Why Is "MUJI" Myth Not Yet Dead?

According to the world clothing shoes and hats net, in 1980,

With the slogan of "reasonable and cheap", as the original commodity of Xiyou department store was born, it created a unique product.

With the growth of commodities and the growth of business, the expansion of its business territory to London, Paris and Asia has been limitless.

But myth will eventually be shattered.

Before and after 2000, all the way, unimpeded MUJI products suffered setbacks and began to fade.

In order to return to the summit, Muji has made a revolution of "scraping the bone and curing wounds" after suffering from pain, and has completed the pformation of Phoenix Nirvana from the dying struggle.

First, from "imprint myth" to death struggle.

In December 1980, Muji was released as a supermarket's own brand. When the global economy was sluggish, the two easy contradictory elements, namely "cheap" and "high quality", were quickly acquired by consumers.

In June 1989, the Muji industry division was separated and independent from the West friends group. It started with a new journey with the identity of 100 million yuan registered fund.

After the collapse of Japan's bubble economy, the growth of MUJI products has been growing steadily.

From 1990 to 1999, Muji sales increased from 24 billion 510 million yen to 106 billion 690 million yen, becoming 4.4 times the original turnover in nine years; the total profit increased from 100 million 2 thousand and 500 yen to 107 times of 13 billion 360 million yen, and the regular profit rate climbed from 0.5% to 12.5%, thus becoming a high profit enterprise in circulation industry.

In the seven years from 1993 to 1999, the profits and sales of Muji were two digit growth compared with the previous year.

In the face of a serious downturn in Japanese consumption, the concept of Muji has adapted to the needs of the times. Under such circumstances, the MUJI products, which have been developing continuously in the second half of the 1990s, have made "imprint myth".

After 1993, there was a large increase in the number of MUJI products, and the store became increasingly large as the shop invitations poured in.

In 1998, it was listed on the two stock exchange of Tokyo and opened more stores since then.

Compared with supermarkets, MUJI products have limited customer level, and their commodity strength can not adapt to the large scale of shopping malls, resulting in the runaway performance.

Since 2000, Muji has shown an unusual situation, and the sales performance of Direct stores has been declining.

Since 2001, Muji has been operating losses for the first time since its establishment.

In terms of overseas business, although muiyin opened shops in Hongkong, China in 1991, and opened stores in Singapore in 1995, it completed the goal of entering Asia early. But later, because of poor management, these shops did not escape the fate of closing down, and Muji was lost in the Asian market for some time.

In 1998, Muji was set up in the UK for 4 stores. In 2000, the good quality plan started shop in the underground street of the Le Louvre Museum Art Gallery in Paris, and increased to 8 stores at the end of the year. Second years later, it closed many shops due to poor management, leaving only four.

The European strategy of the good plan has been in the stage of stagnation and rectification since then.

In the process of Muji's expansion, the customer's evaluation of it was obviously reduced, and the dissatisfaction of customers was also evident in the performance, and the stock market also suffered heavy losses.

The motive force that once created the myth of Muji has become fragmented, and Muji has changed from prosperity to decline.

Two, why is the myth broken?

President Matsui summed up 8 reasons for the sudden decline in the performance of the good plan.

These reasons are interrelated and interrelated. The overlapping of each factor brings serious problems to Muji's performance.

1, success brings complacency.

In contrast with other industries in the depression after the collapse of the bubble economy, Muji has been increasing year by year in the 1990 to 19 thousand and 990 years, and its growth trajectory is extremely strong.

After success, all the workers became complacent. "Everyone thinks they have done well enough to become overconfident."

At this point, Muji employees feel that they do not need to learn from other companies, so long as they maintain the status quo, they lose their modest attitude and the excellent quality of doing their best.

2. Corrosion of large enterprises

The company's internal organizational structure has become too big and rigid, overemphasizing the vertical organizational structure. In many cases, the running speed of enterprises has shown signs of tardy.

