Consumer Goods Entrepreneurship Resurgence: The big wave must not be wrong, but you may not be able to grasp it

 Although catching up with the new wave of consumption, the path of a new generation of entrepreneurs is still tortuous and complicated. This is not only the tens of billions of brand stories with the vitality forest, the perfect diary, and the hi tea, but also the struggle and search of thousands of new brands.

At this time, breaking a certain level of information barrier, sharing experience and lessons and releasing new solutions is tantamount to a long drought for entrepreneurs on the long journey.

A: The big wave of consumption must not be wrong, but you may not be able to grasp it

1. Consumer entrepreneurship requires focus, duty, kindness and curiosity

I just finished listening to everyone’s self-introductions, and many of my friends are doing relatively new things and are very optimistic about their career prospects.

First of all, everyone's decision must be correct. why? Because this is not a simple outlet, but the trend of the times and the general trend of the times.

If everyone can grasp this wave of opportunities, you will not regret it for at least ten years.

I explored the consumer in this line for 26 years, from 1994 to do a market in foreign, so the brand, beyond the year 2000 to do their own trade Easy Company , to support several brands, whether it is the beginning of three million or 30 million, we have Can smoothly help them achieve five or six billion or even more than one billion.

It may not be particularly novel now, but we have been doing consumption since 1994, and many people started doing it earlier, after the reform and opening up.

Because consumption, especially eating, is the biggest rigid demand of human beings.

So if everyone can grasp this big wave of consumption, it will not be wrong, but the key is that you may not be able to grasp it.

In 2014 and 2015, everyone said that e-commerce had no chance and had reached the top, but no one had expected that the market value of Pinduoduo could reach nearly 130 billion U.S. dollars.

So I want to ask everyone, have you really figured it out when you come to do this? What I'm talking about may be reluctant to listen to, but it is our history of blood and tears, and some of our experience in crawling out of the pit and not dead.

You are no better than anyone else. There are more people smarter than you in this world. Why do you think that what you call an idea and what you do can be done well?

So you must think every day, every month, every year: Who are you? what are you doing? What have you accomplished? What do you want to do? You must think about these issues all the time and over and over again.

Regarding entrepreneurship, I have eight words to share with you.

First, focus. To what extent?

Dedicated to beauty sitting there , you can do not to see her, always thinking about you is doing; someone tells you a focus to tomorrow immediately earn a million opportunities, you do not buckle down, still thinking Can my bowl of noodles be sold?

But countless entrepreneurs simply can't do it, he can't handle himself first.

Second, duty.

Do what you do really meet social needs and solve social problems? If you can't solve the social problem, then it's useless to think of anything.

Many people think of a lot of efficient business models, but efficiency should be based on reasonable costs. If you add countless costs to achieve so-called efficiency, it is against social logic.

Third, kindness.

This kindness has a deep meaning, everyone knows the "Tao De Jing", I recommend everyone to read it.

There is a concept that speaks very well: if you take a wrong path, you will never reach the end.

Fourth, curious.

Only founders who are always curious can succeed.

You can keep asking yourself about these eight characters and compete with these eight characters every day, which will be of great help to you.

2. It is very important to strengthen the brand's anti-folding ability

Today, everyone wants to discuss how to make a new brand. Let me start by offering some ideas. All those who do branding cannot escape marketing. Marketing and brand power are the embodiment of a company's anti-folding ability.

This is not the era when it was said that good wine is not afraid of deep alleys N years ago. Even if you have a large amount of information, why can you reveal it? You will definitely be folded.

Therefore, a company must have a strong anti-folding ability, that is, the company's brand power and marketing power, otherwise how to let people know you and buy you.

Therefore, a very important point for branding is to see if you have your own communication strategy.

High efficiency of the new retail, it must be established on the basis of three-dimensional communication strategy on, you have to form a set of very mature, character fit the era of communication strategy needs.

So you must ask yourself these four things every day:

First, does what you are doing promotes social demand for your products?

Second, is what you are doing is building brand equity for the company? If not, don't do anything, but focus.

Third, are you deepening the brand relationship? If not, don't do it. What is a brand? Brands are products that can truly establish contact with consumers, generate trust transfer, and have premium prices.

Fourth, does every action you are doing affect the user's consumption decision?

You take these thoughts to look at every successful brand, and compare these things with what I just said, have they almost done it?

