Rebirth in 1998 is also a kind of life

Since Yang Zhu delegated power, in less than two months, the executives of various business departments and core departments experienced the happiness of being in power for the first time; but this happiness only lasted for more than half a month , What followed was a huge pressure that made people breathless.

At 11:30 in the middle of the night, office building No. 7 of Zhutou Commercial Headquarters, the office of the president of the o2o division.

Director Yan, who was getting thinner and thinner, pinched his brows wearily, and drank a cup of coffee that was so bitter that his tongue was numb, temporarily preventing the combination of vasadenosine and nerve receptors;

After feeling that the caffeine had successfully deceived his brain, Director Yan raised his head, looked at the two vice presidents sitting opposite him, and finally fixed his eyes on Chen Jiale, the director of the information center.

"Director Chen, your department is the first-hand information collector, and you have more say in some matters, so... Regarding [Huixuanfang], a competitor that popped up suddenly, let me hear your opinion." Director Yan Shen Sheng said.

………………

Huixuanfang is an o2o project that has emerged since the beginning of the year, focusing on casual snacks.

At the beginning, Director Yan and others didn't pay much attention to it. After all, there are many follow-up O2O projects in the market, and this Huixuanfang, like other competitors, is far from comparable in scale and number of outlets to Gongyou's Home. Compared, there is really no need to pay attention to it deliberately;

In addition, Huixuanfang mainly focuses on casual snacks, and the consumer groups it faces are young women. It does not directly compete with Gongyou's Home in terms of business format or core consumer groups. I didn’t take it to heart—you must know that although young women are an important consumer group of Gongyou’s Home, the bottom line of the combined business of Gongyou’s Home lies in people’s livelihood commodities. It is possible to hold all subdivided tracks in your hands.

But soon, Director Yan found out that something was wrong. Huixuanfang, which just popped up in Hebei Province at the beginning of the year, spread its business area to eight provinces including the coastal areas in just over three months, and its outlets also expanded from the first More than 40 months, suddenly exploded to more than 700, as of today, the number of outlets has exceeded 1000 - and what is unreasonable is that the outlets of Huixuanfang are not gradually covered from north to south, but Suddenly more flowers bloom.

Anyone who has been in contact with business knows that due to the vast territory of China and the intricate environment of people in various places, no matter whether it is a product or a model, if you blindly play cross-regional copying without the blessing of market verification or powerful value-enabling objects, you will not die. Know how to die.

In the beginning, when people from the o2o business department saw Huixuanfang acting like this, they all moved up stools to watch the fun, waiting for this stunned young man to make a joke;

But within a month, they stopped laughing.

Huixuanfang seems to have done enough preliminary research work and supply chain preparations. Just like the commodity localization strategy of Gongyoujia, Huixuanfang will immediately optimize its product structure every time it takes root in a city, and retain a few common adaptation poles. At the same time as strong competitive products, add more new brand snacks that meet the tastes and preferences of local people-if you don’t expect these, you have never heard of these, but the snack products with very distinctive packaging are definitely Huixuanfang’s Directly operated/associated brands.

Anyone who has worked in the supply chain knows how high this kind of gameplay requires new product development capabilities and resource integration capabilities—not only does it require extremely abundant funds as a guarantee, but it also requires Huixuanfang to have a large, complete and High-level behind-the-scenes team.

That's all, for such a well-prepared competitor, it is a big deal for Zhutou Business to take a defensive position in this sub-division track that is not very important-after all, the opponent has already formed wings without knowing it, and he will leave the field directly In terms of arm wrestling, from a comprehensive perspective, the gains outweigh the losses.

In addition, the people in the o2o business department are all from the front line of the business. They naturally know the quality status of China's food market today, and they also know how difficult and troublesome it is to ensure the quality control of each link; So immediately after the first competition review, the vice president in charge of information gathering and competition response made the decision—and so on.

Yes, wait!

Wait for Huixuanfang to make mistakes, and wait for Huixuanfang to have a food safety accident.

This kind of coping strategy that is incomprehensible and extremely negative in the eyes of later generations is absolutely wise at the beginning of the millennium-you have never experienced that era, and you will never know what the chaos in the Chinese market was at that time To a certain extent, you never know how crazy those businesses can go in pursuit of profits.

You must know that even with the strength and supply chain management capabilities of Zhutou Commercial and Trading, after three years, it only has more than 70 self-operated brands and more than 100 joint venture brands; in addition to market competition factors, highly business-controlled companies The difficulty of self-operated/associated brands can also be seen.

