Difficult To Break Through The Sea LAN Preferred Imitation Muji Loss Nearly Billion

I do not know when to sell lifestyle has become a good business.

NetEase's strict selection, NOME and JNBY home have embarked on the road of Muji.

In the early autumn of 2017, the impact of the substandard products and the "plagiarizing door" on NetEase had not yet faded. NOME opened its first store in Guangzhou. Jingdong's "Beijing Construction" is still in the process of development. The imported ZARA HOME is still warm, and H&M HOME has closed all the mainland stores for nearly two years.

For a time, the track was surging.

"Imitator" Hai Lan optimization

Hai Lan's home, which has been aiming at the wardrobe of the Chinese people, has also turned his eyes to "better life". He has taken a tentative step at the draught.

However, since the birth, Hai Lan has been carrying the brand of "imitation Muji". For this reason, Hai Lan preferred not to avoid it. Even selling the "Muji" as a big selling point of the brand: selling products similar to Muji, but the price is only about 1/3 of Muji.

At present, most consumers are holding the mentality of "imitating him, not imitating, and using cheap and easy to use", which makes the optimization of sea level in the middle and low end consumer market seem to be at the right time.

At the beginning of the creation, Zhou Lichen, President of Hai Lan group, announced that "new products should be more than 100 new products per month and 20 stores by the end of 2018".

In the first half of 2018, Hai Lan preferred life hall soon opened to more than a dozen, not only to Beijing, Shanghai, Sichuan, Henan, Guangxi, Anhui, but also the "stronghold" Jiangsu, which even opened nine stores.

However, the selection of Hai Lan, which even opened many stores, seems to have caused little splash in the crowd. Quite a few people still do not know about Hai Lan's optimization.

In the first half of 2018, Hai Lan home's financial report contained very little about Hai Lan's optimization. Only in the section of "main subsidiaries and shareholding companies' business status", it was mentioned that Jiangyin Hai Lan optimization business Co., Ltd., wholly founded by Hai Lan's home, lost 9 million 607 thousand and 800 yuan in the first half of 2018.

What's the best choice for Hai Lan, who is only one and a half years old?

Hai Lan preferred "low price" dilemma

Billion euro home comes to the Longhu long Ying Tian Street shopping center outside the East Fifth Ring Road in Beijing, where the earliest Beijing Hai Lan life museum is hidden.

Longhu long Ying Street shopping center is a large business district in the east suburb of Beijing.

Although it is working day, there is no cool atmosphere in the shopping mall, the traffic is still relatively large, and some restaurants and drinks shops are queuing up.

The residents in the vicinity are mainly North white-collar and migrant workers, who are in line with the positioning of the low end market.

The store has an area of about 500 square meters, half of which sells daily clothing, and the other half sells home textiles, pajamas, kitchenware, tableware, stationery, aromatherapy, storage supplies, cosmetics, women's accessories and other groceries.

The types and styles of daily dress are various, and the main materials are cotton and flax, and the style is simple. The price is mostly within 200 yuan.

Underwear and socks are also sold in packaged form, priced at 99 yuan, 3 yuan, 30 yuan and 3 pairs.

The style of home textiles is fresh and natural, but there are not many choices. The main products matrix is made up of three kinds of products: washed cotton, Tianzhu cotton and long staple cotton.

The price of the four piece set on the main cotton bed is 398 yuan, which is more competitive than the MUJI MUJI Tmall flagship store's 920 yuan Tianzhu cotton four piece (Muji does not provide four pieces of bed, and the product is added to the price of the single product).

The price of other products is also true.

The U pillow, priced at 160 yuan for Muji, can only be purchased at sea level by 68 yuan, while the 1200 yuan lazy sofa, Hai Lan, has selected a price of 498 yuan.

In addition, the wooden tableware, porcelain toothbrush holder, porcelain seal, and other Muji star products, consumers can choose a "high imitation" at less than half of the price.

At first glance, Hai Lan's competitive price tag is very competitive.

But what is the actual flow of people and the purchase situation? The selection of the life hall of Hai Lan was investigated in the half hour from 18:10 to 18:40 Tuesday.

A total of 26 people entered the store in half an hour, resulting in eight single pactions.

