Wangfujing Electricity Supplier Losses Serious Department Store Genes Become Handicap

Last year, people close to Wangfujing's online shopping mall revealed to the media that Wangfujing's single day turnover was only 1000 yuan, but it was only 10 thousand yuan at a good time, not even as Taobao's single day sales.

Liu Chunji, deputy general manager of Wangfujing department store e-commerce company, did not evade such problems.

Liu Chunji said that after a year of running in, the Wangfujing mall has initially formed a prototype of self operated B2C. The real start is that after last September, sales volume was around 3 million every month, and only about 20000000 yuan in 2014.

Although the decline of department stores' performance is due to the strong development of e-commerce, domestic department stores such as Wangfujing, Wanda, Yintai and so on have taken the initiative to enter the e-commerce market. But after years of development, most of them haven't made any breakthroughs. Nowadays, the development of department stores in E-commerce is becoming more and more embarrassing.

Wangfujing department store is the first batch of old cards to start experimenting with e-commerce.

Since 2007, it has begun to set foot in the online shopping mall. At that time, Beijing's Shuang an shopping arcade, Guangzhou Wangfujing and Changsha Wangfujing were selected as a pilot to open the electricity business.

At the beginning of 2012, Wangfujing set up an independent operation team to power the electricity supplier.

"Traditional retail enterprises do business, at least in the case of that time, they are mostly in a passive state, and have not taken it as a strategic layout."

Ding Liguo, a senior retail expert, said the Department of electronic commerce in the department store had a smaller scale and had a very low autonomy in operation.

After a bit of a tinkering, in 2013, Wangfujing invested one hundred million yuan in the early stage of its business trip.

Until this year, it has been ninth years for Wangfujing department store to set foot in the electricity supplier, but Wangfujing mall has been losing money since its launch.

As the first touches of intime department store, Yintai network, which was launched in November 2010, is a large-scale B2C e-commerce platform specializing in boutique fashion department stores.

Yintai network has also made many adjustments and revisions, but Yintai network has been in a very difficult position. Since then, the flagship store opened in Tmall, and O2O cooperation with Tmall has, to a large extent, coincided with the business of Yintai network, making it more embarrassing.

Since the departure of Liao Bin, founder of Yintai network, in 2013, Yintai has no net spirit and is rarely mentioned in the industry.

"Wangfujing and Yintai are not clear about the strategy of pforming the electricity supplier."

Ding Liguo told reporters that the current domestic electricity suppliers are divided into two categories, one is platform electricity providers, such as Tmall.

One is self run mode, such as Jingdong and shop No. 1.

Platform electricity providers obviously need expensive traffic costs. Wangfujing and Yintai can not spend so much money to develop the platform electricity supplier, especially under the pressure of Taobao and Tmall, Ding Liguo believes that

There is no way out.

In his view, department stores can only be forced to choose their own business models.

"But there is a natural bottleneck in department stores. The department stores that rely on rentals for rent all year long are reluctant to do business on a genetic basis, and department stores do not have their own procurement teams. To build a purchasing system and logistics system from scratch, they have to build their own businesses."

"Although department stores have long-term cooperation with brands, brands can develop their own business automatically."

Hu Chuncai, general manager of Shanghai Shangyi Consulting Co. Ltd., said that the biggest advantage of department stores was the land, but the value of its existence in the presence of electricity providers hardly existed. The flagship store of Tmall on Tmall is worth more than opening a shop on the Department Store platform.

In his view, especially clothing brands, department stores have great difficulty in persuading them.

At present, Liqun department store,

The new world department store, Nanning department store and other large department store business projects are struggling.

Moreover, from its annual report in 2014, these department stores continue to face multiple challenges of rising costs and narrowing profits.

As early as the 2013 China Chain Conference, intime business group CEO Daniel Chan advised the Department Store practitioners not to be a pure PC terminal business platform.

"Indeed, the way of operation of department stores determines that they can not manage the electricity supplier well, which is the root cause."

Ding Liguo very much agrees with this view.