From The 7 Garment Factory To 7 Billion 700 Million Now, Only Because It Has Done 3 Things Right.

Guide reading

From seven or eight simple garment factories to tens of millions of scale today, from self created brand to brand diversification, from the busy market to the digital campaign, Taiping bird has drawn a beautiful growth curve in the development process of 24 years.

What is the secret of making every step of its pace?

In 1984, Zhang Jiangping, a "town youth", went to town to study tailoring. He entered the garment industry with love and courage. He founded the Taiping bird brand in 1995 and finally achieved today's Taiping bird.

According to the latest financial results in 2018, Taiping bird achieved 7 billion 700 million yuan in operating income, 570 million yuan in net profit and 11 billion 200 million yuan in total channel retail sales. Its revenue, net profit and retail sales were the best results since its establishment, leading the upstream of China's fashion apparel industry.

In the 24 years of development and change, we can see the way of growth of Taiping birds: constantly innovating and changing, maintaining a sense of crisis, and understanding how to develop by leveraging.

Without innovation, it will be eliminated.

Whether an individual or an enterprise, if we only observe the results we have already achieved, there will be no future. Ultimately, we will not escape the fate of aging and being eliminated.

Therefore, "we can not stop footsteps, innovate and change constantly, and create a new future". Zhang Jiangping firmly believes in the magic power of innovation and change.

So when people saw that they were no longer looking for tailors to make clothes and went to the clothing market to buy clothes, the tailor Zhang Jiangping knew that the scissors in his hands should be put down.

He became a businessman and began to set up booths in the clothing market and rented counters at department stores.

Soon, he felt that other factories were not able to get the goods, so why not start their own business?

In 1989, Zhang Jiangping found seven or eight people, bought four or five sewing machines, started a garment factory, made processing and foreign trade.

"At that time, there were many orders at home and abroad.

He said.

Zhang Jiangping seems to have found a promising way.

At this time, two phenomena stimulated him.

"I see many clothing brands coming out of the neighborhood. They are doing very well.

I don't have a brand, just do the processing, and then toss it in the Ningbo area, and can't get into the bigger market. "

Zhang Jiangping recalls.

So he sprouted the idea of building a brand.

From one to seven

In 1995, Zhang Jiangping registered the "Taiping bird" brand, and the history of Taiping bird clothing was opened.

At that time, the clothing brands of the city, such as YOUNGOR, Shanshan and Luo Meng, were already famous. They did business dress, and the competition of several millions of Pacific birds with them was almost zero.

So Zhang Jiangping avoided the edge and took the route of differentiation, positioning the Taiping bird in casual men's clothing, and making a good start for the brand.

By 2001, the number of Pacific bird's men's stores was close to 200, and established a certain brand influence.

Two years after the establishment of Taiping bird, Zhang Jiangping found that there was not a brand of women's clothing in Ningbo. Why not use the brand influence of Taiping bird menswear to increase a product line and cut into the women's clothing market.

So Zhang Jiangping carried out the brand extension and launched the Taiping bird dress.

"Even today, Taiping bird's clothing is still a unique brand in the local women's clothing brand and has a place in the domestic market."

Zhang Jiangping said proudly.

In order to make the brand of women's clothing quickly, Zhang Jiangping also creatively managed women's clothing in the mode of team participation.

"A few young people do not invest a lot of money, but the enthusiasm of the team is quite different.

In a very short time, they brought the women's clothes up.

Today, he still appreciates the vitality and dynamism of his team.

By 2008, the number of stores in the two brands of Taiping bird had increased to 1000, and the retail sales reached 1 billion yuan.

However, Zhang Jiangping felt the increasingly fierce competition in the business casual men's wear market, and the development space was saturated.

"We have to brake and change the track."

Zhang Jiangping is decisive.

He has repositioned Taiping bird menswear and women's clothing to the fashion trend brand of 20~30 year old young people as the target group, and has injected new vitality into the two brands.

Since then, Zhang Jiangping has vigorously promoted brand diversification.

In 2008, it opened up a new brand of women's clothing, "Yue Ting", focusing on the sweet, modern and vital young girl of 18~25 years old.

In 2011, it descended to the field of children's wear, and founded the children's clothing brand Mini Peace, aiming at a second tier city.

In 2013, Madonna, the popular American girl Material Girl, was introduced to her daughter by the fashion godmother, the 20~28 year old COOL girl.

In 2018, the French style Baini children's clothing was introduced, and the Taiping bird nest home brand was created to build a lifestyle brand suitable for young customers and family customers.

