Inman Went From "Pro" To "Off"

After 9 years of operation, Inman Parent company Huimei The Group has finally opened the path of IPO. At the same time, Inman and the former minority Taobao Brand The identity of.

　 There are early plans to go public

Since Inman hired Fan Weiqi as the first spokesperson a year ago, some people have wondered whether it is going to be listed soon?

Now it seems that although there is no "soon", the answer is yes. At the beginning of July, Inman said that it had submitted an IPO application.

The only difference is that what is listed is not the pure Inman brand, but its parent company, Huimei Group. In fact, Huimei Group also has many well-known brands of Taobao, such as Chuyu, Qiugu, Zuo, Dalifang, samyama, Pass, etc.

Of course, the listing preparation is not an overnight thing. In the packaging preparation for listing, the spokesperson is only a small part of the brand strategy. The more powerful fact than the spokesperson is that last March, the domestic listed clothing company Souyute (002503, Guba) invested 324 million yuan in the strategy of Huimei Group, and the financing valuation of Huimei Group is about 1.3 billion yuan.

Fang Jianhua, the chairman and CEO of Huimei Group, never acted in a secretive manner. After receiving a huge amount of financing, he admitted to the public that the company had plans to apply for IPO, but the specific time node for the work has not been finalized.

After the listing process was determined in July, he posted a poster like IPO publicity on Weibo. Abnormal performance of silence before IPO of ordinary companies.

Before that, most people mistakenly thought that Inman was the main body of this listing. "In recent days, many friends asked me why the main IPO company is called Huimei Group, not Inman? Otherwise, it can save a lot of advertising expenses. I think this way: we hope Huimei Group is a forest, not trees and grass growing under the forest; Inman is an important part of Huimei. " Fang Jianhua said.

"In the early stage of the development of Taobao brand, Inman was also a grass root, and later grew up with Taobao brand. Especially after grafting the capital market, Inman has changed into a brand that can be independent of Taobao Tmall." Cui Xindi, who founded a free clothing brand on Taobao, told the new financial reporter.

Less dependence on Ali

Inman goes with Ali—— Not long ago, Fang Jianhua sent such a sigh on his microblog.

Indeed, Ali is one of the channels that Inman, who is a Taobao brand, should be most grateful to.

In 1998, Fang Jianhua started his business. In 2007, he founded the Inman brand. In 2008, Inman settled in Taobao Mall (the old name of Tmall). Since then, it has experienced the transformation from ODM to B2B and then to B2C. Since 2011, Inman has been ranking top in the "Double 11" promotion activities.

"Since 2005, we have been growing with Alibaba, and we have become a private brand from foreign trade OEM," Fang Jianhua said.

In 2015, Huimei's major brands maintained a high repeat purchase rate. Among them, the repurchase rate of Inman reached 42.7%, and even the middle and high-end brands with unit prices of thousands of yuan often lived on the left, it also reached 37.5%.

Last August, at the Tmall Fashion Strategy Summit, Xiaoyaozi, CEO of Alibaba, also said: "Brands like Inman, which have become first-class brands, will go to more channels in the future, even to the world."

Xiaoyaozi is right. In terms of channels, as the denominator continues to expand, the share of Tmall as a molecule is declining. In 2015, Huimei Group's revenue in Tmall and Taobao accounted for 56.6%, and Vipshop's revenue accounted for 32%. Compared with 2014, the share of Vipshop increased by nearly 10%, while the share of Tmall and Taobao channels decreased by nearly 10%.

"The expansion of the brand is partly due to Inman's brand strategy, including the fan economy in recent years." Cui Xindi said, "Inman wanted to hire a spokesperson at that time, and hesitated for a year before deciding. It is very important that you look for big brands wishfully or find a star that your clothing fans like."

In addition to the choice of spokesperson, Inman also extended the fan economy offline.

　 Fans economy promotes offline

The offline development is obviously one of the reasons why the Inman brand is "off". In July last year, Inman announced the plan of opening thousands of stores in thousands of cities. The purpose of these stores is to promote the operation and service of fans.

Fang Jianhua said that fans are the best salesmen. Therefore, users who purchase in Inman physical stores will automatically become fans and can get commissions by recommending other users.

"In terms of people to people business, it is not a simple trading relationship, but fun and playing are the key." Fang Jianhua said, "The traditional physical store is waiting for the hare, and the clerk is waiting for customers to come. Now we have smart phones, and we have integrated the three platforms of stores, e-commerce and WeChat. Maybe your store may not be in the place with the most people, but through the power of the community, you can gather the people of the store on the platform. "

As early as 2010, Fang Jianhua thought about trying online offline integration. However, as the e-commerce model was just getting hot at that time, smart phones were not even popular and the environment was not mature.

Fang Jianhua recalled: "This matter has always been hanging in my mind. The consumer is a person's role. How and where to spend is just a matter of different ways, which cannot be artificially restricted. By the beginning of 2015, this heart had finally landed." The offline strategy was determined.

At the same time, in order to match the literary style and slow life characteristics of Inman, its stores also have a heavy brand mark. Now, the "Inman+" experience store opened in Yantai, Shandong Province and Beijing in April, designed with living room, bedroom, dining room and other scenes, and employed tea artists to research and develop health tea products.

After listing, the funds raised are planned to be invested in three major projects, the first is O2O project, that is, online and offline connection, and also includes fashion brand incubation construction project and information construction project.