The Clothing Market Ultimately Depends On Products.

From the achievements and experience gained in the excellent network in the early years, it has made a very strong persistence in the "scale" of enterprises and categories for quite a long time. In the past few years, the situation of the domestic clothing business and the explosive growth of customers during this period have strengthened his confidence in the scale.

"The past practice of customers is to overmatch consumers, lest they do not like it."

Chen concluded, "the way we used to cater for the past is wrong. We used to be too demanding."

A few years ago, Chen and fan did not understand this.

"In the past, the platform, type and category were pferred to" scale ", so all movements were carried out on the scale.

When Chen recalled the great leap forward development of the year, he frowned involuntarily.

Before 2010, customers were occupying the market with the help of a low price increase rate and the advantage of the Internet. At that time, Chen made a judgement on the market: China's consumption era is coming, and the consumption upgrade is the era of Chinese brands.

Based on the above reasons, Chen did not think that UNIQLO and ZARA could cause much trouble in the Chinese market. When the GAP entered the Chinese market, its intention to cooperate with customers eventually ended with the old attitude.

In order to seize the market, customers naturally increase their scale on the Internet by expanding product category and frontline and low price products to occupy the market, trying to create their own volume advantage as much as possible in the short term to lead the new consumption era and win the final victory.

Old age is not an impulsive person, but also experienced the failure of the net of excellence, the last success and the rapid failure of my network. He has accumulated a wealth of entrepreneurial experience.

In 2009, he also warned a friend who wanted to start a business that he must control the speed of the development of the company. The start-up companies were all dead, and few starved to death.

Therefore, when some people question whether the development speed and strategy of the early customers are too fast, he himself is constantly thinking about the same problem.

However, in recent years, the development of the company's business has always been much faster than his most optimistic estimate. Under the repeated impact of these strong external signals, he himself has deeply shaken the common sense and experience accumulated in the past. Is it true that the times are really different?

In the early days of the rush, the fact is that China's manufacturing capacity is also behind it, and the Internet provides a new, efficient and cheap sales outlet.

The old customers were caught up in the general trend and took a high-speed ride.

From 2008 to 2011, the sales revenue of fan's products was 120 million yuan, 300 million yuan, 1 billion 200 million yuan and 3 billion 200 million yuan RMB respectively, and the average annual growth rate was 200% over 4 years.

By the end of June 2011, all customers were favored by the capital market, and they received 6 rounds of financing totaling about $422 million.

But the emergence of this depression is not the essence of China's manufacturing solution. When this depression is rapidly filled, the same problem arises.

Van guest is helping Lining, BELLE and other traditional enterprises solve inventory problems, and finds himself unable to get rid of this fate.

When all the people put their output onto the Internet, when the inventories made in China have already far exceeded the consumer's ability, the advantage of relying on "scale" in the early stage of life has finally become the burden it can not afford.

Most of the time in her career, Zhong Kaixin, vice president of VP, who was a companion, recalled that in the early years of her development, when she hoped that she could recommend some of her products, she could still be familiar. But from the second half of 2010 to 2012, with the expansion of the company's scale and the increasing number of products, she and her colleagues could not give any suggestions and answers.

If anyone asks her, she needs to ask the storehouse to answer the other person.

The development of the great leap forward has brought about the craziness of the category. The result of the expansion of the category is the deteriorating inventory problem.

In order to digest the huge flow of inventory and platform, van guest once tried to pform itself into a platform from its own brand, and access to the three party brands such as Lining and BELLE. At the peak, they accounted for 60% of the customers' platform.

But the result is not satisfactory. Under the background of the poor manufacturing level in China, the quality of traditional brands is not as good as that of customers. The sharp increase of SKU results in the decline of the quality of service and the more serious inventory problems.

By 2012, customers had become a bloated company, and SKU once exceeded 190 thousand.

"The most difficult year for a customer is in 2012. At the end of 2012, we were determined to save ourselves. We used a very extreme method to sell a few bucks and a few bucks. We sold hundreds of thousands of pieces a day. In almost two months, we basically solved our inventory problem. It was really a very cruel way, but it still threw away the burden.

At that time, we could not tolerate the fact that we had considered so much and could not throw away the burden. We could never solve it. "

All this has finally led to the reflection and abandonment of the "stubbornness" of "scale" for a long time.

Over the past year, more than once, Nassim Nicholas Taleb has been recommended to Taleb (Antifragile). In this book, the most important point is that he should not expose himself to danger.

"When all customers do a lot of things and get out of control, each product has its own weaknesses. You show too much of your weaknesses, and you just blow your punches."

After that, he gave a long sigh of relief.

In the spring and summer of 2013, customers began to reduce their categories on a large scale.

Feng Feng also completed the divestiture and became an independent company and reduced more than 20% employees.

Although the process was extremely tragic and almost once fell to the Jedi, through this series of vigorous and resolute means, the guest finally became "small" and survived.

Now, its SKU is only a few hundred, and the product line is refined to 6 categories, including T-shirts, shirts, outdoor, home, khakis, jeans and so on. The staff also cut more than 300 people from 14 thousand at the peak.

At the same time, it also gave up the ambition of making the platform to concentrate on the self service of the van guest brand. The proportion of the third party brand on the electricity supplier has dropped to less than 10%.

"

"And" value is closely related, everyone is following this mentality to scale, which is actually deviating from the essence of the brand.

When customers are seeking the scale, they lose the most important part of the product.

In the same way, "our products are so limited now, because we have limited ability, not our deliberation."

But "small" is just helping the customers stop the blood. This is just helping the organism to heal slowly. If you want to resurrect the blood in the market, this is not enough.