Messi Store Tries Water Business To Fight China Market Again

Struggling Traditional retailing industry We have to find the way of transformation under the new consumption trend.

A few days ago, reporters found that in the first half of this year, 57 listed companies involved in the department store, 77% of the company's revenue declined, 75% of the company's net profit decreased, and 67% of the company's revenue and net profit fell. In the declining trend of performance, a number of traditional department stores choose to close stores to reduce costs. The CITIC Plaza, located in Nanjing West Road, Shanghai, will be closed for business. The Beijing Sun Palace Baisheng shopping center will be closed in October 31st. The ten mile Fort shop in Beijing's halls store will be closed from November 1st.

Over the past year or so, Messi, a veteran retail giant in the United States, has experienced a "closed shop boom" in the world, and its turnover has declined for six consecutive quarters. Messi, chief executive of Dustin, China, told reporters in an interview with the economic news reporters twenty-first Century that in the downturn of the industry, Messi's online strategy in China has become the top priority of Messi's department store, and the use of Tmall's e-commerce platform to enter China is to become a Chinese Messi Department store in twenty-first Century. "Over the past five years, we have gradually understood the habits of Chinese consumers and are very optimistic about the consumption power of Chinese consumers."

It is reported that Messi's department store is jointly owned by Messi department store and Hongkong Feng's retail joint venture, which invested 25 million US dollars. Among them, Messi department store owns 65% shares. The two sides plan to invest $25 million in working capital in 18 months. The proportion of capital contributions is in line with the equity ratio.

According to the plan of Dustin Jones, Messi store has no intention of opening up retail outlets in China, but by making efforts to enter the Chinese market by way of electronic business platform.

Luxury electronics business test water failure

After Messi's cooperation with Tmall, the biggest move was to launch "Tmall brand day" on Tmall platform during the fashion week in New York. Alibaba group CMO Dong Benhong told an economic news reporter in twenty-first Century that Tmall's super brand day was less than 24 hours. The turnover of Messi's department store has broken the sales record of double 11 last year.

Reporters noted that the sale of goods in the Messi department store is located in the middle end brand, basically a parity commodity. Before that, Messi's department store had experienced a setback in the high-end luxury market, and finally transformed into parity.

In 2012, Jiapin net attracted much attention because of the $15 million Messi department store financing and authorized by Messi department store to become the only partner in the country. But it didn't last long. After two months in Messi's department store, the news came out of half a half job cuts. In 2013, Jiapin network two founders Yang Peifeng and COO Dong Ce resigned. Since then, Jiapin net has gradually disappeared, and the entry of department stores has not made it laugh to the end.

At present, the website has no longer dominated the luxury line because of the supply and supply chain problems, but has expanded its category to mother and baby, food, home and other fields. It is more like an ordinary online supermarket, completely losing its own characteristics.

Lu Zhenwang, a senior business observer, said in an interview with the twenty-first Century economic news reporter that the domestic luxury electric business has not found a breakthrough yet, and there are many restrictions in the supply chain and service experience, which is not much related to Messi's own department store. However, after several years of exploration, it is also right for Messi to abandon the original platform idea. When the original mode is blocked, other channels must be used.

According to a set of data released by Tmall, Messi has entered Tmall international for tenth months, and Messi's official overseas flagship store already has over 300 thousand fans. Women's wear Watches and bags become Messi's best-selling products in China.

Dustin Jones is actually the second Messi chief executive officer of China, who took office only in February. He moved from New York to Hongkong, and he has been trying to integrate into the eastern culture for 8 months. "We hope that we can learn more from partners' learning in terms of size, brand preference, category preferences, consumer expectations and so on, and then quickly enrich the quantity of our products and hope to develop faster next year."

Two track parallel strategy

Obviously, Messi China is still in the exploratory stage. There are only 1500 commodities that Messi offers to Chinese consumers, but in Messi, the official mall of the United States provides millions of commodities. Whether in brand or product category, China is far from the US official website.

However, this does not seem to affect Messi's ambition and determination in China's development. "There is a saying in the United States that when you are second, you are nothing." Dustin Jones said he wanted Messi to become the first department store brand in the Chinese market.

In the past September, the two years' domain ownership litigation was settled. Messi China successfully recovered the two top Chinese domain names of "macys.cn" and "macys.com.cn". Next, Messi China will also open the official website of the self operated mall and open the strategy of "Tmall + official website self run" next year. However, Dustin Jones did not reveal the details of whether Messi opened a physical store in China.

In fact, for traditional department stores, in addition to the impact of the electricity supplier, it is also facing the bottleneck of homogenization. The latest analysis report of the foresight Industry Research Institute showed that as of the end of 2015, there were 323 projects in the national built shopping center, with a total construction area of 32 million square meters, and 9 of the 10 largest shopping centers in the world were built in China.

The department store's uncertain future and high cost may be the reason why Messi department store has not stopped. In this case, Tmall platform took the opportunity to introduce more traditional department stores, such as House of Fraser Limited, an old British high-end department store that entered China in the same year, the second largest discount in the US. Retailer Target, and Martha store (MARKS & SPENCER), which has opened 10 physical stores in China.

However, it remains to be seen whether these foreign brands can play the Chinese market. Dustin Jones admits that Messi China still faces many challenges. First, Chinese consumers like something different from the US. Two, China's retail system is very complicated. In addition, Messi stores have no O2O channels in China. "Until today, we are still thinking about how to overcome difficulties. We will never give up the Chinese market. No matter how much resources we put in China, no matter how long it takes, we must take root here. This is different from other foreign companies. "