Entrepreneur Li Tao: Thirteen Years Of Pit And Seize Opportunities For Middle-Aged And Elderly Clothing Market

In December 20th, AgeClub successfully held the second China Elderly Industry Business Innovation Conference in Beijing. The conference invited Li Tao, founder of the Sino Korean brand "Di kuina", who shared the "middle-aged and old industry electricity supplier operation experience and consumer behavior analysis". Through the review of the development of the brand, the comprehensive analysis of the operation experience of the middle-aged and elderly clothing brands was made.
The new geriatric Business Research Institute shares Mr. Li Tao's speech with readers.
Review of the development process of 1. middle-aged and old women's clothing brand di kuina
I started making Taobao in 2007, and the first item I did was middle-aged clothing. It has been more than 10 years since 2019. I have become a continuous entrepreneur, but unfortunately, I have always started a project, which is clothing for middle aged and elderly people.
I was born in science and engineering, studying computer theory and application. My wife is a fashion designer. The core reason for supporting me in this more than 10 years is a "sad" experience at the time of marriage.
My wife and I met each other in Beijing and met each other. When I was planning to get married, there was a problem that puzzled me. That is, what kind of courtesy should we give to our parents?
Choose or choose clothes. But I didn't expect this gift to be picked up from us and eventually sent to the old man's hand. It took about a month or so.
One of the biggest problems of choosing this gift was that it couldn't be picked out at all. It was 2007. When we visited Beijing City, we found that many clothes were not enough as gifts, some of them were priced, but they might be shelved.
What is the reason? My mother is 1.53 meter, 130 Jin, my mother-in-law 1.52 meter, 140 Jin, there is basically no clothes to wear.
We don't think this gift can be dealt with. We'd better let them wear our wedding ceremony. Afterwards, I went to the place where I specially sold big size women's clothes, and I found clothes that I could wear, but I didn't get a grade as a gift.
Finally, I wrote an article on the Sina blog and posted the photos of the last selected clothes. I didn't think that in one hour, this article read thousands of times and read over 10000 times a day. There were lots of messages saying that I could find a sympathetic response. Could I help you? In 2007, my wife opened a Taobao store, named the love affair in the middle and old age stores. It took only two years to make Taobao the first category.
In fact, this is the first origin. At that time, Taobao promoted Wangwang, the longest online mobile phone could award Taobao recommendation. Just when we got married in Lijiang, our mobile phone was hung up for a long time, and it was blown off after being recommended.
Taobao recommends advertising to our middle-aged clothing store, and the traffic volume is coming up. We concluded the itinerary immediately and flew back to Beijing to deliver the goods and process the order. Later, middle-aged and old women's wear became my full-time job. After leaving my original job, I push the cart every day.
Then problems came up. Because the source of goods is a place, all merchants exchange information. Once a shop explodes, it will take four hours for another shop to go online. I buy 59 yuan, 89 yuan, other shops may be 79 yuan, in a few days, 69 yuan, and even more terrible is 59 yuan directly out, but also mail.
This crazy experience I believe many people have heard of or experienced.
At this time, the backbone of our core team emerged. She was an old tailor and had been wearing clothes for more than 20 years. She is my mother-in-law, who came to Beijing in the name of children and participated in our work.
She said, "you can't sell like this. I don't like these clothes. And do you earn money? You can take out the purchase price and see how much you can have.
My wife put forward a point of view, whether or not to design their own clothes, rather than selling market goods? I said I thought, but the designers in Beijing heard that they are old clothes do not want to do.
This is a very practical problem. In the field of middle-aged and elderly clothing, a style can be sold for 11 years, and every year it is exploded. The change is very subtle: the red buttons are turned into green buttons, and the left design is changed to the right side. But the core design has not changed.
In 2009, our family moved back to Ji'nan, Shandong, to re register the company. The old lady took out her layout style several decades ago, and began her original mother's road.
As a result, in 2013, we fell from the Taobao class to twentieth in the first place, and dropped out of the top 100 in two months. The reason is that before the store traffic is mainly exploded, half of the goods are replaced by original ones.
I never imagined that one day I would find my own fabric and find a factory. But to do original is to solve these problems. Goods sold before can be processed to stalls, and there is no inventory problem. But now the rest of the goods need to be processed by themselves. This is a new challenge for us.
So store development is not within my control, or it is beyond my expectations.
That was a dark moment in my startup. The preceding stage means no traffic. My wife and mother-in-law met to discuss whether to insist on originality. If we give up this direction and go back to the market, we can go back to the front shop in minutes, because I know how to kill my competitors. But if we go back to the old road again, some problems still have to be faced.
With their own design elements, there is a very prominent phenomenon, that is, the rate of re purchase is much higher than before. The shop began to have fans, and did not need to inform him that he would come to the store every day to have a look. No new money will be asked. This is something I haven't met before.
In the end, we decided to continue our original path. It is not easy to do, and the more difficult it is, the more difficult it is. The first thing is inventory. At that time, Ji'nan had a relatively popular brand of domestic electric power, Han Du Yi she. I went to them to learn inventory management.
