Market Research: What Does The New Retail Bring To Aokang

Like many traditional industries, the shoe and clothing industry has always pursued the principle of "channel is the king". The core of sales competition is the number of offline stores in order to achieve scale effect.

But now, it's obviously out of date. The fragmentation of the business district leads to a significant reduction in single store customer flow, while the fragmentation of consumer preference reduces the conversion rate. Under the superposition of the two, the decline of single store sales is inevitable. This means that more stores are needed to achieve the same total sales volume. In other words, the cost ratio of enterprises has been greatly increased, and "the more stores open, the faster the death" has become a common phenomenon in the shoe and clothing industry. In addition, many problems such as the loss of users and the low efficiency of shopping guide also hinder the shoe and clothing brands in the process of struggling.

Aokang, 33, is one of them. But the difference is that the old "shoe king" is already on the road of new retail. From 2020, Aokang and youzan have joined hands to start a new retail exploration focusing on the construction of private domain. First of all, through youzan small program, one district and one store can be realized, which can effectively mobilize the enthusiasm of regional companies; We also use youzan enterprise micro assistant to connect enterprise wechat and form an effective link with consumers.

Now, Aokang's youzan app, enterprise wechat and members have formed a new retail Troika. In the process of promoting new retail, Aokang always takes the regional company as the leading role, and the headquarters will accompany it. At the same time, through continuous empowerment, it can enhance the ability of regional companies, so as to truly ensure the landing of new retail layer by layer. At the moment that new retail has become a "must choice", Aokang may provide reference for many traditional enterprises.

After 2009, e-commerce flourished in China. Aokang was once a star enterprise on the e-commerce platform.

However, as the flow dividend fades, like many enterprises, Aokang also realizes that e-commerce cannot replace offline. What e-commerce does is platform traffic, that is, public domain traffic, which can not solve the existing problems of enterprise terminal stores.

As David bell, a professor at Wharton Business School and author of the book "the store that can't disappear," physical retail will never disappear, but the way it exists needs to be changed. Aokang team also firmly believes that if we abandon offline channels, we will not be able to keep online. But the key point is that the two must achieve real integration, rather than separate development.

Therefore, in 2019, Aokang will turn its attention to new retail, and begin to plan to build private domain capability and activate offline stores with online potential energy. At the beginning of 2020, the outbreak of the new epidemic situation pushed it out of the first step.

During the epidemic, Aokang launched the small program of emergency launch and launched global marketing. However, in the process of landing, there are new problems. In the footwear and clothing industry, the prevailing organizational structure is headquarters + regional company mode, and the regional companies often directly manage the terminal stores in the region, accounting independently and taking responsibility for their own profits and losses. How to balance the interests between headquarters and regional companies is a big difficulty.

So is Okun. When Aokang launched a new retail reform from its headquarters, it faced not only how to attract consumers online, but also how to balance the interests of regional companies so that they could truly accept and even embrace the new changes. In other words, whether the system can match the organizational structure is very important.

At first, the app used by Aokang only supported the sharing of one online store across the country, which could not meet the consumption differences of different regions, and could not guarantee the interests of regional companies, which made it difficult for the latter to maintain passion. When the epidemic basically ended, the flow of small programs dropped sharply.

Until September 2020, Aokang set up a new retail operation center. Chen Xiangwu, director of Aokang, was surprised to find that youzan's solution for the shoe and clothing industry could just solve Aokang's pain points at that time.

This is a set of comprehensive digital transformation scheme based on private domain assets, through a "headquarters", enabling the whole offline retail system including regional companies and dealers, and realizing the comprehensive digital transformation scheme of "stores, shopping guides and members".

First of all, youzan mall system supports that each regional company can have its own personalized small program mall, that is, one district and one store. Product display, shop decoration, marketing activities, etc. can be designed by regional companies, and can be directly collected, which makes regional companies truly feel that they are the owners of small app stores. At the same time, based on LBS positioning, customers from all over the country can only see the local micro stores, which effectively realizes the price differentiation among different regions. As a result, the enthusiasm of regional companies has greatly increased.

Since then, Aokang new retail operation center has set up "regional new retail operation" posts and design posts in the headquarters. As a "counselor", Aokang new retail operation center helps regional companies to provide basic services such as shelf design, so as to further empower regional companies. Each regional company has a designated counselor, and the latter is bound up with the regional company in terms of performance indicators, and strives to work together with the regional company.

During this period, youzan's operation experts also provided training for the regional company management team of Aokang, further promoting the process of new retail landing. Under a series of measures, more and more regional companies began to take the initiative to join the new retail team.

Youzan app has huge energy. By trying social fission and other marketing methods, Aokang added 100000 effective users in more than a month. But even so, Chen admits that trying to solve all problems through a small app mall is "too idealistic.".

Lu Yuan, Ding Jie, global partners of Bain company, and Bao Mingfeng, the managing director of Bain company, have jointly written an article. They believe that enterprises should not only focus on the purchase value of a single transaction, but should look at the user value from the perspective of the whole life cycle. The favorable view coincides with it. "If we used to sell a product to 100 people, then the private sector is to sell 100 goods to one person, and then let him share them with 100 people." Xiaoxi (Huaming), the person in charge of youzan shoes and clothing industry, explained.

Private domain is essentially the relationship between people. In order to achieve the stability of daily sales, it is the core to build its own private domain pool and form a cohesive relationship with customers.