This is the fact, including Trump, he is a brand, an IP, he did the same, and created his own IP.

Always continue to build your own brand equity and deepen your brand relationship, it will last forever. If you want to nap, like that rabbit, then you will be overtaken by the tortoise, and you will definitely fail in the end.

B: Pay attention to long-term changes, and use professional power in consumer goods financing

I think everyone may still underestimate the changes in the times under the influence of the epidemic. For example, when the epidemic first broke out, we had a prediction about how much impact the epidemic might have on the economy.

Many people have no idea about this. When the epidemic has already impacted China's entire macro-economy, everyone may still feel that it has no impact on them. What should you do after the epidemic has passed.

But in fact, the epidemic is closely related to China's entire economy, including your career. For example, you may not feel deeply about some of the financial policies of the central bank during the epidemic, but this has a very large impact on our investment.

So one of my thoughts is that both investors and entrepreneurs need to spend a little time thinking about long-term things.

This kind of thing may change very slowly, but after the accumulation of time, you will find that the whole change is very obvious after returning to the market.

Consumer financing at the time, I think we can Victoria with some strength intermediary, such as much as possible to listen to suggest some investment banks or financial adviser, listen to experienced people surrounding the idea. This year, many new entrepreneurs of mine have stepped on a very big pit.

I think entrepreneurs should not only pay attention to your products, channels, customers, and suppliers, but also pay attention to financing. Financing is actually a very professional thing. If you have no experience, try to listen to the suggestions of friends as much as possible. If you can raise money, raise more money.

One question is that many projects have not been funded. At the beginning of financing, the founders may be worried about the delimitation of rights or the relationship.

This company was all mine before, and it was entirely up to me. When there is an investor, no matter whether that person speaks or not, I always feel uncomfortable, and may feel that the company becomes more uncontrollable and hindered by others.

In fact, whether or not to raise money is the same as falling in love . There is no standard answer. It just depends on whether you can find something that suits you.

There are various investment institutions in the market now. Some are seeking to control you. For example, some holding acquisitions just want a controlling stake. If you can’t do it, they will sweep you out. Some are of a financial nature and do not involve any business operations. management.

This is related to investment institutions and to the needs of founders.

Some people just want to ensure the fluency of decision-making, and don't want investors to interfere with me, so it would be better to choose investors who leave their hands behind.

If some people want to seek some value and help from investors in various aspects such as recruiting talents and resources, it is better to choose the one that suits them, such as looking for industry investors.

I'm not suggesting that everyone should raise funds. The core is to think clearly about what you want to do. Just like looking for a boyfriend, you have different needs depending on your figure, face, and money.

For some small initial create product brand, they are more likely to find those bodies give yourself more resources. If this is the case, it is recommended that you keep in touch with them at any time and do not update once after three months or half a year.

If the update is good news, everyone is relaxed, but if there is some bad news, you will be under a lot of pressure, and they may potentially want to come in and interfere with you and give very strong opinions.

But if in this process, you have always maintained better information communication with the other party, let the other party know what is good and what is bad.

When you are really in difficulty, the other party will definitely have to put out all the resources to help you, because after all you are part of his vote, and if you really lose, he will not escape. So in this process, it is best not to hide too much information.

Sometimes out of self-esteem or face problems, the founder may think that some minor problems are covered. However, if there are too many considerations in this regard, it may affect the relationship between investors and themselves in the later stage, and also have a great impact on the development of the company.

C: The timing of entrepreneurs choosing categories is very important

First of all, the consumer industry does not look at the previous part-time job experience, and in the consumer circle, some bosses may not have gone to school, and they are not from a major.

During my time in Alibaba and Douyin, apart from learning how Internet marketing is done, how to calculate the internal cost of advertising and the ratio of production, what price is more appropriate, and other things are basically useless. .

So I think that the experience accumulated in large companies basically doesn't work in the battlefield of consumer products. What is more useful is rather imaginary values.

Alibaba’s corporate culture is particularly strong. The slogan is six pulses, customer first, unity and cooperation, etc. It may be some words that are preferred by those born in the 60s and 70s. For example, our own company can be changed to more suitable for young people. word.

Speaking of starting a business, I think the time of entering the sea is very important.

No matter how successful you are, the timing of choosing a category is particularly important.

I officially started all in to engage in electronic cigarettes in March last year, which is the second batch in the industry.

