However, the word "transformation" is easier said than done. Taking Xiuyu as an example, after two changes, it was able to find a suitable way of transformation and seize the track of the American market with new business logic.
Transformation is imminent.
Time returned to 20 1 965438+1October1.At that time, the lowest temperature in Beijing reached-10 degrees Celsius, but Tiananmen Square was still crowded with 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 in Xiuyu.
Dozens of executives gathered in Beijing to watch the flag-raising collectively. What does this mean? It turns out that Xiuyu is about to usher in a brave man's broken wrist and cross the rubicon. To this end, the senior management team will be gathered together to hold an annual meeting and organize the flag raising, just to prepare everyone for challenges and even failures.
At the annual meeting, Li Xiaoning, the founder of Xiuyu Company, came straight to the point and poured cold water on someone present: "The company still has three years to live. If it can win, it can go to a whole new world. If you lose, the company will not close down, but it will definitely shrink. "
Faced with such a sudden and severe situation, the executives looked at each other and were very confused. Because in their view, Xiuyu has developed well since it was transformed from 20 16 to a technology beauty brand. Not only did it obtain the financing of 1 billion dollars led by Morgan Stanley, but it also realized the holding of Haiya Yuemei through mergers and acquisitions, which consolidated the foundation of its own "double beauty" operation. Everything seems to be going well. Why do you suddenly "transform"? Where are you going?
Amid all the doubts and discussions, Li Xiaoning publicly announced three key words for Xiuyu's transformation: big data, big health and artificial intelligence.
Hearing 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? Li Xiaoning has no confidence in this. 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 "only way" for Xiuyu.
After the annual meeting, the "Xiao Ning Theory" which stopped for nearly four months was updated. Li Xiaoning described himself as "burying his head in the sand like an ostrich, so nothing happened when he couldn't see". However, escape is not an eternal way. Li Xiaoning knows that only by solving the problem can we move on.
So she returned to reality and organized a conference to show the transformation of jade. At the meeting, Dr. Cheng Hong, director of the doctoral robot research center 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 serving American industries.
Interestingly, the media at the scene asked Xiuyu executives whether they understood this change, and the response was "I don't understand what I am talking about at all". It can be seen that for this transformation, Xiuyu does not seem to be ready for the theoretical foundation and talent reserve, and everything seems to be too early.
But in Li Xiaoning's view, this change is very urgent and urgent.
500 million, the "tuition fee" paid for failure.
Previously, Xiuyu transformed the beauty of science and technology, but in fact, its performance was not as good as expected, which can be said to be "transformation failure". This time, the insiders also pointed out that it is because "traditional brands are difficult to successfully transform into the field of scientific beauty."
In 20 17, Xiuyu received 1 100 million USD 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 consumers after 90 is 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 200 million yuan of advertisements and opened 200 scientific beauty specialty stores. However, behind the huge investment, the performance of Xiuyu 20 18 declined instead of increasing. In the end, Xiuyu Technology Beauty accumulated a loss of 500 million. At this point, Li Xiaoning realized that the beauty of science and technology is a "false proposition", and Xiuyu must be transformed in order to survive and develop.
As for why 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 not clear, 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 by technology. In addition, beauty service is a non-high standard product, and it is impossible to establish category trust through advertising. The gimmick of "technology" naturally cannot touch the hearts of consumers.
Secondly, the market positioning error leads to being suppressed by medical beauty. When Xiuyu transforms 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 both has its own needs.
This is also the reason why Xiuyu invested 500 million yuan to create scientific and technological beauty, but it has little effect, while the performance of Spring Rain has maintained a high growth.
In addition, the rapid rise of labor costs has also become one of the reasons to promote the transformation of the beauty industry.
I once answered the investor, "Why is there a beauty industry only in China?" At that time, Li Xiaoning's first answer was: because of the high cost of foreign labor. But at that time, Li Xiaoning thought that China still had the advantage of labor cost for at least 10 years, so the transformation and upgrading of the beauty of life could be explored slowly.
But as the saying goes, plans can never keep up with changes. The rising speed of domestic labor cost far exceeds Li Xiaoning's expectation. In just three years, the actual operating cost of Xiuyu is more than 30% higher than that of its peers.
In this context, the transformation of Xiuyu is reasonable and imperative, just as Li Xiaoning said: "There may be a chance for transformation, but if you don't transform, you can only wait for death."
Opportunity, build a brand-new business logic
Judging from the current development, consumers' demand for beauty efficiency is increasing day by day, which is also the reason 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 raw 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. 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, 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 beauty or advanced technology of the store. Therefore, many beauty shops spend huge sums of money on storefront 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 advancing 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 it well.
In Li Xiaoning's concept, service means "spending little money and getting more results than expected". 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 understanding of the beauty industry, and more beauty salons are busy getting customers instead of 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 Li Xiaoning's sight.
From the perspective of consumer demand, at present, 70% of people in China are in a sub-health state, and 15% of people are in a sick state. More importantly, in the next 10 years, various chronic diseases are likely to spread rapidly to every family. Moreover, the service effect of health conditioning is more intuitive. Once the needs of consumers are solved, a stable membership system will be directly formed, and customers will be more stable.
From the perspective 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 20% 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 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 faced by Xiuyu and even the whole beauty industry.
5,000 stores standardized endorsement service with new technology.
If you want to seek new development, you naturally need new technology as a support. 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 Expo in March this year, Xiuyu, which was transformed into a big health track, made its debut, attracting 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 90% of manual services next year, greatly reducing the labor costs of enterprises and improving the standardization of enterprise management and services. After solving the standardization problem of management and service, Xiuyu is focusing on large-scale growth, "making the number of stores exceed 5,000 in the next five years".
Secondly, the construction of information system is also a powerful driving force 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 her and told her about the new retail strategy of Box Horse Development. This exchange also inspired Li Xiaoning, that is, with the help of technical means, consumers can also be tracked, and every consumption behavior of consumers 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 solves the bad situation of "customers are in the hands of employees", strengthens the centralization of headquarters and strengthens the management of customers by enterprises; On the other hand, the system management mode also improves the company's financial efficiency and ensures its accuracy, and at the same time, the efficiency of goods storage and goods circulation in stores is also greatly improved.
Most importantly, the introduction of the customer management system will enable every employee in the store to better understand customer needs and realize accurate marketing, thus improving operational efficiency. To this end, Xiuyu specially set up a data team to simulate business processes and improve the data model according to rich customer labels.
Looking back, Xiuyu really hit a lot of walls on the road of transformation, losing money and wasting 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. Naturally, we can get back the lost time at a more efficient speed.
Since the beginning of this year, Xiuyu has held an offline flash event for the first time, which enables consumers to experience the service and realize the rapid transformation of customers. Subsequently, Xiuyu also introduced the policy of "no reason to refund", that is, if consumers are not satisfied with the service, they can directly initiate a refund application on their mobile phones. Up to now, Xiuyu's refund rate is only 0.3%.
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.