Camel, A Traditional Shoe Enterprise, Has Found Development In The Trend And Independent Design

The decline of traditional shoe enterprises is old news. A number of traditional brands which used to be the king of channels are seeking change after experiencing the trend of sports and leisure and e-commerce reshuffle.

In the period of more than 20 years, the offline department stores and other online shoe stores have been in the center of the national market for more than 4000 years, and they have been relying on the top of other online shoe stores. With its original core consumers aging, the brand has become a "traditional brand" in many people's minds.

After 2017, camel entered the "new media e-commerce era" in the mouth of its founder Wan Jingang: nearly half of the annual revenue of nearly 10 billion yuan was contributed by e-commerce channels.

This brand, which used to be dominated by men's casual leather shoes and outdoor rhubarb boots, now has a wide range of tentacles in the shoe industry: covering all categories of men's and women's shoes, including sports goods, work wear shoes, business shoes, and the current popular dad's shoes and small white shoes.

According to an Zhi, a Xiao Er of tmall shoes and boots industry, if the export of footwear brands is removed, the e-commerce penetration rate of the footwear industry has reached 80% -- compared with other industries, the penetration rate of shoes and boots is very high. This means that traditional brands have long been on the Internet, but it also means that the growth dividend of this industry is no longer longer, and it needs to rely on more refined operation mode to obtain new growth.

After experiencing the trial of entity and e-commerce, the camel that has opened the era of new media e-commerce has become a typical case of the shoe industry turning around in the new e-commerce era.

In the past year, it has increased the unit price and conversion rate of customers mainly through three things, and achieved Gmv growth far exceeding the growth rate of the industry.

1. Guide production with trend through platform tools. Combined with the R & D advantages of brand soles, we explored the subdivision categories with high growth trend; 2. Based on the data, insight into the core consumer portraits, around the trend selling points of new products, and using the limited budget, reasonably design the marketing and product stratification strategy before and after the launch; 3. Using AI design to design the layout, relying on the accumulation of deep supply chain resources, adjusting the proportion of self built factories and suppliers, and realizing the rapid response to the trend.

Based on DNA, jump out of the Red Sea to find the blue sea

In the past year, there have been many popular categories in the footwear industry with an increase rate of 100%: mecha shoes, dissolving shoes, German training shoes The emergence of these new types of purposes, the driver is often a new brand.

The traditional brands with weak innovation consciousness mostly adopt the following policy. As a result, commodities are homogenized, and shoe enterprises are always crowded in the same price with fierce competition.

But Camel found a "blue ocean" of Martin boots, and successfully jumped out of the vicious circle of price war.

In the past year, according to the decision-making factors of consumers, tmall has drawn all the footwear commodities in the industry onto a coordinate axis - the horizontal axis is the category and attribute of shoes and boots, and the vertical axis is the price of shoes and boots. In this industry wide chart, it is clear what kind of goods are in excess / insufficient supply and how businesses can adjust commodity prices to avoid more competitive price bands.

According to the commodity supply efficiency and flow efficiency shown in the chart, tmall footwear industry has also divided about 400 blue ocean tracks. Among them, Lefu shoes, which are popular in 2021, are in one of the blue ocean tracks.

This category of shoes and shoes has not been operated in the past. After the joint efforts of the footwear industry and head shoe enterprises to increase supply, and after the promotion of the industry's head anchor, the sales of Lefu shoes once reached a growth rate of 130%, and the scale also expanded to become a new leaf category.

The growth path of Lefu shoes provides a reproducible methodology for camel to launch new products. In men's and women's shoes industry driven by richness, businesses often need to constantly update and sell more shoes to attract consumers. But SPU (standard product unit) is already very wide camel, instead of reducing red sea products, focusing on blue ocean products, taking advantage of the momentum of trend category growth.

In January 2021, camel launched nearly 40 different Martin boots. They are not only one of the 400 blue ocean categories, but also catch up with the bonus of the main shoes in autumn and winter. Although the price is 30% higher than the average price of shoes in the past, they help camels avoid the Red Sea price band and increase the unit price of door store customers by 20%.

Mr Wan said camels are now using data from third-party consultants and tmall frequently. Tmall, which has a more industrial perspective and can be combined with the actual sales, is the trend basis most valued by camel.

But if a brand wants to develop in the long run, it should follow the market trend and not lose its DNA.

