In recent years, with the continuous landing of big data, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, as well as the big health economy ushered in the wind mouth period, many traditional industries perceived new opportunities.
But in the process of transformation and upgrading, opportunities often coexist with challenges, especially in the traditional beauty industry, its transformation and upgrading can be called "road blocked and difficult" on behalf of.
Now in the field of intelligent health "a horse in the lead" of the show domain, for example, it is also in the transformation and upgrading of the failure, the party to capture the new business logic and the new brand track, to the application of artificial intelligence and big data as a grip, in order to achieve the reduction of operating costs, to solve the problem of standardization of products and services, direct operation of thousands of stores. The ambition of thousands of stores.
We often hear the saying, "Opportunity, often left to those who are prepared." However, the transformation of the show domain in 2019 is forced by the change of the times "duck on the shelf". Participated in the annual meeting of the show domain people, all of them are y impressed by the transformation needs of the annual meeting, "cold" and "do not understand", is a lot of people's personal feelings.
On the day of the meeting, the lowest temperature in Beijing was minus 10 degrees Celsius, and before the day was fully lit, Xiuwu's executive team was waiting for the first flag-raising ceremony of the new year in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. In addition to the cold weather, Li Xiaoning, the founder of Xiuwu, opened the door and said the first sentence, but also "a pot of cold water". Li Xiaoning directly told the participants, "the company has three years of survival opportunities, if we can win, we can go to a new world, if we lose, the company will not go out of business, but it will shrink dramatically.
It must be known that, in the eyes of the executives at the time, since the transformation into a technology beauty brand in 2016, the development of the show domain has been witnessed ****, not only quickly got the $ 100 million financing led by Morgan Stanley, and then also through mergers and acquisitions to complete the holding of the sea medical yuemei, to further consolidate the medical beauty plate, and the development of a good momentum.
Because of this, many people not only do not understand the direction of the transition, but also do not understand the purpose of Li Xiaoning this "toss".
In this meeting, Li Xiaoning announced three key words: big data, big health, artificial intelligence, and also invited Dr. Cheng Hong, director of the robotics research center of the University of Electronic Science and Technology, and John Ma, director of the solution architect of the Western Region of Ali Cloud, to introduce the application of artificial intelligence in the beauty industry services.
From today's perspective, the three keywords of big data, big health, and artificial intelligence can be called the "Troika" of Xiuwu, which has brought Xiuwu to a whole new field that the traditional beauty industry does not even dare to think about. But at the time, not only Li Xiaoning himself bottomless, the executives were even more confused, many executives said they "do not understand what is being said".
It is in such a theoretical foundation, no professional talent reserves, no preparation, show domain began its forced and imminent transformation.
It is reported that after the end of the meeting, stopped nearly four months of "Xiaoning said" finally updated, in the "six months I do what to go", Li Xiaoning described himself as "like an ostrich buried his head in the sand, can not see to what did not happen. However, the opportunity to transition quickly, Li Xiaoning had to return to reality, to take practical action to solve the problem, the first step, is to convene a conference, officially announced the transition plan.
Why will the show domain transformation and upgrading direction aimed at intelligent health? In fact, this is not something that Li Xiaoning himself patted his head to decide, but with the 2016 show domain transition to technology beauty after the market economic changes, as well as show domain in the transition after the results are closely related.
It is understood that with the prosperous development of the market economy, people's demand for beauty is becoming more and more diversified, and traditional beauty brands have been laying out the youthful track, introducing Korean and Japanese skin management methods, and enhancing user stickiness through service and cultural output. At this time, Xiuwu proposed to transform to technology beauty, in order to improve the efficiency of skin detection, cleaning and introduction through beauty equipment, optimize the service experience, so as to win the blue ocean market of technology beauty.
Sources said that in 2017, after receiving $100 million in financing, Xiuwu took out 200 million yuan in advertising to do "technological beauty" market education, and opened 200 technological beauty stores. Frustratingly, in 2018, the performance of Xiuwu fell instead of contending. According to statistics, since the transformation in 2016, show domain in technology beauty accumulated losses of 500 million, which is why Li Xiaoning in 2019 to convene an urgent meeting of transformation and upgrading of the key reasons.
So what lesson did Showfield buy by spending 500 million dollars on tech beauty? We can read it on two levels.
First, tech beauty is actually a false proposition.
On the one hand, the boundary between traditional beauty and tech beauty positioning is not clear, and in the state of homogenized services, it is difficult for consumers to define the specific effects brought by technology. In Li Xiaoning's opinion, "consumers choose to see who can help them solve problems. Consumers choose to repurchase, because the last service is satisfactory, consumers never choose you because of your advanced technology."
On the other hand, the wrong market positioning of the show domain, resulting in its suppression by the medical beauty.
When it comes to the beauty industry, lifestyle beauty, tech beauty, and medical beauty are the choices everyone can't get around. At that time, Xiuwei thought that tech beauty was the transition from lifestyle beauty to medical beauty, so it positioned itself in the tech beauty segment.
