The influence of channel brands is gradually covering up product brands.
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “New Business Essentials” (ID:xinshangye2016) author: Teamwork. Original title: “With 3.5 billion goods overnight, you were “lied” by Via”
The influence of channel brands is gradually covering up product brands, and only the upstream supply chain is left for consumer products.
According to the daily list of goods given by the platform, Wei Ya’s live broadcast sales reached 3.5 billion and Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast sales reached 3.2 billion.
This income exceeds 80% of the annual revenue of A-share listed companies.
Live streaming has become the key to the rise of new consumer brands and has become an undisputed argument.
Many people say that this is similar to the huge changes in the star industry. In the past, the stars were all out of the box, but now they can become popular with Internet fans through variety shows.
Then, new consumer brands don’t need to be Wahaha, like Nongfu Spring from channel, marketing, and supply chain The links are linked together, Xiaohongshu, station B, and live broadcast e-commerce can make their blockbuster Long preparation period is needed again.
But what I want to say is:
Don’t be fooled by Wei Ya’s delivery of 3.5 billion goods overnight, we have to passPhenomenon, to grasp the essential core competitiveness of this industry in the new consumer era.
1 Consumer experience is always restricted by channels
Since 2016, the wave of new retail has begun to surge in the circle of friends of various bosses.
What is new retail? Ye Guohui believes that online and offline integration and user experience improvement are the ultimate goals of new retail.
“Brands must accelerate refactoring to identify, analyze, and reach users to improve user experience.”
At that time, Ye Guohui was the head of Tmall’s new retail platform division.
The home furnishing retailer IKEA, IKEA, has done everything in this respect. The all-weather real-time experience makes users feel like they are at home when they arrive at IKEA.
But the offline scene is more of experience, but it is defeated by experience. The most basic and material experience of users has two aspects. The first is price and the second is spatial distance.
IKEA has only 18 stores in the Chinese market, and due to its large operating area, they are all located in the suburbs of cities.
Use JingGuan Chang for the book “Energy Consumption Game”, this layout adds User space energy consumption.
Chongqing IKEA IKEA at 2 am, photography/Marvin
As a result, convenience stores, experience centers, and fresh supermarkets close to the community have become popular among capitals.
It should be emphasized that this kind of market phenomenon is only allowed in China.
During a Kuznets cycle, create The prosperity and decline of the construction industry can reflect periodic fluctuations, with an average period of about 20 years.
In the past 20 years, there has been a construction industry phenomenon in China that is not in the world.
In the form of community gathering driven by Chinese real estate, one place was completely stripped off and a dozen or so buildings were built, and then people of the same age group, same income level, and almost the same family structure gathered suddenly it’s here.
Currently, a community in China generally has 3,000 households or 10,000 people.
This number is equivalent to a large town in Europe and America. In Europe and America, a small town will have a large store with many commercial facilities.
This gives bonuses to offline stores in the community and even large supermarkets.
The Legend of Fresh Food Wang Wei once said that the small offline store they are currently pursuing It is a transitional stage. In the future, the development of the format of a large-scale comprehensive supermarket in the community is extremely likely.
Convenience supermarket laid out in the community, picture/Sohu focus
Of course, IKEA’s business model does not allow it to move large stores to the community.
22 years after coming to China, this elephantFinally bowed to the space energy consumption, went to Online at your fingertips.
Online can also solve a problem, namely price and energy consumption.
As one of the largest hand sanitizer brands in China, Blue Moon’s sales in Pinduoduo accounted for 10% of the brand’s online sales, which was the same as Jingdong’s sales.
Users outside the Fifth Ring Road can buy cheap Blue Moon here.
In the past, if people buy a bottle of hand sanitizer in a mom-and-pop shop, the price is 13 yuan. Its price composition is actually at least 7 removals, and about 3 yuan in rent, manpower, and profit sharing in various links.
Dating back to the manufacture of hand sanitizer, its cost is only 3 yuan.
In the non-Internet era where channels are concrete, a bottle of hand sanitizer requires a channel cost of about 10 yuan. Otherwise, it will not reach consumers.
Now, you can buy such a bottle of hand sanitizer on Pinduoduo. Assuming that the price is 7.9 yuan, the price is composed of 3 yuan cost + 4 yuan logistics + 0.9 yuan platform commission.
It would be 8 yuan, so the factory can make 0.1 yuan.
Consumer products are always subject to channels. Even online channels still have a channel cost of 4.9 yuan.
But end users spend less money, and reduced prices and energy consumption have enabled many consumer products to embark on a path of small profits but quick turnover.
Pinduoduo uses channels to empower agricultural production areas, photo/China Business News
In the new consumer era, the path for consumer products to reach end users has become flat.
A typical channel is for factory products to directly find Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya. These KOLs such as Taobao live broadcast and Douyin live broadcast have becomechannel.
