How Did MUJI Products Become The Benchmark Of China'S Consumption Upgrading?

One is known as "no".

"Super brand" has always been an invisible commercial monster. It is very common in Japan, but the price is very high in China. The cock wire, the public and the middle class all have different understanding of it. The large retail collections of nearly 8000 kinds of commodities do not have to be opened in the golden section.

The core floor.

The business is highly competitive, the brand is extremely low-key, the product style is cold, but it is highly sought after and leading the trend. This is the product of Japan's economic downturn, but has become the benchmark of China's consumption upgrading.

How can we not arouse the curiosity of Chinese business?

From supermarket brand to world-class retail enterprises

In 1980, Muji was born as the private brand of Xi You supermarket in Japan, positioning and adhering to the idea of "being reasonable and cheap". In 1990, it obtained all the management rights from Xi you hand, officially divorced from Xi you, and opened the chain replication expansion road.

Although it has experienced two growth crises, it has successfully disintegrated and eventually developed into 27 countries and regions in the world covering Europe, America, East Asia, southwest Asia and Oceania. In 2015, the revenue scale exceeded 300 billion yen, and the world's top retail businesses with 758 stores.

Defining ideas and shaping product lines

MUJI is a chain retail enterprise developed by private brand products of supermarket stores. Its core is built around products, and the continuous attraction of products depends on the unique brand concept defined by Muji and the penetration of ideas into every product design.

In terms of brand concept definition, Muji is in line with the downward trend of Japanese consumption: it is based on practicality, creating cost-effective products; emphasizing product quality, texture and environmental protection, and winning the foundation of consumers' word of mouth, in order to achieve a lower marketing cost rate.

At the same time, we pay great attention to the sense of product design, so as to ensure the continuity of brand concept and the gathering power of products: the joint professional design team integrates the design and production of products, pays attention to the style of product design, and achieves linkage sales, so as to continuously enhance the unit price of customers.

1, ideas

About the concept of MUJI, its design director, original research and design, described in the design:

"It's not" so good "but" so good ".

It gives value to acceptable quality: temperance, concession and pcendental rationality, which can be called "global rational value", a philosophy advocating the use of resources and objects in extreme rational perspective.

The idea of MUJI is to point out the "foundation" and "universality" of everyday life.

This is rooted in history.

In 1978, the second oil crisis broke out, and the rapid growth of Japanese economy was ended. Consumers began to seek cost-effective products.

This has prompted Japanese supermarkets to scramble to develop their own brands.

In 1980, the Japanese supermarket set up its own brand, and MUJI was born.

Kinouchi Jeonwoong, the first president, positioned himself to remove all the fancy packaging and gimmicks, leaving only convenience and better quality.

In Kimi Masaki's view, the above idea is not out of date. It is the foundation of MUJI in the materialistic society.

"There are many commodities in the world, not for easier use, but for selling better and more popular.

The pursuit of the essence of goods makes MUJI not obsolete in the rush.

Kimi said.

As a good project, the plant will be the fourth president, and Kimi Masaki has witnessed the ups and downs of MUJI many times.

In 1993, Kimi Masaki, who has worked in Xiyou for 17 years, began to be responsible for the development of MUJI commodities, and worked with Mr. mu, Tanaka, Koike Ichiko, Yamamoto Teruji and others.

"I learned a lot about design and beauty from them."

Kimi recalls.

From 1990 to 1999, MUJI's turnover increased from 24 billion 510 million yen to 106 billion 690 million yen, and its operating profit rose from 125 million yen to 13 billion 360 million yen.

But the glory did not last long.

Due to excessive pursuit of sales performance, ignoring design and development concepts, expanding stores too fast and encountering countermoves from parity rivals, MUJI2001 lost 3 billion 900 million yen in the past year.

The company is on the verge of bankruptcy, and the second president, He Xin, has resigned.

Subsequently, the third president Matsui Chusan carried out a three year "V word recovery" reform to bring him back to the right track, and he burned the bad stock of 3 billion 800 million yen.

The reform began.

Kimi Masaki, the executive director of the good plan, is the right arm of Matsui Chusan, and is among the decision-makers.

Matsui focuses on company management, and Kimi Masaki is responsible for business and commodity development.

He accompanied Matsui to visit the MUJI national store. After work, he would talk about the store manager to the wine room to understand the situation.

At first, the shopkeeper did not trust the two people. Matsui and Jin Jing two people took a year to dismantle their subordinates.

