Luxury Repair Craftsman: Expensive Big Bag, Not Ready.

There are hundreds of craftsmen wearing masks and aprons in the Tianjin factory of the Internet luxury repair platform "Bao Zheng".

Luxuries from all over the country are neatly placed on the shelves of the warehouse, waiting for repairs.

"LV's vegetable tanned leather is easily broken, Chloe's Suede skin is hard to wash, Gucci has a cloth bag, easy to reverse glue, Prada is too hard and easy to deform..."

Although Bao Zheng's master Wei Ning did not buy luxuries, he knew every big weakness.

There is nothing wrong with Hermes.

But Wei Ningxiu had a man destroyed by Hermes. The couple quarrelled and confiscated them, and chopped them with a knife.

He looked at the bag and felt a little prick.

However, there is also a warm heart case - someone sent an old world postwar postman bag to repair, not a big name, fragile leather to a touch of broken, but the family as a treasure to the collection.

Before the cloak of the Internet, most of the business of luxury repair is still online.

These shops often appear in the humble corners of the shopping mall, but they are full of expensive bags and shoes.

If they are not familiar customers, they always go straight through them because of the "deep water" feeling and do not easily enter.

Subject to the dependence on manual technology, the luxury repair industry lacks standards in terms of training, pricing, technology and so on from the very beginning.

This indicates that in the long run, the sustainability of this business is still to be explored.

The predecessor of luxury repair is repairing shoes.

Few people know that the shoe repair industry decades ago was actually the predecessor of the luxury repair industry.

In 1980s, the shoe repair business came to the first wave of mechanized driving, and the masters who had finished their meal by technology could finally liberate part of their labor with machines.

These machines are usually imported from abroad, and the price ranges from fifty thousand to more than ten thousand. The wheels of the machine can cut the edges of leather edges beautifully and smoothly.

And the guests did not expect that, in addition to repairing old shoes, new shoes could be first put on a bottom to extend their service life.

For a time, this new business has attracted many consumers and inward traders.

Because buying a machine can be opened, the wind of joining is popular.

In just a few years, there are shoe repair shops everywhere in the streets and alleys.

Later, the industry also set up a business combination of shoes and shoes repair, which is the second change.

In order to win more customers, improve service quality and pricing, some businesses have repaired the worn area and even re coloured the place when they wash their shoes.

Before that, about 5 pairs of shoes were washed, and the upgraded service reached 80 yuan and a pair. The price was high but there was a good market.

Under the stimulation of one-stop service demand, the shoe shop slowly disappeared and mostly merged into the shoe repair shop.

About ten years ago, people could see the figure of the shoemaker in the streets and lanes. Several square meters of small stalls had wrapped up the daily repair business of the surrounding residents.

(photo source: Vision China)

In the past ten years, people's clothing consumption has become more and more new, and the demand for repairing old products has plummeted.

In order to survive, the trend of integrating the subdivision into the industry is becoming clearer.

Whether shoes, bags, clothing or furniture, as long as leather products, can be integrated into a shop.

With the rapid growth of the Chinese people into the world's largest luxury consumer group, leather care industry is also generally high-end, pricing followed dozens of times.

Shops with many familiar customers will also open small scale resale business in a timely manner according to the situation.

Until now, most luxury care shops are doing business like this.

"When every industry change happens, there will be a large number of franchisees," said Lili, the landlady of ALBB luxury care shop. "However, they will also disappear quickly, because hard technology is not good enough. It is not enough to rely on machines alone."

Lili's shop opened in Shenzhen Vientiane world, the whole name is Alibaba luxury care.

However, it has nothing to do with Ma Yun's Alibaba and belongs to the wholesale company.

Since 2004, ALBB has opened 7 shopping malls in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Wenzhou, which are all high-end department stores owned by Huarun group.

After many years of working in the Shenzhen market, most of Lili's customers are familiar customers, and many of them use VIP cards from their mothers.

But she is still very cautious about the scale of expansion: "the handicraft industry is not selling milk tea, it can be replicated indefinitely."

It takes a long time to train a repair master, and the rapid expansion of the scale may affect the quality. "

For this reason, ALBB has never accepted franchisees.

At present, almost all of the luxury brands that seek sound development are the main way to attack the market, with little expansion, and only to open their own stores.

Shenzhen brand OTT otter is also an example, but its development strategy is bolder than ALBB.