In the face of these personal channels, consumer products still need to face the latest styles, the lowest prices on the whole network and other requirements for bringing goods.
Last year, the Pechoin pigeon took Li Jiaqi and embraced Wei Ya, which is actually a game between brand and channel.
Offline, online, KOL, after the analysis, it is chilling, consumer products return to the old era when channels are king?
2 Product brand gives way to channel brand
More than that.
The influence of channel brands is gradually covering up product brands.
In the past, if there were new shopping malls in a certain city, it was usually to invite brands such as Uniqlo and ZARA in advance. Basically, the admission fee is free, and there is an exclusive policy.
Two years ago, Starbucks’ exclusive policy in shopping malls was Luckin Coffee poked out .
But this phenomenon has become less and less. Excellent consumer product brands may have a series of cooperation with shopping malls, but the same kind of treatment has never been given in the past.
Italian luxury brand Prada is a good case.
Before announcing the move to Tmall, Early Light, the owner of “Plaza 2000” on Russell Street, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, China, revealed that the lease of the Prada store will expire in June 2020 and will not be renewed.
Prada’s rent here is 9 million Hong Kong dollars a month.
Prada’s Hong Kong store is about to close, photo/luxe
In front of the channel, the brand always has to bend over to speak, even though your downstream voice is exemplified.
The same goes for online channels. For Pinduoduo’s 7.9 yuan hand sanitizer, the platform may directly initiate a C2M order to a certain factory in the future.
After this factory accepts national demand, the marginal cost will be reduced, and the price for the terminal will be lower. By that time, a large number of merchants and other hand sanitizer brands will be ruthlessly squeezed out.
At present, Pinduoduo is cooperating with Kexinrou and Plant Care in the field of napkins. The two factories can sell 200,000 orders per day during peak periods.
Last year, Pinduoduo even cooperated with Zhaochi shares cooperated with the first customized TV, 65 The first 4K TV is only 1999 yuan.
When channels start to make their own products, it has nothing to do with brands.
This trend is intensifying. Yonghui Supermarket once launched its own brand “Optimum”. Since then, the porcelain bowl brand in Jingdezhen and the brand of small household appliances in Shunde have begun to be marketed by brands labeled “Yonghui Optimum”.
Yonghui prefers its own brand matrix, picture/ZAKER
The path trend of consumer goods reaching users is actually the process of channel brands establishing a credit system.
Take the current popular KOL carrying goods as an example:
First, they share high-quality content socially. Rebecca, Yu Xiaoge, Wei Ya, etc., when sharing content, they mainly tell users how to work both internally and externally to lead a decent life that is practical and stylish.
The next step is to trust the agent. They usually use their own experience to tell users what to buy and how to buy. Users trust the things recommended by these girls.
In order to better manage user trust, on the one hand, theyBe very cautious when receiving promotion product information. They will use all the products to be promoted by themselves, and will recommend them to users if they feel really good.
So, when consumer products are in contact with your channel, this kind of To B communication does not really need a brand, but a product.
In the future, it is impossible for channels to dilute self-branding and endorse a bad product.
Like last year, Li Jiaqi promoted non-stick pan rollovers and was accused of false propaganda in promoting Yangcheng champion crabs. These not only attracted criticism from authoritative newspapers such as the People’s Daily, but also made many netizens turn black.
Li Jiaqi responded to the non-stick pan incident, picture/weibo
When all channel brands maintain the same “credit system”, good products have more opportunities to reach consumers.
This is what product managers often say, good products can speak for themselves.
3 Only the upstream supply chain is left for consumer goods
As mentioned above: When all channel brands maintain the same “credit system”, those with more opportunities to reach consumers must be good products.
Good products test the supply chain.
The construction of upstream supply chain, but two kinds:
The first is to cooperate with mature upstream industrial chains, such as Xiaomi, Three squirrels etc.
The second is to extend yourself upstream, such as Jiang Xiaobai, hi tea, etc.
How to determine whether a company should engage in the entire industry chain by itself? When the industrial chain is immature, that is, when the interface of each chain link is not clear, a company will integrate these chains with high efficiency.
Use a more classic case:
Back then, Ford was engaged in the entire industry chain. Iron ore was transported from upstream, and cars could be sold downstream. But Ford struggled to engage in the entire industrial chain because it could not find a suitable cooperative unit at that time.
Others can’t understand his gameplay, and the cost of doing it is very high.
SAIC-GM-Wuling is also the same logic. After controlling the upstream supply chain, Beijing Benz lost 400 million yuan a day and requested government permission to resume work in advance, Wuling The production of masks and masks were converted in a few days, and 2 million masks were donated every day.
Wuling mask production data, picture/official screenshot
Generally speaking, when the industry matures, companies should only focus on the core and outsource the related small-profit supporting facilities.
Such a division of labor can achieve high efficiency. A typical example is three squirrels.