After understanding the crux of the problem, Matsui Chusan began internal reform.

The core of the reform is to return to commodity quality. Matsui Chusan even invited the design master to be the MUJI art director, to improve the product design concept and return to the source of "convenient use".

The brand remodeling campaign has also been launched.

In 2001, MUJI began to communicate with consumers through the Internet, formulating the planning plan, raising opinions to netizens, thus gaining insight into the basic characteristics of the best products in the minds of customers.

The developer will sort out the opinions of the netizens and select the plan for their votes. The highest number of votes will be made to the sample. After the price is determined, the MUJI will accept the reservation to achieve the minimum production volume of the order, that is, commercialization.

According to this method, MUJI launched a lazy sofa resembling a large sandbag in 2002, and sold eighty thousand copies in a month, with sales of up to 1 billion yen.

Two years later, MUJI's performance returned to the right track.

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"I learned a lot of work methods from Matsui, and I learned to be soft and not as rude as I used to be."

Kimi Masa said that the most important work method is consumer research.

In 2003, MUJI implemented the development plan called "observation". The development team would visit consumers directly, observe their daily lives, take photos of every corner of the room, and even each product, and the photos were then submitted for discussion and analysis, so as to tap potential consumer demand.

The move was quite successful.

For example, developers found that round bottles were difficult to fit with the bathroom walls and bathtubs, and eventually launched a square bathroom replacement bottle.

Another work method Kimi Masaki learned from Matsui is "battalion relay management", that is, "promoting organization operation based on simple rules".

Matsui set the benchmark value for MUJI, which is suffering from bad inventory, to determine whether new products are worth remanufacturing.

For example, when women's wear is sold for a week and men's wear is sold for two weeks, if the sales volume reaches more than 130% of the expected quantity, additional orders can be placed. If the product is not fully 70%, then it is necessary to use cloth, change the style and remanufacture.

In 2008, Kimi Masaki became the fourth president of the good plan.

In the eyes of his predecessor, a manager who runs a design company must be familiar with all kinds of operational data and be proficient in the development of commodities. Kimi Masaama is a man of both kinds.

2, design

This year coincided with the financial crisis, and MUJI's performance failed.

Kimi Masaki's strategy was to set up a commodity strategy committee in 2009 to select "strategic commodities that can be confidently recommended to customers" - the total number of such goods accounts for about 25% of the total merchandise sales and up to 50%.

Kimi Masaki also divided strategic commodities into two categories.

A series of products such as make-up water.

The other is premium products such as right angle stockings, high collar, no itchy sweaters and so on.

The pursuit of product nature and convenience makes MUJI's product development process quite different.

Take DAIEI, a leading retail enterprise in Japan, for example, its own brand "SAVING" only cooperates with manufacturers while developing MUJI, and each commodity needs to be checked from design, design, manufacture to sale, and designers are involved.

Even if the product design scheme is finally passed, the product will face more severe hurdle.

The external advisory committee, composed of top Japanese designers, strictly discusses whether goods conform to the "MUJI concept".

Rigid indicators include commodities can not catch up with the trend of fashion, so as not to be out of date with the wind, and goods must be able to enhance brand image.

Only after the collective approval of the external advisory committee can the product be finally put on the shelves.

"The most common reason for elimination is that designers do not consider whether products can be sold."

Kimi Masaki explained.

Kimi Masaki emphasized the restraint and anti epidemic.

Excessive consumption will lead to the loss of many simple things.

As a popular antithesis, MUJI pursues long-lasting, highly universal design and material, and the right price, without increasing the design and color that is very good.

Kimi Masa said clearly.

The business reform of MUJI (Shanghai) Commercial Co., Ltd. acted as a rejection when Narikawa Takuya had made proposals for stationery and kitchen utensils.

"At that time, I was asked about the difference between this thing and other brands, and what benefits it would bring to customers after merchandise purchase."

Narikawa Cho said.

In order to drive MUJI to achieve "ease of use", Kimi Masaki established two core management departments and personally managed them.

One is the life quality research institute, which focuses on consumers. Users can provide advice on the stages of commodity development, trial sale and official sale. Kimi has opened personal mailboxes to adopt suggestions to urge progress.

The other is the Development Department of the commodity category that the designer takes the initiative to find the demand. Under the door, there are three branches, such as life, clothing and food department, which regularly inspect and update the product.

