Recommendation: After the standard of living has improved, soft clothing has become a culture, with young people walking into every family. And will become a pursuit of future hope.
——Ren Zhiqiang
In 2007, I graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where I studied insurance actuarial science and postgraduate study statistics. However, I have always had a strong interest in display design, so I studied the major and also took a softcover course at the London college of Fashion.
Soft clothing mainly involves furniture, lamps, fabrics, flowers and so on. If a house is turned over, the part that can fall to the ground with gravity will belong to the category of soft clothing, and the fixed part will be hard.
In Europe and the United States, there are very few rough houses in commercial houses, most of which are hardcover houses, so residents do not need to think too much about hard work, but soft clothing is a big need. In the developed countries of the West, soft clothing is a systematic industry, and practitioners will mix and match from the perspectives of space design, color matching, and aesthetic sense. Housing rental companies usually provide such services. While providing soft-packing services, they also provide furniture rental and purchase services. Households often choose the overall solution.
The domestic market ecology is very different from Europe and the United States. The European and American soft-packing market is very mature. The large middle-class people have a relatively rigid demand for soft, and the soft-packing company also has a complete furniture accessories supply system. With the acceleration of China's consumption upgrade trend, the domestic soft package overall solution service has just begun to rise.
In reality, companies that tend to focus on hard-wearing are not necessarily good at soft-packing because they are very different in design. In the matching of accessories, the buckle of a curtain is required to be specially designed.
Pain point for civilian soft clothing
The soft-packing market has always existed in China, but it is mainly for the sales offices, clubs and hotels of B-side real estate companies. However, there is an essential difference between civilian soft clothing and B-end soft clothing.
First, the supply chain is completely different. The model room in the sales office is relatively fixed, often limited to modern or luxurious style, so the supply chain is relatively simple. The style of civilian soft clothing is more extensive and diverse, involving Japanese, American, Nordic, and modern. In this sense, the supply chain requirements for civilian soft furnishings are more diverse and more complex.
Second, the demand is more personalized. For the rising middle class, limited package options are no longer sufficient for their needs. Hard packs can be standardized, but soft packs are also difficult to standardize. This means that communication between customers, companies, and designers is important when providing a total solution. The traditional company serves the model room, and the requirements of the B-side party are relatively unidirectional, and the communication is relatively simple. For civilian softwear, this is a more interactive process, and communication between designers and users requires specialized training.
Third, the design capability is higher. In the past, the soft-cloth style of the model room was relatively fixed, which led the designers of traditional companies to focus on modern and luxury styles, but lacked understanding of the needs of the middle-class people, and lacked the experience of civilian soft clothing. The requirements of the middle-class people for soft clothing are not only to meet the high standards of aesthetics, but also to be more functionally compatible with their living habits.
Fourth, a standardized service system. Although the demand for the civilian drapery market is personalized, the service system needs to be standardized. Serving individuals with different needs is very different from serving the model. Therefore, a standardized service system largely tests the management and operational capabilities of a company. In this sense, traditional companies want to transform into civilian soft clothing, there is still a long way to go.
Fifth, there are differences in the way customers are acquired. Traditional companies are not good at Internet marketing and promotion, and their understanding of new media channels is relatively insufficient. In the way of obtaining a customer, there is a big difference between the B end and the C end.
The civil soft-packing industry faces some common problems, and the current status of the above-mentioned industries also reflects the pain points of the entire industry.
House bean soft mode
The mode of house beans is divided into online and offline.
Online services are available to users who only purchase our designs. We have integrated nearly 200 software designers across the country to complete this work. While providing design solutions to users, we also provide online purchasing channels for furniture as a reference.
The offline service provides a complete solution for the soft pack. We will go to the door to measure the house, provide a personalized design, and also package and sell the complete set of furniture products. Take some of the online reds and well-known fashion bloggers we have served as an example. They have very high requirements for renting the environment because they need to broadcast and take photos in the living environment. In the overall solution, involving housing measurement, custom design, procurement and placement, users only need to stay in the bag.
Our audience is positioned at the middle class after 75. It belongs to the mode of low-frequency high-price unit price, and the average passenger unit price is more than 150,000, and the higher is 200-300 million. Most of the people we target are focused on their own business, very busy, and have no time and energy to complete the design display, detailing and furniture procurement of soft clothing. In addition, most people are not good at softwear. Therefore, instead of selling furniture items, we offer an overall soft-packed solution. In addition to design, users can also choose to purchase furniture through us. We have our own supply chain system and have long-term cooperation with some brands and custom factories, so the price of furniture will also be lower than the retail price of the market.
In our supply chain, the first category is branded furniture suppliers. We only work with well-known brands. The second category is custom cabinet suppliers. Cabinets are difficult to standardize, and each scene is different, often requiring custom products based on field conditions. The third category is the foundry of custom furniture. Well-known brands are more expensive, and we can provide users with lower-priced custom furniture under the premise of ensuring quality by directly cooperating with the foundry. The fourth category is the accessories supplier, which involves lamps, vases, flowers, pendants, decorative paintings, etc.
