When the development of American industry enters the Internet era, the traditional model has been struggling for a long time, and only with the help of internet plus can it occupy a place in the American industry market. If the brand of Meiye wants to develop by leaps and bounds, it must speed up the transformation of traditional stores.
However, the word "transformation" is easier said than done. Take Xiuyu as an example, it was only after two changes that it was able to find a suitable way of transformation and seize the track of the American market with new business logic.
Transformation is urgent.
The time has been set back to January 1, 219, when the lowest temperature in Beijing reached MINUS 1 degrees Celsius. However, Tiananmen Square was still full of people from all over the country, waiting for the first flag-raising of the New Year in the dark sky. Among them, there are twenty or thirty executives from Xiuyu.
dozens of executives gathered in Beijing to watch the flag-raising collectively. What do you mean? It turns out that Xiuyu is about to usher in a brave man's broken wrist and cross the rubicon. For this reason, the senior management team will be gathered together to hold the annual meeting and organize the flag raising, just to prepare everyone for meeting challenges and even facing failure.
At the annual meeting, Li Xiaoning, the founder of Xiuyu Company, came straight to the point and poured cold water on someone in the place: "The company still has three years to survive. If it wins, it will go to a brand-new world. If it loses, it will not go bankrupt, but it will definitely shrink greatly."
faced with such a sudden and severe situation, the executives looked at each other and were very puzzled. Because in their view, Xiuyu has developed very well since it was transformed into a technology beauty brand in 216. Not only did it get the financing of $1 million led by Morgan Stanley, but it also realized the holding of Haiyi Yuemei through mergers and acquisitions, which consolidated the foundation of its own "Shuangmei" operation. Everything seems to be going smoothly. Why should we suddenly "transform"? Where are you going to "go"?
amid the voices of doubt and discussion, Li Xiaoning publicly announced three key words of Xiuyu's transformation: big data, big health and artificial intelligence.
When I heard this, the executives were silent. After all, the relationship between Xiuyu's business and big data and artificial intelligence seems to be "out of reach". Is this transformation really reliable? In this regard, Li Xiaoning has no confidence. She doesn't know how high the success probability of this transformation is, but she is very firm, that is, big data and artificial intelligence are the "must-go roads" for Xiuyu.
After the annual meeting, the "Xiao Ning Shuo", which stopped for nearly 4 months, was updated again. Li Xiaoning described himself as "burying his head in the sand like an ostrich, so that nothing happened when he couldn't see it". However, escape is not an eternal way, and Li Xiaoning knows that only by solving the problem can we move on.
So she returned to reality and organized a conference on the transformation of Xiuyu. At the meeting, Dr. Cheng Hong, director of the Research Center for Doctoral Robot of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and Ma Junjie, director of the solution architect of Alibaba Cloud West District, were invited to introduce the application scenarios of artificial intelligence in the service of American industry.
interestingly, the media present asked Xiuyu executives whether they understood this transformation, and the response was "I didn't understand what I was saying at all". It can be seen that for this transformation, Xiuyu seems to have not prepared the theoretical foundation and talent reserve, and everything seems to be too early.
But in Li Xiaoning's view, this transformation is very urgent and urgent.
5 million, the "tuition fee" paid for the failure
Previously, Xiuyu transformed into a technology beauty salon, but in fact, its performance was not as good as expected, which can be said to be a "transformation failure". And this time, the industry also pointed out that it is because "traditional brands are difficult to successfully transform into the field of scientific beauty."
in 217, xiuyu received $1 million in financing and began to formally lay out "scientific beauty". The so-called "scientific beauty" is to improve the efficiency of skin detection, cleaning and introduction through beauty instruments; And through the optimization of service experience, the absolute appeal to post-9 s consumers can be realized. In short, it is to upgrade the efficiency and experience of traditional beauty forms.
At that time, in order to do a good job in the market education of "scientific beauty" and accelerate market penetration, Xiuyu successively put in nearly 2 million yuan of advertisements and opened 2 scientific beauty stores. However, behind the huge investment, Xiuyu's performance in 218 did not increase but decreased. In the end, Xiuyu accumulated a loss of 5 million in science and technology beauty. At this point, Li Xiaoning realized that beauty in science and technology is a "false proposition", and that in order to survive and develop, xiuyu must be transformed.
as for why the scientific beauty is a false proposition, the reason is that there are problems in the service form and market positioning of scientific beauty.
first of all, the definition of scientific beauty is unclear, which makes it difficult for consumers to perceive. You know, for beauty services, consumers are more concerned about beauty itself than form, so it is difficult for them to perceive the essential changes brought about by technology. In addition, beauty services are non-high-standard products, and category trust cannot be established through advertising. The gimmick of "technology" naturally cannot reach the hearts of consumers.
Secondly, the market positioning is wrong, which leads to being suppressed by medical beauty. When Xiuyu transformed into scientific beauty, the medical beauty market has entered a stage of rapid development. On this occasion, Xiuyu also launched its own medical beauty brand "Spring Talk". At that time, Xiuyu thought that scientific beauty was a transition from life beauty to medical beauty, but there was no transition zone between life beauty and medical beauty. Because efficiency and price will divide consumers, and the choice of the two has its own needs.
That's why Xiuyu invested 5 million yuan to build scientific and technological beauty, but the results were very little, while the performance of Chunyu maintained a high growth rate.
in addition, the rapid rise of labor costs has also become one of the reasons for promoting the transformation of the beauty industry.
I once answered the investor, "Why is China the only beauty industry in the world?" At that time, Li Xiaoning's first answer was: because of the high labor cost abroad. However, at that time, Li Xiaoning thought that China still had the advantage of labor cost for at least 1 years, so the transformation and upgrading of life beauty could be explored slowly.
but as the saying goes, plans can never keep up with changes. The rising speed of domestic labor costs far exceeds Li Xiaoning's expectation. In just three years, the actual operating cost of Xiuyu is more than 3% higher than that of its peers.