Such design process is often rather costly.

"Matsui Chusan once said that when designing commodities for collection, it was actually appropriate to swing between two lines.

It's a bit like adjusting the volume of the radio, you may not know what kind of volume is suitable for you, so you will tune it up, come back a little, and come back and go back a little bit, that's the process. "

MUJI China General Manager Wang Wenxin explained.

For example, MUJI, a cold bucket used for making cold water in a refrigerator, has undergone four pformations.

Designers found that Japanese refrigerators were generally small and large cold water tanks could not be erected vertically, so that the sides were designed to be flat so that they could not be rolled in the fridge, and the buckets were sealed to prevent water overflow from the flat.

Some female consumers reflected that the bucket was too heavy after filling the water, and it was difficult to put it out. The designer added an arc groove on the side of the bucket to increase the force point.

The cold water can also serve as a teapot for tea making. Since then, consumers have proposed to improve the filter screen for two times, and designers will eventually accept it.

Kimi Masaki sometimes excavated strategic commodities himself, and the selected items were often placed on a large table for gold, development and management ministers and well-known design consultants.

This approach is quite effective.

From 2009 to 2012, the sales volume of strategic commodities accounted for only 25% of the total sales increased from 18% to 50%.

As sales increase, factories can produce larger orders and achieve higher gross margins.

MUJI's products have also attracted much attention due to its unique design.

Between 2006 and 2011, nearly 74% Japanese women with an average age of 34 were patronizing 3.3 times a month for MUJI.

The experience of commodity development over the years has made Kimi Masaki sensitive and elegant.

Lazy sofa has become a classic, MUJI today's sales champion of electronic products, and the wall mounted CD player designed by Fukazawa Naohito.

Different from the design of the ordinary CD player's "lying on the back" forever, the CD player designed by Fukazawa Naohito is like a square ventilator on the wall, and the switch is not the usual button, but the hanging rope.

At that time, Kimi looked at the simple and refreshing appearance and the way of "see and understand" and put it into the market.

The wall mounted CD machine came into the market only 8 months, that is, 0.6% of the market share.

Kimi Masaki is also very friendly with top designers.

In order to explore the design more suited to the way of life in China, MUJI will be set up in Japan's MUJI AWARD design competition to move to China. The list of judges is not only Japanese national treasure designer Fukazawa Naohito, but also many Chinese faces.

　　。

Zhang Yonghe, director of the Department of architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Wang Shu, architect Wang Shu prize winner, Wang Shu, graphic designer Chen Youjian, and Liu Zhizhi, the top prize winner of the Japanese graphic design competition, are among them.

These designers were invited by Kimi Masaki.

"He has a magic power that allows these masters to fully identify with MUJI."

Wang Wenxin said.

The reason is that Kimi Masaki can understand the style of designers and talk with them.

In the hotel where he stayed, Kimi Masaakihito could see that a chair came from Fukazawa Naohito's hand.

"I looked over and looked at the name of the Shenze on the back of the chair. He also saw a small coffee table and immediately told the designer's name."

Wang Wenxin said.

Zhang Yonghe has also been invited to participate in MUJI product development.

Two years ago, Kimi Masaki found a Zhang, hoping that he could design a strong Chinese style bed. MUJI's market research found that young people who had just finished their careers had limited living space, and badly needed beds that could be used for lying down, multi-purpose, high efficiency and small occupying.

Zhang Yonghe and MUJI's design team began the design of a bed named "collapse combination".

"Couch combination" has undergone repeated modifications from development to production, which takes more than two and a half years.

It consists of a body of 1.6 meters long and two long 0.4 meters splicing parts. It has different combinations. It can be used as a slump for chatting, and can also be used as a bed for sleeping and rest.

At the very beginning, Zhang Yonghe designed the length of the main part to 1.5 meters, but finally considered that the length of the two person chat was slightly crowded with the couch, and the length of 1.6 meters was more suitable for making children's beds.

MUJI even repeated discussions with Zhang Yonghe about the location and amount of Poding for linking components.

"If the hook is placed underground, it will be too much trouble for others to turn it on. If the hook is more connected, it will be strong and complicated."

Zhang Yonghe said.

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In order to make the best plan, they communicate innumerable, even at the busiest, at the airport, so that the discussion will go to the next destination after the end of the discussion.

What impressed Zhang Yonghe most was that MUJI was demanding the safety of the "couch combination".