Shoe industry generally recognized a rule: "a pair of shoes determines success or failure.".

Compared with the production of lower threshold vamp, sole technology often shows the core competitiveness of a shoe enterprise, with a life cycle of 3-5 years. Some of the classic soles, even by changing the upper design has been evergreen. For example, Nike's air max air cushion shoes launched in 1987 are still popular today. And Adidas is proud of the boost foam sole, has also evolved to a more shockproof ultra boost.

Camel has also found a balance between trend and independent design: unlike the heavy and bulky traditional Martin boots, its Martin boot toe follows the trend, making it narrower and more elegant. It also adds the popular thick heel element, but uses the same super light sole.

This kind of sole draws lessons from the development technology of the soles of sports shoes. It uses more lightweight, wear-resistant and more elastic materials. It also registered a technical patent, which is regarded as "the DNA of the brand" by wanjingang. In the camel's plan, its life cycle can be as long as eight years, and it will continue to iterate in the future.

Leverage the whole life cycle operation of goods with new product planning

The production process of footwear industry is more complex than that of clothing industry, which also needs longer R & D cycle and heavier supply chain investment. Such a heavy asset industry, the core problem to be solved is to reduce inventory and improve operational efficiency.

In addition to the specific marketing strategy before and after the launch of camel shoes, we can find out the specific marketing strategy of camel shoes.

1. Insight into the trend of new products before their launch.

In the past, camel mainly promoted men's casual leather shoes and rough outdoor yellow boots, with obvious masculinity. But now, camel has found that the number of its male and female consumers is now relatively balanced through tools such as Alibaba data bank, and has discovered the current "gender free" trend.

As a result, camel made adjustments when planning new shoes, launched small white shoes according to the needs of female users, and also tested the neutral style of Martin boots, work wear boots and other categories.

The planning and design of these categories, based on the consumer portraits depicted by the data, attract more female consumers than men. This also provides a basis for camel's new product planning in the future.

For example, camel launched a pair of up to IP Dahuang boots, which not only had insight into consumer portraits and trends before going on the market, but also combined the core category of Martin boots with IP. It also finalized the cooperation with super head anchor before the product was launched, and finally sold more than 20000 pairs.

2. Combining with AI design, shorten the design proofing link before the new product is launched.

In March 2021, tmall footwear industry and Dharma Institute jointly launched a trend design tool called AI design. Camel has also become the first tmall merchants to use AI design.

In the past, the trend reports of various industries were mostly written in words. Many businesses were unable to intuitively feel and produce in time, so they missed the trend opportunity. However, after learning the industry trend and the commodity characteristics of various brands, AI design will provide each business with completely different trend shoe pictures -- personalized and specific trend prediction, which not only enables businesses to produce according to the drawings in time, but also solves the problem of commodity homogeneity.

Before double 11 last year, camel didn't spend too much time to reprint and produce according to the pattern after getting the shoe map provided by AI design. Instead, it took the advantage of strong supply chain, found similar styles in the previous version library, and quickly followed the trend by purchasing in large quantities, and put more than 40 shoes on the shelves.

3. Differentiated communication strategy for new product period.

Nearly 40 Martin boots launched by camel have been marked with different commodity labels in the operation process, focusing on different groups of people according to different echelons.

Generally speaking, the brand will establish the main push money in the new product planning, and will adjust the production plan again according to the sales performance after putting it on the shelf for testing. In the same batch of goods on the shelf, with a steeper sales curve, often become potential hot money.

In the case of limited marketing resources, camel concentrates its main resources on the main promotion funds: it takes the "asexual style" of men and women, not only owns the product nickname (nickname) "black horse", but also attracts many stars such as Jia Nailiang and Meng Ziyi to plant grass inside and outside the station to reach the target group, and finally land to the channel. This shoe, which focuses on young people, has increased camel's penetration rate by 80%.

"Mengzi Yitong" by camel "The life cycle of a product of Martin boot map camel clothing tmall flagship store includes pre launch, new product period, maturity period and final delivery period. At each stage, camel has established a relatively complete data monitoring system: only by understanding the relationship between inventory and sales from the data of R & D, design and production, can we understand the problems faced by the commodity in each stage.

