Iterative Upgrading Of Clothing Brand And E-Commerce Platform In Digital Economy

Digital economy has become a global consensus and has a wide and profound impact on the industrial pattern. According to the OECD report, 93% of enterprises in OECD countries have access to broadband connection in 2019.

In 2020, under the comprehensive effect of multiple factors, such as the effective prevention and control of domestic epidemic situation and the introduction of consumption support measures, online innovation has become an important way to release the potential of domestic demand. According to the data of the National Bureau of statistics, from January to November 2020, the retail sales of online wear goods increased by 5.9% year-on-year. In October 2020, the turnover of women's, men's, children's and home textiles on Taobao and tmall platforms were 36.8 billion yuan, 18.53 billion yuan, 8.43 billion yuan and 4.21 billion yuan, respectively, with year-on-year growth rates of 32.5%, 35.1%, 32.2% and 34.2%, respectively.

In recent years, the integration and collision of clothing brand and new mode, new technology and new form has become the vane leading the transformation of traditional industries to the Internet. However, in the symbiosis and co prosperity of clothing brands and e-commerce platforms, it is inevitable that there are obstacles. In the era of rapid development of the Internet, what is the relationship between the two? Which direction will the cooperation go in the future?

Help the industrial iterative upgrading

As the earliest entrants of e-commerce platform, garment enterprises have changed greatly after nearly 20 years of common growth with e-commerce platform. The new scene created by online and offline integration and interaction brings infinite possibilities for new consumption. At the same time, the in-depth interaction between e-commerce platform and clothing brands helps domestic brands establish emotional connection with the new generation of consumers, create a number of new generation national brands, and help traditional brands complete the iterative upgrading.

In the winter of 2020, bosden down jacket is selling very well. During the "double 11" period in 2020, bosden brand ranked first in the whole clothing industry in the self broadcast ranking of tmall apparel merchants. At the same time, bosden made use of the online ole channel to accelerate the de stocking by taking advantage of the online price advantage. Nowadays, bosden's "national down jacket brand" image is more deeply rooted.

In fact, this honor was once at the peak of bosden. At that time, one third of the down jackets in the world came from bosden, which was unprecedented in scale. However, in 2013, bosden's revenue began to plummet, and the huge inventory backlog caused by the battle in the middle and low-end markets once made bosden hard to breathe. Gao Dekang, chairman of the board of directors of the company, chose to survive by breaking his arm. According to the financial report data, he closed nearly 9000 retail stores in five years, with unprecedented strength.

In recent years, bosden brand has achieved a strong return with the halo of national brand. In this regard, goldcon admitted that he has found a new key to breaking the situation: new retail based on digital and mobile technology.

Online sales is an important marketing and user feedback channel in the process of bosden digital transformation. Over the past decade, bosden has continued to develop e-commerce channels and achieved steady growth in online sales performance. In January 2019, bosden joined the Alibaba A100 strategic cooperation plan. With the help of Alibaba's commercial operating system, bosden began to cover the whole supply chain from front-end sales to back-end manufacturing, and vigorously promoted the online, offline and all channel integration of the whole network.

From fiscal year 2018 to fiscal year 2020, the compound annual growth rate of online revenue of bosden down jacket business reached 44%, and the current channel revenue accounted for more than 20%; in the first half of 2020 / 21, the online sales revenue of bosden's full brand was about 540 million yuan, up 76.4% year-on-year.

Gao Dekang said: "the future of digital transformation has come. The real 5g era is the era of Internet of all things. It is the era of all business data and all data business. Bosden's exploration and practice in the transformation of digital intelligence is only a small step towards the new growth and new peak of digital economy. We plan to spend about four years to promote the implementation of digital foundation, data governance, digital application, operation system, digital driven business model innovation, and digital business intelligence. Build bosden's ability of digital transformation team, achieve a new height from "data governance thinking" to "digital management decision-making thinking", realize the comprehensive digital goal of full business, whole process and all contacts, and truly become a digital business enterprise. "

Coincidentally, on January 12, 2021, taipingniao released a performance forecast, saying that it is expected to realize a net profit of RMB 700 million to its parent in 2020, an increase of 27% over the same period of last year. Relevant person in charge of the company said that the main reason is the company's e-commerce channel reform and high target traction, resulting in the continuous improvement of the company's profitability.