In order to let the bed have good support, the design of the building is long Zhang Yonghe adds a pverse and upward wooden bar at the bottom of the bedstead as a loading frame, while the MUJI design team takes into account that the child will jump up and down in the bed. In order to ensure that the bed has enough strength to bear the bouncing force of the child, the final design plan will change all the pverse wooden strips below the bedstead to the loading frame.

3, display

Besides commodity development, Kimi Masaki also attached importance to display aesthetics.

He knows that MUJI, which relies solely on practical needs and practical convenience, is not enough to bring out many window shopping people who have been hanging around their stores.

When goods are put on shelves, MUJI without logo, without bright patterns, without advertisements and without spokesmen must conquer customers through complex commodity displays.

One MUJI employee admitted that the most difficult work of a new store is display, which costs one to three weeks for each store.

MUJI (Shanghai) planning minister Hu Huifang felt deeply about this.

She spent half of her time in the field of visual merchandising (VMD).

Before checking the display at the Shanghai international trade iapm store, which is about to open, the "flying trapeze" Hu just confirmed the work of Changsha new store. Then she flew to Guangzhou to inspect the first local store.

In 2013, MUJI had no precedent expansion in China's history. The total number of refurbished or newly opened stores in the year amounted to 45.

The opening of all new stores must be confirmed by the planning department for the purpose of maximizing standardization.

Display work started with communication with the development department. The latter will provide basic consumer intelligence to VMD, including the surrounding environment of shopping malls, retail sales in the business circle, the distance from the store to the station, the number of customers, the number of property tenants, the age of the regional consumers, the ratio of men to women, the trend of passenger flow in shopping malls, and the details of business areas, residential areas or school districts.

VMD determines the type and quantity of goods displayed in each display area.

If the main consumer groups are women, VMD will display women's clothing and beauty care products at the entrance of the store. If there are children's entertainment facilities near the business circle, the display of stationery products will be more conspicuous.

The key to the analysis of MUJI stores is from a standardized "shop reference book", which is from the former Japanese headquarters, which is responsible for the sales development of Tokue Junichi.

In order to ensure the successful site selection, Dejiang often visits the site five times in person.

Usually, it will take a taxi to surround the business circle, and chat with the driver as a "long-distance customer" to get all kinds of information.

After that, he will drive himself, regardless of the usual or weekend weekend, carefully confirm the situation of ten km radius.

He will stay for seven to eight hours near the site, and observe the situation before the opening, noon, three p.m. and closing.

In China, the display standard of MUJI is a mixture of Japanese headquarters display mode and local VMD concept.

Usually, the Japanese headquarters will give the methodology of merchandising.

For example, the bottom of a large shelf is a sales area, which should be convenient for customers to pick up goods; the middle level is the display area, which is used to convey product uses; the high level display area provides visual impact for customers.

In MUJI's philosophy of display, the placement of all commodities must follow the basic rules of display from left to right, from shallow to deep, from small to large.

Chen Lieh, who is to be trained, must practice the display method for 6 to 12 months in the store. The final plan needs to be customized according to the preferences of Chinese customers, the status of the open stores, and the theme of the planning activities.

After the large display area is determined, MUJI will continue to subdivide the display, which is the most time-consuming part of the "persuasive Engineering".

It is quite different from most retailers' customary practice of displaying goods according to the size of the shelf space. MUJI will first design the display scheme, and then customize the shelves and clothing props according to the plan. The advantage of doing so is that the goods and shelves, goods and props can be seamlessly integrated, and the sense of fullness will give customers a strong visual impact.

Each commodity has its own precise coordinates in MUJI stores.

VMD will design a layout plan for each shelf according to the basic methodology of headquarters.

The basic shelves are used for normal display, while side shelves are used for the sale of strategic commodities and promotional products.

This picture will precisely show which goods should be placed on each shelf, from left to right, and confirm with bar code.

If a large shelf, VMD will also be accompanied by a late completion effect map.

In Shanghai's iapm shopping center, which has not yet been opened, the store of MUJI has completed nearly 80% of its display by relying on this method.

In addition to the new stores, Chen also needs to work on new products, themes and promotional displays.

Under normal circumstances, such updates will be distributed to stores in the form of pictures. When the salesmen display their changes, they need to take photos to give VMD confirmation.

In order to better unify the display of more than 70 Chinese stores, MUJI also added the post of "regional division Chen" to follow up the implementation of standardized display in various stores.

