Every Guest Is Defeated, Starting From A Single Shirt That Can Not Be Found.

At the end of 2010, a forum in Beijing suburb was sitting next to Liu Qiangdong, who claimed to rush for 10 billion yuan in 2011, and just got 1 billion 500 million dollars.

At that time, all customers were in the limelight. By the end of 2007, sales were 100 million in 2008, 500 million in 2009, and 2 billion in 2010, up 300% over the same period last year. After ranking only in Jingdong, Amazon and Dangdang, they reached fourth in the electricity supplier industry.

The original mode of van guest is very simple. The target is a PPG. Clothing net The Direct Selling Company has just cut the domestic clothing market fragmented at that time.

Most of the offline channels can only create areas. brand And the development of electric business is likely to give birth to super brand cluster enterprises. The birth of all customers is catering to this opportunity.

It can be said that those who came later were 29 yuan T-shirt, 49 yuan fan. Cloth shoes Polo shirt and so on, with high quality and low price quickly captured the hearts of the masses, coupled with full court mail, 24 hours customer service, 30 days return service, quickly created a good reputation.

In 2010, "all objects" set off a nationwide carnival on the Internet. Internet outlets, search engines and other online channels, everywhere advertising is everywhere. It wants to use the relatively cheap Internet to offset the cost of offline media, and get young artists who are slowly migrating to the Internet.

By July 2011, van customer has completed seven rounds of financing, with the highest valuation reaching US $3 billion 200 million.

But starting from the goal of 10 billion yuan, everyone began to get lost and walked down the altar.

stay Popular After being detonated, it is the first step for everyone to go wrong.

There are two ways to reach 10 billion goals: first, to expand the buying crowd; the two is to expand product categories. Huge advertising and hundreds of T-shirts have shown the "efforts" of expanding customers, but we need to make quick results. The second way is not to be missed.

In order to impact sales, customers choose to expand the category. In addition to shirts, T-shirts and other proprietary products, the introduction of third party products, and even sold completely masked with clothing, kitchen knives, tweezers, rice cookers...... Van SKU's once increased to 200 thousand, and the channel expanded to more than 500.

In fact, increasing the category does not necessarily go nowhere. Jingdong is also gradually expanding from 3C to books, department stores and other categories. It is not easy for customers to fight too fast, but rapidly expanding products do not provide sufficient time for product polishing, quality control and production line selection.

On the one hand, the craziness of "OEM selling" has turned everyone into a grocery store, the quality of clothes is getting poorer and the customers are getting away. On the other hand, the rapid expansion of the category not only did not bring the expected sales growth, but formed a huge inventory backlog.

In June 2010, the total inventory was 198 million yuan. By the end of 2011, the situation of customers was bad enough to have more than 1 billion 400 million yuan of stock, which was stacked in 38 warehouses throughout the country. In front of it, there was a year-end report of a total loss of nearly 600 million yuan, and the sales target of 10 billion yuan was only 1/3.

The overstocking of van customer's inventory was as high as 2 billion yuan at that time. At that time, there was still such a bridge. It said that a whole office building had been emptied in the past, and it was devoted exclusively to storing the company's backlog of clothing inventory.

And when he wanted to find a shirt that could be taken out of these piles of clothes, he couldn't find a satisfactory product after several turns.

In fact, behind the crazily expanding category, apart from the decline in product quality and huge inventory backlog, there is also an expansion of the size of the internal staff.

At that time, the "500 day employees" were not just a legend. When the customers are most busy, there are more than 13000 employees, and only 30 executives at the CEO level.

However, the strategic goal of 10 billion yuan and a steady stream of new comers bring not only the confusion of managers, but also the frustration caused by unreasonable assessment standards.

Employees began to be overstaffed and aged very annoyed, so there was a decision of 5% quick layoffs for each department. Then there was an article entitled "three questions about old age".

Ignoring products and indulging in marketing are the second steps for customers to go wrong.

After experiencing large-scale expansion, there are many worries. In the past, but still did not spend energy on products, but busy advertising the brand, build a large platform and find investors financing.

Most of the executives of van customers came from excellent network or other Internet Co, and were better at Internet operation. Therefore, all customers lack sufficient control over the whole process of clothing production.

Fan's foundry is located in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta, which is heavily concentrated in the garment manufacturing industry. There are also places like Chongqing and Vietnam. But in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta, there are no specialized procurement departments. Most of the purchasing and production personnel are stationed in Beijing.

People who are not familiar with the production themselves do not attach enough importance to quality inspection. As a result, the quality problems of all customers began to erupt frequently, and the clothes shrink, deform, fade, and the upper and the upper part of the shoes are separated and even broken.

Besides quality, there are design problems. Except for canvas shoes. Forming The design team, customers and other categories of clothing, basically rely on buyers to purchase samples.

