YOHO! CEO Liang Chao: How To Strike A Balance Between Commercialization And Tonality.

This conclusion is pmitted in some trends.

Goods are not well known to the public.

Platform, despite its 2017 sales estimate of 3 billion 400 million.

Ordinary consumers rarely say that Taobao and Jingdong have changed, because for most people, Taobao and Jingdong are simple.

There is only a difference between fast and fast delivery, but there is no such thing as tonality.

But the goods are different.

The group is not only a shopping platform that can buy all kinds of tide cards, but also a gathering place for people in the trend.

Tonality is the essence of having goods in a brutal business circle.

It is also because of the image of Chao chi that has been established for many years. Once the brand has become more and more, consumers should be taken into account.

The most typical example is that goods once reached a deep binding with Edison Chan, and two years later suspended cooperation.

Despite the signing of Shawn Yue and Berlin Chan's influx of cards later, for the hardcore fans of the tide brand, losing the benchmarking Edison Chan is enough to justify the doubt that a platform is not cool enough.

After ceasing cooperation with goods, Edison Chan also launched his own tide brand e-commerce platform in 2017.

This is the argument that YOHO! Founder and CEO Liang Chao must face. The development of YOHO! Also represents the difficult problem facing all the companies that do the tide business. In the face of a group of consumers who are very fastidious about individuality, how to strike a balance between commercialization and tonality.

YOHO! At present, there are more than 800 people, the electricity business accounts for about 95% of the revenue, and the income of the media business accounts for only 5%.

But the media used to be and will always be the YOHO!

At present, the media content of YOHO includes a series of trend magazines, the trend App YOHO! NOW, lifestyle App Mars, and the same name WeChat public number.

With the media as the starting point, YOHO! Can find young people who are interested in the tide flu, and then drain them into the electronic business platform and offline stores.

Image: first line store appearance

According to the world clothing shoes and hats net, from the media to the electricity supplier, YOHO!

In 2005, it launched the first YOHO! Trend, launched the trend community in 2007, launched the electricity supplier in 2008, and then opened the first line shop at the end of 2017. It seems that every step is smooth, but the danger and the long wait for the opportunity are only known by the Bureau.

Before "China hip-hop" exploded, YOHO signed Wu Yifan as spokesperson.

After China has hip-hop, the tide business has become the business that the investment circle has begun to consider. At this time, the goods are large enough to hatch and invest in other domestic brands.

Reporters chatted with YOHO! Group CEO Liang Chao about the domestic trend of user groups, the layout of the offline layout, how to find the young people in those three or four line cities.

At the same time, YOHO! Is also seriously considering the listing plan. The current timetable is that it will start preparing materials this year, and the first place to list will be the United States.

The following is an interview record, compiled by reporters to edit the definition of "cool".

Reporter: at the end of 2017, we opened the first line shop in Nanjing, and in 2018, the next line is also the focus.

Offline stores need to involve early location, placement of goods, and many other small objects, and the execution of each store may not be the same.

Comparison of electricity providers, offline efficiency is not high enough?

Liang Chao: offline is a direction for us to think, and we are only planning internally. In addition to Nanjing, we will find some three or four line cities in 2018 and open 800 square shops.

I think the biggest challenge in doing this is not to shop, but to be human.

In this city, can you find people who are interested in fashion and fashion to spread what we want to do?

It is not such a difficult thing to open a shop under the copy line, and open a 300 or 500 home. Because there are too many brands, too many supermarkets are doing the layout of the chain.

Reporter: what are the specific ways you want to find young people in these cities?

Liang Chao: media communication is an important way, but definitely not the only one.

Now that the media is going to centralization, an authoritative media can release this voice before. It may not be the voice of a person, but many big V and the media numbers are all voicing.

Second, we are also considering the line. The three or four line cities are relatively small in scale. The impact of one hot spot on the city is enormous.

For example, if we open an interesting shop in a three or four line city today, people in the whole city will know that the pmission efficiency is higher than that in Shanghai and Hangzhou tomorrow.

The third way is regional marketing, after the city has a line, and then do this kind of local media marketing.

These three ways are almost the same as those of a second line. We have been doing it and the direction of execution may be different.

Picture: party is the most popular type of activity under the goods line.

Reporter: the traditional point of view is that the offline cost is higher than the line. Does this mean that you will focus the funds on the offline part in the future?

Liang Chao: from the trend, the cost of online and offline is not necessarily high or low.