"We implement gradient brand development strategy. Different brands aim at different segments of the market, complement each other in target consumer groups, brand positioning, product design, etc., to meet the diverse needs of increasingly subdivided consumer groups."

Zhang Jiangping explained.

At present, Taiping bird menswear and Taiping bird dress are still the core brands of Taiping bird, contributing about 70% of the revenue.

The emerging brand Lok ting and Mini Peace are in the development stage, and the sales scale is growing rapidly.

Breeding brand Material Girl, Betty sweet and Taiping bird nest are positioning the market with great potential.

Go online

In addition to brand pformation, in 2008, Zhang Jiangping also made a historic move to shop in Taobao mall.

"When we first started our business, we didn't even think that the online change would be so large that it could bring us billions of sales.

But one thing I believe is that so many sales on line are not made by data. It is a deal. "

Zhang Jiangping said.

Before 2008, Taobao, which positioned C2C trading, was still a self-employed and Amoy brand.

Zhang Jiangping saw that some of his costumes were walking along the line, and he also had a lot of sales, but few of them made brands.

He wonders if the brand like Taiping bird can digest some inventory with this channel.

Under the traditional order system, inventory is a common problem in the clothing industry.

If the line can handle some inventory, "it is also good for our confidence".

As a traditional brand, Taiping bird has no electricity supplier gene, nor does it have electricity supplier.

Now decided to do electricity supplier, no one how to do? Zhang Jiangping came to a crisp, "we from the outside to a more than 30 small business companies dug the whole."

"We look at the electricity supplier as a selling stock. In fact, the bigger idea is that we should try some new areas and challenge some new ways of playing."

Zhang Jiangping added.

By the end of 2018, Taiping bird's brand online revenue reached 1 billion 997 million yuan, accounting for 26.29% of the company's total revenue.

Introducing TOC management

As mentioned above, inventory is a common problem in the traditional clothing industry. Even today, this problem is still widespread.

"Why do we generate so many stocks? Because the products are ready for half a year in advance, and then wholesale to distributors. Products are not actually sold out, they are all stuck in channels.

So, we need to figure out where the problem is and where is the bottleneck? "Zhang Jiangping questioned.

In 2017, Taiping bird introduced TOC management mode to start the supply chain pformation.

The so-called TOC management mode, in simple terms, is to formulate production plans according to the sales situation, integrate company data analysis, production fast response, warehousing and logistics, and terminal retail capacity, so as to achieve the best sales and deep sales and inventory optimization.

TOC management mode was first tested in Taiping bird menswear and then extended to the whole brand in 2018.

At present, the supply chain rapid response project has achieved some results.

In the past, the fastest way to catch up was 40 days, and now basically 14 days.

In the summer of 2018, the sale rate of goods increased by 6%.

In 2018, when the operating income increased by 7.8%, the stock growth momentum of the company was effectively controlled, and the original value of merchandise inventory decreased by 110 million yuan compared with the beginning of the year, a decrease of 4.8%.

By the end of 2018, except for Bei sweet and Taiping bird nest, all brand stores and 45% franchised stores had been able to catch up single cover, and the proportion of chasing the list was 18%.

Pacific bird's men's 2018 summer wear is purchased by chasing the list, and the retail sales increased by 34% during the quarter.

The sense of crisis has brought the Taiping bird to the present.

Zhang Jiangping's sense of crisis stems from the "darkest moment" that he experienced shortly after the creation of the brand.

The establishment of a brand in 1995 is a "very big step" for Zhang Jiangping, because "creating brand is not easy and has a lot of risks. At the same time, there are many companies that we create together with brands, but we can't find them now."

Creating their own brand means that the product has to be completed by itself, from design, production to sales, which not only greatly increases the risk of operation and management, but also requires a large amount of capital investment.

"At that time, relying on the previous processing and foreign trade, accumulated a few million of the original capital, but it is far from enough to run a brand and operate well."

Zhang Jiangping said.

Therefore, like most private enterprises at that time, Taiping bird has also made a lot of money to the financial institutions, which is basically a liability operation.

If there are no major changes in the economic environment and business operations are arranged step by step, it will be no harm to rely on bank loans for turnover management.

In 1998, the Asian financial crisis broke out, and financial institutions began to lend money.

"That period is very painful. It can be said to be the darkest and most painful period in my life."

Zhang Jiangping still has a lingering fear.

In order to survive, Zhang Jiangping worked during the day and visited the credit officer of the financial institution in the evening to find ways to keep the money.

"At that time, Taiping bird had two thousand or three thousand people and opened hundreds of stores throughout the country.