However, for the design of upstream production models, some economists also believe that industries with low technological dependence can transfer production and processing costs outward.
So, although Xiaomi has perfected the upstream and downstream integration model, his mobile phone industry is highly dependent on technology. In fact, it is not suitable for outsourcing but needs to be done by itself.
An emerging consumer product brand engaged in the upstream supply chain is Jiang Xiaobai in the field of liquor. Although this company seems to be playing Internet thinking, he has his own brewing base and set up his own agricultural company to grow sorghum.
With the development of new retail today, the voice of channels may be stronger in the future, and the brand will likely age. What’s more, the essence of brand business is that the company collects brand tax from users. It is nothing more than a question of brand tax.
But in the future, what will become a rare asset in the entire consumer goods field is the upstream high-quality supply chain. Regardless of the development of e-commerce platforms, community e-commerce, content e-commerce, etc., a high-quality supply chain must always be one of the underlying core competitiveness.
For example, one day, channel brands such as Tmall, Pinduoduo, Wal-Mart, and MUJI will launch their own liquor brands. Its brand and culture may not be that important.
Jiang Xiaobai’s upstream production base, picture/Lieyun.com
Everything is endorsed by the influence of the channel, which is more acceptable to consumers.
So, what should consumer goods entrepreneurs strive for? Raise your own supply chain, so that this channel has its own brand of liquor products, which are brewed by themselves, and even sorghum is grown in their own land.
This is the foundation of the industry, and it can make your business sustainable and profitable.
The foundation is firmly laid, the products are recognized by the channels, and the brand building is natural.
It’s very likely that even if your brand is not so public, that oneBrand tax is less, in fact, competitiveness still exists.
I think that the gross profit margin at this stage can be explored in terms of organizational management and supply chain configuration.
Although consumer needs are from material to spiritual. But the prerequisite for reaching the spiritual level (brand identity level) is that the foundation of the material level has been laid.
Not to be blindly influenced by brand marketing and the public, but to independently determine product quality and implement rational consumption decisions is the so-called consumption upgrade.
4 Is the brand still competitive in the end?
In 2019, there was a heated discussion in the circle about the final competitiveness of the brand. Time InterestCEO Zhang Rui, Diaoye Beef Brisket Founder Meng Xing, Women’s Knife Method founder Ke Rundong, etc., are all involved.
Many opinions are that China has no brands but only labels. After all, such super IPs as Coca-Cola, Adidas, KFC, etc. cannot be found in China.
Without a brand, there is no premium, which is a disadvantage in the international trade of consumer goods.
But there is no way. In China, the world’s largest consumer market, the influence of the brand may continue to be weakened in the future, and the product is king, moving towards the era of unbranded consumer goods.
Shen Shuaibo, CEO of Paidong Influence, mentioned in a previous article:
Swatch is the triumph of cost performance in Europe; WalMart is the victory of cost performance in the Americas; Decathlon is an anti-market behavior in the luxury market, France, and Uniqlo is the representative of Japan’s ultimate price-performance ratio.
There are such participants in China too, and Shen Shuaibo said it is MINISO.
What these brands have in common is that they are all squeezing brand premiums, highlighting the ultimate cost-effectiveness of their products. Through the product is king, even without brand management, in fact, in the end, familiar brands will be born.
Uniqlo Beijing Sanlitun Store, photo/Xinhuanet
On weekdays, explaining the source of everything, mostly divided by groups of people.
China’s post-90s generation has unprecedented acceptance of new things, and is particularly sensitive to price and quality. Such user characteristics have boosted the unbranded movement with the ultimate cost-effectiveness.
As early as twenty or thirty years ago, Uniqlo was born in Japan as well.
Miura Exhibition stated in the “Fourth Consumer Era” that Uniqlo caters to the “new human generation” in Japan. They were taken to Ginza by the service when they were children, and they started playing in Shibuya in high school.
But when it comes to the bottom, it is the economic foundation that determines the superstructure.
Uniqlo’s development is inseparable from the “Plaza Agreement.” After the agreement was signed, the yen exchange rate soared, and Japanese goods no longer have a price advantage in overseas markets.
Young people no longer dare to touch expensive and luxurious clothing, but have a demand for “fashionable, durable, but inexpensive”.
It is obvious that China is going through such an economic cycle.
As the main consumer group, the post-90s generation is faced with mortgages, car loans, etc., which are paid back after graduation.
Nielsen’s survey of 18-29-year-olds showed that 86.6% of the people in the survey belonged to the “debt group,” with an average debt of 120,000 per capita.
Report on the debt status of young consumers in China, Figure/DT Finance
It can be concluded that the current Chinese consumer industry is the best time to learn from brands such as Uniqlo and Decathlon.
Why do brands need to deliberately build brands? Focusing on the construction of channels and supply chains is actually the accumulation of comprehensive brand power.
At the end of the brand, competitiveness is reflected in products with the ultimate cost-effectiveness.