The customers who enter the shop and purchase are mainly women, and the products are mainly tableware, hangers, dolls and accessories. The price of the eight customers is about 54 yuan (the arithmetic mean of removing a maximum and a minimum).

Most of the female customers stay in front of the shelves of clothing, aromatherapy, hair ornaments and tableware, and most of them will browse the whole store. Three young men and women who enter the shop alone mainly browse men's wear and men's underwear, and only glance at other products in the end.

It can be seen that Hai Lan preferred to play the "low price card", the effect is not very ideal.

The evaluation of Hai Lan's preferred stores in public comment is mostly Tucao.

In the evaluation, the "quality general" appeared most frequently, followed by "high price" and "low price performance"; on the brand style, consumers agreed that Hai Lan preferred to imitate MUJI products; in addition, many consumers said "never knew before" and "not many people in the shop".

Hai Lan preferred to have a small profit but quick turnover route, but its traffic and turnover were not as good as that of NOME, which is the new brand and the main low price and Nordic wind. It is roughly the same level as the ZARA HOME with a slightly higher positioning and a more refined style.

This result seems unsatisfactory, but Hai Lan optimization is a dangerous signal.

In the ZARA HOME of Chaoyang Joy City, 49 million people entered the ZARA HOME at 18:40 p.m. to 19:10 p.m. on Monday afternoon. The number of passengers at the same time in Hai Lan's preferred working day was nearly doubled. During that time, a total of six tickets were sold, slightly less than Hai Lan optimization, but the six customers had a unit price of about 200 yuan (removing a maximum and a minimum arithmetic mean).

ZARA HOME is obviously better at absorbing gold from consumers' wallet than 54 yuan per passenger price.

Compared with the same level players, Hai Lan optimization is still weak, and it still has a long way to go for the target Muji (thematic reading).

According to the report of Chinese entrepreneur at the end of 2018, the price of IKEA's guest was about 140 yuan, and the price of Muji was 300 yuan.

No "multi sales" can be achieved, leaving only "small profits". Hai Lan's best choice is to survive. I'm afraid it can only rely on the big tree of Hai Lan group.

How hard is it to break through?

Hai Lan group went out of the wardrobe and aimed at the consumer's home. But in the past year and a half, it failed to turn the consumer's home into its home. Consumers did not seem to have chosen the "home" provided by Hai Lan group.

We may have a glimpse of the causes from three aspects.

First, too slow - the new frequency is low, the quantity is few, the product matrix expands slowly.

Although the logo is printed, the new frequency and quantity of Hai Lan's selection are far lower than that of the former, not to mention the ZARA HOME, which is fast fashion and product upgrading.

In the 11 days from March 9, 2019 to March 19th, Hai Lan preferred Tmall flagship store to two large scale new products, 26 new products and 11 new products. MUJI MUJI Tmall flagship store has three large scale new products, 53 new products, 44 pieces and 15 pieces, and ZARA HOME Tmall flagship store will update more than 10 items every day. Within 11 days, the number of goods updated by 5 days is close to or more than that.

Within 11 days, Hai Lan has selected a total of 41 new products. According to this rate, Zhou Lichen, President of Hai Lan group, has set the target of "over 100 new products in one month".

But this is too slow for Hai Lan optimization. Muji finished the goal of Hai Lan's selection for one month in 11 days, and ZARA HOME could be completed in about 3 days.

Online sales have an important logic: increasing the frequency of the appearance of goods and frequently washing the face in front of consumers is an important way to increase consumers' desire to buy.

Nowadays, the purchasing behavior of consumers has changed from "consumers want a commodity - Search buy" to "platform to show consumers a lot of goods - consumers choose a commodity to buy" change, and the new low frequency Hai Lan optimization will inevitably miss many opportunities to "brush face" on the platform.

Two, too chaotic: some commodities are unreasonable in pricing and chaotic in style.

The main cost performance of Hai Lan optimization is that the pricing of some products is quite unreasonable, leaving some consumers with a negative impression of low price and high price.

For example, the "exploding" make-up mirror of the left picture can be bought at 9.8 yuan for Taobao's "very home". The similar section of NOME ("wheat straw table mirror") sells for 15 yuan, while Hai Lan has selected a high price of 38 yuan.

