The Rise Of Muji Shows You That Rebuilding A Company Is The First Step To Stop Bleeding.

10 years before Muji was launched, it was plain sailing. However, in 2000, the company lost its first profit, and its net profit dropped to 0 yuan in 2001. At this time, Matsui Chusan became president and made Muji as a Japanese retail brand, the best company in internationalization.

How did Muji rise? What kind of talent management concept does Matsui Chusan have? You can find the answer in this article.

The predicament of enterprise management must come from inside.

It's impossible to rebuild a company by stopping bleeding.

From the "failure system" to "the victory of war" system

MUJI was formally founded in 1989, and its predecessor was its own brand, which was born in 1980. In 1989~1999, Muji has gone through ten years of triumph, and since then suffered a major development crisis. In one year, its market value dropped from 490 billion yen in 1999 to about 70000000000 yen in 2000.

In 2001, Matsui Chusan, a person with a career background, was sent to the post of chairman of the Muji company. After reform, the company achieved a double increase in sales and profits after 7 years in 2001. In addition to the decline in the performance of the global subprime crisis in 2008, the Muji has been growing until its official retirement in 2015 (in 2008).

At present, Muji has nearly 20000 employees worldwide. It has 420 and 497 stores in Japan and abroad, covering 27 countries and regions in the world. It is the best Japanese retailing brand in China.

What is the reason why Muji has been in crisis? What qualities do we need to rebuild our business leaders? Matsui Chusan, the former president of Muji, came to attend the college. The scene shared the resurgence of the story behind the revival.

　 The predicament of enterprise management must come from inside.

In 2001, after I took over the company, I began to analyze why the company would fall from the highest peak of smooth sailing to the lowest level within a year. Later, we concluded that for an enterprise, once the business is in a predicament, the profits will decline, and nine out of ten companies will have internal problems, rather than the external causes such as industry, competition and so on.

The fall of Muji is also caused by internal reasons.

　　 Pride and luxury.

In the first fiscal year of 1990, Muji sales amounted to 24 billion 500 million yen, the 1/40 of the parent company Xi You department store. After 10 years, Muji sales were already 1/10 of Xi You department store. This has made arrogant sentiment spread among Muji workers.

　　 Two is the sense of loss of crisis.

Because of arrogance, Muji begins to pay no attention to the external environment, nor does it listen to the outside voice. Everything closes itself to discuss itself. But at the same time, as a rapidly growing enterprise within 10 years, we are being studied and begun to be surpassed by our competitors in the industry.

For example, DAISO sells the stationery and cosmetics similar to ours at the price of 100 yen, and NITORI sells the bed and sofa similar to ours at a low price of 30%.

　　 Three, short term measures for impatience.

At that time, Muji had three categories of clothing, groceries and food. The earliest decline and decline were clothing categories. Consumers began to think that Muji clothing was made by supermarkets in the west, and the tide was not enough.

At that time, Muji was still a very immature organization. Once there was a problem, it began to take impetuous short-term measures. For instance, 5 ministers in charge of clothing business in 3 years had caused great confusion and volatility inside the company.

　　 Four is brand weakening.

At that time, Muji became a sales driven company and gradually lost its commitment to product research and development by pushing sales to boost upstream research and development and production. The concept of "cheap reason" is fading away, and the characteristics of product departmentalism, Zen and tea ceremony are no longer clear. Consumers' cognition of brand is beginning to blur.

The five is the rapid expansion of strategy.

Compared with 1999, Muji's business area increased by 40% in 2000, when the healthy new shop area expanded at 4%~5% per year. Moreover, all the newly opened stores are direct stores. All the pressure on inventory is borne by the stores. Finally, there is a huge confusion in the stores and a huge decline in profits.

The same is true in overseas markets. Before 2000, we worked in the European market for 11 years, and we opened 5 stores. In 2000, we opened 50 stores in one year. The location was not comprehensively considered, and all European stores were losing money.