At present, Huixuanfang has more than 200 new self-operated/associated brands, and the number is even more than Zhutou Trading-supply chain management and quality control capabilities cannot be developed immediately. If there is no food safety problem in the workshop, all the executives of the o2o business department dare to screw their heads off on the spot!

And once there is a slightly serious food safety problem in Huixuanfang... Huh, I'm sorry, Zhutou Trading is a family with Cucumber.com, which is in the limelight for a while. When the time comes, through the offensive of public opinion, you will definitely regret appearing in Huaxia. on the ground.

It's just that there is a good saying - life is like chocolate, you never know what color the next one will be.

Huixuanfang has not yet had a thunderstorm, but the o2o business of Zhutou Trading has a problem that many executives have to pay attention to. There was a negative growth in business, and the decline was as high as 2%.

Don't underestimate the 4.1% decline. Based on the active volume of investment and trading o2o business, a monthly contraction of 4.1% means that the turnover has decreased by nearly 4 million yuan. More importantly, last month's business decline is just a At the beginning, although only half a month has passed this month, judging from the data obtained so far, this month's performance is definitely still declining year-on-year, and the downward trend has a tendency to further expand.

The reason why the o2o business began to decline is actually very simple-many young members of Gongyou's House have been taken away by Huixuanfang!

Yes, the Home of Workers, which claims to have the highest user stickiness, has been taken away by Huixuanfang for a total of 30 yuan so far-nearly 12 of which were taken away in the last month alone.

And the reason why Huixuanfang is so awesome is also very simple-since a month ago, Huixuanfang began to enrich its business format. In the store that was originally full of snacks, a huge area was vacated to sell trendy bags. Bags and various trinkets.

You must know that although these new businesses have no direct conflict with Zhutou Trading, the disposable income of each consumer is limited. Since those young female consumers spend all their money on various snacks and those prices and styles Trendy bags that can definitely surprise them, naturally there is no way to maintain enough activity and consumption frequency in Gongyou's Home - to some extent, Huixuanfang is planning Gongyou's Home in another dimension root.

Today, the reason why Director Yan held a meeting late into the night with some executives of the o2o business department was to discuss how to face the competition from Huixuanfang, and to come up with a countermeasure to reverse the downward trend of performance.

In the past, this kind of matter must be reported to Yang Zhu, and then the big boss will directly decide how to deal with it, but since Yang Zhu has delegated power, the responsibility for this is of course the executive president of each business department/ On the shoulders of the vice president - if there is a business problem and you have to trouble the big boss, then what's the use of casting investment and trading to support so many executives?

………………

"We underestimated Huixuanfang too much before. This is an opponent that is definitely worthy of attention, and... as expected, there must be a huge capital institution behind them!" After reporting the detailed information of the competitor, the information Chen Jiale, the director of the center, said with a serious face.

Listening to this is equivalent to the beginning of nonsense, Director Yan and the other two vice presidents did not show any impatience on their faces - unlike other companies that only listen to results and conclusions, Zhutou Trading has always required managers to have the ability to make overall calculations, Therefore, any content that helps to explore the core nature of the transaction is very important.

"According to our evaluation results, Huixuanfang's products are all sold with a 10% to 15% increase in price on the basis of the industry's average ex-factory price, and the price increase for popular products such as potato chips and melon seeds is only about 5%. ——President Yan, you should know what this means." There should be worry in Chen Jiale's eyes.

Even 20 years later, the distribution channel is still one of the most important costs of the product, not to mention the terminal is king now?

Under normal circumstances, unless it is a brand like Coca-Cola whose influence has reached a certain level and even turned into a hard currency, ordinary products cannot cover all kinds of marketing and marketing without maintaining a gross profit rate of 30%~50%. Circulation costs - this is just ordinary food, such as health care products, at least a gross profit rate of more than 80% must be guaranteed, so that it is possible to open up all sales and circulation links.

And although we don’t know the actual production cost of Huixuanfang’s products, but the price of 5%~15% above the industry’s average ex-factory price is circulated to consumers, which means that all products are sold at a loss. of! ——Don’t talk about the factory direct sales model. Those outlets are all franchisees, and they also need to be responsible for a lot of costs such as rent, water, electricity, staff salaries, etc. The cost of this link alone cannot be fed by such a small gross profit.

Bad money drainage! !

These four words instantly popped up in Director Yan's mind.

Thinking of Huixuanfang's actions in the past month, he was almost sure that the other party was playing a game against time.