If I don't do it, it will affect many people's lives. I can't bear it. "

Zhang Jiangping mortgaged all the assets of his family, borrowed money from his friends, even sold the factory buildings and equipment, and outsourced production.

Then, he invested the limited liquidity in the research and development of products and channels, and opened up the market with the help of the capital of franchisees.

In this way, the Pacific bird survived.

Although this experience is not worth looking back, Zhang Jiangping is also a blessing in disguise.

Because forced to sell heavy assets, Taiping bird had to adopt a light asset model, which in turn increased its operating efficiency and made business activities more focused.

At the same time, through this matter, Zhang Jiangping realized the importance of cash flow painfully, and could not operate on debt. He must maintain healthy cash flow so as to avoid risks.

It is also because of this lesson that when the financial crisis broke out again in 2008, Taiping bird did not suffer too much impact because of its ample cash flow. Instead, it seized the opportunity to change the brand and pformed it into a younger one.

"The two financial crisis has different meanings for our company.

One is to fight for survival, one is to live better.

Zhang Jiangping concluded.

Near 2018, Zhang Jiangping still did not forget the "scars" and wondered if there would be another financial crisis.

"The result is not coming, but in fact, we are ready.

We went public in 2017 and are confident that we will get through the new financial crisis.

Zhang Jiangping is full of confidence.

We must learn to borrow power.

No commercial body can survive independently. It can not be separated from suppliers, consumers, and channel partners, producers and other partners.

Especially in the Internet era today, the form of cooperation is even more diverse.

Cross boundary marketing

As early as 2011, Pacific bird men tried to cross border cooperation with SWAROVSKI.

Without thinking, it was impossible to get rid of it. After that, cross-border alliance became the highlight of Taiping bird.

For example, Taiping bird dress and Pepsi, Phoenix Bicycle, Godzilla, hi tea, Taiping bird menswear and Coca-Cola, Playboy, Sesame Street, Lok ting and pink leopard, MTSS, Mini Peace and Disney, NASA, Material Girl and UMBRO, flying girl and other joint series, in the year light consumer crowd set off a wave of fans craze.

"Actually, we don't choose cooperative brands according to whether they are non clothes or not, but whether they are interested in whether they are interested in young people or not."

Zhang Jiangping explained.

Embrace the electricity supplier

In addition to cooperating with many brands that do not have borders with clothing, Taiping's cooperation with Alibaba is the best way to borrow power.

The cooperation between the two sides has been going on for 10 years and has developed into a strategic partnership.

Ali brings Taiping bird not only an electricity supplier channel, a strong engine for future sales growth, but also a deep empowerment to promote its commercial upgrading.

If Taiping bird originally made an electronic business, it regarded the online as a supplement to offline sales, mainly by discounted inventory. After 10 years, the electricity supplier has become one of the core of the "two wheel drive" under the line of Taiping bird line.

In 2008, Taiping bird made an electric shock for the first time. Its annual sales volume was about 7000000 yuan.

In 2018, sales of Taiping bird reached 3 billion 600 million yuan, 500 times more than 10 years ago, accounting for 32% of the company's total sales.

In 2009, Tmall held a double 11 for the first time. The Pacific bird participated in the test water mentality and gained 520 thousand yuan.

In 2018, double 11, Taiping bird brand traded 818 million yuan, maintained 10 consecutive years of growth.

Recalling the double 11 in 2009, Zhang Jiangping is still very excited: "we made 520 thousand a day, too happy, unable to sleep at night, happier than the 11 double 8 now."

Now, for Taiping bird, the electricity supplier is not only a sales channel, but also has the function of integrating online and offline, enabling the whole network to be full channel marketing through digitalization.

"Taiping bird and Coca-Cola, Sesame Street, Phoenix and Disney are all online starters," said Weng Jianghong, general manager of Taiping bird electric business. "It is earlier than offline, because the online first episode can generate clustering and can immediately find consumer demand.

For example, Coca-Cola's joint name was not optimistic at the beginning. We felt that it could not have a very high sales volume.

Let's hurry up and reverse, and let the line be laid out quickly.

The same is true of Sesame Street joint name. Originally we only had a black one. After the online start, we immediately chased the bill and added a white one.

These are feedback from online data after the start. "

Introducing new retail

In September 2017, less than 1 years after the new retail concept was put forward, Taiping and Ali signed a new retail strategy cooperation to become the first sign brand.

How dare the Taiping birds dare to eat crab first when they do not understand what new retail is?

Zhang Jiangping's response is very sentimental: "I have been working with ALI and have been heading in the right direction. We want to explore together."

In fact, as a business developing in the same business environment, Taiping and Ali both smell the future of data and new retail.