From offline to online

Otter's founder, Xin Xian Feng, made furniture factory business in the early years, and changed to leather maintenance in 2004.

After the otter brand was formally established in 2012, it focused on the local market in Shenzhen and focused on high-end commercial centers.

During the operation, he observed that the market for leather care was relatively small, and the growth was slow.

Although the unit price is high, the customer is not big.

Therefore, he stopped the pace of expanding the physical store, and chose to use the laundry brand founded in 2018 to "wash" to drain.

In 2017, otter also worked with Mass Phil, Ya Ying, and gleth and other domestic apparel groups and banks to help their VIP customers in the field to maintain their customers' skin.

Meanwhile, otter and ALBB are also trying online business, but that's not their main battleground.

They only use the line as a means of communication with foreign customers, and expand the market in the form of "central customer service + logistics".

If ALBB has a certain number of familiar customers, it will use WeChat's circle of friends to sell second hand luxury goods.

Benefiting from the familiarity of long-term training, customers and businesses basically find out each other's "bottom" and therefore have a better grasp of the authenticity of the goods.

However, apart from second-hand pactions, merchants always remain silent about authenticity.

When receiving high imitation and fake care needs, no matter whether the customer knows, they will not point out.

Lili and Xin Xian Feng both said that the industry has this "hidden rule" for two reasons.

On the one hand, luxury goods are somewhere between real and false, and no one can judge easily. On the other hand, it is possible to cause disputes between customers and goods, and they will also cause unnecessary trouble.

For the traditional luxury goods repair business, if we build another Internet platform, it is almost equivalent to taking another track.

This track is burning money and risks, and no one dare to try it easily.

In May 2018, otter carried out on-site repair activities at the next store.

(photo source: otter)

However, in the past two years, some people have gone through a way through the Internet thinking in the luxury repair industry.

In 2014, the "Bao Zheng" studio was set up in an office building in Qingnian Road, Beijing.

A few startups were born outside the Alibaba advertising outsourcing team and Yang Haijun, a craftsman.

Bao Zheng COO Valley gold and partners were initially invited by Yang navy to help him in operation and design.

They noticed some industry problems in the process of participation, either the craftsmen were highly skilled, but the passenger flow was scarce, and their life was hard.

This led them to see the opportunity to make up for the market gap, and then joined the group.

What started them to worry is how to build a large craftsman team under the scarcity of talent resources in the industry, and at the same time guarantee the technical level of craftsmen.

"Maybe because we are all born on the Internet, we always want to do something about information matching," says Gu Jin. "Therefore, the craftsmen use platform mode or proprietary mode.

According to their understanding of the market at that time, the craftsmen with good skills were few and hard to find. They were too wasteful to train their craftsmen, and the platform mode was almost unworkable.

Again and again, they came up with a two way approach to split maintenance processes and build training systems.

Bao Zhengxian divided the process into four categories: cleaning, sewing, edge oil and coloring.

Accordingly, the craftsmen with specific craftwork were trained separately and divided into four grades: apprentice, early, middle and high.

In this case, a complete repair process is going down, and the bag may go through the hands of different craftsmen.

In order to get through the information between different processes, Bao Zheng set up a symptom library, which was generated by customers to generate diagnostic programs for technicians to see and communicate.

It took a whole year to find out the whole set of standard chemical orders, and to set up the workmen's supply chain and non production line.

"With the dismantling of processes and SKU, the establishment of process standards, and the establishment of training systems, most craftsmen can be trained to operate for half a month to a month."

Gu Jin said.

Color before color.

(photo source: Bao Zheng)

From the beginning of the process, Bao Zheng embarked on a "standardized" luxury protection road.

Pricing, demolition and repair, annex management and so on can now be found in Bao Zheng.

Even consumers can see the rate of standardized repair.

For example, leather cleaning services for Louis Vuitton were divided into 8 years, 8-12 years, 12 years or more, three hours of usage, corresponding to different percentages of reduction rate.

If customers still want to know what the 70% reduction rate means, customer service staff will take the previous repair case as a reference.

From another point of view, the standardized way also avoids disputes with customers on the repair effect to some extent.

However, process division may also lead to potential problems.

For example, once a previous process has problems, it may cause unnecessary trouble to the master of the later process, and the accident liability is difficult to determine.