The mode of the house bean is not heavy, but we have done a lot of resource integration. For users who choose a total solution, we have a 45-day cycle. In theory, we are flexible according to the order, there is no inventory and financial pressure.
At present, the house bean has covered four cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and will soon be in the fifth city of Chengdu.
Online and offline
After graduating from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2007, I stayed in the UK and worked for the HSBC Investment Banking Department. For the next seven years, I focused on quantitative analysis. I returned to China in 2013 and hope to do what I like, so I set up a small studio to design a model room for some real estate companies.
While serving the real estate company, many owners took the initiative to find us, hoping that I can provide civilian soft-packing services. In 2015, I began to consider starting a business in the field of civilian soft-packing services, and landed in Shenzhen, and also obtained the personal angel investment of Ren Zhiqiang.
In the beginning, I hope to build an internet platform to sell furniture online. We created an app called Home Bean, which introduced more than 60 furniture brands. But after a short trial, we decided to give up. On the one hand, the system services of Tmall and other giants are very perfect, the background query, return and exchange mechanism is also very mature, it is difficult to make a new platform differentiation; on the other hand, the traffic cost is too high, it is difficult for new visitors to bear . In short, I don't think this is a sustainable business model.
The transformation stems from the occasional exploration. When we built the Internet furniture platform, we tried to cooperate with some stars, network reds and well-known bloggers to promote products. Occasionally, we used the homes of these well-known bloggers as the blueprint to design the renderings of the furniture mix. After they were promoted, they achieved unexpected results. Many people want to buy the whole furniture package we designed instead of buying. Single product. At this time, I saw the market opportunity for the overall solution.
Since then, people who come to us to design a complete package of soft furnishings have been in constant stream. At this time, we began to consider the transformation of the model. In fact, there are many companies in Europe and the United States that focus on the overall solution of softcovering. This model has been verified. There is a B-round startup called Havenly, whose model is mainly to work with furniture brands to collect commissions.
Pioneering pit
In the process of starting a business, the first pit that the house bean stepped on was burning money. At the beginning, we hoped to build an online platform for selling furniture, and it was easy to burn more than 10 million. The high cost of online traffic is a situation that many startups cannot avoid.
The second pit is to just do the line and ignore the line. Before 2016, we only do online, not offline. The idea at the time was to come out of the solution online and then earn a commission through. However, the reality is that users who only have online demand are relatively low in price. More paying users tend to settle online.
The third pit is in the supply chain. When we started to try offline business, we started shipping from Shenzhen at the beginning. We thought that Guangdong's supply chain was enough to satisfy the national business. However, when we expanded to Beijing, we encountered various problems. The logistics loss is serious, the inspection process is complicated, and the sales of many brands are not controllable. At this time, we began to deepen the supply chain and create different supply systems for different regions.
At the beginning of 2016, the house bean completed the A round of financing of RMB 20 million, and the investor was the investment of Zhongke. We make a distinction between online and offline business. A soft-package design solution is available online, and a soft-packaged overall solution is available offline. At the same time, we have also begun to build a standardized management and service system. At the end of 2016, we started an attempt to cross-city operations, expanding from Shenzhen and Guangzhou to Beijing. At the beginning of 2017, the house bean expanded to Shanghai. Every time we land a new city, we first conduct network promotion and test data. First expand your business through online orders, then lay the studio. After the transition, as of now, Zhaidou has achieved breakeven in every city. At this stage, our monthly revenue is close to 5 million.
After completing the A round of financing, our main layout is online. Offline stores can improve conversions, and traffic is relatively effective when users see products in physical stores. Users can communicate face-to-face with designers based on a scenario, which is an important service method.
(Economic Observer Online reporter Gao Yang interview finishing)
Gaoyang Economic Observer
Economic Observer, company reporter
London School of Economics and Political Science, Master of International History, King's College of London, Master of War. In February 2016, he joined the Economic Observer and the Corporate News Department. Mainly focused on early investment and entrepreneurship. Good at character columns, surveys and company reports. Responsible for the column: Flower buds, VC investment notes, PE notes.
subscription
This category presents different kinds of LED Tri-fold Makeup Mirror,Double-Sided Makeup Mirror, makeup mirror with lights, make up mirrorHollywood Vanity Mirror and Illuminated Mirror with Organizer Tray. We have been professionally designing and producing makeup mirrors for 17 years. Not only are all the materials used in the mirror the best, but our technology is very good, using the most advanced and up-to-date machines. We also accept OEM and ODM. Our style is very popular in foreign countries, especially in the European and American markets, and the feedback in the local market is very good. Our after-sales service is also professional and patient. So that our customers can buy with confidence, no worries, and no worries about the situation that they do not understand. With the progress of the times, our design team is also keeping up with the pace of fashion, continuing to design more new styles of makeup mirrors for our customers. Let's enjoy the joy that smart beauty mirrors bring us. Welcome to contact us!
Beauty Mirror,3 Color Lighting Makeup Mirror,Plastic Cosmetic Mirror,Lighted Cosmetic Mirror
Dongguan Powerme Tech. Co., Ltd. , https://www.powermetechs.com