However, with the rapid development of the medical beauty market, lifestyle beauty and medical beauty have completed a seamless transition. Consumers who have the money and value efficiency are choosing medical beauty, while those who focus on cost-effectiveness are choosing DIY skincare, which doesn't leave enough market space for tech beauty.
According to statistics, the size of China's medical beauty market was 80.9 billion yuan in 2016, and reached 179.5 billion yuan by 2020, and it was during this period that home beauty instruments and domestic beauty brands rose one after another.
The trend, show domain technology beauty transformation ended in failure, but show domain's medical beauty segment of the spring language has won a high growth rate, in 2018, spring language introduction of the Sano show, honeycomb picoseconds, the use of a variety of photoelectric equipment joint treatment, while in the skin nutrition and metabolism of the launch of composite hydroponic light treatment,*** counting more than 100,000 injections of cosmetic services for customers. I have to say, the creation of the people.
Secondly, the rising cost of labor has raised the overall operating costs of Showfield.
The high labor cost in the beauty industry is a well-known problem, which is also a key factor that high labor cost countries do not have life beauty but have developed medical beauty. At that time, although China's labor costs are rising, but in Li Xiaoning's prediction, life beauty and technology beauty should still have about 10 years of demographic dividend time.
But things are unpredictable, China's labor costs rose much faster than Li Xiaoning predicted, and in 2019, China's labor costs rose sharply, and under the guarantee of employees' five insurance and one gold and legally compliant tax processes, the actual operating costs of Xiuwu were more than 30% higher than those of peers. The low revenue and high cost problems brought about by technological beauty have once again opened up the road of transformation and upgrading for Xiuwu, and this time, after many visits and reflections, Li Xiaoning has set his sights on the field of great health, hoping to revitalize Xiuwu with a new business logic.
The transformation of the traditional beauty industry is not to beat the competition, but to become a better self. The previous transformation of Xiuwei to technology-based beauty was, in essence, a progress of replacing backward productivity with advanced productivity. In proposing the transformation to the smart health field, Xiuwei hopes to explore more possibilities in the direction of the industrial Internet, capture new track opportunities, and create services with high technological content and high value-addedness. Based on this, Li Xiaoning has figured out two major ways forward.
First, Xiuwei should be down-to-earth and think and solve problems from the consumer's standpoint.
It must be said that in the past few years, with the concept of consumer upgrading, many beauty brands began to spend effort on store design and decoration, and in the industry to form a "scroll" model, we are scrambling to follow suit to "look good! We all follow suit to attract customers' attention and enhance our competitiveness with "good-looking" stores. But in fact, these do not meet the core needs of consumers beauty, and can not promote the healthy development of the industry.
Therefore, Xiuwu did the opposite, hoping to start from the pain point of consumers, to provide them with products and services that can meet their core needs, and can quickly perceive the effect.
Secondly, looking to the stars, Xiuwu is based on consumer demand for health, and aims for a new direction of development from the perspective of the future.
It is precisely after the failure of the transformation of technological beauty, Li Xiaoning determined the direction of transformation of the health industry from the perspective of consumer demand and the future.
In terms of consumer demand, 70% of people in China are in a state of sub-health and 15% are in a state of disease. According to this trend, in the next 10 years, a variety of chronic diseases will plague every family.
Xiu domain from the perspective of health conditioning, although its technology and investment needs are higher, but the effect is more intuitive. When Xiuwu can help consumers solve specific problems, it can attract more users, form a more stable membership system, and promote Xiuwu's high-quality development.
From a future perspective, although the traditional beauty industry is gradually shrinking under the blow of medical beauty, the big health industry has just emerged and is in the wind mouth period. According to the World Health Organization data, China's per capita health expenditure is only 20% of the global per capita health expenditure, and in October 2016, the Central Committee and State Council issued the "" Health China 2030 "" planning program ", but also once again to enhance the heat of the big health industry, according to estimates, in 2023, China's big health industry size It is estimated that in 2023, the scale of China's large health industry will exceed 14 trillion yuan, and the market prospect of large health industry is huge.
In order to realize the strategy of big health, Xiuwei has invested a lot of money and talents in this new track with artificial intelligence and information technology as the important grips. Three years later, "the emperor is not responsible for the people who have the heart", in March this year, the United States Expo, the transition to the big health track of the show domain first large-scale debut has attracted much attention and recognition. According to on-site reports, the exhibitors of the beauty industry will show the booth of the domain surrounded, there is curiosity, there is more marvel: the original, the traditional beauty industry can really be a gorgeous turn, become a technology company.
Therefore, the show will be familiar with the artificial intelligence, big data and other advanced technology to the enterprise products, to achieve the brand leopard change of the specific practices, has also become the focus of attention outside the industry.
First, the introduction of artificial intelligence technology, the show domain to achieve management standardization and standardization of services.
