Dialogue With Founder Of Meibang Clothing: It'S Time To Let The Younger Generation Really Come Out

Recently, the company's flagship store of Meibang, which has just finished half a year, has attracted a lot of young people of Meibang fashion store. This time, Wu Lei's flash is mainly to create momentum for MetS Bonwe's "mtee lab" space.

At the same time, Metersbonwe is also constantly looking for the convergence point between the brand and IP, mining, integrating and innovating the culture in various fields, exploring the cultural heritage of different dimensions with the help of unique fashion attitude, accurately developing product series adapting to the trend and shopping trend, and promoting the brand value of the whole business scene.

Q: How did Meibang come up with such an mtee lab activity today?

President Zhou: for activities like today, what we do is to improve the experience - store experience and scene experience. We focus on integrating the IP products we have accumulated for so many years to create a trendy cultural front for young people to gather. This is actually the energy for our whole brand upgrading and image upgrading.

But to be honest, I'm not in charge of this activity today. I'm just here to watch and learn. Everything is done by their young team.

Q: Young people team refers to the company's core team members are young people? Post-90s?

President Zhou: since the beginning of this year, our core teams are mainly post-90s, and the proportion of new post-90s members has increased significantly. Next, we will further strengthen the leading force of fresh blood and really let the post-90s play their role.

Including the designer team on the site of today's event, they are all very talented young designers. They have a lot of good and fresh ideas on design and creativity. These designs and ideas will also have topics closer to the spiritual world of young people. I hope more young people can join in in in the future.

Q: When did the company begin to introduce such a younger team?

Zhou: in recent years, especially after the outbreak, I have been communicating with our youth team. In this process, I found that I was getting further and further away from the young people. It was my thinking logic and thinking method that were more and more different from them. This is also a change in my thinking, mentality and identity since this period of time.

In recent years, Meibang has not been out of the predicament, has been adjusting, but has not achieved good results. The fundamental reason is that we have not made essential and profound adjustments. This has something to do with my own advance and retreat, struggle and hesitation. For example, we didn't make a big difference in the original style of our products a few years ago, but we didn't make a big difference in terms of the original style. For example, we didn't make a big difference in the original style of our products a few years ago 。

Since we are a casual fashion clothing brand, our core competitiveness will not change. It is still the concept of "leisure fashion". However, today's "leisure" is quite different from the "leisure" ten years ago and 20 years ago. Especially for today's young consumers, their understanding of "leisure" and "fashion" is completely different. Now, as the mainstream of this era, only the young people's team can understand the needs of young people better. Therefore, we should firmly believe in young people, let them think about problems, and let each of us play its due role.

Q: In 2020, the outbreak of new crown pneumonia, especially in the first half of this year, has a serious impact on the FMCG industry. In the process of facing the impact of the epidemic, is such thinking and transformation adjustment accidental or inevitable?

President Zhou: this year's epidemic has had a great impact on the whole industry, and of course it has also brought us great challenges. Through the financial report data released by us yesterday, you can see that although some of our data are positive, the profitability is indeed declining. Originally, our performance in the fourth quarter of last year had been greatly improved. Objectively speaking, after the adjustment of last year, this year would have been a good start.

This year's unexpected situation really caught us by surprise, but from another perspective, such challenges also bring us new opportunities. It can be said that there are opportunities in "danger". This is what our youth team trained and told me. After analyzing the big data system, they found that the epidemic has changed the whole consumption scene and purchasing environment greatly. Consumers' sensitivity to clothing brands will increase, and their sensitivity to brand attitude, image and quality cost performance will also increase, especially the yearning for domestic brand clothing will become more and more urgent, and the requirements will be higher and higher.

Now, we can say that adjustment is both accidental and inevitable. Here we can borrow a metaphor I often made some time ago - in fact, the epidemic has given quite a number of enterprises the opportunity to restart. Let's stand at a new starting line and rethink the future development path. Therefore, we have decided to start a thorough and unswerving transformation and reform, and to find a very clear goal.

From this point of view, I find that only such a young team can find this goal and wake up metsbouray again. It is time for young people to take the lead, let them constantly communicate with young consumers, and comprehensively sort out the whole system of Meibang. For example, how to look at the ability of global brand competitiveness and domestic brand competitiveness; how to conduct digital analysis from the perspective of the whole industry, combined with our own problems, to find out which dimensions can be sorted out and adjusted.

Q: What kind of strategic adjustment will this kind of organization bring to the company? Which specific dimensions can be sorted out and adjusted? What is the core? Can you give a few examples?

Mr. Zhou: organizing the youth meeting has brought essential improvement to the company's products and brands. Take the recent achievements as an example, the group's children's clothing brand moomoo has completed an upgrade after preliminary adjustment. At the 2021 spring ordering meeting just concluded last week, the on-site franchisees have full confidence and their feedback on products is very positive, which also confirms the impact of the youth organization meeting on the production Products and brands bring the most intuitive changes. At the same time, Metersbonwe is also undergoing a major upgrade from the inside out. The results of the whole upgrade will be announced as early as the spring ordering meeting on September 10, when the brand will have a significant upgrade.

At present, according to the historical business data, we will make important adjustments in internal control, business strategy, brand strategy, channel experience, brand image, etc., so as to enhance the strength of the enterprise in an all-round way. The most important thing is to enhance the added value of products and become an influential brand. In these aspects, our young generation will thoroughly think about adjustment, and will go ahead and continue to plough deeply.

Q: Will there be a big adjustment in terms of products? Will we continue to focus on Guochao's products? In addition, will the company make any major moves in IP co branding and designer cooperation in the second half of the year?