Among them, enterprise wechat has become the core weapon. Through enterprise wechat, shopping guides can build an effective community on the basis of mutual trust. The enterprise wechat assistant of youzan can seamlessly connect the enterprise wechat and youzan app store to realize the automatic connection of user data. As a result, the shopping guide can clearly understand the customer portrait through the member label in youzan CRM, and help them interact accurately, forming a closed-loop of attracting customers and converting repurchase.

After youzan app, wechat of enterprise has become another starting point of Aokang new retail.

In order to open up the promotion situation, the new retail operation center has made a unique effort to carry out the national enterprise micro promotion competition. The shopping guide with excellent performance can get a reward of several thousand yuan a month, and the corresponding new retail responsible person will also be rewarded.

In the short three months since then, Aokang's Micro fans have soared from 30000 at the beginning of 2021 to 700000. In order to ensure the sustainability of the passion of regional companies, the new retail operation center has set a benchmark through similar incentive activities.

"We are very clear that regional companies are the customers of Aokang's new retail operation center, so our mission is' new retail helps store performance growth '," Chen Xiangwu said

As Chen Xiangwu said, we should "speak with data". However, how to measure the quality of private domain layout, so as to clarify the next direction of enterprises? For this reason, youzan put forward four measurement indicators, namely: the increase of sales from the store, the improvement of the consumption power of members, the growth of the same store ratio in the store, and the improvement of shopping guide efficiency and income. For Aokang and other enterprises, it is particularly important to "increase sales by leaving the store" and "improve the efficiency and income of shopping guide".

Xiaoxi, the person in charge of youzan shoes and clothing industry, said: "we have noticed that during the period from 10:00 p.m. to 10:00 a.m. of the next day, the sales volume of youzan shoes and clothing merchants through private domain accounts for 31% of the total sales volume. These" after sleep "income is basically incremental for stores."

The size of this increment depends on the ability of shopping guide. Because, out of store sales test the trust between the shopping guide and customers. This needs to continuously strengthen the training of online social sales ability of shopping guide, at the same time, set up corresponding incentive mechanism in the income composition of shopping guide to improve the enthusiasm of shopping guide.

In order to truly implement the new retail method to each shopping guide, with the support of youzan, Aokang new retail operation center has explored a set of promotion training methods. First, the headquarters training, then to each regional company, then to the District, and finally to the store training of each store. The in store training relies on the standardized SOP, and after the training and explanation, direct hand-in-hand guidance is carried out to ensure the understanding of the shopping guide.

As of October this year, more than 1000 such in store training has been conducted, and the effect is very good. Now, Aokang has more than 10000 wechat users every day, and the total number has exceeded one million. Moreover, the three carriages of small program, enterprise wechat and members have been completely connected. After customers arrive at the store, they can automatically receive the link of opening membership card and small program mall by scanning QR code and adding enterprise wechat. The three tasks are completed at one time. Many old members precipitated in the membership system have been reactivated. And because it is bound with enterprise wechat, it can be reached continuously instead of just a phone number that may not be connected.

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Nowadays, Aokang's regional companies are embracing the new retail more and more. Many regional companies have turned their part-time new retail managers into full-time ones. In addition, the general managers of regional companies actively applied to call on the employees of the new retail operation center to help connect with the community activities. When the general managers of many regional companies make work reports, they also include the new retail.

The new retail brings not only performance, but also many pain points, which are directly reflected in the "key indicators".

The first is the offline key role - the transfer of shopping guide. For this group, the best benefits are orders. But in the past, due to the limitation of time and tools, the income of shopping guide did not go up, and it was difficult to have a sense of achievement, so the liquidity was very large. After connecting the offline and online shopping guides, the play space of shopping guides is greatly increased, which makes excellent shopping guides more willing to stay, and solves the pain point of frequent loss of store staff.

At the same time, connecting with online can also help stores break through the space restrictions. It not only helps them improve their daily income, but also provides a second battlefield when they have to close their stores in special periods such as epidemic situation and decoration, so as to maintain the interaction with customer groups and make up for the sales loss.

Through the new retail mode, it is more convenient to collect customer feedback and can be converted into data. This has brought great help to the continuous improvement of R & D and production departments of the headquarters.

The new retail also brought Aokang the idea of subversion. The general managers of regional companies have abandoned the traditional concept that sales must rely on physical stores, and people must go to stores. They no longer think that new retail is only the business of the e-commerce department. They have initially built their private domain capabilities and no longer feel that new retail is out of reach.

"I think of new retail as" white plus black ", which is to break the limitations of time and space," explains Wang An, vice president of Aokang international. "Traditional retail has three carriages: channels, commodities and sales. Our new retail is positioned as a new Troika: small programs, enterprises and members." new plus old and white plus black have formed a complete set of links after getting through each other.

Now, Aokang has enabled the retail stores of youzan to guide the purchase, refine the operation of users, and improve the repurchase and additional purchase, which has made the repurchase rate of Aokang youzan micro mall reach 25%. The number of wechat fans has accumulated more than one million. Although new retail sales account for less than 10% of the total sales, achievements have been made. "My goal is to increase the number of people in the private sector to 10 million in the future," Wang said. "In the future, we will increase the proportion of new retail sales to 50%." although there is still a gap to this goal, he is full of confidence. He believed that the new retail, combined with the brand upgrading currently under way, could realize greater ideals in the future and change consumers' perception of leather shoes.