In order to raise the level of display, headquarters will issue a "good case shop".

The store's photos and comments will be sent to the store for reference.

In MUJI's "good case store", MUJI wrote in the main points of recommendation: "the shelves are launched with good quality, and there are many kinds of products, different colors and styles to meet different customers' needs. The different collocation of models reflects the diversification of products."

In the photo, it is reminded to use the model to make use of the following items.

Standardized displays not only require neat, full and impact, but also consider customer shopping habits.

For example, all the pen covers in the stationery area must face the same direction. The bottle cap and label of all kinds of bottles for hairdressing and skin care must also be unified. The rubbing bathing cotton and bathing flowers hung on the high side must be arranged by cardboard as ruler and kept at the same level.

In the clothing sales area, which accounts for 50% of China's total sales, MUJI requests that the clothes on top of each garment should be directed outward to the garment whenever it is folded and placed. MUJI finds that customers often care about necklines when buying clothes, so that customers can not easily see the neckline styles of each rack.

4., operation

Store management is rather cumbersome.

Although the business hours are 10 in the morning, Guan Qian, the chief shop manager of MUJI Shanghai, usually arrives one hour ahead of schedule.

After confirming yesterday's business, he needed to take charge of all the store owners and the sales area of the store and check the display.

"Employees will be assigned to fixed points for regular job duties, and then ensure that each point is completed on the day.

My main responsibility is to see the person in charge of the day, check, improve and improve the problem.

Guan Qian said.

In the tableware area, shut off will pull out the top part of each pile like a customer and experience whether the plates are stacked too high, causing customers to bump out when they pull out.

He also needs to confirm that the pots of all teapots are all 45 degrees outward, and the upper shelf must be about 30%.

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After the operation, the employees will check the direction of the cap, labels and clothes Stacking once a hour to ensure that the customers are still neat after drawing.

In addition, he must pay attention to various figures, such as turnover, budget ratio, year-on-year growth rate, single product trend and so on, and read "five weekly" to understand the sales situation of stores within one month.

In China, the MUJI standard store area is seven hundred or eight hundred square meters, containing three thousand or four thousand SKU, but formal employees are usually less than 10, responsible for supervision and inspection, while more than 50 part-time employees are responsible for the specific implementation.

Due to personnel changes, manpower shortage is normal.

In order to better deploy manpower, the store set up a personnel rotation table, and decide whether to increase staffs based on the number of customers and the performance curve.

MUJI will set the maximum time of a store's working day's traffic as "struggle time". During this period, no one can rest, and must receive guests at the store. Usually, two employees will greet customers at the door at the moment.

Daily site management relies mostly on the "strategy board" which contains information about sales data, task priorities and improvement details.

On a "strategic board", the person in charge of the store will give a detailed list of the information about which employee is working in a certain area of the store in a certain period of time, and who will be replaced at that time and what items need to be discounted and cleared.

The strategic board will be posted at the front of the office for manual inspection before the operation. It will also be scanned to the regional store manager and regional manager, who will be able to understand the operation of each store.

Its stores also made clear the shelves and finishing time of commodities at all levels.

For example, A, S grade goods are on shelves three times a day, two times, C and D products are each time.

In order to better drive single store performance, headquarters will provide performance coordinates for terminal stores.

For example, the sales ranking of each store in the country, the product of the top ten sales of each category.

The store manager will compare the performance of the store according to these figures. If the salable goods are unsalable in the store, the store manager will find out the specific reasons and make rectification.

On Tuesday, store owners will receive weekly "weekly instructions" issued by the headquarters, which includes operational details of last week's national sales, new week's attention, and need to be adjusted.

All adjustment changes in the store must be completed on Friday week - usually Saturday is the largest time for stores.

If the display changes, the store manager will also need to take photos of the changed photos and upload them to the headquarters for examination.

The weekly instructions of Chinese stores are from the headquarters business plan of Shanghai as Horiguchi Kenta's hand.

She was the youngest store manager in MUJI, and was stationed in China because of the excellent performance of her store.

As China's longest stay in Japan, the "China Unicom" has been practicing in Beijing stores for three years, and the familiarity with Beijing market can be immediately informed of the nearest store address.

Every Saturday, he collects business forms arranged by various regional managers.

Every Monday, Shanghai headquarters will develop new sales strategies based on sales data.

On the second day, the new strategy will be conveyed to the store.