In this context, the transformation of Xiuyu is justified and imperative, just as Li Xiaoning said: "There may be a chance to survive in the transformation, but if you don't transform, you can only wait for death."
opportunity, construct brand-new business logic
from the current development situation, consumers' demand for beauty efficiency is increasing day by day, which is why medical beauty can grow rapidly. Nowadays, the popularity of light medical beauty is gradually covering life beauty, so Xiuyu is also actively seeking change and looking for new business logic.
in Li Xiaoning's view, the competition between medical beauty and health beauty does not lie in service or price, because it is essentially the substitution of advanced productive forces for backward productive forces, including the transformation of scientific and technological beauty brands, and it is also a more advanced productive force in essence. This is not only determined by the market demand, but also the requirement for the beauty industry to develop to the industrial Internet.
then, how to capture new track opportunities from a new perspective and create high-tech and high-value-added services has become a key issue for American brands.
first of all, we must think from the standpoint of consumers and solve problems for them. Because consumers' repurchase is often based on their satisfaction with the last service, rather than the store's good-looking or advanced technology. Therefore, many beauty shops spend huge sums of money on store design and decoration, which is just icing on the cake. If you want to harvest "good business", you must be able to accurately solve the pain points and needs of consumers.
in addition, it is also important to have a forward-looking vision. No matter which industry, it is moving forward step by step because of the iteration of technology, and the beauty industry is no exception. In particular, beauty belongs to the service industry, and it is not easy to do a good job.
In Li Xiaoning's concept, service means "spending little money and getting more than expected results". But these two standards are the bottleneck that the beauty industry can't break through. On the one hand, the influence of traditional beauty makes the public have insufficient knowledge of the beauty industry, and more beauty salons are busy getting customers than providing quality services. On the other hand, life beauty is also facing the high-efficiency "enemy" of medical beauty institutions. In addition, the price and service of medical beauty are gradually improving, and the advantages are more obvious.
so, where should the beauty industry transform to get development opportunities? After many investigations, the big health industry has entered the sight of Li Xiaoning.
in terms of consumer demand, at present, 7% of people in China are in a sub-healthy state, and 15% are in a sick state. More importantly, in the next 1 years, various chronic diseases will probably spread rapidly to every family. Moreover, the service effect of health conditioning is more intuitive, and once the needs of consumers are solved, a stable membership system will be directly formed, and the customers will be more stable.
In terms of future development, the big health industry is in a period of rapid development. According to the data of the World Health Organization, China's per capita health expenditure is only 2% of the global per capita health expenditure. In the future, with the improvement of economic level and people's attention to health, China's health management and health care products industry will usher in a huge blue ocean.
It can be seen that great health is the best export for the transformation of the beauty industry. But how to implement it is the second problem that Xiuyu and even the whole beauty industry are facing.
5, stores endorse service standardization with new technology
If they want to seek new development, they naturally need new technology as the support for implementation. Therefore, Xiuyu increased the investment of capital and talents during the transition period, and now artificial intelligence and information technology have occupied an absolute strategic highland within Xiuyu.
Especially at the US Expo in March this year, Xiuyu, a great health track in transition, made its debut, which attracted the attention of countless audiences, and everyone even surrounded its booth. Visible "is no longer a simple life service brand, but a technology company" xiuyu, is gradually recognized by the public.
So, what are the specific aspects of Xiuyu's "science and technology genes"?
the first is naturally artificial intelligence technology. It is understood that Xiuyu is currently developing a new generation of artificial intelligence robots, which is expected to replace 9% of manual services next year, greatly reducing the labor costs of enterprises and improving the standardization of enterprise management and service. After solving the problem of standardization of management and service, Xiuyu is focusing on large-scale growth, "let the number of stores exceed 5, in the next five years".
Secondly, the building of information system is also a powerful pusher for the transformation of Xiuyu. Previously, in the face of transformation, Li Xiaoning was "at a loss", but fortunately, the person in charge of Alibaba Cloud came to the door and told her about the new retail strategy of Box Horse Development. This communication has also inspired Li Xiaoning, that is, with the help of technical means, consumers can also be tracked, and every consumer behavior can be restored through data such as purchase habits and addresses.
In this way, Xiuyu has built a complete customer management information system. On the one hand, it solved the bad situation of "customers are in the hands of employees", strengthened the centralization of headquarters and strengthened the management of customers by enterprises; On the other hand, the system management mode has also improved the financial efficiency of the company, ensuring its accuracy, and at the same time, the efficiency of goods storage and goods circulation in stores has also been greatly increased.
most importantly, the launch of the customer management system will enable every employee in the store to better understand customer needs and achieve accurate marketing, thus improving operational efficiency. To this end, Xiuyu has specially set up a data team to simulate business processes and improve the data model according to rich customer labels.
Looking back, Xiuyu did hit a lot of walls on the road of transformation, losing money and time. However, opportunities are always reserved for those who are prepared. Today's Xiuyu has found the right direction of transformation and made great strides forward. Naturally, it can get back the lost time with more efficient speed.
Since this year, Xiuyu has held offline flash events to make consumers experience the service, so as to achieve the rapid transformation of customers. Subsequently, Xiuyu also introduced the policy of "refund without cause", that is, if consumers are dissatisfied with the service, they can directly initiate a refund application on the mobile phone. As of now, Xiuyu's refund rate is only .3%.
In the future, Xiuyu, which has solved the problems of operating costs and standardization, believes that it will continue to "arm" itself and truly have the ability to directly operate thousands of stores.