Can The Rental Of Shoes Become The Potential Business Potential Of The Next US $100 Million?

Nowadays, information about sneakers and sports shoes has penetrated into the life of "Y" generation and "Z" generation. Their sense of shoes has become the mark of this generation as well as "customary social software" and "E-sports". Even if they are not real Senakerhead or experienced street culture lovers, young people nowadays are more or less possessed of many pairs, and are eager to have more pairs of shoes. Sneakers have become the "business cards" of young people today. This also drives brands such as Gucci, Balenciaga, Prada and LouisVuitton to increase their investment in sneakers, add shoe products to the products of each season and invest more in promotional efforts. Add Nike and adidas and other traditional brands to create a limited number of shoes that are full of topics.

The shoes of fashion houses have a high price in the form of brand additional value, workmanship, material and many other factors. While the price of traditional sports shoes is still close to the people, there will be a shortage of supply. Under the confluence of these two forces, consumers are faced with the problem of "unable to afford" and "unable to buy" when buying shoes, sometimes even the two.

In order to solve or slow down the imbalance between supply and demand, it is probably time to explore the feasibility of this business model in addition to the marketing mode change of the brand itself and the standardized two level market.

　　 Business models worthy of reference

Instead of leasing, it is better to give it a more popular name: shared shoes. The popularity of shared bicycles has brought convenience to people's lives. The concept of sharing umbrellas and sharing charging treasure is also rising day by day. The shared luxury platform, which is leased by "sky" as a counting unit, has also sprung up rapidly in China. The app store that opens the mobile phone has been able to jump out of a large number of APP with "shared luxury" as its keyword.

The shared lease of luxury goods is extremely simple and easy to operate. It only requires registration (part App needs real name authentication), paying rent and deposit. Products on the platform are mostly eight or nine into new ones. The products of one platform are divided into two categories: heavy luxury and light luxury. The rental cost of heavy rental is 25-50 yuan / day, light luxury is 1-25 yuan / day, and seven days rent. Although the rental fee is cheaper, a higher deposit is required when placing the order. The deposit is determined according to the commodity value, for example, the deposit of light luxury goods is 1000-5000 yuan, and the extravagance is 6000-12000 yuan. Such a mode of operation, if all kinds of bags and watches and other luxury goods into shoes, on the whole is feasible.

The main consumer groups for leasing luxury goods can be roughly divided into two categories: first, there is a longing for luxury goods, and at this stage, the income can not match such longing; second, there is a longing for luxury goods. At this stage, income can support the purchase of certain luxuries, but at the same time, it hopes to use different styles of luxury goods at a lower price. But the base of these two customer groups is not large. For the first point of departure, rental luggage jewelry is a low-frequency event, and only when there is occasion for "vanity" will there be demand. The second starting point is daily. User habits use the platform as their own cloud wardrobe, but the number of users with this starting point is few.

And if the shared customer rental platform corresponds to the customer group, it is now called Sneakerhead and street trend enthusiasts. The first group of players who yearn for shoes but can't match their income, though not many, still have a large base of people who yearn for limited joint names and topic shoes. With regard to the second type of demand, most of the main players of consumption shoes have already been caught in the strange circle of "shoes are not in essence but in many". Consumers who are influenced by this concept can bring opportunities to the business mode of sharing shoes.

　　 Potential business opportunities

The importance of sneakers for the present and future consumers indicates that the market for shoes is far from being exploited. Even in terms of price and added value, it is incomparable to traditional luxury goods. However, the crazy pursuit of the next generation of people makes the market absolutely unacceptable. Looking back at the latest share list of the global sporting goods market released by Wedbush, the US brokerage firm, including the Jordan Brand, the two giants of Nike and Adidas account for about 56% share of the global market. The total sales volume of 607 has been recorded. The sales volume of the traditional fashion and luxury brands in the field of shoes has not been summed up in the entire list. If the statistics and calculations are comprehensively made, the market of a 100 billion dollar Jordan has already been formed. Limited sale shoes are few, and there are two levels of market barriers. Fashion shoes of fashion houses do not need to be snapped up. Consumers who crave sports shoes must find new ways to release their spending power.

As mentioned above, young consumers and potential consumers in the future are easy to be influenced by the marketing offensive and market creating atmosphere of merchants. As long as the joint name of NikeLab, as long as the 9 hole Air Jordan 1 of OG, as long as it is YEEZY Boost shoes, it must be possessed. If we regard the shared shoes as the online cloud shoe cabinet, we will wear the latest shoes at 50 to 100 every day without considering the deposit. We can not repeat them for a week, a month or even a season. This is really tempting for consumers who value the "vanity" that sneakers bring.

In addition to consumers, sharing shoes can also lead to many combinations of profit models. For example, consumers have used only a few times of limited and topic shoes, if there is no need for their own use, the only way to deal with it now is to sell again at the second-hand price. If there is a mature and reliable sharing platform, then they can rely on their credibility to recycle these sneakers. After cleaning and maintenance, customers can be rented to the customers through the platform. The real holders of the platform and sports shoes can only share the rent according to the proportion. In this mode, the cost of the platform is reduced, and consumers with "excess resources" can continue to make profits through their own shoes.

And sharing sneakers will also involve many problems, such as supply and cleaning, etc., which can interact with the derivatives industry around the gym shoes identification and shoes cleaning. Admittedly, there are endless business opportunities behind these derived business models, but at the same time, they need practical verification.