As a result, after seven or eight months of work, the government policy came out and began to suppress e-cigarettes. We set up a company with the same group are fellow uncle, Overheating, everyone who did not make money.

There were two companies in the first batch that entered early. They started doing it at the end of 2017, one and a half years earlier than our second batch.

The number one company in the head of e-cigarettes is RELX, and the other is a relatively native manufacturer, and its product is called small gold bars.

The small gold bars first made a wave of quick money by pushing the bar. At that time, they were doing local promotions in some trendy bars in Hangzhou and Chengdu. For example, they found drunk men to sell e-cigarettes from 1 to 4 in the morning. The sales rose very quickly because consumers were very curious about e-cigarettes. There is a wave of bonuses for the mind.

When our second batch of companies started to push on the same street as him, the Internet began to expose that e-cigarettes were toxic, and they were useless after smoking. We could not even cover the cost of hiring a part-time job.

Therefore, once the time point is late, it is difficult to find a new channel breakthrough.

Including RELX, it also wins in the early entry time. RELX was the first company to make a new generation of e-cigarettes. At that time, they took more than 30 million yuan in start-up funds, and they almost collapsed after a little more than a year, and they couldn't sell it anywhere.

Because the problems encountered by new brands are very similar: offline have to go to various channels to pay entry fees and barcode fees, a lot of funds and goods, and there is no brand awareness; online has the right time and place, whether it is for electricity The business is still a private domain community, and success this time may not succeed the next time.

RELX’s life-saving straw comes from online car-hailing because their team is an operator of Guandidi and has many drivers in their hands.

Because the drops provisions drivers can not smoke in the car, put the country Wyatt carved driver summoned a meeting, saying that their home can quit smoking electronic cigarette, the smoke will not produce a driver have a second hand smoke affect passengers. In this way, the driver sold off the goods they had suppressed.

I think as a new company, don't spend tens of millions of budgets for advertising in the first five years. Instead, you need to find various new channels, first be stable and bigger, and then consider branding.

If you want to advertise, you can smash it hard, but the premise is to find a breakthrough channel.

If you go in late, this channel is very difficult to find.

Someone discovered the online ride-hailing, and the bar push was also discovered. What happened to the things you went in later? So it was very difficult for us to find it later. After we walked through the WeChat business and live broadcast rooms, the mall was also closed due to the policy of banning sales on the whole network. 

D: How to balance feelings and profitability in the process of starting a business?

I now represent a French children's shoe brand, with materials and design in Paris, France, and supply chain in Spain.

It has a history of 60 years in France, but it is a brand-new brand in the Chinese market. The brand is also positioned as a light luxury in France, with a retail price of 70 Euros, which is considered a relatively high-end niche brand.

The reason why I chose to represent such a brand with a tonal but not very high sales volume was because I felt that I did not start a business purely for making money, but because I really wanted to bring these good products to Chinese babies.

This is also a point that I have always been confused. Our brand is very expensive because of its very good materials and design. Many entrepreneurs do branding to control costs and maximize profits, but I might do the opposite.

I hope to focus on making the product good and providing consumers with the most valuable things. I think this should be a correct way for new brands to enter the Chinese market.

Therefore, many friends around me say that I am too passionate about starting a business, and that your brand will die very quickly, perhaps even without the opportunity to show up.

I am also confused, how should I balance brand quality and production costs? But in any case, I hope to maintain my original intention, focus on the maternal and infant industry, and provide environmentally friendly, high-quality products to this group.

The investor said: I want to pour some cold water and talk about my objective thoughts. There are two points:

First, you said that toddler shoes may need to be replaced once a year. For 1,000 yuan to buy a pair of shoes that need to be replaced a year, I guess the crowd should be worth more than ten million.

This group of people in China is only 800,000 yuan, a pair of shoes is 1,000 yuan, 1,000 multiplied by 800,000 is 800 million, how big is your market? The company's revenue is at most 800 million, and can all of this 800,000 buy you? It’s good to buy 10% in China, with an income of 80 million. So what are you talking about starting a business?

Second, I think your product cost and benefit are not particularly matched.

You say that your products are good enough, but China's supply chain must not be able to produce such products?

Nowadays, we talk about the national trend, and the consumer products are all up. It is not that I have used foreign supply chains and designs to make good products. The same quality and tonality in China may be cheaper. I have come into contact with people with overseas backgrounds and this is a common misunderstanding.