I see a latest data that 60% of Nanjing's commercial bodies are in a vacant state for investment, and the competition for commercial bodies is becoming more and more intense.

YOHO! It's another thing that can help commercial bodies drain. These can help us get better conditions.

The operating cost of our online shop is not higher than that of the online market. I dare not say that it will be low in the future, but at least it should be a relatively balanced state.

Reporter: how do you fill in the span between the magazine and the electricity supplier? The path and organization structure of the two should be very different.

Liang Chao: the starting point of my original media is that young people in China will become more and more popular and cool. So the media is not my ultimate goal, but a carrier. It can help young people in China become more and more popular.

Do you say there is a big difference between doing retail and making media? There must be, from the executive level, each has its own points, each has its own way, but in essence it is the same, that is, how to make these consumers more cool.

Interviewer: how do you define Chao and cool?

Our media and retail investment is a department, because the people who can advertise here and the goods you can sell are actually the same brand.

Similarly, you are affected by these users. They want to know more about the content and want to buy things from you.

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Reporter: 05 years ago, when you first started your business, how big is the scale of the people who pursue the cool crowd?

Liang Chao: Chao Hei can not be understood in a single sentence. But I think they have something in common, personality.

Behind the tide is diversification and individuation.

In the past, we talked about what the tide is, wearing wide pants and dyeing hair, but not now. Now we are talking about skateboarding and hip-hop.

Do you like hip-hop, or do you like to listen to pop music? I don't think so.

The trend is now made up of a variety of personalized elements.

If you have your own personality and dare to express your individuality, you already have the foundation of tide and cool.

Liang Chao: let's take the example of circulation. Our first issue magazine has issued ten thousand volumes, four cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou.

The official circulation of our magazine is about 680 thousand copies a month.

Equilibrium formula

Reporter: after China has hip-hop, the media began to notice the potential of hip-hop and tide card consumption. Before that, did many platforms want to do business with the same users?

Liang Chao: it has always been, specifically divided into two categories, the first is the large platform.

But I don't think the big platform is clear about it. They still sell it as a standard product and feel that they can sell anything. Today, I can sell all the 3C products, books and cosmetics. Why can't the tide brand be sold?

If tide brand becomes more popular, instead of doing channel selection and goods distinction, it will probably become a less fashionable brand and lose its survival value.

In addition, some new platforms are also thinking about this matter, but it will be relatively difficult.

Because after all, goods have been ploughed for more than 10 years in this field, and there is a great deal of time cost here.

You may say that I sell through live broadcast and sell through WeChat. These are just means, and we are also expanding and trying these means.

Reporter: as you say, once a thing is too commercialized, the tide users will be very resistant. Similarly, some people feel that the goods are too big now, not cool enough, especially if you do not cooperate with Edison Chan, which is a very big mistake.

Will these voices be a situation for you to deal with?

Liang Chao: for us, this is a balancing process, and also commercialization, and to maintain their own trend of tonality, how to go to balance in the middle, there must be something we have done well and badly done, we will adjust according to some feedback from consumers.

For example, before making the goods, we made the revision of the whole App, and we found that it was more and more like Tmall and Jingdong.

Indeed, if they pursue efficiency and pformation, they are probably the most correct ones, because they are all bigger brands and are the ones that have studied more user needs.

But for goods, if I only pursue pformation today, I may lose my tonality if I pursue UV value.

So in August and September of last year, we made a revision to return the whole product to a content oriented version. As a result, there are many users in App Store that this is the right thing to do.

I think this is also our own groping process, including cooperation with brands, we have also lowered the threshold and introduced some brands that may not be so fashionable. Now we are making some adjustments.

Figure: YOHO! Product line development process

Reporter: do you still define yourself as a niche culture today?

Liang Chao: from beginning to end, we didn't think we were small. We just said we were vertical.

This vertical is a big and small area. If you go to Japan, Korea, Europe and America, are you interested in fashion? Are you sure? No, most people like fashion.

But in China, most people today do not really understand it.

We are a vertical platform, but we believe these people will get bigger and bigger.

Reporter: so it is a very good time to have goods in the past two years? This is probably the most important node in more than a decade, besides the time of starting a business.

Liang Chao: I think so.

From 2008 to 2015, all the Internet platforms talk about the efficiency of selling, and they can sell things anyway.

But what are you talking about now? It's about consumption, new retail and precision marketing, talking about the difference in goods, how to do the most quality things, not the exploding products.