According to Gu Jin, 85% of SKU has been standardized by process standardization, and standardized output can be achieved.

For the remaining 15% of the non-standard SKU, such as creating shoulder straps, creative repair and other services, we need experienced and experienced masters to solve them.

"After all, this is still a non-standard industry, and there will be a long-term problem of inconsistency in information communication," she said. "So we will provide users with a three month warranty and 1.5% customer rework rate to ensure the ultimate quality of service."

When Bao Zheng became the largest online luxury brand in the country in 2016, Gu Jin felt that they had made the standardized and streamlined mode of luxury industry run.

Repairing is to lengthen the life of your bag, not to deceive your eyes.

Manual repair is the most curious part of the industry.

Recently, there have been some practitioners in the chattering, demonstrating stunning repair techniques.

For example, in an account video entitled "Dujiangyan strontium leather skin care shop", artisans often display hand-painted and coloring processes, which basically can restore leather's original appearance visually.

There is a video which makes people think carefully.

The craftsman first used scissors to cut out the burnt part on the bag and bare the bare lining.

Then add bubble gum and toffee, as well as brown sugar and coloring, put them into a bowl and stir them into paste.

Finally, the leather mold is used to compressing the paste into the shape of the bag cortex, which is restored.

This video has gained about two million points.

Some netizens commented that the craftsman must have replaced the paste into the real leather in the last picture, and the video was just for the sake of clansmen.

Some netizens remembered the bag that they had repaired. "My bag might not have been filled with real leather."

Jitter users copy leather with bubble gum and rainbow sugar.

Although this approach is full of creativity, it is not always possible to really restore the practicality of bags from the perspective of bag durability.

Wei Ning said that in the repair techniques, there is indeed a "creative repair" method, usually used for problems that can not be solved by conventional methods.

For example, when a piece of leather with a special pattern is dropped, customers do not want to change the leather. They can use the appropriate accessories to fill the gap, or hand painted patterns to make up.

Another use is to pform bags according to customer needs.

For example, change the color to the bag, change the Dior 7 compartment princess's bag into 5 squares, and pform the LV's tote bag into a bucket bag.

As for the color displayed in the jitter video, it is usually the next choice.

Lili said that most nursing shops always choose to use color to cover up defects rather than cleanliness.

According to her experience, if a bag has been colored three times, it may be destroyed, even second-hand stores may not be recycled, or even judged by the surveyor as a fake bag.

"The person who really repairs is to extend the life of the bag, not the makeup artist, and deceive your eyes."

She said.

Dior the princess's bag is re colored. (photo source: Bao Zheng)

In addition to the color, the routine repair steps may not be so ornamental.

"It's one of the most common problems," said Wei Ning, for example, "for example," Wei Ning, for example, "often has a customer complaining about the cost of repairing edge oil because of its complexity."

The first step to repair the edge oil is to wear the original edge oil a little bit, then match the paint with the original tone of the oil, and then apply it to the bag, and be careful not to keep the oil in the rest of the bag, and then dry it for 4 to 6 hours.

This process should be repeated 3 to 5 times.

"An experienced master can only make two bags of oil every day."

Wei Ning said.

And UGG snow boots with the largest number of orders each winter.

"Not only should we use special cleaning agents, but also brush with professional techniques. After washing, there will be a later treatment of wool to make the fuzz stand up," he said. "When necessary, there is also coloring, or is it necessary to add grease to ensure the handle."

In the luxury repair industry, the skills and steps are actually not the secrets of the industry, and the real competitiveness lies in the skills of the masters.

Therefore, even though Bao Zheng has quickly trained many new craftsmen by using the standardized splitting process, one of its core competitiveness is still the versatile craftsmen with skillful skills and experience.

In Bao Zheng, these people are called "master teachers". They will be known as "torch makers" for decades. They are highly respected in the company.

Masters usually not only need to deal with problems that others can not handle personally, but also train new craftsmen, technical guides, etc.

According to goofy, head of Bao Zheng's former supply chain, Bao Zheng spent a lot of energy in recruiting his master at the beginning of his business.

"Almost all of them are three kinds of houses. At the very beginning, we can't promise them how much wages they can give, and we can only touch them with feelings."

Many master teachers went to work at the age of seventeen or eight. After years of study, they usually chose to start their own businesses, but few could really make a fortune by this craft.

