The disruptive nature of e-commerce 2.0 is reflected in the unprecedented power of consumers (users). Their participation methods are more active and active, and the market allocates resources in a reverse direction based on the demand side. As a result, new forms and business formats have been born.
C2B demand is king
The emergence of new models such as aggregation, points, alliances, and group purchases shows the rise of personalized demand from different aspects. The traditional business model in which companies provide products and services to consumers may undergo a 180-degree reversal. A new model in which consumers provide demand information to companies and benefit from it has begun to take shape. C2B (consumer to business, consumer to business) ) The era when demand is king is coming.
Group buying is one of the typical C2B models. Consumers gather together to collectively bargain with manufacturers, thereby realizing the transfer of price dominance from manufacturers to consumers. The Witkey model can also be regarded as a C2B model. From the initial points and virtual currency rewards such as Sina iAsk and Baidu Zhizhi, to k68.cn’s cash payment of “full payment, never refund, website deducts 20%”, to witkey.com’s application of bidding tasks in technology transfer field. Both models have common weaknesses: enterprises are slightly passive, consumers are very dispersed, and platform organization costs are high.
Are there any companies actively intervening on the demand side, consciously guiding demand and allocating resources in reverse?
Qigege: Pioneer in reverse design
"Qigege TOP Trendy Store" is recognized as one of the most popular women's clothing stores on Taobao, but what is truly scary is not its sales, but its bizarre development speed and the competition model that represents the future.
Shop owner Cao Qing, whose online name is "Qi Ge Ge", is female and was born in 1982. In 2006, Cao Qing, who had just graduated, used 4,000 yuan to register an online store and has been playing around for the next two or three years. It was promoted to the crown in January 2009 and has three full-time employees. By the end of 2009, the online store had become 5 Crowns, with more than 100 employees, a complete electronic management system, industrial assembly lines, and two registered clothing brands. In 2009, Qigege's sales exceeded 30 million yuan and are expected to exceed 150 million yuan this year.
This is the fastest growing and most successful online store in Taobao's history. Not only that, there are already five shopping websites other than Taobao acting as agents for Qigege, and foreign distribution websites have developed to Europe, the United States, Japan and other places.
Why has it changed so much in just one year? Seize personalized needs and configure resources in reverse!
All women's clothing sold by Qigege are 100% original works. It has a team of "15 young designers + 1 full-time matchmaker". It is stipulated that at least 100-150 new styles will be launched every month to ensure that the goods in the store are consistent. Less than 500 styles. It has tens of thousands of die-hard fans and many QQ groups.
Every time a new model is launched, Qigege will first upload the new design to the store. For example, when preparing to launch 80 new clothes, we will design more than 200 new styles, let netizens vote and discuss them in the QQ group, and finally select the styles that everyone generally likes and modify them, then upload them to the website, repeat several rounds, and finally Shelves and production.
This completely subverts the traditional model of big-name designers leading fashion trends. Traditionally, designers close their doors and decide the style design for the next season by capturing popular elements and their own inspiration. However, the Qigege model is the opposite. Consumers begin to truly decide the style and fashion direction.
It even subverts our traditional basic understanding of brands. As we all know, brands are products of the industrialization era. Communication requires time and accumulation, and needs to be continuously communicated to consumers. But the Internet era is completely different. Two-way communication has greatly increased the speed of accumulation of brand value. From obscurity to the fourth best-selling women's clothing brand on Taobao, Qi Gege only took more than half a year.
Maibaobao: data wins
Maibaobao is the number one luggage brand on Taobao. Its founder, Ye Haifeng, has more than ten years of experience in the traditional luggage industry. In September 2007, Ye Haifeng changed the traditional OEM processing model, switched from export to domestic sales, fully utilized the online marketing model, and created the "Wheat Bags" brand. Qigege’s success comes from reverse design, while Maibaobao uses powerful data analysis to lock in consumer demand and seize the opportunity.
Using IT technology, Maibaobao has been able to capture information and data from hundreds of luggage stores on the three major C2C platforms Taobao, Paipai and Youa, as well as dozens of B2C luggage websites, so as to judge market prospects. Today, Maibaobao's data capture scope has expanded beyond China and has begun monitoring Amazon, eBay and some e-commerce platforms in Europe.
The store's best-selling "98 decibel" cowhide shoulder bag is a milestone achievement of this model. It is named "98 decibels" because the designer believes that women will scream when they see this bag. The highest screaming volume is 98 decibels. Facts have proved that in just one month, the sales volume of this single product is close to 50,000, and it is still selling well.
Behind the miracle is accurate demand analysis. Two months in advance, Maibaobao was doing market analysis, calculating the popularity of various styles and the possible sales volume on Taobao and all its online retail markets, and then working backwards to do product design, packaging and publicity and promotion. . Accurate calculations allow Maibaobao to quickly organize production based on consumer feedback and reduce inventory backlog to the lowest point.
UFO: Pre-sale to determine demand
UFO is a fashion women's shoe brand under Shanghai Maizhong Clothing. It was born in January 2009. In just 8 months, it stood out from the 24,000 women's shoe stores on Taobao and became the largest women's shoe brand on Taobao, with an average of 680,000 visitors per day. Today, among the 1 million women's shoes sold online on Taobao, UFO occupies all of the top 50.
Yan Dan, the founder of MaiZhong, is a veteran in China’s VC industry and was once the largest shareholder of 8848. Like wheat bags, UFO also has powerful IT systems and data analysis and mining capabilities. It monitors and analyzes the sales of big-name women's shoes around the world. After discovering potential targets, it buys samples overseas and expresses them back to China, and then tries them in China. , modify and design, and upload the designed sample photos to Taobao for consumers to choose and see if they can be sold in the domestic market.
It is worth mentioning that Yan Dan also designed a novel pre-sale model. There is a 30-day pre-sale period after uploading photos of new shoes, and the price increases over time. For example, the pre-sale price of a pair of shoes is 300 yuan. The initial price is only 100 yuan, and 10 yuan is added for every 100 pairs sold. It is not until the 15th day that the shoes are sold at the tag price (official price) - the manufacturer does nothing during these 15 days until collection After sufficient demand is met, an order will be placed with the factory to begin mass production and delivery. The minimum threshold for UFO to place an order with the factory is 1,000 pairs.
The precise demand has allowed UFO to save a lot of logistics, inventory, and marketing costs, and the capital turnover rate has reached an astonishing 9 times per month. But this model also has obvious shortcomings: What if the pre-sale is not enough to collect 1,000 pairs? What to do when there are only a few dozen pairs available for pre-sale? However, this marketing model does have a lot of room for business imagination.
The era of “Demand is King” is coming
Qigege, Maibaobao, UFO, etc. are not special cases. Similar companies are appearing in the Internet field in batches and will gradually move offline, creating a disruptive impact on the traditional business world. Taking men's clothing as an example, among the 20 brands with the largest sales on Taobao platform, new brands born on the Internet account for almost half, and three of the top 5 are online brands.
Industry insiders believe that, unlike traditional commerce, which is large-scale, standardized and product-oriented, the network economy is characterized by small batches, personalization and customer orientation, corresponding to the business models of flexible manufacturing, personalized marketing and socialized logistics. Among them, the trend of personalization and "personalized marketing" are the most critical - it uses consumer demand as the driving engine to force "flexible production" forward and "socialized logistics" backward.
Therefore, information technology is only a means and tool, and the real core is the discovery and grasp of user needs, transforming from "resource allocation as the center" to "demand collection as the center", which is also the logical starting point and basis of "E-commerce 2.0" destination.
Article excerpt source: http://www.paidai.com/