If it is not expected, the other party wants to attract traffic at a super low price, grab the young female members of Zhutou Business through those superficial snacks painted with appearance and concept, and then stick to it by creating a product format specifically for young women. Most of these consumers—young women are visual animals, and their appeals for products are very different from other groups. In addition, they have large mental loopholes and are extremely easy to be brainwashed. Therefore, it is not necessary to stick to them like Zhutou Trading. Every link of the industrial chain has worked hard.

谷覴

And once enough customers are attracted in the early stage, Huixuanfang will start to play the game of "product iteration", and gradually abandon those loss-making drainage products, and then replace them with "upgrades" to ensure sufficient gross profit A series of products - if brainwashed properly, and then play with the generalized circle empowerment, the gross profit of those iterated products will even far exceed the traditional offline similar products.

Sensing the vaguely familiar routine of the other party, Director Yan couldn't help but sneered a few times - he wanted to learn their way of investing in business, but he didn't want to learn their uprightness, what a beautiful idea! !

Seeing Director Yan sneering there, one of the vice presidents couldn't help but uttered: "Mr. Yan, why don't we have a head-to-head confrontation with them? With our ability to control the industrial chain, even if these snacks are reduced to the same level as theirs At the price level, we won’t lose much—we will play with them for a year or so, and see who can’t stand it first!”

Director Yan knew that he was worried about the continuous loss of young female members of the Workers' Home, and the vice president's suggestion was not wrong at all-there are many moats that are invisible to outsiders, and the ability to control the industrial chain of some industries is One of them, as long as Zhutou Trading is willing, this price war will definitely see the other party doubt their lives.

After thinking about it, Director Yan still shook his head: "No, if it's not a matter of life and death, we, Zhutou Trading, can't use price wars indiscriminately - it's not that we are reluctant to lose money, but once we start playing price wars, it's hard to say that this industry will die. It’s about to start a vicious cycle after another.”

The vice president naturally knew what Director Yan meant - any company needs profits to survive, and once the price war lasts longer, consumers' psychological expectations for casual snacks will drop again and again. down to the point where the business simply can't afford it.

You know, the mindset is a very scary thing. Once consumers who are used to selling at a loss think that it is reasonable to sell things that cost ten yuan originally, they should be sold for one yuan. It’s hard to sell again—who cares if the actual cost of the item is much more than a dollar?

Therefore, once this low-price mindset is formed, merchants in the field of leisure snacks will either simply close their doors, or simply use the cheapest and lowest-quality raw materials to produce products with far lower costs. To satisfy consumers with products worth only one yuan, or to fabricate one brand story after another to force a premium - no matter how those merchants choose, in the end, this industry can only enter one round after another. The short-lived brand era of "bad + bragging".

As for industrial upgrading... stop making trouble, go to bed and sleep!You can't even make money, so what are you talking about upgrading or not?

If it's just a general enterprise, the casual snack industry will be rotten if it's rotten, it's none of my business?Anyway, I am just a platform company.

But... Zhutou Trading is different!

Thinking of the company's corporate mission and vision, the vice president nodded silently and did not mention the price war anymore.

Squeezing the space between his brows, Director Yan said, "The opponent's race against time actually has a lot of drawbacks;"

"If I'm not wrong, they must have used a method similar to the Ponzi scheme to grant credit through some intermediary agencies, and then [swipe] a lot of resources from hundreds of cooperative supplier companies and thousands of franchisees. , Only in this way can we ensure that we can expand to such a large scale in such a short period of time—otherwise, besides central enterprises, there are absolutely few private enterprises in China that can mobilize such large-scale resources by themselves!"

"Director Chen is right. Judging from the operation mode of Huixuanfang, there must be large capital institutions standing behind it-and with the urinating nature of those capital institutions, it is strange that they did not play leverage games in the middle !"

Speaking of this, Director Yan's eyes became sharper: "Hmph, since the opponent dares to play this kind of tightrope game, I can't blame others for falling to pieces!"

When the two vice presidents saw this, their eyes lit up immediately: "President Yan, do you have a solution?"

Director Yan nodded: "The opponent's racing mode actually has a lot of internal troubles... The most taboo thing is to slow down the circulation speed;"

"In other words, the most taboo thing is the decline in participant confidence caused by the slowdown in the layout data!"

"So we just need to jam the opponent at this point!"

The two vice presidents nodded, and then shook their heads: "Mr. Yan, I agree with your point of view. If there are too many participants in a project, it will become a mob. Once the wind direction is not right, it will easily turn into a bird and a beast." ; but the question is... how do we limit their data curve in the short term without resorting to price wars?"