After three years of stumbling and falling, by 2012, we made the first priority for middle-aged and elderly clothing in the emerging market of Taobao.
When Taobao changed its name to Tmall, the big screen posters and special models on Mother's day used my model to pick an old model from the old model team of Shandong University, pushing my product to a peak.
But only a year later, I fell into a pit, which is more serious than the previous one, which eventually led to the breakup of the capital chain.
The reason for this is that the shipment was not good enough, and the grade was not high enough. Actually, it could use better fabrics. But because of limited pricing, it can not afford good fabrics.
The designer at that time was also very dissatisfied with the goods. He knew that there were better fabrics in the market. I made a decision. In those days, mother's Day promoted the product and raised the price. On the one hand, I thought the brand was well-known. On the other hand, it is a good idea that customers will like it.
I think it will be the first category to receive more promotions and resources. But in fact, that year, our dress became the most expensive one in the whole network, and the discount was 239 yuan.
At that time, young women's clothing sold at this price was very small, so that we could not sell on Mother's day. In a day, I cut the price by 10%, but it was completely destroyed. Large quantities of goods are in stock.
It finally led to the merger of ANYMO and in February 2014, and still located in middle-aged and old women's clothing.
There are third problems at this time. That is when Tmall store operated for more than two years, in 2014, the Trademark Office announced that because of an amore brand, its name coincided, so my brand could not be registered.
At this time, my flagship store already had 200 thousand customers, some of which were core members. But there is no other way but to change the name and register the "Di kuina" brand. Official operation began in April 16, 2014. On 2015 mother's day, di kuina returned to category first.
Such an experience is very rare for me. In the process, I want to share with you how to make the brand quickly, mainly talking about some dry goods in the process of the establishment of di kuina in South Korea's clothing house. Including how I control my inventory.
The stock turnover rate of all brands of Han Du Yi house is very high, and the sales rate is up to 98.5%. The sales rate of di kuina is the best in a year, which is 99%. This is very important for a garment enterprise, and the core problem is inventory.
2. create a market segment, define it, and become the boss.
Mom installed this market is not subdivided, no category. So we set up a new category at that time, that is, Han Feng mother dress.
I was the first to propose such a subdivision concept in this field. But what is Han Feng is not clear. According to our research, Hanfeng is not Korean Edition. At that time, he did a lot of research, and went to South Korea to do some field research to shoot the local old lady. What we see is that many European and American winds have evolved into Hanfeng.
In fact, Koreans have studied the culture of Europe and America for half a century earlier. They have transformed the popular elements and fashions of Europe and America into Korea. At the same time, East Asian women generally appreciate this kind of aesthetics, so Korean designers have very strong influence in the international market.
But one problem is the acceptance of Chinese culture by Korean elderly. This is a new challenge.
There is a saying that young Han Han, the elderly have this market? We have made some attempts, the core of the attempt is to Han Feng mother pretend to be suitable for China's transformation.
The success or failure is also crucial. The key point is whether anyone in the team knows clothes or whether they have the ability to develop products. We must not copy it. Because before a garment factory directly sold the old clothes of Han Guodong's door to the Internet, the result was a failure. So we later formed a team of designers from China and Korea. Korean designers are responsible for providing fashion trends and direction, and Chinese designers achieve product technology. This is the division of labor of the team. Later, we specially built a mother's database. This is not founded by Di kuina. But from the first day we opened shop, we collected physical data from elderly consumers on Wangwang.
At that time, I didn't expect to have such a large purpose. I just wanted to solve the problem of code selection. Now it is very important to see these data, which has contributed greatly to the establishment of data system. Based on this system, we can apply any style developed by young people to this system, first of all, we can solve the problem of old people's style, and then consider collocation and color problems. The original design of fabric is also a progress in our design decision. From the design style to the design fabric, and the fabrics can also be sold back to Korea. This is also a breakthrough in the field of middle aged and elderly.
Now I enter several key themes. The first thing I want to share is the importance of visual merchandising.
Whether Tmall or Taobao, Jingdong, online business must pay attention to vision. Because the biggest difference between online and offline entities is visible and intangible. Vision is the first step to get traffic. How to display good products is the first problem to be solved.
So we started the most famous old model in Korea at that time. In fact, she is only more than 30 years old. From the chart, we can see that there is a very obvious difference in visual comparison between market goods and di kuina.
In 2015, when di kuina returned to the category first, the market reappeared. Until today, I can tell you very firmly that in the market, whether online or offline, more than 90% of the new models are designed by our team. Here is a set of 2017 mother's Day ranking data.
Next, let's talk about how we control turnover and sales.
Here is a very important concept, that is, the concept of planning. We divide the product planning into several steps: first, we plan the number of funds, then the first return plan, and finally the arrival planning.
This is also applicable in the field of non clothing. Its core lies in the understanding and application of this project, but there are some differences in the matching of specific categories.
This process is specifically divided into 8 steps. The first is the determination of the sales task, which determines the value of the stock. Usually the rate of delivery is achieved by the sales task. The required value is 110% or 120%. This is a relatively conservative state.
