The Escape And Rebirth Of Footwear Industry

There will be another week in 2019.

If we say, which industries will fluctuate greatly in the past year, the shoe and clothing industry will be counted.

The latest news is that the GAP group announces that its Old Navy is withdrawing from the Chinese market.

As the second largest clothing brand in the United States and the ninth largest service retailer, the Old Navy entered the Chinese market in 2014. So far, only 16 stores have been opened to China, and this speed is not SEI.

At the same time, Victoria's Secret, which belongs to the same group as the Old Navy, is also being questioned by the industry whether it will become the next brand to withdraw from the Chinese market because of its difficult position in the Chinese market.

A long time ago, there was a great stir in the industry. It was the news of Forever, 21, which had been ploughing for 11 years in China.

Data show that as more and more shoe and clothing brands join in competition, in the context of China's economic growth tends to slow down, consumers' consumption of shoes and clothing is both subdivided and rational. At present, the whole shoe and clothing industry has entered the low growth area below double digit.

"In the future, clothing companies must not compete in the stock market if they want to maintain their competitive posture, but think about how to enhance the competitiveness of the incremental market." Li Ru, founder and chairman of YOUNGOR group, said.

　　 Ice and fire in a twinkling

After 70 and after 80 may have such memories. In high school, if you can buy a Metersbonwe, Giordano, Baleno, it must be the most beautiful child on the Gai street. Assuming that the pocket money is ample, buying a Esprit, it will attract the envy of the surrounding people.

In the 90s, which is not rich in clothing brand, Esprit not only has a unique personality, but also has a unique brand in a youth brand, and has a high price of ordinary brand. Buying a Esprit dress is not only a symbol of strength, but also a testimony of taste.

However, the financial crisis in 2008 unexpectedly arrived, coupled with the acceleration of global integration process, prompting more shoe and clothing brands to enter China speeded up.

In the face of more and more brands, consumers are becoming more picky. Esprit solidified product style and virtual high product prices bring it to the downstream channel. Faced with this situation, Esprit did not start with products, but chose to deal with discounts, and the lower the brand value.

"When I was in University, I liked this brand very much. The products were fashionable, simple, and versatile, and the quality was very good. Bought a white cardigan, and later, because I like it, I bought a black one and wore it in turn. Nana, Esprit's die hard powder, recalls, "ESPRIT stores are becoming less and less fashionable, and clothes are getting old. They haven't bought their clothes for a long time. They only buy their bed products."

In the first half of 2019, the parent company Esprit announced its sales revenue of HK $12 billion 932 million, down by 16.3%. You can hardly imagine that this is the achievement of a former industry darling.

The latest news is that Esprit will be taken over by GXG's parent company, mohsun group, and will jointly set up a new joint venture to redevelop the mainland market. Perhaps this is good news for Zhong powder like Nana.

With Esprit, he was the Nine West, the world's biggest designer, manufacturer and seller of leather shoes.

This brand, which entered the Chinese market in 1994, eventually withdrew from the Chinese market in 2018, including Tmall flagship store, because of poor management. According to the analysis of the industry, the failure of Long Xi is related to the fast changing demand of China's channels and consumers.

The bad shoes were Daphne. According to the annual report this year, Daphne's turnover in the first half of 2019 was HK $1 billion 403 million, a decrease of 37.9% compared with the same period last year.

You know, the peak Daphne not only has more than 6000 stores, but also sold 50 million pairs of women's leather shoes in 1 years, occupying nearly 20% of the market. But in recent years, news from Daphne stores has been heard from time to time. According to rough estimates, Daphne has shut down more than 4000 stores in the past four years.

Compared with Daphne's "downsizing", the outcome of the birds seemed even worse. In November of this year, fortune bird was forced to withdraw from the HKEx and enter the bankruptcy liquidation process with an embarrassing situation of 3 billion 82 million yuan in debt.

At home and abroad, successful enterprises are different, and failing businesses are often very similar. Carefully speaking, the reasons for the failure of these enterprises can be generally considered from three aspects:

First, there is a problem in brand positioning, which makes target consumers unclear, and products can not meet the needs of consumers.

The two is to go further away from consumers. Many brands only want to sell goods without speaking experience. With the rise of consumers' sovereignty consciousness, consumers will vote with feet.

Three, the strategy is too lagging behind, and the era of market occupation through channels has become the past. Digital ability will become the key to the survival of enterprises in the new business era.

　　 From imagination to digital technology

Li Rucheng believes that China's clothing industry is now in the stage of industrialization from the industrialization era to the commercialization era and the digital age. During this period, the enterprises face great challenges, because the clothing industry has its own special development path. "The past consumers are more intensive, there are more channels now, and the demand of consumers is also more yuan."

Diversified consumer demand, brand do not know? Qian fan, vice president of red dragonfly, admitted that in the past, consumers' understanding was actually not a real understanding, but a kind of experience based assumption.

"Because everything has no data to support, until we start working with ALI cloud, we really understand how the Red Dragonfly consumers are now through technology and data technology, and what they know about red dragonflies."

Like the red dragonfly, YOUNGOR knows exactly what it is after digitization, and its customers are 70 and 80. Based on this information, YOUNGOR finally strengthened its high-end brand positioning.

"What's the first impression in your mind when it comes to red dragonflies?" Qian Fang randomly surveyed the retail champion after 80. When the retailer said "leather shoes", Qian fan laughed. "So this year, our most important job is to return to the main business of leather shoes and contract other lines of business."

Of course, this is not the same way to make leather shoes in the past. Instead, it is aimed at people's foot type changes, wearing scenes, opening up to meet the needs of people's multi scene wear, and heading for the leisure shoes market.