In the cartoon notebook on the right hand, Hai Lan chooses a price of 20 yuan, while Taobao uses the keyword "cartoon notebook thick" to search, and the similar product is priced at 19.8 yuan and 4 copies.

Not only that, the unprinted grocer's grocery store is a "chaotic" cartoon notebook, which exposes another problem of the preferred living room of the Hai Lan: the style is messy and the positioning is not clear.

When consumers enter the store, they will first feel the similarity between Hai Lan optimization and Muji in decorating and home textiles, tableware products. Hai Lan's preferred home textile products are lighter and brighter than Muji, but they can also blend into the environment.

But with more browsing, consumers will soon feel the split of styles.

Hai Lan's preferred dress is like the local UNIQLO and GAP. Colorful aromatherapy and glass ornaments try to convey a fashionable and refined attitude towards life. Apart from the pure color notebooks placed at the bottom of the shelf, the rest of the pens, notebooks, and paper tape are walking in the fresh cartoon route.

The enamel pots only have big red and blue blue color. They are full of shelves. They look very lively. The shelves that turn over the enamel pan are Kitchenware and chopsticks made of wood.

Perhaps due to the confusion of style, Hai Lan optimization has not yet become a grocery brand with a distinct theme of life.

For its audience, Hai Lan's choice is very clear: three or four line urban residents and people who come to the first tier cities but can only live in the outer ring.

But what kind of lifestyle does Hai Lan choose to sell to them? From the survey of offline stores, we can not generalize. Maybe even Hai Lan can not give the right answer.

Three, too common -- lack of core competitiveness and strong substitution.

Hai Lan's criticism of product optimization has been exposed in the above public comment and evaluation: the quality is not good, the price is not competitive, and there are too few design elements to imitate and draw lessons from.

Inheriting the consistent mode of Hai Lan's home, Hai Lan chooses to go on the one hand with the supplier to jointly develop and outsource the production part. On the one hand, it implements direct management of franchised stores and does not bear the pressure of inventory in franchisees.

At the beginning of the selection of Hai Lan, Hai Lan group said frankly: the mode of production outsourcing and direct management will become one of the advantages of Hai Lan's best choice. Moreover, "the manufacturers that make trousers for us will not make us home clothes". The channels of products such as groceries and home textiles are quite different from the existing clothing channels. But the endorsement of Hai Lan group is seeking to find suppliers for Hai Lan to clear up many obstacles.

But now it seems that the past experience and success of Hai Lan group has become the shackle of Hai Lan's optimization.

On the one hand, foundry production relies on cheap labor, raw materials and technology to lower costs, and the quality of products varies. On the other hand, Hai Lan chooses to go the old way of low price, but ignores the sense of design.

Zhou Lichen, President of Hai Lan group, said in a speech: "(Hai Lan optimization) is working with many Japanese designers and Swedish and Nordic designers, because in the field of lifestyle, the world's most famous designers are all in Japan and Northern Europe.

We either do not cooperate or find the best partners. "

But ironically, Hai Lan optimization is still a replica of Muji. Stores in addition to MUJI products are full of identical market goods and high staple goods. It is hard for consumers to tell the difference between them and Taobao's explosions.

Hainang optimization has not yet been implemented to reduce the price to a level of NOME, but also to compare with Taobao. The best choice for Haji LAN is to achieve low price. However, in this field, NetEase has been strictly selected before, and relying on low prices is not a sustainable development path.

"Intercourse with interest, while profit ends."

It is not easy to attract consumers at low prices. Once consumers find a lower price, they will quickly turn to other brands.

Consumers think products are too expensive. The key is not that they are too expensive, but that they do not provide consumers with the special value of "even more expensive but willing to buy".

The missing part of this "special value" may point to quality and design.

Hai Lan optimization is the time to stop and ask ourselves what is our core competitiveness.

The concept of "Muji", which is priced at 1/3, looks good.

But if we turn our attention from Hai Lan to the concept itself, it is easy to find the paradox: those who like Muji will not be able to afford to buy Muji; people from the three or four tier cities and those with lower level of consumption may not like MUJI products.

This makes the position of "Hai Lun preferred position" to locate "Muji" instead of embarrassment.

By contrast, the aesthetics offered by NOME may be much more universal.