Rigid organization has a negative impact on the development of goods, resulting in the company unable to respond quickly to the best-selling products.

At the same time, as a decision-making organ meeting - board meeting became a formal routine.

At this point, almost every item of Muji has been adopted by the board of directors to raise the vote and decide whether to open a shop according to the principle of majority compliance.

Recalling the situation at that time, Matsui said: "at that time, the state is like a lot of foolish politics."

In addition, after a sharp increase in the number of stores, two or three years after entering the company, almost all employees promoted to the store manager, causing employees to lose their sense of urgency.

3, forget the fundamental, just look at the eyes.

In response to the decline in performance, Muji has been taking short-term measures to tackle the problem from beginning to end.

The drop in store sales has led to chaos in many ways.

The most typical case was the grocer department, which was the most serious situation at that time. In just three years, the Department replaced five ministers.

Moreover, on the opening of commodities, MUJI products have adopted emergency strategies, such as copying the designs of other companies' best sellers, or changing the tone of the original products with only black and natural colors, and adding other colors, and placing them on the store shelves.

4, the weakening of the brand itself

MUJI has also been slack in building brands, resulting in the weakening of the brand itself.

Matsui recalled that Muji finished the brand image in 1986 and 90s, which is ahead of the times.

But with the progress of the times, the ability of consumers to collect information is also improving rapidly.

At the same time, the production of other competitors has increased to a level that can compete with Muji.

Under such circumstances, the brand that has not been built up more than 10 years ago is bound to be unable to cope with the great changes in the market.

5. Failure of store development strategy

The misjudgement of the good plan to the store development strategy mainly lies in: the shop scale is too large, too fast to develop shops.

Before the expansion of commodity production and the improvement of the supply system, Muji preferred to expand the shop area.

That is to say, Muji is an enterprise developed by relying on larger stores and then developing commodities.

When the scale of the shop developed to 1000 square meters, this pattern was not yet wrong, but after the area expanded to 1500 square meters, Muji's performance began to decline.

6, new and old replacement of the president

Kinouchi Jeonwoong, the founder of the good plan, returned to Xi you in August 1997, and he became a new president.

In this regard, Matsui said: "the replacement of the president is a very important risk for enterprises."

The good plan failed to pass the period.

Matsui pointed out: "leaders who take over managerial power from the founders must be cautious and must have organizational capabilities.

In order to enable enterprises to develop continuously, it is very important to establish a complete organization system and create corresponding corporate atmosphere.

And when the above conditions of Muji are not available, the company is divorced from the guidance and operation of the founder.

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7, swaying to the original intention of manufacturing.

"Muji" was originally based on the idea of "profit elimination" which can be sold in the clothing industry.

At this point, from the perspective of customers, enterprises become "as long as they can be praised in the market, they will produce products according to the views of industry analysts, totally abandoning the pposition thinking from the perspective of consumers."

Recalling the situation at that time, Jin added, "sales are important, but when Muji will put its mind on the best selling products, the good quality will disappear and customers will abandon it."

At the same time, the interior of the good plan has been bogged down in a rigid swamp.

All of the internal management system is adopted, and the power to break the rotten and innovation is weakening.

Under such circumstances, Muji can not concentrate on changing the company's departure from its original intention.

The strong rise of competitors accelerated the decline of Muji.

Before and after 2000, the three departments of clothing, groceries, daily necessities and food were greatly affected by the strong offensive of competitors in various fields.

Matsui said: "in the main commodity market, new enterprises are constantly rising.

At this time, the overall strength of the company is weakening, so the impact of these external factors is also very large.

Three, self-healing reform

In order to promote the structural reform of the enterprise, the good plan has set up seven business reform projects inside the company.

1, clear up a pile of stock.

Excessive production system and sales system led to a large number of backlog of goods, so that consumers quickly lost their sense of novelty to Muji, and the goods were even more unmarketable, and the stock was increasing.