Before that, the Red Dragonfly had been in the mire of brand aging. "This is a vicious circle. The older the brand, the worse the shop is, and the dealer profits are less and less after sinking, so it is even more reluctant to open a store in a good location." Yu Aifei, the new retail leader of red dragonfly, recalls.

Through digital transformation, red dragonfly identified young strategy this year. The spokesperson (brand friend) changed to young Angela Baby (Angelababy) and Ren Qing Jia after 00, and the brand changed obviously.

"We opened two stores in Chun Xi Road in Chengdu this year, which is not dared to think in the past. We should know that the rent of light shops in that lot is nearly 8 million a year." Yu Aifei said.

Besides the changes under the line, the Red Dragonfly's performance on the line is also commendable. This year's double 11, red dragonfly single brand channel achieved 380 million, of which about 180 million yuan online.

"This year's double 11 red dragonfly achieved this result, we are also a bit surprised. You know, last year, double 11 did not enter the top ten, but this year it was fourth of the category. Ali Yun new retail business department head of clothing intelligent manufacturing line Liu Xinming said.

　 What is the purpose of winning a domestic product?

In recent years, the rise of the national tide, Lining also with this wave potential energy, in New York fashion week shine brilliantly. In addition, through a series of digital reforms, Lining has narrowed the distance from consumers and improved their performance.

After working with ALI cloud, Lining carried out a complete intelligent transformation of all links. Digital stores are an important part of it, and also a concentrated display of transformation results.

Last year, Lining launched a digital flagship store in Shanghai's Expo Park and Ali cloud. An interactive large screen is installed on the door outside the shop, attracting consumers to interact outside the store through some marketing activities and game forms, so that they can "play" into the store.

In the store, consumers can also see a lot of interactive screens, display products, broadcast maintenance methods and other information. At the same time, interactive screen can also recommend products for consumers, so that consumers can have a more appropriate experience.

Digital transformation is still upgrading the supply chain. In terms of product delivery cycle, traditional supply chain has no way to support market changes and needs, especially online businesses and new businesses that need quick response.

In May 2019, the Lining group Guangxi supply base was officially launched with the capacity to produce 5 million pairs of sports shoes annually. This is the first time that Li Ning Co has built its own factory in 30 years.

　　 Direction is more important than result.

Drucker, a master of management, is familiar with the management theory in the business world. This is not because of his deep management theory. On the contrary, his management theory is very simple. Drucker is very good at looking at complex enterprise problems with a simple view.

For example, enterprise strategy, many people like to depict it high and deep, and it seems that it is not worthy of being called strategy.

But in fact, the essence of strategy is to help enterprises think: who are my customers? Where are my customers? What kind of ways do I use to provide customers with what products and services, and what value can they ultimately produce?

For this reason, Li Rucheng, who founded YOUNGOR for 40 years, has also done a lot of thinking and insistence. All along, he is unwilling to use the price to replace the market. "In the future, YOUNGOR will stick to its high-end positioning, but we will develop more products according to different scenarios to meet the needs of consumers in different scenarios."

How to understand the needs of consumers? Digitalization is a necessary path. In fact, YOUNGOR digital started very early, but because it was too early, it did not understand digitalization very well, and made progress slowly until it met Ali cloud.

"At present, although we and Ali cloud are also groping in the state, but I am sure that digitalization is the trend, and actively embrace digitalization, so that the direction of online and offline integration is right." Li Rucheng admitted that in the past YOUNGOR did not really apply digitalization, "for example, our service to VIP customers is to offer discounts. Now, this kind of thinking must change. We must really change the thinking from selling thinking to serving consumers.

"This year's double 11, YOUNGOR's total network sales amounted to 124 million yuan, an increase of 88.8% over the same period, of which 1/4 of sales came from the" high-end O2O "of global stock. In short, it's high priced goods. Introduction of YOUNGOR brand CEO Xu Peng.

Li Rucheng did not care about these achievements. He saw further. "The healthy development of enterprises must pay attention to efficiency, but the cooperation between YOUNGOR and Ali can not only look at the benefits, but also look at the significance of this matter from the perspective of industry exploration."

This statement has the same meaning with Liu Xinming's co creation. "When we cooperate with our customers, we follow the N+1 principle. N is the agreement of the contract itself, and the 1 is based on the different needs of the enterprise. Liu Xinming introduced that Lining's "intelligent distribution" model is the result of both sides.

In this process, what role does Ali cloud play? Xiao Lihua, vice president of Alibaba and general manager of the new retail business department of Ali Yun Yun, once said:

As the cloud of Alibaba, Ali cloud is the base of the whole Alibaba business operation system. It has a wide and solid practice of new retail transformation in the economy. It carries the digitization ability of the multi-element commercial scene of the Ali economy for 20 years, and provides a systematic solution for retailers to provide technology, e-commerce, logistics, Alipay, etc.

At yesterday's Alibaba ONE business conference, Ali announced the phased results in the field of shoes and clothing applications: 80% the well-known shoes and clothing brands have worked with ALI cloud to transform new retail outlets, among which the rise of domestic brands and the average revenue growth of 24%. Lining, XTEP, YOUNGOR, red dragonfly, Taiping bird, Semir, BELLE, Anta, Bosideng are all forerunners.

At present, the number of intelligent transformation of retail enterprises, Ali cloud has formed its own five trilogy, namely infrastructure cloud, contact digitization, online business, operation data, intelligent decision.

Since the beginning of the new strategic retail business in the beginning of the year, Ali cloud has injected technology into the retail industry, creating value in the scene and expanding a new path of rapid promotion, scale replication and system operation.

However, different industries, different enterprises, the situation is vastly different, and the number of enterprises will eventually go to where intelligence, no one can know the correct answer in advance. But one thing is certain - Lu Suiyuan, the line is coming.