Third, don't talk about market education. This cost is very high.

It is easy for us to make money from the poor, but it is too hard to make money from the rich, let alone educate them.

So don't always think about education. It's good to be able to guide. It's more to follow, find that the trend follows him, and meet his needs is finished. Talking about education is very tiring.

Fourth, the issue of private domain communities. Can we find such a suitable community? The rich are very concerned about privacy, and it is difficult to master a precise community.

I invested in a golf project. Golf enthusiasts are already a very precise crowd. It is extremely difficult to get them together. They have great ability to pay, but this group of people are very picky. Why should he buy your things?

And the rich have a lot of channels. Their friends are all over the world. It is super convenient to buy products. They know the brand better than me. It is too difficult for us to sell him something.

If you look at the world now, many large consumer product companies make mass consumer products, and there are few of them.

Is Zhong Xue noble or expensive? A Zhong Xuegao costs 20 yuan, which is also very expensive compared to ordinary ice cream, but it is only very expensive in absolute terms, and ordinary people can afford it.

And I can do a self-propagation of ice cream, and shoot a video to promote it, but children's shoes have no slots and it is difficult to design for users to share.

I suggest that you can do it from high to low. It's okay for you to position the high-end, but just set the tone and make a bit of high-tonality consumer products. But if you insist on educating and taking it slowly with feelings , you will not be able to survive.

E: How do start-up brands choose internet celebrities and grab the live broadcast dividend?

1. Internet celebrity is a channel ecology, and its life cycle depends on the capacity of traffic operation

I think the net red count is a channel ecosystem, possibly a red head is a network platform.

For example, Wei Ya, Li Jiaqi, and Simba can reach the scale of one platform by one person. Like Wei Ya broadcasts billions a month, a single brand cannot do so much.

My previous platform mainly focused on mid-waist and long-tail celebrities, so a lot of mid-waist celebrities have been gathered to form a traffic pool.

The mid-waist celebrities are relatively stable, and the cooperation with the platform is relatively strong. Because many mid-waist celebrities do not have mature teams and operations, they provide this set of services.

Just now, a friend asked if there is a life cycle for an internet celebrity. In fact, how long an internet celebrity has a life cycle depends on her own traffic operation capabilities.

Some internet celebrities may be group leaders and micro-businesses, which belong to your private domain logically in the community and do not have that much traffic.

However , Internet celebrities on platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin cover a larger traffic pool and can obtain traffic through their own capabilities.

So if her ability to acquire traffic and to operate fans is strong enough, the growth will actually be very fast. But if you do not have this ability and compete on this platform, your life cycle will definitely be short.

2. How can start-up brands capture the traffic dividend of live broadcast?

How can start-up brands seize the bonus of live broadcast? As a seller, I think we must first know how many channels your products currently have. There are also many store operations in the channels, including Tmall, Taobao, and Jingdong, which also have live broadcasts, so live broadcasts are just one of the sales channels for you.

You don’t need to put everything on the live broadcast. For example, I am suitable for Douyin, Xiaohongshu , and Station B. That is the question of which main channel I choose.

If your tone is Xiaohongshu, I think you can make arrangements in advance, of course, it also depends on your own stage, whether you have enough manpower to invest in it.

As for what kind of internet celebrities to find, it actually depends on the channel operation capabilities of the product itself.

If your product can find a big influencer, you may be able to get out of the circle quickly and open up the situation faster; if you only find a mid-waist influencer to broadcast, the sales may not be so optimistic for the time being; or you can find the middle-waist first Internet celebrities, after they have sales data, go to big anchors.

In fact, it is based on your products, channel capabilities and your own stage step by step.

F: How can international brands match the needs of new people?

In the area of ​​branding, Zara is a very successful case. It has seen a very large demand and is just capable of making this product.

What Zara has done most successfully is that it keeps fashion down infinitely, continuously suppresses upstream supply chain prices, and transfers all benefits to consumers.

Based on my experience in brick-and-mortar retail, everyone is now a small brand. It is very expensive to develop physical store channels and build your own physical store, and it may be more difficult to compete in various aspects.

But building your own physical store channels has a big advantage in that you can reach users one-on-one, you can really know who they are, and you can get a lot of data feedback to prove what the needs of the user group are?

Data is too important for Zara, because it needs to understand requirements and design products based on all data feedback.

Zara will continue to evolve its products, its basic models sell best, and some basic models are constantly evolving.