Gu Jin has seen that there are master teachers who sleep directly on the workbench after work. The conditions are very difficult.

We saw some masters in Bao Zheng's Tianjin restoration factory, including shoemaker from Luoyang, Henan, and the owner of luxury nursing shop in Qinhuangdao, Hebei.

After coming to Bao Zheng, they were assigned to different processes according to their previous work experience.

ALBB and otter have 20 or so craftsmen, almost all of them are trained by themselves, and some have already had more than ten years' experience.

An industry that relies heavily on "human"

It can be seen that whether Internet Co or physical stores, luxury repair industry can never abandon the essence of craftsman strength as the core.

This leads to the fact that most people are constrained by the craftsmen breeding cycle, unable to expand their scale, mostly small businesses, and seem to be "scattered". Some people lack skills, they can only attract customers by low price strategy, or participate in some quality training courses, resulting in "chaos".

In the early observation of the market, goofy found that there were not a few regular training institutions in the market, most of which were private lectures, even when the shops failed.

"This is not solid enough. It is impossible to learn 2 to 3 months. Most of them are theoretical training, and there is no offline practice," he said. "Before we go, we recommend a pile of washing equipment, tools, chemicals, or brand affiliate fees, so that they can go back to shop."

This reminded him of the great masters who had worked together.

Many of them, decades ago, served tea and running errands for masters in order to learn a craft.

Only by being trusted by the master can he become an apprentice. He learns for three or five years.

The sense of ritual of this kind of apprenticeship has almost disappeared in an impatient business environment, instead of an expensive Bibi tuition, which may be just fur art.

Some craftsmen said that about ten years ago, when the leather goods were taught in private small classes, the price was about 25 thousand yuan, and the training time was only 45 days.

The rapid training cycle will breed a large number of entrepreneurs who are suddenly appearing.

"Many of these guerrillas, such as the studio with brand names," Lili said, "at least thousands of such occupations in Shenzhen are invisible and visible.

It's a shopping mall, and there are even downstairs for every community.

They all have their own customers, and they will do business in the circle of friends without their stores. "

These businesses can only compete in price because of their skill level.

"My home washing bag is 800, and the market is probably 500-600.

But the real luxury customers pay more attention to the quality than the price. "

At present, ALBB and otter have not considered expanding scale.

It is not that they are conservative, but that the luxury industry is subject to the craftsmanship level and training cycle. Few companies have technology and human capital to undertake a large number of businesses from all over the country.

Xin Xian Feng feels that for the brand dominated by offline shops, it is probably a good idea to establish a community service center that combines washing, care and resale.

And Lili thinks, whether offline or online, blindly expanding may be a vicious circle.

"When the quantity is large and the manpower is not enough, the craftsmen can only be trained quickly, and the quality of the products can not be guaranteed when the skills are not enough."

She also worries about the more scarce sources of identifying talents and the simple judgement of online procedures on the resale price of luxury goods.

This may be a persistent problem for Bao Zheng, because it is leading to a predictable way to go public.

In 2016, Bao Zheng got 10 million yuan financing in the Pre-A round.

According to Gu Jin, the A round of financing has been completed in 2018, but it has not been disclosed.

And companies entering the capital market usually generate rapid expansion of demand under the pressure of investors.

It still takes time to test whether the quality of technology can be maintained in a larger scale.

The water is very deep. We have prepared some anti fraud and daily care tips for you.

1. some businesses will persuade customers to do nursing once a month, suggesting that they should not overcare, which will only shorten the service life of leather products and even cause depreciation.

Some businesses may sneak up in order to let you see the effect.

2. if businesses say they can make your bags look like new ones, don't believe them.

3. do not blindly believe the picture contrast effect. The picture can be PS. The effect of each package should be judged according to the specific circumstances.

4. try not to wrap the whole color, only modify the location of loss.

5. the "bag spa" project may also be tricky, sometimes coloured and sometimes waterproofing.

Waterproofing products are only effective for some products. Spray can last for ten and a half days.

But the crocodile skin should not be sprayed, easily tarnished or even decolorization.

6. if you don't use your bags every day, you may not care for a year.

7. lacquer bags, shoes, furniture, if there are scratches, you can wipe with the essence of essence.

8. suede bags and shoes, you can try to use eraser, or raw rubber wipe, you can find these gadgets online.