We were also helpless when we adopted such irritable and irrational rapid expansion policy. MUJI's parent company, Xi you group, has become the largest retail group Saison in Japan after continuous acquisitions and reforms. At that time, Saison group, in order to maintain the share price of the listed company, pushed its two cards vigorously -- family convenience stores and MUJI products for growth. Therefore, the expansion of Muji is to some extent a necessity.

　　 It's impossible to rebuild a company by stopping bleeding.

Amid chaos, I took over the Muji and began to rebuild. In 2001, I did one thing - hemostasis. The most important thing to stop bleeding is two jobs.

The first is to close about 10% of the deficit stores, while some large shops will reduce the area by half, thereby reducing the extent of losses.

The two is to deal with bad stocks. The previous development has brought a lot of bad stocks. Many stores are stacking up with clothes a year ago or even two years ago. The discount is selling at a low price.

Finally, we searched the truck and pulled the bad stock of about 10 billion yen accumulated in the Niigata logistics center to the burn center. The company's commodity developers saw this with their eyes, and some of them left tears.

Reform starts with pain, and all employees must have the awareness and awareness of reform.

But rebuilding a company is impossible only by stopping bleeding. Many Japanese retailers have failed to revive after the decline. One important reason is that they only know how to stop bleeding, but they do not reinvigorate the company after the end of the blood.

To create a new system for the company, we must find the root cause of the problem. In addition to the internal reasons mentioned above, I have always believed that there are still deeper reasons that have not been touched. If the underlying causes can not be touched, the new system can not be established. After constant reflection, I realized that the most profound reason is corporate culture.

　　 Why do you say that?

MUJI was then a subsidiary of Saison group, Japan's largest retail group. The head of Saison group is the founder of Xi You department store, Diqing two. He is a typical market talent and very sensitive to the market. This leads to Saison group being a culture that relies on culture and sensibility.

This culture has its advantages, but there are also problems, such as lack of scientific management, which is crucial to developing MUJI products for chain stores.

Saison group is a company that relies on empiricism to develop and train employees. It is necessary to rely on experience to become a salesperson who is a dedicated shop owner. It may take 15 years to go through all the situations.

But UNIQLO and other competitors have already established a complete mechanism including commodity development mechanism, commodity management mechanism, commodity sales mechanism, personnel training mechanism and so on, and can not compete with them simply by experience.

Moreover, due to the decline in performance, there were three large-scale layoffs before and after Saison. The departure of the old staff took away the company's experience and the company was in a vicious circle. Therefore, Muji must create a standardized operation system.

Saison group emphasizes planning, the company's planning books are very thick, but a company's executive power is often inversely proportional to the thickness of the proposal. Saison is a 95% enterprise that relies on planning and 5% execution.

After I took over Muji, I announced that Muji would become an enterprise with only 5% planning and 95% execution power.

In addition, organizational culture is also necessary for corporate culture reform. MUJI, as a company with only 10 years of history, is still very immature. An important performance is that once problems arise, the problem is totally imputable to people.

Finally, we must change the way of thinking of employees. If we always manage the quality of goods with the thinking of retail industry, things can not be done. We must manage goods in the way of manufacturing thinking.

We dug people from the flower king to specialize in the quality of commodities, to compress the cost of goods with a dollar and a piece of money, and to improve the quality of commodities one by one. This way of management is the lack of Muji. In addition, the positive energy culture of Kao is worth learning from.

In short, Muji transformation has two key words: evolution and implementation. "Evolution" means building new mechanisms and systems and forming new models. More importantly, "execution", with new mechanisms and patterns, must also be done by others.

　　 From the "failure system" to "the victory of war" system

From failure to success, Muji has also gone through a number of groping processes and tried many ways.

　 Reshaping brand concept and developing mechanism

First, we must renew the brand concept, and we can not change the "cheap reason". But from the time when it is still the private brand of Xi you, it has been 20 years since then. The consumer has changed a lot and must be upgraded.