For example, the oversize style of menswear used to be a relatively niche style that was sold to a few people, but based on our observations on the market and data feedback, we found that the demand for this style is increasing, especially In the Asian market, it has now become a basic model.

So by contacting customers through physical stores, you can clearly capture customer needs. This is a unique advantage of physical store channels over other channels.

In fact, I have some questions recently, how does customer experience influence consumer decision-making, and how does it count as a good customer experience?

Brands may lack perception of customer experience. For example, Zara’s fixed impression of everyone is relatively high and cold, and we do not perceive that some customers in the store experience deductions, perhaps because the attitude of the shop assistants is not particularly good.

We are more to make some changes in both the goods and the market.

I don’t know if you have noticed that the venues, furniture, and decorations of some shops in Shanghai’s core business districts have undergone major changes.

For some second- and third-tier cities, its furniture design, shop SKUs, and display methods may have different strategies.

But these changes are based on a theory, that is, customer consumption upgrades.

Customers have high requirements for consumer experience, but they do not want a particularly high product price. This is also a difficult point.

People in their thirties may not be particularly interested in new products, so some emerging brands are aimed at young people.

I don't know what you think about the future changes in the needs of this group of young people. A large part of Zara's consumer group is young people, but it is currently targeting a slightly more mature age group, so how do you match the needs of the new group?

Because your customers will grow up, when a good brand ladder is about to emerge, whether the next brand can hold it, this is the ability.

Everyone is not buying Zara anymore. I think there is a fault in the Zara crowd.

Now Zara’s store styles can no longer meet the needs of new people, and fast fashion competition is too fierce. Consumers have many choices. What core competitiveness does Zara have to give these people?

G: Consumer brands must be based on national conditions and build user thinking

I think founders should believe in fate when creating an industry. Some industries have a good life and are particularly easy to grow up, while the clothing industry has a particularly miserable life.

Some good brands in the past have only Uniqlo and fast fashion models that can run, but fast fashion is not working anymore because it is not fashionable anymore.

The current clothing brand is too dependent on the designer, the designer's tone is too high, my talent determines that I will design this dress. But in fact, clothing is more dependent on data, just like byte beating, what users like immediately grabs.

Or do some sub-categories, such as children's clothing, sports brands. At present, you can see that some of the better listed companies in the world are better, Semir, Anta, Li Ning, etc., basically rely on these.

From an investment perspective, food and beverage companies should be a better track. In the investment industry, food, beverages, and medical care are Baifumei industries. It is relatively better to engage in these industries, but it is relatively poor in the clothing industry.

I have made a few mistakes in the past few years, you can share.

The first point is to base itself on China's national conditions.

We need to build a brand based on national conditions. In many cases, our own ideas may not be realistic and not the real needs of users. It is easier to make money from the poor in China because they do have less knowledge.

Pinduoduo can make more money than JD.com and Alibaba. Regardless of the model, it is cheaper, and it can make a sudden rise with this.

The second point is that user thinking is very important.

Many startups pay special attention to channels. As soon as Xiaohongshu is coming and Douyin is coming, they immediately wonder what magnitude I can generate from these channels.

But as XX said just now, you still have to pay attention to consumers and the product itself.

First of all, we must meet the needs of consumers, and then tap the channels while meeting the needs of users. As soon as you see the channel bonus coming, you will immediately jump on it. It is very likely that the bonus is not high.

Now the online and offline prices are very high. I think it’s easy to lose big by looking only at the channel. It’s better to look at consumers first to see which needs can be met.

I now feel that consumers are indeed getting smarter and more difficult to satisfy. The so-called consumption upgrade is no longer a simple low price, but a comprehensive improvement, including an improvement in aesthetics.

My original boss had a theory. He said that when making consumer products, we must think about what consumers are thinking from a human point of view, because consumer products satisfy consumers and are the closest to consumers.

Jiang Nanchun, the founder of Focus Media , concluded that consumers have " three loves and three fears and three lacks". Three loves are beauty, play, and sharing; three fears are fear of old age, death, and loneliness. What is lacking is lack of love. Lack of mood and excitement, some of the better consumer products companies are around these aspects.

So I think user thinking is a point that consumer goods companies need to pay special attention to.

From the perspective of investors, I believe that a good consumer goods company must first produce hard products, whether it is price or quality, which can bring consumers satisfaction beyond expectations.

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