In Horiguchi Kenta's opinion, the best way to improve store sales is to enhance the operation and management capabilities of store managers.

The general manager will only improve the sales strategy according to the feeling of people in the shop, and rarely consider the stock.

The excellent store manager will understand and predict the sales trend in the coming month by interpreting sales data and managing the store.

For store management, Horiguchi Kenta believes that the most important thing is that the store manager must practise the management details and correct the deviation.

"Site management is the most important thing on business day. When I am a store manager in Japan, I always stay in the store."

Horiguchi Kenta said.

In addition to relying on "weekly instructions" to conduct shop guidance, Horiguchi Kenta also emphasized walking management.

When he was in charge of all the stores in Beijing, Horiguchi Kenta visited the store every week and communicated with the store manager.

In addition to inspecting the convenience and visual impact of commodity display, he is particularly concerned about store inventory and timely replenishment.

If the display is not enough due to the shortage of replenishment, he will immediately let the clerk analyze the reason.

If the stock is not enough, he will use the mobile phone to capture the shelves with insufficient goods and feedback to headquarters for distribution.

Data analysis is also important.

In MUJI, the most effective performance improvement mechanism is "best seller search".

This mechanism began in Japan eight years ago.

In Japan, MUJI will summarize the top 10 sales of men's clothing, home appliances, electronic products and so on according to the sales situation of the national stores, and encourage each store to expand the sales performance of these star products.

Because of its uniform style of merchandise, sales of goods in various stores generally do not appear to be too large.

If a store is far from the national average sales, the headquarters will trace the reasons for the analysis.

"Either the goods are sold poorly in the store, or the others use models and stack well, and you don't have them.

If the location and mode of display are changed immediately after discovery, the sales can be quickly promoted.

China's business reform takes on Narikawa Takuya's explanation.

5. Localization

Localization of commodity development is also critical to pulling sales up.

Narikawa Takuya, who was responsible for the development of grocery products in Japan headquarters, went to China on business in the early years. He once heard Chinese employees complain that the size of the Japanese design bed is not in line with China's national conditions.

In Japan, the living space of their citizens is small, and the size of their homes is also small. Usually the design width of the bed is 1.4 meters, while in China and Europe and the United States, the width of the bed is usually 1.6 meters or 1.8 meters.

"After all, size is part of China's demand. If we don't have this size, sales are basically impossible."

Narikawa said.

In March 2012, Narikawa Takuya was stationed in China as a business reform.

He went to IKEA and China Furniture City to record the size of the bed sold in each store and the number of products in each dimension, and put forward proposals for improvement to the Japanese headquarters.

The proposal and the continuous "big bed" requirement overseas prompted MUJI to sell 1.6 m and 1.8 m wide beds in China in January 2013.

In addition to the bed, a table that matches the local market and special size also appears in China.

In 2009, Kimi set up 100 expansion plans for China in 2013.

The plan was rather radical, when the number of MUJI stores in China was only 13.

What's worse is that although more than half of MUJI's products are made in China, they need to go through the complicated process of leaving customs before entering the shelves.

At that time, MUJI had not yet fully expanded, and China's stores were not only small in number but also very low in sales volume, which could not reach the minimum order quantity of the factories, which resulted in only about 10 products sold in the market.

Since the products of customs clearance are all attached with Japanese tag, the sale of products after re entry will need to add Chinese tag.

As China's stores and sales increase, the situation has changed.

From 2010 onwards, MUJI began to carry out large-scale "internal selling" in China. By 2012, clothing had all been sold inside, and the rate of "internal selling" of groceries was 30%.

As a result, the cost of logistics and tag decreases exponentially.

MUJI also reduces the cost of OEM by reducing the defective rate.

The Japanese head office has stationed seven Japanese goods in China for this purpose.

These people tend to be older and experienced, and are familiar with production steps, process and site management.

MUJI has commissioned Chinese factories to manufacture plexiglass based acrylic products.

The process requires multiple pieces of glass to be spliced together, during which glass is easy to inflow and generate bubbles. Once that happens, it will become a bad product.

Due to the high rate of defective products, the foundries were forced to increase the cost of over 10%.

In response to this problem, MUJI deployed a quality to the factory and made samples manually, traced the whole production process, and finally solved the problem.

After this operation, the rate of defective products, materials and labor costs in the factories were greatly reduced.

Doing so ensures full profits, and the expansion of store numbers and sales volume helps to develop the first batch of experienced mid-level employees in China.

