This article comes from WeChat public account: Consumption of Michael House (ID: wicbyfangjiayi) , author: Fang Jia Yi, title figure from: Photo by vnwayne fan on Unsplash

Although there have been many studies and reports on the Japanese consumer industry on the market, I still think that the research and analysis of the entire Japanese consumer retail sector is in a blank. So let ’s explore this time. Recently, the Japanese brand with the hottest topic-MUJI (MUJI) , to analyze the domestic perspective on it. What kind of misunderstandings and illusions have appeared.

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Articles praising MUJI have flooded the market. So if I write it, it is to restore much of the unknown truth behind MUJI. These conclusions come from the truth that I discovered after deduction through interdisciplinary and cross-role. Not much nonsense, first throw up a conclusion: Muji’s gene is a selling company, not a brand company.

I used to ask big coffees in the domestic consumer industry how to view MUJI. Now many people in China have an inherent impression of MUJI, and even the most discussed point of view is that MUJI is a brand design sense. Full company. It is precisely because of such false impressions that we will gradually sort out the development process of MUJI and take everyone to look at the essence of the company’s DNA.

Look at the company name first. In fact, the main name of MUJI listed companies in Japan is not MUJI, but “Good Product Plan”. “Good Product” is a good thing. “Plan” is designed and planned in Japanese. meaning. Those who are familiar with Japanese companies must know thatIt is very similar to the name of the new product planning division in Japanese companies. In fact, MUJI’s predecessor was the channel brand department of Japan’s large-scale comprehensive retail supermarket “West Friends”.

Why does Xiyou do channel branding? Have to return to Japan in 1979.

After Japan’s second oil crisis in 1979, the entire country ’s consumer market has shrunk severely, and consumers have begun to pay attention to the price of goods and their value for money. At the same time, the rise of category killer stores, which rely on a long-term and deep-binding supply system, has also further impacted the price of department stores and large comprehensive supermarkets that have previously occupied the top 10 of the Japanese retail industry.

Under such circumstances, Xiyou followed the “No Brand” channel brand of the older brother “Daie” and started the research and development of its own brand in 1978.

In 1980, MUJI began to enter the market. At first, there were only 40 items. (SKU) . 31 food items. It also highlights the concept of “わ け あ っ て 安 い”, which means “cheap and reasonable”. In response to the public’s demand for de-branding premiums, the basic functions of a product should be built to the extreme. Others should not be .

From 1980 to 1988, Seiyu continuously delivered traffic, channels and marketing resources to “MUJI”. As long as it is a Xiyou store, there will be “MUJI”. In theory, as a brand trader, in your cold start phase, if your positioning is high or low, you must spend a lot of effort on content traffic, marketing, and channels.

However, you do n’t need to worry about such issues when you are born.

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Firstly, on the channel, Seiyu pulls his group of department stores and the big brother of GMS to instill traffic and channel resources to MUJI. Because its products are cheap, it will bring its own traffic. For the heavy money, I invited a wave of top designers from Japan, such as Naoto Fukasawa, to give it a platform and put forward a de-branding concept, so that the shaping of all subsequent content stories is thinking about how to subtract the brand. Instead of playing the “Plus + X” differentiated upgrade route.

In 1983, Seiyo created a brand-operated store for MUJI’s trendy buyer store in Aoyama, Tokyo. 2 years later, The private label exceeded the department’s KPI. Because in the Japanese bubble economy, the concept of subtraction in the state of excess consumption exactly matched the Japanese “Zen” national character, making MUJI’s sales of more than 14 billion yen. For the western friends who were struggling with the format of Uniqlo, Daiso, Can do, etc. at that time, it can be said to be a charcoal in the snow.

So Xiyou decided to set up a separate “MUJI Business Unit” for it. In 1989, MUJI was spun off independently and renamed “Good Product Plan”, in order to incubate more brands like “MUJI” in the future.

It stands to reason that after coming out of Xiyou’s stomach, he still adheres to the SPA model. Taking the road of self-built channels is a big challenge for the “MUJI” that has previously heavily leveraged the traffic and channels of others.

But the magic is here. In the second year after the spin-off, the Japanese economy completely collapsed, and MUJI relied on a category label that naturally drains, such as “cheap, cost-effective”, like Don Quijote and Uniqlo. Lie up in the dividends of the times.

But everyone knows that if you want to become a channel brand, especially the concept of cost performance, you must have 3 kinds of capabilities.

1. Strong product research and development ability to meet the common needs of the market (The goods are really easy to use and durable) ;

2. The ability to place a large number of orders upstream to reduce costs (can bargain with suppliers to reduce production costs) ;

3. To solve the unsalable sales that may be caused by a large number of purchases, you must have a strong marketing ability (will sell goods) .

All three abilities are indispensable.

But in addition to the second ability, the MUJI products of the year were shortcomings. Because the traffic and channels are provided by Xiyou, the specific direction of product development is also based on the sales data of various categories within Xiyou, that is,It is said that this is a department that can only do design and make goods, but now it needs to build its own channels. This is equivalent to letting the factory manager who is accustomed to the process thinking of the supply chain to do brand marketing with divergent thinking. In the same way, there was also the first loss of MUJI in 2001.

At that time, the entire company was “as long as the goods are good, don’t worry about selling them”-this kind of typical thinking of selling goods, do not understand the market, users, brands, channels, the inherent defects of the channel It almost killed him for a moment.