In the view of Taiping bird, Ali, as the main engine of consumption upgrading and new retail main force, can provide new retail solutions for the company, achieve online and offline access, improve the efficiency of store operation, and member wide operation.

In the eyes of Ali, as a domestic fashion apparel retail giant, Taiping bird aims at the new generation of consumers. It is more determined to use data to upgrade the brand. It can provide new retail solutions, such as practice, diagnosis and data feedback, and become a benchmark for new retail sales.

Double 11 in 2017, less than 2 months after the two sides reached a new retail cooperation, Taiping bird expanded its brand line to participate in the double 11 store, through goods and payment to get through, to support store scan code purchase, store self mention, but also for the first time to enable Ali store Xiaomi intelligent robot customer service, completed about 50% of the Advisory reception.

Big data empowerment

In Zhang Jiangping's view, the driving force of digitalization on brands is getting stronger and stronger.

He explained the role of data: "using big data, we can more accurately and quickly find opportunities for consumers, and then give the best recommendations through data integration analysis, in the development of style, product packaging, content marketing to better integrate the needs of consumers."

Simply speaking, data can make invisible consumers become visible and tangible.

In January 10th, Taiping bird announced its 2019 strategy, focus on fashion, data driven, and whole network retail.

Among them, data driven is to use intelligent algorithm to drive business decisions.

Taiping bird will realize the digital infrastructure in some blank areas of enterprise operation, and continue to digitize the data in order to achieve intelligent decision in the field of digitalization.

It includes the following campaigns:

Terminal digitization to achieve POS upgrade and WiFi layout;

The digitalization of channels, the use of passenger groups around the channel and the density of human settlements to realize the digitalization of shop opening channels;

Commodities realize RFID chip layout and receive consumers' information in an all-round way;

Supply chain digitalization to realize the intellectualization of production terminals;

Logistics digitalization, to achieve digital docking of stores and logistics base.

Zhang Jiangping said that data not only came from the Internet, but in fact, the data under the line are even more complex.

Taiping bird will collect data from a larger scope, including both its own operational data and the data of external platforms such as Ali.

"Now, with Ali's massive data empowerment, consumers are more active and more stickiness with us, and believe in the power of Taiping brand and company."

He said.

Layout overseas

Taiping bird has been thinking abroad for a long time.

Over the years, Taiping bird invited famous international models to take part in the brand image, and joined international famous brands and designers, and tried to sign international brand management rights.

But to say that Taiping bird brand is really out of the country, it is still in cooperation with ALI.

In 2017, Taiping began to take part in Tmall's "sea going plan", and sold products to overseas markets such as Southeast Asia directly with the help of Tmall and other overseas sales platforms such as Lazada.

In addition to selling products directly to overseas consumers, Taiping bird joined hands with ALI on the global stage to expand its brand influence, enhance its brand image and express Chinese brand confidence.

During the double 11 period in 2017, the Pacific bird tested the water to sea. Based on Ali's data and technical support, it debuted overseas in the form of flash shop.

In February 2018, Taiping bird took its Pacific bird suit and Taiping bird dress to participate in the "fashion New York Sunday cat China day" event to complete the first fashion show in the international fashion week.

"We shot the Taiping bird to a new height this time.

After this time, we already have a set of routines and teams, and we will go out in the future.

Zhang Jiangping is very satisfied with the first international show.

2 months later, the general manager of Taiping bird electricity supplier Weng Jiang Hong attended the "Ali night" held by Ali in Australia.

In the meantime, he said that Taiping bird will unite Ali Tmall, aiming at the 80 million global Chinese market.

"Southeast Asia and Australia and New Zealand are basically against us. Therefore, after the products in the domestic market are changed, they can be put on overseas platforms and then sold.

This means that our products are out of season, and the selling cycle is extended.

Moreover, targeting overseas Chinese market does not require us to specialize in developing products because they are of the same size as ours.

Weng Jianghong disclosed.

In February 2019, Taiping bird went to New York fashion week again. Its men's wear was released in the name of "YOUTH MADE CHINA". The show invited the cutting-edge artists Trouble Andrew and Reilly to work together to explain the classic Sesame Street elements, and the new series was produced by the Chinese new generation "Taiping Youth" and the global fashion designers.

Zhang Jiangping thought he was very lucky because he had chosen a very good industry and had a very good time.

He dreamed of the bigger digital performance in the future, and "it's all right, because China has such a large market and urgent overseas markets, and Ali and other platforms have created such a good marketing channel."

Of course, he has his own way of doing business, and that's the way to win the future.

Author: Chen Fuming