MUJI's corporate culture and promotion system emphasize practical experience at the bottom. Most of its senior managers are from the bottom shop.

"If your promotion trajectory is not derived from shops, the company will feel that you are not sincere."

One MUJI employee said.

The company has benefited so much. In the past, the display work of new stores must rely on Japanese VMD staff, and the preparation period is usually more than three weeks.

Now, this work has been completed by local staff.

In order to avoid the operational risks brought by too many part-time employees, MUJI set up a "education role" in China in March this year, and screened training in different places. The latter will first take part in the training of education in Shanghai headquarters, and then train employees in their own jurisdiction.

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Experienced local staff also contributed greatly to the introduction of commodities.

In the past, Japanese headquarters employees stationed in China every year must attend the commodity exhibition of Japanese headquarters, looking for new products that can be introduced into China.

During screening, Japanese employees will try to avoid products that are not in line with Chinese life and consumption habits, such as the Japanese used in winter, the stove that they can sit around for heating, or the expensive mattress in Japan, which is very cheap in China.

However, such screening is still missing.

In 2011, after market investigation, MUJI found that the popularity of microwave ovens in China was quite high. The Chinese also had the habit of using microwave ovens, so they introduced a very popular silicone cooker in Japan, which was specially used for cooking dishes in microwave oven.

However, Chinese people are only used to heating the microwave oven with ordinary utensils, and do not like to cook with them. In the end, this Japanese best seller is sold poorly in China.

In order to avoid repeating the same mistakes, Narikawa Takuya usually brings two experienced Chinese staff members as "staff officers" at the new exhibition.

Cheng Chuan Zhuo will also be very cautious about those products that he has decided to introduce. After the failure of the introduction of the silicone cooker, he has decided that the new product will be considered by more than 60 Chinese staff in Shanghai headquarters.

Another problem of localization is how to estimate product sales and order quantity.

For new products with sales reference, Cheng Chuan will calculate the order quantity according to the sales performance of similar products in the past.

For new products lacking reference, Cheng Chuan will listen to the opinions of Chinese staff and draw up collective sales plan.

"We don't want Chinese workers to worry about what to do if they can't be sold, but consider how the product can be sold better."

Narikawa Takuya explained.

Take the quilt set that MUJI had never sold in China for example, after consulting with Chinese staff, Cheng Chuan decided to introduce it and boldly let shops sell as recommended goods for half a year.

Today, the product, priced at 650 yuan, is the second best seller of textiles.

Such decisions are sometimes based entirely on feelings.

In the view of Wang Wenxin, general manager of China, the development of MUJI in China has entered a good environment.

In the early work of root planting, China has already owned stores and sales scale, experienced local middle level team, a completely corresponding operation structure with Japanese headquarters, and many advantages such as localized products, so it needs more thorough localization in the future.

"We look forward to integrating the concept of MUJI into Chinese culture and attitude towards life and creating a new thing."

Wang Wenxin said.

Wang Wenxin once served as general manager of MUJI Taiwan, and has been highly praised in Japan's headquarters due to localization.

Earlier, because Taiwan was earlier than Japan, it was later than winter in Japan, and the clothes listed by Japanese headquarters at the same time were not in line with Taiwan's local seasonal characteristics.

Wang Wenxin made a form for this purpose, which included the clothing categories of men and women from January to December, so as to persuade Japanese headquarters to list products according to the seasonal characteristics of Taiwan. This method lasted for two years and was finally adopted by Japanese headquarters.

In addition, Wang also took the lead in the Taiwan real estate show for MUJI's new season clothing, which has been a great success - even in Japan's MUJI market.

Shanghai is seeing brand consultant CEO Cui Hongbo believes that in the mainland of China, MUJI's top priority is to optimize the product mix.

Although the unique brand personality makes MUJI unique, its product structure is still too Japanese, and it is difficult to expand consumer groups.

For example, MUJI introduced toiletries and replacement bottles in China, and even specializes in making Japanese food "Egg Cooker" and other products, but it was not successful.

"There are not many Chinese people who travel alone to buy toiletries. MUJI has many product structures, but many products are too advanced, which requires Chinese people to digest them for a period of time."

Kimi Masaki is also aware of this.

In October of this year, the MUJI AWARD design competition will be held in Japan by China.

Kimi hopes that it can collect practical design and commercialize it to Chinese designers and ordinary people.