So at this time, Matsui Takazo was in danger and ordered a drastic reform of MUJI. It involves: activation of first-line store operation capabilities, adjustment of store locations to store locations where rents are cheaper, etc., but in my opinion these reforms have only helped MUJI to establish a standard SPA model, or to have already adopted the SPA model Uniqlo, which has a lot of fun, is one step closer. But it still hasn’t got rid of its roots: the seller’s thinking.

Although MUJI always promotes itself as a brand, he doesn’t seem to understand the difference between branding and selling. In other words, Matsui intends to put profit growth first in order to increase the stock price of MUJI. In the previous article “Reconstructing the Law of People’s Goods Yards Consumed in Japan and Seeing How Chinese New Brands Go from 0 to 1”, I clearly mentioned the difference between selling goods and making brands.

So I think the real success of a brand company is to occupy the mind share first and then the market share. But MUJI clearly reversed the order in China.

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In 2005, MUJI began to enter China. I did not expect to find out that the trademark was registered in 2001 by a domestic company called Hainan Nanhua Industrial Trading Company. MUJI has been robbing, but the lawsuit has also been losing in the past two years.

For those who have a world-class brand goal, businessThe registration of bids should be completed in all target countries long before the sea is ready to go to sea in 1990. Therefore, MUJI first dug a pit for itself with the thinking of selling goods as long as the goods are good.

Muji’s flagship stores in Shanghai and Beijing have since opened. The established strategy is to hold high and fight high, just like today’s celebrity products go to Southeast Asia to reduce dimensionality, and cut leeks in mainland China. Former President of MUJI Takai, Matsui said: “MUJI as a cost-effective brand in Japan is because consumers are no longer obsessed with products, but their positioning in China should be high-end, Because Chinese consumers are obsessed with the possession of goods. ”

Everyone is curious here, isn’t it that MUJI is a “cheap, cheap, or cheap” brand in Japan? How to get into the country has become high-handed.

From the perspective of the seller, we must know that in 2005, China’s accession to the WTO (WTO) Chinese clothing company brands such as Hailan House, Metersbonwe, Carbin, and Semir are occupying people’s perception of consumer product brands. Since MUJI hangs on these traditional brands in terms of design tone, why not follow the times Consumption upgrade trend, selling more expensive, making money easier.

So relying on the platforms of Japanese big-name designers such as “Yoshimoto Yamamoto”, “Yaken Hara” and “Naoto Fukasawa”, the mysterious, low-key, luxurious sense of luxury, the endorsement of “Made In Japan” products, MUJI In the early stage, these domestic clothing and home furnishing brands were basically rubbed on the ground. / span>. Therefore, in the minds of Chinese consumers, MUJI has always been a representative of a “light luxury lifestyle”.

But for a while, I couldn’t hide it forever. As the information exchange between China and Japan becomes more and more transparent, and more and more consumers have been to Japan, some consumers and entrepreneurs have realized the MUJI brand bullies. It is also a chair exactly the same as the one in Japan. The Japanese shop sells for 10,000 yen. After that, how did the price become 20,000 yen (equivalent to RMB 1280 yuan) .

Why? Why do you want to let yourself who has evolved to the stage of rational consumption make sense to say that you are expensive because of its elegance, mystery and high level, but the actual idea is to downgrade consumption, pursue the Buddhist system, and pay for branded brands.

It’s time to understand that people have come out. For example, Ye Guofu, when he created MINISO products under the slogan “Designed in Japan + Made in China”, MUJI’s fake masks began to be exposed by the world.

Ye Guofu is keenly observing the dilemma of MUJI. If the price of MUJI is reduced, then he is proving to Chinese consumers that he was a “brand bully”, which is basically a brand company. A devastating blow; if MUJI does not reduce its price, then its customer base will be washed out by the Chinese local channel brand, relying on the true ultimate cost performance.

So the early selection method of Mingchuang Youpin was simple and rude. A group of buyers were sent to the MUJI store in Japan to take samples, and they were directly passed to the foundry to ask if they could proof, and they could do the proof. The retail price goes directly to 15 yuan.

It can be seen that since 2016, the growth rate of MUJI ’s Chinese stores ’single store business profits has begun to plummet. In Q3 2017, the growth rate was even negative. Accompanying the sharp decline in growth rate was MUJI’s price cut frenzy. To be honest, I have never seen any brand that would lower its price 11 times in five years, and brands are generally unwilling to discount it. From the perspective of investment, these 11 price reductions can basically make MUJI’s worth in China drop by 2-3 times. (P / S multiples of general brands Greater than channel brand greater than channel) .

So looking at the development of MUJI, we find that its gene is a sales company, not a brand company.

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Finally, let me talk about my understanding of the brand. I believe that the establishment of consumer trust in the brand comes from the accumulation of everything the brand does through the entire value chain. Starting with the concept of selecting your products in the early stages, to what materials you use, how much effort you have spent on research and development, what designers to look for, what stories to tell, and what people to endorse What kind of channels to follow, what rules to set prices, etc., any detail score here will be added to the trust of consumers in your brand.

If you are doing a cold start for a brand, from 0 to 1, you can rely on 1-2 things to make the product burst. But if your goal is to be a world-class brand, then you have to do everything. Regardless of your aesthetics, as long as you do one thing wrong, your consumer’s mind share will collapse, followed by the collapse of the market share.

For example, in Japan, as long as a brand restaurant has a serious health problem, the brand will basically cease to exist the next day, and the president may turn off after turning his back on his sin.

This article is from the WeChat public account: Consumption at Michael House (ID: wicbyfangjiayi) , author: Fang Jia Yi