In the eyes of many people, artificial intelligence as a substitute for the existence of manpower, can significantly reduce labor costs. Indeed, there is internal news revealed that the new generation of artificial intelligence robots show domain is being developed, is expected to replace 90% of the manual service next year, reducing the effect of labor costs significantly. But more critically, artificial intelligence is more effective in improving management standardization and service standardization.
Although the temperature of the manual service is the machine can not be replaced, but people have emotional fluctuations, will feel fatigue, can not consistently provide high-quality service, while the machine can bring a more stable, more durable high-quality service, which is difficult to reach the artificial service service "ceiling".
"Human service fluctuates back and forth between 60 and 100 points, but a machine can always stay at 90 points." This is the most intuitive feeling of many show domain users.
After solving the problem of manpower costs, as well as the standardization of management and service, Xiuwu has set a scale expansion goal of "more than 5000 stores in the next 5 years", and based on Xiuwu's current development speed and its outlook on the field of artificial intelligence, it is believed that this goal should be achievable.
Secondly, by building an information system, Xiuwu's ability to manage its employees and customers has reached a new level.
The importance of digitization and informatization for enterprises has long been self-evident, but in the process of practicing and figuring it out, Xiuwu also hit a lot of walls. After more than a year of fumbling, the person in charge of AliCloud found Xiuwu, at that time, Ali is promoting the new retail strategy, ready to build the box horse as a future retail brand.
Although this communication, described by Li Xiaoning as "worth 10 million", did not get to the needs of Xiuwu, but the business logic of "people, goods, and field" of the Box Office made Li Xiaoning "enlightened". Li Xiaoning was enlightened by the business logic of "People, Cargo, and Field" of Boxma. Therefore, the show domain from the solution of customer management and staff management and other issues to start, built a complete set of information technology system, not only can track consumers, but also through the consumer's every consumer behavior to restore the consumer portrait, and strive to achieve precision marketing.
Show domain through the creation of information technology system, to solve the following three aspects of the problem.
First, to strengthen the management of customers, to further strengthen the headquarters centralized power.
In the traditional life service industry, there is such a phenomenon: customers are firmly in the hands of employees, and once the employees leave, customers will be lost to varying degrees. Li Xiaoning has used this analogy to describe the delicate relationship between employees and the company, "We are not opening 1,000 stores, recruited 10,000 employees, but the company is divided into 1,000 copies, set up 10,000 rivals for themselves".
Therefore, Li Xiaoning believes that the number of stores and the number of employees of the chain brand is expanding, but it does not mean that the brand's advantage is improving. Only through the centralized management of customers through information technology, in order to achieve consistency in the orders of all stores, so that each store becomes a part of the increase in brand image. This is the embodiment of the centralization of the headquarters of the show domain.
Secondly, to solve the inventory pressure and improve the efficiency of financial management.
Another major advantage of digitalization and information technology is that it can solve the inventory pressure of the enterprise and enhance the efficiency of financial management.
In the absence of an information technology system, Xiuwu's stores are based on the store manager's personal experience to the purchasing department to report an approximate figure, it is easy to appear goods backlog or the need to replenish the situation. When the digital system intervened, all the stores of Xiuwu realized the automatic allocation and return of goods, which greatly reduced the pressure of inventory and improved the efficiency of the flow of goods.
At the same time, using the advantages of the information technology system, all the financial processes of the show can flow in real time on the system, which not only improves the audit and management efficiency, but also further ensures the accuracy of the data. Currently, the two teams of more than 100 employees in the Audit and Finance Departments of Xiuwu have been compressed by a large part, but the efficiency has been greatly improved.
Third, accurate marketing, the right service, show domain service satisfaction is amazing.
What is good service? In Li Xiaoning's opinion, good service is to hand a pillow, not a cup of coffee, when the customer wants to sleep. It is precisely for this reason that we can find such a phenomenon, in many beauty stores, the more the staff sells, the more customers are disgusted.
In order to precision marketing, symptomatic service, show domain set up a professional data team to understand customer needs, create customer labels, improve the data model.
With the help of the information system, Xiuwu's operational efficiency has been improved, and customer satisfaction has skyrocketed. It is understood that the show domain launched the first in the industry to launch the "no reason to refund" policy, that is, consumers are not satisfied with the service, you can directly in the mobile terminal to initiate a refund application, but the current refund rate of only 0.3%, which can be seen in the user's satisfaction and trust of the show domain.
In summary, by capturing the big health wind period in a timely manner, and fully utilizing the advantages of AI and big data advanced technology, Xiuwu finally transformed and upgraded successfully after experiencing failure, and realized the leopard change. This process may be painful and difficult, but it is extremely valuable and meaningful.
In the show itself, its smart health in the field of a long way to go, go a little slower, go a little more down-to-earth, not a bad thing. And for the traditional beauty industry and even other industries, this is a successful case worthy of reference and reference, can strengthen their confidence in the transformation and upgrading, as well as the pace of progress.