　　 Unknown risk

Luxury rental platform has a long history. The American luxury rental platform Rent theRunway provides high-end brand clothing, accessories, handbags and other rental services, covering 6 million members of the United States, and sales revenue in 2016 reached US $one hundred million. In the past few years, the trend towards fast food and fashion oriented street has opened a precedent for leasing shoes. LSWOP, a company that leases boutique shoes in the US, specializes in providing premium brand shoes such as Louis Vuitton, Saint Laurent and Rick Owens. In 2016, when the YEEZYBoost series was in the ascendant, they opened the YEEZY Boost 350 V2 shoe rental service. But at that time, it did not seem to cause too much market reaction, so we can see that the sharing of sports shoes will also face other problems that will be encountered in the shared economy. If we refer to the experience of luxury rental industry, it is easy to cause disputes in terms of damage identification and accountability. Besides, consumers may also encounter problems such as inadequate service, poor after-sale experience, arbitrary charges, product authenticity and so on. And sharing rental shoes may also encounter many problems.

　　 demand

In fact, like leasing luxury goods, the leasehold may be a "pseudo demand" and a "consumer demotion". Rental shoes are psychologically neglected in terms of purchase desire and possessive desire, as well as sanitation and cleanliness. At present, the domestic sports shoes culture is still in its infancy. When most consumers are looking for and establishing the correct values and consumption concept, the "enjoy" sports shoes can really survive and develop. But it is precisely because the domestic shoe culture has not yet become a climate, based on this attempt to open the sharing of shoes business, itself also has the nature of gambling. For those who have the need to hire sports shoes, it is difficult to word-of-mouth fermentation. Imagine that their own rental Nike Air Yeezy 2 will shine brilliantly on Party, but some people will take the initiative to share with their friends that this is what he rents. We must realize that this sense of superiority gained from sports shoes is the driving force of many people's consumption of sports shoes. Sharing the rental shoes makes this driving force disappear, so why do consumers want to ask for it?

　　 Source of supply

Assuming that the source is not a problem, enter the link. A rental platform is sure to enrich its shelves. If consumers find that the style of their shoes is not rich, or they do not have their own "hard goods", then transformation consumption will no longer exist. But rich shelves are a great cost, including logistics cost, maintenance costs, warehousing and depreciation costs. In fact, the major brands are unlikely to recognize and support or even boycott the leasing business. Therefore, the vast majority of sources are two sources: B direct mining and C terminal recovery. If the B end is not directly supported by the brand, then the richness of the category and quantity will not be mentioned. In the later stage, it should not be expected to scale and chain. Even if there is enough capital to sweep the goods, it means that the cost will be huge, and the return period will be very long, thus falling into the dilemma of "sharing a single car". The C end recovery from the consumer and two levels of the city to go this way, the operation is very difficult. For example, the most sensitive problem in the field of sports shoes is genuine and fake.

　　 Appraisal

Direct purchase from official channels, if you can get the support of the brand, then the true and false problems can be solved, but this is almost impossible. Then, from the two level market, the ability to reclaim sneakers has been tested. The field of identification of their own shoes is a sensitive point that can not be avoided. And a rare pair of shoes from the two tier market, which have gone through all kinds of hardships, are rented out. They are also facing the problem of counterfeit goods in the recovery stage. Customers do not want to wear a pair of sneakers with leased platforms to tell others that their shoes are rented. Predictably, if there is any dispute between the platform and the users, this link must be the most controversial.

　　 Wash and care

Compared with other products leasing, sneakers belong to close fitting products. This alone will scare away a number of interested consumers. The maintenance of products also involves hedging and subsequent sales, especially the shoes that are leased are mostly dominated by rare and expensive topic styles. The wear after repeated use is irreversible loss, so that the cost of maintenance will be superimposed after each use, but in the end, it will also be scrapped. The overall life cycle of a product may be shorter than that of other shared products. At present, the only solution is to carry out long-term professional cooperation with Jason Markk shoes cleaning and maintenance platform to reduce the cost of part of the washing.

　　 logistics

Even with the efficient and safe logistics service solution of Shun Feng express, the cost of logistics will not be reduced without sufficient volume. This part of the cost will be the same as the cost of care before, and will eventually be added to the consumer's head. From the perspective of value and user experience, self built logistics is the most feasible, but it does not reach a huge volume. Such a solution is also an Arabian tale. Besides, how to recycle the customer after the lease is finished, and it is also uncontrollable for the customer to send it back.

　　 Capital chain

Even though all of the above problems have been solved. The sharing of shoes leases is also a whole challenge, which is different from second-hand cars, second-hand houses and shared bicycles. Nowadays, the new iteration of sports shoes is too fast, and its popularity and outdated time lag are relatively short. Keep up with the fashion trend, the purchase of sneakers did not return during the lease period, but many new models will appear, and the probability of sharing old ones will quickly decline. Even if we follow the topic to buy goods, we must have a strong foresight. Because those shoes that are purchased but few people ask for, they will quickly become a backlog of stock. How to digest is a thorny problem. Without quick turnover and solution, backlog will become the last straw to break the capital chain.

Obviously, at present, the opportunity to open sharing shoes is at least existed. After all, the shoe market in the upper level is not only saturated but also growing. But it is obviously not enough to completely replicate the operation mode of shared luxury goods and other O2O sharing economies. Maybe when consumers need to upgrade their shoes one more time, and the capital will add another magnitude to the investment in the field of shoes, the pure sharing platform will emerge as the times require.