President Zhou: as for product design, the group of young people in the company are more professional than me. I also believe in their ability and can do it well. We have a lot of insight into the fashion design of our company, which is based on the traditional fashion of our company. We have a lot of insight into the design of these products by our young people, and we have a great demand for the design of these products. At the same time, they will use digital tools to analyze the brand, analyze the consumers, and match the products and consumers' needs, which demands match which brand, and the demand with the trend of national tide will match the Guochao series. I believe they will have a complete thinking.

What I know at present and can be disclosed to you is that I only know that they are doing it, and I will not interfere in the specific ways of doing and playing. I can't use my old habits to ask them to match new demands. If I still intervene in their product development according to my cognition, it is not a complete reform.

Q: You just mentioned the channel experience. Is it a store experience improvement like today? Will it be implemented nationwide? Because we also noticed that in our semi annual financial report published yesterday, more than 500 stores were closed in the first half of the year. So, in terms of stores, what are our future strategies?

President Zhou: from the report released in the first half of the year, the proportion of our online sales is increasing. Although everyone is talking about new retail now, we are not simply talking about focusing on online. Offline is still a very important part of the map of Meibang. Generally speaking, in terms of offline channel strategy, on the one hand, we do development, on the other hand, we do throttling.

The form like today is very good. Such a 13 year old benchmarking store has been transformed into a new trend gathering place. Our youth team is also innovating and developing, constantly thinking about how to make the offline experience better.

At the same time, we are also studying how to reduce the cost. Due to the impact of the epidemic, we had less offline business in the first quarter. In addition, the epidemic has brought a lot of changes to consumers' consumption habits. Even the business district with good flow of people has been impacted by passenger flow diversion.

In the first half of the year, we have been actively adjusting, optimizing and even closing many inefficient stores that cannot create value. There will be many similar cases in the near future. For example, our image store in Hangzhou - Yanqing store, which has been cultivated in Hangzhou for nearly 20 years, opened a large number of people in that year. For quite a long time, this shop can be regarded as a fashionable landmark of the local business circle, a place for young people to get together and date, and a "intersection of youth". However, the times are constantly changing, the local business circle has already shifted, and now because of the epidemic, passenger flow is almost cliff like. Although based on feelings, emotions and plots, our feelings for this store are also numerous, but from a commercial point of view, from the reality, we must also make adjustments.

Q: There is also a big problem faced by many clothing enterprises - inventory. The recent financial report released by the company shows that the inventory has decreased, but there is still a certain amount of stock. How can we digest the inventory? Will we mainly adopt the way of discount and promotion?

President Zhou: in terms of de stocking, we adopt the thinking mode of global channels, and use commodity resources to precisely match channels. In this way, these goods in stock are no longer inventory, but are actually resources. Different stocks of goods will be digested through different channels, so as to achieve the return of funds and reduce the operating costs. Because the high inventory means that we have to match more resources for these stocks, so we will increase a lot of costs.

Of course, this form is not only through the simple and crude way of increasing discount. The thinking mode of global channel just mentioned by me means that we will refine and sort out the inventory products, analyze the demand of all channels, including comprehensive indicators such as Omni channel influence, crowd characteristics, consumption scenarios, etc., and then match the corresponding products sorted out by us to make the stock commodities circulate To maximize the value of inventory products.

As a matter of fact, it is also proposed by our post-90s youth team. I think we can't just focus on the concepts of online and offline and social retail. We need to think about global channels, so that we can know which channels sell class a goods, which channels sell class B goods, and which channels sell class C goods.

Q: In the financial report you mentioned just now, both revenue and net profit have fallen. Of course, there are also some data mentioned, such as inventory decrease and revenue decline narrowed. Is it due to the strategy adjustment mentioned above?

Mr. Zhou: indeed, we closed more than 500 stores in the first half of this year. To a certain extent, we were stopping losses in time, which narrowed the decline rate in the second quarter. However, this does not mean that we have done better than others. It should be said that at least the gap between the average level and the society has narrowed.

In the future, from the perspective of enterprise quality, efficiency and profitability, there will be changes. At this stage, many of our data are not very healthy. After all, we are in transition in recent years, and there are still many problems left over from history that need to be solved and adjusted slowly. But I believe that the overall data of July and August in the second half of the year will pick up, and the introduction of young teams and the inflow of fresh blood will also bring new thinking and adjustment to enterprises.

Q: Now, which young people are thinking about?

President Zhou: what I'm thinking about now is how to cooperate with them, let the young team do communication with consumers, do business, and do front-end things; and my work will focus on the back-end support, and strengthen the management in the company's risk control, such as our annual budget, including budget implementation, input-output analysis.

In the aspect of young people's weakness, I use my experience and lessons, combined with my advantages, to give them good guidance and help. For example, in the supply chain resources, how can we introduce and support them; for example, after the product upgrading, we need new version and new technology, and we need to mobilize the technical force, cooperate with them to transform ideas into reality, and help them make good use of my social resources.

Of course, it is also necessary to cooperate with the team to promote the rejuvenation of the organization. Now it is a new era. In the new era, it is not enough to rely on one person. It depends on a group of people and an organization, including organizational culture and corporate culture. We should help them to take the lead in the old system and let them take the lead in the development of the old enterprises.

Q: I've heard that you have repeatedly mentioned the recognition of young teams, but as the helmsman of the company, you have changed your role from a first-line leader to a second-line service provider. What kind of experience is it for you?

President Zhou: at present, this kind of experience is very good for me. Take today's event as an example, including how to invite Wu Lei, how to play with fans, and how to arrange it. I didn't know about it in advance. I didn't participate from the beginning to the end. I also found that I had done a very good job when I arrived. In the past, I wanted to do everything myself and worried that they could not do it well. Now I try my best to let myself go and let young people do it completely.

For me, it is a happy transformation. My role now is to be a good student, a good supporting role and a good assistant.