For example, we put forward a new commodity development mechanism, put Muji in Italy and France, and put it all over the world, inviting the world's top designers to participate in the design of products, and create MUJI products with the world's thinking and thinking mode.

Further, directly penetrate into the life of consumers, draw good ideas and elements from daily life, and form commodity inspiration. We made the long strip stools found in rural China based on the concept of MUJI products. We also invited Yamamoto Teruji design team to participate in the design, enhance the sense of commodity design, and win the love of consumers.

At the same time, we have put forward a new definition for "reasonable cheap": not pursuing "this is good", creating "this is good". "Good" is characterized by subtle egoism and non harmony elements. "Good" reflects restraint and rationality, and intends to eliminate consumers' dissatisfaction.

　　 Rearrange shop standards

Besides the commodity, the way of opening a shop also needs to be changed.

At that time, there were only about 2 shops that opened up 10 stores for Muji, and the most important reason was the wrong location of shops. We recombed our store standards, and combed twenty or thirty factors that had an impact on store sales, such as sales volume, population and income index of retail outlets in the business district, forming five levels of S, A, B, C and D. C level should be reviewed, and D level must not be opened, so as to set up a new store revenue model.

Finally, the success rate of opening shop increased from 20% to 90%.

　　 A live MUJI GRAM

We also produced the industry's well-known MUJI GRAM, the Muji shop standard operating manual, a total of 2000 pages, all of which are photos, visual way to facilitate store clerks to understand, and standardized operation.

Why do I want to make such a handbook? Once I took over as president, I went to see a new store before it opened, and saw that the new store was ready to point out a lot of problems by a group of old shopkeeper. It didn't change until 12 midnight.

Everyone has their own ideas. This is entirely empirical. I think this is a big problem. We must achieve a truly scientific operation through a standardized manual.

The standardized manuals of many companies have a fatal problem: The Handbook is outdated at the moment of completion. Therefore, we have to create a living manual and must involve on-site staff.

Specifically, employees can submit new ideas of store operation management to the company every day. The company will focus on Revising once a month after approval. A MUJI GRAM has to modify about 20 pages per month, that is, 1%. It will change the content of 12% in one year, so that the manual is never out of date.

It is also a training manual for new employees, even though it is not fully grasps in written form, it can also be mastered by on-the-job learning, because MUJI GRAM is already an air like presence in Muji.

　 Change culture with "doing"

As mentioned earlier, the underlying reason for the crisis lies in the problem of corporate culture. How can it be changed? Just writing it and hanging it on the wall will not work. It is difficult to form a corporate culture only through the habit of forming.

What we did was to decide on a theme every month and concentrate on changing one behavior every month.

For example, in March, changing the names of colleagues, stipulate that they no longer call each other's duties, such as a certain director or minister, instead of each other called "sang", emphasizing the equality relationship; in April, we must be ordered to work; in May, we asked employees to eliminate rubbish themselves, no longer use cleaning staff, and so on. Through a month's reinforcement, we can form a habit and form a culture.

In my opinion, the change of greeting between colleagues has been done well, but after visiting Canon, we found that the frequency and enthusiasm of greeting are far from enough. Therefore, despite the opposition of many employees at that time, we resolutely implemented a measure.

For a period of time, I stood at the front of the company headquarters with 9 managers before I went to work every morning, and greeted every employee who came to work. Later, the management of all the above managers in the company greeted the door at the door in the morning. So far, this habit is still going on.

Any culture is not formed two days in a day. It is the result of accumulating day by day. We must change the cognition and way of thinking of employees through continuous work, thus forming a new atmosphere and culture.

At first, we may encounter great resistance and opposition, but we must never give up as a leader. Giving up is the biggest leadership. If you don't stick to the end, you won't know if it's wrong or wrong.