Earlier this year, Surprisingly Home received 13 billion yuan in joint investment from Alibaba, Kangtai Group, Yunfeng Capital and Ca Wai Yip Capital. It is understood that unexpectedly home and Ali after strategic cooperation, will deepen cooperation in mobile payment, smart stores, online payment and other aspects, through cooperation to jointly build online and offline integration of new retail business pattern.
Home of incredibly want in capital under the help of such as ali, based on the entity stores, with big data driven business model change, the fusion of conducting online actively explore new retail model in the field of large consumption, driven by property body to big data driven change, completed from the “house” to “consumption”.
However, incredibly the home as in traditional household store deep plow old “two landlord”, really can smooth transformation new retail? This is a question worth exploring.
Home furnishing stores lack of customer flow, incredibly the home is struggling
Want to discuss whether unexpectedly home transformation new retail can succeed, and want to find out why unexpectedly home transformation new retail.
Unexpectedly the biggest reason why the home transformation new retail is in recent years the lack of customer flow of traditional household stores. In fact, not only is incredibly home, whole household sells industry very cold. To this point, I want to live in the practitioners of stores should be deeply touched. In recent years, the home furnishing store’s guests are sparse and loose, even the holiday activities can not add what popularity.
According to relevant public information, the sales volume of home furnishing stores in 2014 was about 1206.21 billion yuan, down 3.36% year on year; The sales volume in 2015 was 1084.91 billion yuan, down 9.98% year on year; In 2017, the sales volume of building materials home furnishing stores above the national scale was 917.37 billion yuan, down 22.6% year-on-year. Look from the data, in recent years household market sales slump has been an indisputable fact. The rental rate of stores is also declining year by year, and some regional stores are facing the dilemma of shrinking, relocation, closure and acquisition by large enterprises. Incredibly the home as home to sell one of the giants also bogged down.
In addition to the lack of customer flow in home furnishing stores, there is also the rational return of the property market economy and the introduction of a series of real estate policies, making the overall household consumption demand of residents decline. After the 19th National Congress of the CPC, adhering to the spirit of “house is for living, not for speculation”, the country has issued relevant purchase restriction policies, or purchase limit number or increase the down payment interest rate. Limit buy policy frequency, housing industry encounters cold, with its relevant household also ushered in winter.
Again, the rise of home e-commerce platform, hardcover room, brand furniture enterprises, unexpectedly home and other home furnding stores are facing multi-channel shunting, for consumers no longer simply buy furniture from home furnding stores, for home furnding enterprises no longer simply rely on stores for sales. Such, store customer flow and sales also subsequently declined.
The lack of customer flow leads to a decline in the sales of home furnishing brands. Since they cannot sell in the stores, the rental rate of the stores declines. The “second landlord” who relies on rent to support his family is also facing a difficult period of “tenants” withdrawing their rent. In these difficult times, Unexpectedly Home began to seek change, so the new retail is seen as a lifeline for unexpectedly Home. Unexpectedly the home embarked on a comprehensive promotion of online and offline integration of the new retail road.
After the integration of formats did not pick up, new retail plans to change fear of the road ahead is uncertain
Since we know why incredibly home to transform the new retail, then we go on to talk about, hand in hand with Ali, incredibly home’s new retail seek to change the road is not reliable.
Let’s take a look at what happened to the family after the alibaba investment. The big move is the incredible Home Experience MALL, which debuted in late April. This is actually home and Ali since the cooperation, together to create a one-stop business project, is the two new retail strategic cooperation of the first test field.
In fact, the Home experience MALL was transformed from the Home Experience Lize store. After the transformation, Lize store has now completed the full coverage of home building materials, fresh supermarket, catering cinema, children’s entertainment, digital intelligence, sports fitness and home care and other big consumption formats. Unexpectedly Home Chairman Wang Linming said that this is unexpectedly home around the concept of big family to create a consumer ecosystem, is also the future unexpectedly home strategy core, the future Unexpectedly home experience MALL model will be replicated in stores across the country.
Indeed, the appearance of unexpectedly home experience MALL marks unexpectedly home from “everyone” to “big consumption” a big step forward, indicating unexpectedly home has already carried out a new business model, and is no longer waiting for rent collection of the “primary landlord”. However, after format is integrated, the household commodity sales volume in unexpectedly home sells does not have how old raise.