It was not until June 2013 that all customers set up their own version of the house. Previously, such key links as layout design had been rushed to the foundries hastily.

Even with its own "professional version of the housing", the 300 versions produced by customers are still being criticized. Due to the lack of design capabilities, customers are not even as good as the "brand names" that are also made up of clothing, electricity suppliers, and Korean clothing homes.

All customers want to study UNIQLO, but they only learn the fur by relying on basic funds. UNIQLO, though relatively small in style, has strong strength in fabric technology research and development, and a series of high-tech clothing has been highly sought after.

Customers chose the same thing as UNIQLO. Material Science The Dongli cooperation company has been criticized for its cooperative development. When the photos of old man dressed in assault clothes and torrential rain were sent to micro-blog, there was a suspicion. Is the core of the assault suit rain proof?

In the brand sales and platform sales mode wobble, is the wrong third step.

In fact, after having an index of 10 billion yuan, there seems to be no clear plan for all customers from top to bottom.

Since 2011, all customers have launched the "platform win win" plan. The plan is divided into three parts: all customers are fully connected with the major e-business platforms; the V+ platform will further profit and cooperate with the brand partners; in 2011, the CPS advertising of the website of the local customers website is expected to give 100 million yuan to the major website alliances.

The leakage of houses is a rainy night. The rise of the comprehensive electricity supplier is a blow to everyone.

Double eleven Taobao, Tmall's amount of trading volume, indicating that Internet traffic and resources are accelerating to the platform business gathering, coupled with Jingdong mall and suning.com and so on, a share of the market, leaving the vertical electricity supplier space is getting smaller and smaller.

Traditional brands have begun to occupy the network channel, which will undoubtedly engulf further the market space of vertical electric providers with the network as the sole sales channel.

The V+ mall is a third party platform, operating from 3C products. extravagant Products, such as different types of goods, the mall was founded in May 18, 2010, it is the most crazy development of customers, the commitment of high-end customers. fashion The long cherished wish of the platform.

But everyone in the development of brands, channels, platforms between hesitant, multiple extrusion, the V+ platform did not give customers a bonus.

With its first-class business management capability and even 0 of its inventory, UNIQLO, with its SPA private brand professional retailer business model, launched a steady and timely strategic cooperation with Jingdong and Tmall, and seized the brand edge.

In contrast, the cooperation between customers and Tmall and Jingdong is hesitant. They are swaying between themselves and cooperation, unable to seize the bonus period brought by the business tycoons, so that their capital advantages and publicity advantages have been dried up by the independent e-commerce platform.

Worse than the industrial environment, the collapse of capital is more of a collapse. In the days when everyone was in the ascendant, China's group buying began to rise, and after the "thousand regiment war", the group buying website went bankrupt. Because of capital shaking and capital breaking up, Wall Street is undoubtedly a fatal blow to customers.

The client's plan to submit the application documents in the United States has been stranded by the industry for many years, which has made the plan worse.

As time goes by, the head effect of Taobao and Jingdong has been formed. The golden age of China's B2C business development has been missed by everyone. In 2014, it was sold as "wind up" and V+ sold in 2016.

From PPG to van guest, someone has been wondering: will the customers who walk on the PPG road repeat the mistakes of their predecessors?

History seems to show a striking similarity.

Although a little bit of news and action from time to time, but the shock left to people is only "the original guest is still alive", it is difficult to cause the waves of the consumer heart, eventually become "ordinary passer".

Business mode observation

Chen once told a data that when the customers were the most busy, there were more than 13000 people in the company. Later, it reduced to less than 300 people, and the business was still running smoothly. Old age is puzzled. What are so many people doing in the company?

There are two answers to this question.

The first is that all customers finally began to focus, reducing the number of 20 tens of thousands of SKU to a dozen SKU.

More importantly, customers have changed from an e-commerce platform brand to a product brand.

This is also a point that the customers are entangled in the past. Is the word "fan" two characters, is it a product brand or a platform brand? The essence of this question is whether the Internet business is a technology, a kind of thinking or an independent industry.

In 2019, we will not have any entanglement in answering this question. The Internet is, of course, a technology and a way of thinking. It is the foundation of the new business ecosystem. But ten years ago, it is obvious that the answer is wrong. Everyone is a product, not a platform. Therefore, no matter how to increase product category, it is still a big platform like cats and Jingdong.

Instead, we concentrate on doing a white shirt. It seems that we have seen a bit of the original look.

Of course, it is impossible for us to go back to ten years ago to tell Chen what he did wrong. But we can remind ourselves that the mobile Internet is also a technology, a kind of thinking or an independent industry.

Without the support of the industrial foundation, the so-called business model innovation is just a mirage carnival.