In fact, in addition to bosden and taipingniao, many local clothing brands have been re sought after by the market after experiencing changes in the external environment and their own in-depth changes. E-commerce channel providers are increasing support and empowerment of domestic brands to help the rise, while the rapid development of emerging e-commerce channels is the key for local brands to achieve overtaking on the curve.

Profit consumed by traffic

The digital and intelligent innovative technology is changing the layout and pattern of the clothing industry. Who has done well in the digital construction early will not only keep his own city, but also may realize the counter attack in the clothing market with the help of intelligent and digital Dongfeng. However, while the e-commerce platform brings opportunities for the development of clothing brands, profits are also eroded.

Taomi technology is a company focusing on data-based services. Its product "magic mirror Market Intelligence" mainly collects public data from major e-commerce platforms, summarizes and sorts them out, so as to serve enterprises and generate commercial value. Sun Guoqiang, COO of Beijing Taomi Technology Co., Ltd., said that the huge flow cost has become a great pressure on the clothing brand operation e-commerce platform.

　　 Feng Ye, general manager of Li Ning group's e-commerce division, also holds the same view. He believes that the dividend of netizen traffic is no longer any longer, and some brands will even show negative growth in the next period of time. In the past, the extensive development mode relying on flow, stacking and price is no longer feasible. He believes that the operation of e-commerce platform needs enterprises to have good data operation ability and product ability to achieve profitability.

Indeed, today, the number of indicators of Internet users has peaked, the dividend period of public domain traffic has ended, and the marginal access cost of traffic is an inevitable trend.

Sun Guoqiang, when analyzing the cost of operating e-commerce platforms for clothing enterprises, said that e-commerce platforms mainly rely on traffic to obtain customers, which includes free traffic and paid traffic. Some stores with good operation data, high conversion rate and few complaints will get more free quota traffic; however, the cost of paid traffic will be higher. Taking the paid search of e-commerce platform as an example, each click from hot search words often needs several yuan (the flow of each click into the store).

"If 500 yuan paid traffic can bring sales of 500 yuan to 1000 yuan, many stores can accept it for short-term marketing goals; but in fact, excluding product costs, these stores are likely to lose money." Sun Guoqiang said that in recent years, clothing big brands are often more favored by e-commerce platforms, "because e-commerce platforms all want big brands to settle in, and the policies given are relatively favorable."

If the relationship among consumers, e-commerce platform and clothing brand is compared to the dynamic game among three parties, it will form a corner of mutual restriction: the competition between platforms will benefit the clothing brand, and the choice of the platform by consumers will give the platform more discourse power. For example, a clothing brand may feel that the operating cost of a e-commerce platform is lower at one time, and that of B e-commerce platform is lower at another time.

Talking about the common problems existing in e-commerce platforms, sun Guoqiang summed up three aspects: firstly, the relatively large traffic cost makes some small and medium-sized enterprises do business on the edge of the break even line; secondly, in terms of brand protection, some e-commerce platforms need to enter the brand to provide relevant qualification and authorization, but there are also some e-commerce platforms that are not strict in management, which leads to a long market Mixed, clothing enterprises feel that it is not easy to crack down on counterfeit goods and protect their rights; the third is channel management, such as online and offline collusion.

Feng Ye talked about another problem, that is, many platforms require clothing brands to give "the lowest price of the whole network".