It is understood that since the opening of the home experience MALL, the flow of people has greatly increased than before, especially on weekends and holidays, the nearby residents will come to visit. Many consumers come to the MALL to watch movies and eat, and the atmosphere is much more lively than before. However, the shopping mall traffic is mainly concentrated in the children’s theme park on the third floor, the gym on the fourth floor and the dining and cinema area on the fifth floor. And building materials home, furniture, bathroom, kitchen appliances and other furniture brand stores that account for the main proportion are still deserted. Even when customers drop in, they just look at the store and almost never buy the product.
Admittedly, at present, the transformation of “big consumption” has not essentially solved the problem of the lack of customer flow in Unexpectedly Home hypermarket. Because customers come to the MALL to experience food and play, very few customers have the intention of buying home products. Incredibly home spent a lot of effort, in an attempt to increase the customer flow of furniture brands, but the fact has no effect. The reason for this is pretty simple.
1. Unexpectedly home experience MALL mode is out of focus and fails to target the target customers of home furnishing products
On the basis of home building materials, experience MALL has added fresh supermarket, restaurant theater, children’s entertainment and other formats. To a large extent, the consumer groups of these formats do not coincide with the target customers of home building materials. Household belongs to the product category of high low frequency, it must be the user who has clear consumer demand will take the initiative to come to the door to ask, unlike clothes, cosmetics and other low-frequency products so easy to make people produce consumption impulse.
Through the market reaction after the opening, as the first test field of “big consumption”, unexpectedly the home experience MALL did not really help home brand usher in customer flow. On the contrary, the newly added low-price high-frequency consumption such as catering, fresh food and cinema almost monopolized the flow of some places to sell, while the high-price low-frequency consumption such as home furnishing still did not improve.
Second, experience MALL did not bring traffic, but increased the operating cost, stealing chicken can not lose rice
It is reported that many home furnishing stores in the Home Experience MALL have adjusted their opening hours from 7 and 8 to 9 and 10 in order to accommodate the development of the new business format. After the extension of business hours, there was no significant change in turnover and sales. It increases employee costs.
Moreover, in order to take advantage of the customer flow of big stores, home furnishing brands make every effort to do all kinds of activities in the store, but in the end customers also look at a look to see also nothing. Home furnishing brands have done activities but have no effect, the white money generated by daily activities is not said to flow out, but also affect the morale of store sales.
Three, Ali invested a huge sum of money to cooperate early abacus, unexpectedly the home is afraid of making wedding clothes for others
In the industry, Ali’s expansive new retail layout is not a day. You don’t even have to be sharp to spot alibaba’s m&a frenzy. After ali’s new retail banner spread over fresh food, department stores, logistics, retail and other industries, the huge household industry seems to be the last piece of primitive forest that has not been transformed.
On the background of decreasing dividend online, incredibly home as a home store giant, its offline store resources really let Ali eye. But Ali was more than greedy. After cooperation with unexpectedly the home of, according to the strategic agreement, leading new retail brand box Ma Xian ali will come unexpectedly the home, and the introduction of box of raw ma at the same time, incredibly home stopped part of its business, including import at li ze store supermarket, li river food supermarkets and earlier off two empty box.
It is understood that unexpectedly the home of Beijing’s 8 stores, hema fresh has been in 7 of them, will soon open in succession. This is expected to increase the price of groceries and movies, which are high in frequency and low in price, while the price of home furnishing stores, which are low in frequency and high in price, will decline. The contrast between the two will become more and more obvious, completely contrary to the original intention of unexpectedly home “big consumption” new retail.
At present, the “big consumption” after the integration of formats has not solved the problem of customer flow and sales of household brands. On the contrary, from the performance of the Experience MALL of Unexpectedly Home, the new retail road from “home for everyone” to “big consumption” is more like a scam. However, some people are optimistic that the transformation of Incredibly Home is just beginning, may be a detour, but its new retail road is absolutely bright.
I do not confirm or deny. Admittedly, in the huge home furnishing industry chain, it is not easy for a single enterprise to complete the transformation of new retail through online and offline. Unexpectedly home and Ali’s cooperation, is indeed mutual change, mutual empowerment. However, it is worth our reflection that Under the new retail outlet, Alibaba has been running a horse enclosure, but there is no particularly successful transformation of the physical business case. Nevertheless, household industry scale is big, unexpectedly the home is industry giant, add the actual strength of Ali and ambition, the future may be able to see different game play in household industry.
Public ID: Liukuangtmt, content cooperation plus wechat account: Sanche2017, this article was first published on The website of Venture Capital