What's more conservative is to determine the rate of production according to the income of 90% or 80%. It is also very important to determine the ratio between the number of funds and the old and new ones, which will determine your traffic volume.
The fifth step is the first return ratio determination, followed by the opening season and the arrival band. These three points determine your supply chain. The final plan is to start with a command. One of the first seven steps is to follow the pattern and the gross profit margin once a month or every quarter. This tracking will determine the adjustment of the first seven steps.
In addition, our inventory tracking is also specific to a certain day. It can also be followed by a three day or a week. The purpose is to use stock to reverse the marketing action.
The background of marketing action is to observe the inventory situation according to the progress of sales and the value of each item, and at the same time to observe whether the preceding marketing action is effective.
We will drop the inventory and turnover indicators to each group, that is, every employee should check the turnover rate and turnover rate, and how much bonus is ultimately linked to the completion rate of these indicators.
This is a specific tracking progress result, each employee can find, for example, this season, the new order digestion process and the value of goods digested into, relatively should match.
I have refined the core steps of raising inventory turnover and selling out ratio into these points.
The smallest single quick return - relying on flexible supply chain, the minimum 10 pieces can be produced, and then gradually optimized;
First, check the payment and return to the list - flexible measurement method, and control the quantity of return according to the test data.
Strictly control the return cycle - Planning for pre production planning, yarn and accessories planning, and reducing the single cycle to 7 days.
Flat and sluggish sell with clear - 1 times every 24 hours.
Life cycle analysis - life cycle analysis is refined to single item to maximize inventory risk control.
I also want to talk about some experience of doing electricity supplier operation.
Locate and focus highly in a niche market / category.
Building product competitiveness is the only way to obtain traffic and improve transformation.
The explosion that can not bring free traffic is not a burst, but your own best seller.
Elderly electricity providers will not form a "super explosion", we must be good at managing "small explosion groups".
There are two types of customers in the elderly business: category a customers are children, B customers are elderly people, and B satisfaction can make A happy.
Tell your children, "this is what your parents need," instead of telling them, "this is filial piety".
With the trend of tight platform, new initiatives and new layout of new ways to play, there is no exception for the elderly electricity supplier.
Community electricity supplier is the best mode of electricity supplier in the old age. All traffic will eventually be transformed into private domain traffic.
3. consumer behavior analysis of elderly electricity providers
I want to share with you a set of data, which is an internal data from Tmall to our C products merchants in the middle and old age. The pain points and problems of the middle and old aged men and women in Tmall from 2018 to 2019 are analyzed. Clothing is the biggest match among them, so we take clothing as an example.
The core pain point is: at present, the elderly consumers think that the details page information on Tmall is not accurate enough; the search results are not accurate; the product type is not rich enough, not new, the quality requirements are higher, and the return is troublesome.
The problem exposed here is that the product is identical, and the search results are not what I want.
This gives us new inspiration, that is, do not rub traffic, do not simply add the flow of large vocabulary to the title, which will reduce the weight of the product and interfere with user choice.
In addition, we should not only map out the cheap but also enhance the brand power and the bargaining power of products through quality.
The problem with returns is that mothers are reluctant to contact express. We observed a very strange phenomenon, that is, the rate of clothing replacement for middle-aged and old people is higher than that of young women's clothing, and the replacement rate of young women's clothing is generally 15%-18%, while the rate of clothing replacement for middle-aged and old people can reach 20%.
The typical reason is not to allow mothers to size up with their children, buy two pieces at a time, and then return unsuitable ones.
I upgrade the consumption behavior of middle-aged and elderly consumers into four upgrading:
Upgrading of consumption Intention -- from "not spending money" to "myself"
Upgrading of consumption concept -- from "high cost performance" to "high personalization"
Upgrading of consumption channels -- from "reading pictures to reading" to "video live broadcasting"
Upgrading of consumption roles -- from "shop members" to "Super Fans"
The first escalation of consumption intention is to let children spend money on their own initiative. Here is a set of data, since 2015, the proportion of elderly people in the consumer group is increasing, which means that the elderly customers' awareness of active consumption continues to improve.
The change of consumption concept lies in choosing cheap products from the past and now buying what they like. This is a decision making change.
Consumption channels from picture to text to video live is also a significant change. Although the elderly are not the biggest users of jitter and fast hand, these two channels are the most effective channels for sticky and efficient transmission. The content related to the elderly on these two platforms is mainly fashion wear.
Here are some cases. The video content of a vibrato is all dressed in pictures and is broadcast in a slide mode, which has achieved high growth of fans in three months. There is also a local 87 year old lady's quiver, dressed in casual clothes, but the content conveys a message that women's love for beauty is not age, and this demand always exists.
The upgrading of consumer roles is from shop members to super fans. There are some loyal fans who have been following us from the beginning of my business. Not only did they use action support, they also gave some suggestions and suggestions on product upgrading, but their loyalty was very high. Finally, I want to share eight words: heart management and love care.