Director Yan sighed, this was the answer he hadn't thought of just now.

Chen Jiale who was on the side suddenly said: "Mr. Yan, according to the data feedback collected by our information center in the past two years, in fact, as long as it can form an interception on the consumer path, it is actually not very difficult to limit the data curve of Huixuanfang. After all, offline consumers are still very dependent on physical paths, and the minds of these young female consumers are easily affected. As long as we can slightly expand the category of leisure snacks, and then do a little bit in the name of the platform It is not difficult to form traffic interception with bundled profit-sharing promotions!"

The so-called consumer path interception is to set up a series of product temptations on the way consumers go to the original destination, to empty the consumer's wallet to the greatest extent, or to dispel the consumer's intention to go to the original destination - this means It is very common in supermarkets, otc pharmacies, and shopping malls in tourist attractions, but even after 20 years, this method has not disappeared, which shows its effectiveness.

Hearing Chen Jiale's suggestion, Director Yan and the two vice presidents were overjoyed at first, and then frowned: "Director Chen, your idea is very good, but the implementation...is difficult!"

Chen Jiale understood what Director Yan meant by "difficult".

There are two difficulties in implementing this idea;

The first is the nearly full load of commodity temptation items.

If you think about it, you know that this kind of project will cost a huge amount of funds and budgets. It not only requires the mobilization of a large number of cross-industry business resources, but also requires countless behind-the-scenes staff to design various targeted activity plans day and night. In order to seize the subdivided needs of young female consumer groups, squeeze every penny out of them and their pockets.

In fact, this is not bad, since it involves the strategic security of the o2o business unit, as long as it is not too much, the finance department will not get stuck in this area of ​​the budget; With his status and prestige, it is actually not that difficult for departments such as the local life service business department and the self-owned brand business department to seek help.

But the second difficulty is the most terrible - the resources of the enterprise are not infinite, let alone they are just a business department?They need to find out the real consumption path of these lost members and the deep-seated reasons for the loss, so that they can carry out targeted actions within a limited resource budget to make up for the business loopholes at the root.

And this is actually the real reason that troubled Director Yan and the other two vice presidents.

Taking a deep breath, Director Yan couldn't help picking up the network layout diagram of Gongyou Home on the table again, and thought carefully.

He really couldn't figure it out. Every branch of Gongyou's House was carefully selected and finalized, and its business coverage was also calculated strictly according to a 3-kilometer circular area-the Huixuanfang located within the business coverage of these branches is How to bypass the mental influence that the Workers' Home is proud of, and "steal" so many young female consumers at once?

You know, if you only consider the inertia factor, Huixuanfang may be able to pry away some consumers from Gongyou's Home while developing its own members, but the other party can pry away 12 members in just one month. It is definitely not explained by the word "near"!

Thinking of this, Director Yan was frustrated, and couldn't help feeling nostalgic for a bastard who was once dictatorial to the limit... If this matter was placed on Yang Zhu's desk, maybe that bastard would be able to find out the problem in a few minutes, and then Can you decide on a deadly counterattack in 5 minutes?

After waving his hand to signal for the few people to leave the meeting and go home to rest, Director Yan leaned on the chair a little dejectedly, with a bitter smile on the corner of his mouth—he had a feeling that Huixuanfang, which has been developing in a low-key manner, suddenly became high-profile in the past one and a half months When he got up, he knew that Yang Zhu had already started to delegate power, and he no longer interfered in the affairs of various business departments.

Hehe, it seems that once Zhutou Trading is not directly covered by the great god Yang Zhu, it will immediately enter into troubled times!

Director Yan stared at the other brightly lit office buildings outside the window with a complicated expression...

........................

What Director Yan didn't know was that when he was staring out the window in a daze, in a high-end office building that was also brightly lit in Shanghai, a man with self-confidence and solemn eyes was facing Huixuanfang who had just been promoted. A group of senior executives knocked on the blackboard.

"Rookies... you have to remember that the real business district is not a circle, but an irregular ellipse like a paramecium, and these neglected gaps are the real foundation of your Huixuanfang!" the hair combed. The meticulous middle-aged man, with bloodshot eyes open, spoke to a group of executives in an almost haughty voice.

As for the executives of different ages, when they heard this man call themselves a rookie, almost none of them showed any dissatisfaction on their faces. Flipping through the notebook, trying to muster up the last ounce of energy, he listened carefully to the man in front of him talking about today's tenth crash course...