was gone at a certain distance.

But if I add fuel to the flames and push it farther and farther, the coverage will be large.

In March 2009, we took the opportunity to strike the iron and steel to participate in the seventeenth China International Clothing and accessories fair.

Because of the financial crisis, many brands began to shrink.

We took the largest booth in the women's wear area and held the first show. We dressed the model in the maternity dress and walked to T. We invited Xiao Si to the scene and set off a climax. All the audiences in the exhibition hall were attracted.

These marketing activities have allowed "October mommy" to be accepted by more and more 80 mothers.

We hope to combine the public image, innovation mode and entertainment communication to make the brand better.

Business model innovation

Now our product line has been extended, and many new products have been developed.

Some consumers said, "we trust you, your products are very good, you should launch baby products, so we don't have to run a lot of places."

In fact, with the improvement of people's consumption consciousness, the extension of products is very wide. We hope to diversify the brand gradually.

In addition to coats, trousers and so on, "October mummy" covers all the clothing items that pregnant women need, including radiation protection products, which are very fashionable and colorful.

The latest radiation protection products are made of silver wire and silk. They are very thin. There is no signal in the mobile phone bag, it can shield many rays, and the radiation protection effect is very good.

We have more than 230 new products per season, each with different colors.

We continued the breakdown of maternity wear, and we launched a brand named UKI for the next generation of quasi Mommy.

These people are more "Meng". They still have children, but they can call them nipple Mommy or "Meng Ma" vividly.

We also won the authorization of Pietro Brunelli, the top maternity dress brand in Italy. From the spring and summer 2012, new products began to rush to the domestic high-end market, and more than a dozen stores were opened in the country. The price of each garment was 2000 yuan to 5000 yuan.

Because we concentrate on doing the market segmentation, and make the market segments well done, so that the three brands can cover the whole market.

One of the things we are doing now is to work with a member management company in China, to collect membership data, to establish clubs, and to exchange members.

In terms of business cost, a 30 square meter private brand shop may have a gross profit margin of 70%, but the shop will expand to 100 square meters with a gross profit margin of 40%.

From the commercial point of view, marginal benefit is decreasing.

Then, if the shop expands to 1000 square meters, it may only have a gross margin of 8%.

Although the total profit has increased, the profit rate is decreasing, so that once the product is out of question or the store rent is raised, it will bring great risk.

Under such circumstances, making full use of the existing Internet and mobile Internet technology, and adding many interesting experiences on line, the development and utilization of the crowd in the store can increase revenue and reduce rent costs in disguised form.

In this respect, at the beginning, we should not want to make profit and business operation, we should do more value-added services to consumers.

For example, open shop on the first floor, open the club on the five floor or the eighth floor, and reduce the business cost with office costs.

At present, we consider opening a number of clubs in the first tier cities with the principle of proximity. There is a cluster effect that enhances the viscosity of members. The club provides yoga courses for pregnant women to interact with consumers and promote culture.

In 2009, several MBA students from the Lyon business school in France came to our company for half a year's practice.

I asked them to collect the pregnant women's service system in all developed countries in the world.

In many countries, the education of pregnant women requires both husband and wife to take part in the training, and the insurance company pays the bill, which is called "maternity insurance".

If the husband and wife do not come, then the premium will increase.

China is only trying symbolically in some places, but it is not mandatory.

Therefore, we will strive to cooperate with insurance companies in the future to launch "October mummy" maternity insurance and provide training, so that the scope of services will be expanded.

With the rapid development of the mobile Internet, we are trying to develop smart phone clients to do some interesting APP applications like post pregnancy, 90 pregnant women, such as temperature curve during pregnancy, pregnant women's diary, pregnant women's mood sharing and so on. For example, the photos of couples and two people in a shake can predict the future growth of children.

Such application and dissemination can not only achieve interaction between brands and users, but also satisfy the consumption needs of young "hot mothers" and "Meng Ma".

We have already invested in Sequoia Capital. They have invested a lot of successful enterprises and brought us lots of experience. In some respects, we do not need trial and error correction.

In the process of starting a business, we have the right direction and the right way of thinking. There may be some deviations in some minor aspects. However, every step of the key step is accurate. In the future, we hope that "October Mom" will be listed on the domestic small and medium-sized board.