After Matsui became president in 2001, his performance has not been improved, and his stock has been accumulating. Matsui believes that as long as these bad stocks are loaded, the company will not be reborn.

So in August 2001, the company cleaned up the bad stocks valued at about 3 billion 800 million yen.

2. The number of overseas stores is halved.

MUJI called "the 50 shops, 20 billion yen" in 2003, and actively set up shops overseas, so many shops that failed to achieve the target sales volume, the direct result is deficit expansion.

Under such circumstances, Matsui closed 4 of the 7 shops that continued to run into deficit in France and 1 stores in Belgium.

While closing 5 shops in France and Belgium to stop bleeding, Muji concentrated the logistics system in France and the United Kingdom, and sent professionals from Japan to improve local sales efficiency.

Since then, Muji has taken a big step in the direction of rebirth.

3. Build a functional system of R & D, design and planning.

Since 2003, the new way of development of Muji has been "global Muji".

This is a Muji product that cooperates with the world's top designers who agree with their ideas.

In this way, many good design inspirations from the world were obtained, while Muji's own design features were maintained, so that MUJI products were successful, and the products sold very well.

4, learn the way to open shop in the island village, quantify store standards.

In 2001, Tokue Junichi, director of the shop development department, realized that there was a problem in the shop development mode at that time, so he began to visit the headquarters of the island village to learn the relevant process of the store's development in detail.

The shop development of the good plan has always depended on external forces, and there has been no establishment of a store standard based on the company's development strategy. It has become a big mistake in opening a shop with low return on investment.

Therefore, the good quality plan has been modeled by the island village to set up its own shop standard manual, and has made many quantitative judgement standards.

What is the average consumer income index of a city open to shops? The index of urban average consumption income is directly proportional to the business status of Muji shops.

Dosage to determine when to open shop, under what circumstances can not open shop.

After setting up such a quantitative standard, the result is very obvious. The success rate of the new store introduced into the standard has reached over 90%, 10 shops and 9 shops will be profitable.

5, the 30% Committee of drastically reducing costs.

In order to further enhance competitiveness, President Matsui Chusan has focused on reducing management fees.

In 2005, Matsui set up the "30% committee" directly affiliated to the company.

Why is it called the 30% committee? The goal is to reduce the operating cost of the company to 30%, which is the operation cost, the denominator is the sales volume, and the total operating cost will account for 30% of the sales volume.

In order to control sales management fees below 30%, the committee set up 8 improvement projects.

The result of this reform is very obvious. In 2004, 34.1% of the sales management fees dropped to 31.8% in a short span of a year. In fact, it amounted to nearly 2 billion 900 million yen for Muji.

6. Simple and powerful weapon shop guide

Before Muji, many stores often had the same problems and wasted time and manpower. Later, on the company's intranet, a platform for employees' internal proposals was made. Any employee in the front line could complete a workbook through the platform, and the contents of the handbook were related to the execution content of the store.

A front-line employee can submit his opinion to the company through the internal website, then confirm by the regional manager, then confirm it by the company headquarters, then compile it into the latest manual immediately, and request the company's work process to make corresponding changes.

7. A complete and systematic staff education system.

The training of Muji employees in the company consists of three components, namely, 10%, 80% and 10%:

The 10% is the proportion of work manual learning, is the benchmark; 80% is through the training of company posts, through the OJT (On the Job Training), namely, in the workplace, the boss and skilled skilled employees to the new employees through daily work, the necessary knowledge, skills, methods of work and so on a training method to learn; the last 10% is the specialized training for employees, the company internal training courses, these three parts constitute the Muji quality education for employees.

After implementing the reform plan, Muji has made remarkable achievements, and the media has reported its rebirth with "no print, divorced from sensibility and resurrection".

In the process of "rebirth", the president Matsui realized the recent management and operation objectives of the enterprise through the visualization of the whole process of operation, and showed us a "new product plan".

More interesting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing shoes and hats net.