DSW Is Going To Switch To "Sharing Shoes"?

Last week, the famous brand shoes discount chain Designer Shoes Warehouse (meaning "

A piece of news about the famous brand shoe store, hereinafter referred to as "DSW", almost surprised the retail industry's chin: DSW should switch to "share shoes".

According to the world clothing and shoe net, DSW recently announced that it is considering offering some single shoe rental, repair and storage services in 511 stores.

DSW website home page

DSW spokesman Christina Cheng said: "many customers before us suggested that we do this business -- especially at weddings, proms or other special occasions when they had to wear shoes matching their dress.

But obviously, these shoes are all disposable, and they may never wear them again.

Cheng said that the "sharing shoes" plan will be tested in the coming months.

How do stores know which styles and sizes are popular? How can the maintenance and cleaning of single shoes be solved? How should the rental cost be calculated?

Many people in the industry have questioned from the perspective of "customer consumption inertia": can people change their habits in a short time, like wearing roller skates and wearing high-heeled shoes that others wear to attend weddings?

"Sharing shoes" is an extreme phenomenon of shared economy.

Shoes are much more private than clothes or accessories. It's enough to just fit.

I don't think people will be willing to share such personal things with others.

Milton Pedraza, chief executive officer of Luxury Institute, a retail consulting firm in New York, said, "in addition," shared shoes "also face malicious damage and depreciation.

For example, some people wear suede.

What should I do when I walk on rainy days? Or, when they step into the pit with their shining high-heeled shoes, what do they do?

But if this is to determine the failure of DSW, it is too arbitrary.

As Pedraza deduced, "sharing shoes" is neither a high frequency demand nor a high profit selling point.

The purpose of DSW's move is rather to open up a new business, rather than to stimulate consumption by using a concept similar to "one-stop shopping".

DSW chief operating officer Michelle Love has said before: "today, customers want to get more than just a single hand delivery and one hand payment" in a physical store, but a multi-faceted "shopping experience".

This is the secret that DSW stores in the world are scrambling to add to this business. The exclusive service of a store can not only pull customers back from the network to the real world, but also allow customers to draw more money out of their pockets.

This "routine" itself is not new: last week, the first "zero inventory" store opened by Nordstorm, a luxury department store, allows guests to enjoy wine tasting, nail making, or even consulting stylist advice while trying on clothes.

In order to make customers stay longer, Apple Corp retail stores have conference rooms, forum chat areas, high-tech park style squares, and so on, besides selling areas.

Forum chat area of Apple store in San Francisco

However, for DSW, "shared shoes" not only effectively stimulate the consumption of stores, but also help to reduce the cost of logistics, after sale and warehousing.

As we all know, the biggest problem with online shopping is the high return rate, especially DSW, which is based on the concept of "famous shoes discount".

Analysts say: now many people are accustomed to placing seven or eight pairs of shoes on the Internet. After trying on them, they only leave one or two pairs, and the rest are returned to the products.

This kind of "fake big order" is a big trouble no matter whether it is for logistics or after sales.

But if you move the shopping behavior from the Internet to the store, it's completely different.

"(although DSW's online store business is also booming, its biggest competitive advantage lies in its over all geographical coverage - there are more than 500 stores in North America," said Steven L. Marotta, CL King&Associates footwear analyst. "The more services there are, the more likely customers are to enter the store. The more customers enter the store, the more likely they are to complete consumer behavior on the store rather than on the website.

And the return rate of stores is much lower than that of online stores.

This is why DSW executives finally decided to test and hire water shoes.

As for warehousing business, it is actually targeted at

Ad hoc services.

DSW now plans to pick some stores and turn them into "mini Storehouses" - letting parcels be shipped from a store near their home, instead of shipping goods from the logistics centers far away from the city as before.

Cheng said that DSW will redecorate its stores, increase the shelves for higher and deeper shelves, so as to save more than 30% of the shoes before. The backstage systems of online stores and stores will also be merged, so that the number and location of a pair of shoes can be seen at a glance, and data consistency and shortage scheduling will also be very convenient.

"Today's retailers need to be able to do that," Marotta said. "We need to take advantage of everything from storage centers to stores or everywhere."

As for Milton Pedraza, the new business of DSW will be difficult to continue because of the privacy of the product and the malicious damage of customers. That may be more like a "worry".

After all, there are still some seemingly unreliable sharing economic leasing services on the market, which are still very moist.

In 2009, the Rent the Runway, the originator of online rental clothing, had the concept of "$30 for Vera Wang dress" for $1295. It not only stood 8 years without taking down 5 million users, but also earned $100 million in revenue last year, and completed 60 million US dollars in E round financing.

Similarly, Bag, Borrow or Steal, which was born in 2004, has achieved great success by leasing and selling second-hand designer handbags.

Under the stimulation of Internet entrepreneurship, the United States has also produced a more irresponsible sharing economy - earrings, watches, and even wigs.

The rental price of the AXESS CHRONOS list is $7-16 per day.

Now, with the prevalence of the shared economy, more and more entrepreneurs in China are taking aim at the shared lease of "non high frequency but high priced" products.

In September 22nd of this year, Taobao quietly launched the "Taobao lease". The first five rental brands, including rented, machine honey, estimated rent machines, and replacement, entered the first batch of rental brands. The rent of the new iPhone8 aircraft was 3348 yuan a year. As a result, more than 5000 iPhone8 were robbed overnight.

After four days, at zero o'clock in September 26th, Taobao leasing began to launch into the whole category. Apart from mobile phones, many rental brands such as household appliances, toys, clothing and so on were launched, such as the head rental brand of the clothing industry such as goddess and garment two or three, for the first time to "land" Taobao.

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"Clothing two or three" once marked Rent the Runway, which is a short rental platform called "long things" for women's dress. Not long ago, the brand pformed into a female fashion rental platform.

High frequency, everyday, cheap...

These are combined with words that are not in tune with the field of shared dress, but they form a magic power.

In September of this year, "clothing two or three" took the 50 million dollar C round of Ali investment.

"The pain of Chinese women is not the scene dressing, but in daily dress, they lack a wardrobe that can try more styles."

Yi Ersan founder Liu Mengyuan said.

The platform for women's fashion rental, Yi Ersan

Another website that provides rental services for middle and high-end children's toys is much favored by VC agencies before it was launched, and it won millions of dollars in A round financing at the beginning of its creation.

In September of this year, after playing the brand of "Taobao renting" for the first time to enter the brand, with the help of the "sesame credit" personal credit system, the era of "zero rent rent toys" was opened, so that more people would like to try this new sharing experience.

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