The lowest price of the whole network is to make profits for consumers, but it is not friendly to production enterprises. In a normal market environment, there should be a virtuous circle. The production enterprises should have enough profits to further research and development and improve the quality of products. If they all rely on price comparison, it is difficult to improve the consumption level of the public. The main problem with price war is that the traditional mode of real economy has been moved to the Internet. Simple online and offline is a popular way of Internet in its immature period. However, with the rapid development of the Internet, there is still a large market for price war.

The new model may weaken the dependence on the platform

Since the outbreak of the epidemic, a number of new online economic formats, such as "house economy" and "cloud shopping", which are mainly in the form of live broadcasting, have broken out in a concentrated way, which has become a bright color of China's economy under the new normal. According to AI media consulting report: in 2020, the transaction scale of China's live e-commerce is expected to reach 916 billion yuan. Compared with other e-commerce modes, live e-commerce has the advantages of shorter transmission path and higher efficiency. Meanwhile, businesses, platforms, anchors and consumers will benefit from the live e-commerce mode. The operation of clothing enterprises in the field of live e-commerce is approaching maturity, which may weaken the dependence of clothing enterprises on brands.

In this regard, sun Guoqiang pointed out that the improvement of shuoyin, Kuaishou and even wechat, self built live broadcasting platform, etc., will promote the e-commerce platform to invest more cost to compete for traffic and merchants, which may reduce the operation cost of clothing brands in terms of traffic.

For clothing brands of different magnitudes, should they choose Taobao and taoyin in the public domain or wechat end and self built live broadcast platform for private traffic? This is worth considering in-depth with each brand's own situation.

The so-called public domain traffic live broadcast means that enterprises and brands have not established relevant user links, and do not have their own private domain traffic pool, and need to rely on a third-party platform to complete the live broadcast; private domain traffic live broadcast means that enterprises and brands have established relevant user links, or established user links in the form of app, applet and wechat group, forming a link based foundation Private domain traffic pool. Compared with the public domain traffic that can be obtained as long as the budget is enough, the private domain traffic is the opposite. It does not need to pay, and can directly reach users at any time and frequency. Obviously, private domain traffic is more advantageous on a certain basis.

Therefore, the challenge lies in the "flow", while the opportunity still lies in the "flow". ?

In July 2020, outlook think tank held an online closed door seminar to make a special study on the major changes brought by live broadcasting to the economy and society. According to the study, from the perspective of IP e-commerce, some large IP tend to be e-commerce, which is conducive to the production of some personalized and aesthetic products, and also has great significance for the transformation of industrial structure. Furthermore, the relationship between the fans and the anchor is expected to form a fixed relationship, which will eventually lead to a cooperative relationship. In this relationship, the anchor can guide the manufacturer to produce some personalized products for consumers and fans. Manufacturers can also get sustained benefits. This is of great value to our consumption upgrading and product added value.

In fact, at present, many anchors have begun to look for their own production plants and have linked to the upstream production link. It is not only the problem of pure control of sellers, but also the brand of anchor in the whole industrial chain of product design, production and service. This is a new phenomenon worthy of attention. It is estimated that a large number of products focusing on personalization, high added value, high quality and strong experience will appear this year and next, which will greatly promote the development of the whole industry chain including product production, marketing, design and scientific research.

Talking about the development trend of clothing brands in the e-commerce platform, sun Guoqiang also talked about the development trend of the whole category. The most representative brand in the industry is the Antarctic brand. In recent years, Antarctica began to equip the whole market products through authorization. In fact, this is the same as millet ecological chain. Although this method is more difficult in quality control, it also represents another development trend of current clothing brands. Xiaomi started with mobile phones and now sells bags and washing machines And clothing enterprises are actually starting to think, in addition to meet the clothing, but also for consumers to provide?

Of course, whether online or offline, the continuous upgrading of consumption will bring more opportunities for garment enterprises, and digital leverage is everywhere. We should be good at using big data to identify, insight, accurately reach and serve consumers, and finally establish emotional links with consumers.