This is actually YOHO! One thing I was thinking about 12 years ago when you started a business, Chinese young people are sure to choose products suitable for their taste and consumption because of their tide and cool.

It's now at such a time.

Efficiency of spending money

Reporter: I heard that when you open shop in Nanjing, you often shop in the store. What information do you notice when you shop online? What are the differences between the people you are facing and the people you imagine before you open your shop?

Liang Chao: I will see what they are going to see and what they consume online.

This includes the naked eye and the more rational data, because the smart shelves we do are collecting data.

So we are going to see what deviations the young people in the city will have in understanding the trend and our big data, so that we can make adjustments.

Some brands may be shown online, but no one touches them for 2 months, but they sell well on the back line.

At this point, you will find that those brands that are even more monotonous are not very different for online consumers.

Next, when we are doing the central store in the city, we will know how to consider the display and sale of the brand.

Although online and offline pay attention to integration, that is more a trend, a general direction of consumer preferences, but truly from the consumer behavior, from the aspect of efficiency, it will not be the same, this is what we are going to see.

In other words, from the scene, we are looking at the trend of consumers. From the point of view of efficiency, we see how we can improve the efficiency of the whole retail business through data and observations.

Picture: store shelves with smart shelves

Reporter: from the media to the electricity supplier to the next line, now look back at YOHO! Of course, every step of pformation is smooth.

But was there any time when the company almost died?

Liang Chao: for entrepreneurial companies, it is possible to die in minutes.

For example, in 2008, we just got the electricity supplier from the media and met the financial crisis. At that time, we had mortgaged everything in our home to bank turnover, and survived 2009.

Until now, I think it is not easy to think of death in the size, volume and position of YOHO!

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Reporter: how much is the GMV that was available in 2008 and 2009?

Liang Chao: about two to thirty million yuan.

Reporter: what is the annual growth rate of goods sales?

Liang Chao: about 50%.

Reporter: both investors and the market have attached great importance to the needs and trends of young people in the past two years.

Do you think this is likely to bring too high expectations? Maybe this crowd has not yet arrived at explosive growth.

Liang Chao: we feel that the trend electricity supplier is not an explosive growth industry.

It has a lot of retail core values, including supply chain, team formation and so on, all of which doomed the industry to grow at a speed of several times a year, and it may increase by 50% to 100% a year.

At such a speed, there is still a long way from the ceiling.

After all, China has too many people. How many people really understand fashion trends?

Reporter: as far as you know, are there many investment institutions entering this industry at present?

Liang Chao: I know these organizations will start investing in some brands, but for the upstream platform, I think it's more difficult.

But I think there are some opportunities to make a brand.

So we can see that in recent years, whether traditional clothing companies or investment groups like LVMH have strategic backgrounds, they are investing in and acquiring some brands.

China is still short of brands, and there are many opportunities for personalized brand growth, but you can not predict how big it can grow.

The brand will still involve the balance between commercialization and tonality.

Reporter: as far as I know, all the technologies used by your offline stores are developed by yourself. From inductive labels to smart clothes mirrors, why not use outsourcing? After all, the cost of outsourcing may be even lower, and the important thing is that research and development time can be shorter.

Liang Chao: we also tried to outsource some projects before, and found that the whole reaction rate was too slow.

Because the new retail iteration is actually very fast, if outsourcing, involves many communication costs, it is not suitable for a platform company like ours to do.

For some Brand Company, outsourcing a lot of things is reasonable.

Because many are standardised, some system software parsing, and we involve independent research and development, and the integration of online and offline, there are many personalized functions and needs.

Reporter: so your style is to spend money as long as you feel it is worth it? Some start-up companies CEO pay great attention to the efficiency of spending money, draw out a piece of money, and earn five yuan.

Liang Chao: I am not saying that it is not prudent to spend money, but that it is necessary to spend money.

Only in this way can you hope for the future.

Reporter: even if the money spent earlier is far more than that of peers?

Liang Chao: is it possible to analyze the result with less money?

If not, then we have to spend first.

This thing must be done, and I really can't make the money more cost-effective.

Then we have to occupy the pit first, and then slowly adjust the project.

Reporter: so these one or two years will be the stage of YOHO!

Liang Chao: the place to spend money has to be spent.

For example, the first line shop, inviting Japanese designers, we think it is valuable.

Because we must have a purpose behind the first store. We don't need second stores or third stores in the future.

At that time, it may be known that it should be opened in a cost-effective way, and there is still an analysis process in the middle.

In the middle of time and effect, we need to make some trade-offs.

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