Now, it has laid the foundation for the third party's online and offline inventory management system. The improvement of data not only helps camel realize the production and marketing coordination at the goods end, the traceable delivery effect data, and the more perfect member management system, all help camel to further understand the marketing effect of the brand and its relationship with different consumers.

The "online and offline integration" model is now used by many brands: split the objectives of each stage, monitor the inventory, and timely adjust the supply chain stock situation, products and marketing budget through weekly sales volume and forecast model.

Changed commodity planning process

In the past, shoe brands, like clothing brands, released new products throughout the year. In the planning period before the launch of new products, shoe companies look for trends and inspiration from overseas fashion week or big brand new product pictorial; After the launch of the planning, we can get the confirmed order quantity from the order meeting, and reserve enough time for production and preparation for ourselves.

The goods planned and produced in advance are called "futures" in the industry. For those who bet on the right trend, the futures model ensures that shoes can be delivered normally, but once the wrong bet is made, it may bring a lot of inventory.

In order to make the brand's "hit rate" higher, tmall, which has deposited a large number of sales and trend data, has now become an important role in the commodity planning of shoe enterprises.

After the promotion of 618 and double 11 every year, the employees of tmall will give a forecast for the next quarter based on the sales data, leaving about 6 months of preparation time for manufacturers to develop and design shoes. In 2021, camel sold more than 80 million yuan of futures commodities, accounting for nearly 40% of the total turnover of stores.

But on the new faster pace of e-commerce channels, shoe enterprises also need to produce fast reflexes at the same time to cope with the new trend that may appear at any time during the season change. For example, this year's popular thick soled shoes, as well as horseshoe buckle, checkerboard and other vamp elements.

This is quite a test of the quick response ability of the merchants. Not only do they need to quickly respond to the trend and test the funds, but also timely adjust the production plan according to the market feedback; According to the sales forecast and market changes of the existing goods, we need to make quick order replenishment, reduce the inventory pressure and capital occupation, and ensure that the core commodities do not appear color shortage and code breaking.

In the past, camel, which was mainly OEM, has changed its production mode to a combination of "self built factory + supplier": its own factory is responsible for producing 30% of the goods, mainly the core pop-up items, while the supplier is responsible for producing the remaining shoes with longer tail but not deep inventory.

For camel, a brand with many shoes, if it relies too much on self built factories, it will require heavy investment, and it is difficult to cover all shoes - it needs foreign aid from factories with different production advantages.

However, if the production process is completely delivered to other factories, the delivery cycle is likely to be uncertain due to insufficient stock of fabrics and accessories. In particular, when camel started live broadcasting, it put the release of new products in the live broadcasting room, and last year, we went to Li Jiaqi and other head anchors to bring goods. This unexpected and volatile sales model can only be more timely responded to by self built factories.

For a live broadcast with 30000 pairs of shoes, 60000 pairs of shoes need to be prepared. In order to avoid them from being stocked, camels will produce some shoes ahead of time and prepare enough fabric and soles. Once the order is launched in 7-6 days, it can be split according to the order.

Relying on the accumulation of supply chain in the past 20 years, camel has recombined the proportion of self built factory and cooperative factory, reducing inventory risk. It also helps itself to improve its operational efficiency by readjusting the structure of its goods.

However, camel still faces the problem of brand confusion: the image of camel in the eyes of many people is still the "old camel" who focuses on men's casual shoes. Young people who had never heard of camel's reputation in the past saw the "new camel" chasing the trend. "New and old camel" faces two fault groups, which exposes the disunity of brand positioning, which is likely to affect the follow-up development of the brand.

Today's brand sales rely on product force and content force. The former determines whether the commodity turnover is fast enough and whether the operating cost is lower, while the latter determines whether the brand can have a higher premium.

Camel turns around, has greatly improved the efficiency of commodity operation. Wan Jingang said that camel will become a "new media brand" in the next step -- Pursuing brand premium through content. After all, catching up with trends and mining blue ocean categories are just means. The underlying logic of the brand is still the user.

Summary of sophomore

　　 Narrator: An Zhi, the second child of tmall shoes and boots industry

[camel benchmarking factor] brand positioning: camel is a supply chain driven brand with high category richness and many SKUs. Through the production mode of self built factory + supply chain cooperation, the rapid reaction ability and product width can be improved together.

Core growth point: combined with the supply chain advantages of the brand, complete the optimization of the commodity structure, improve the conversion rate of goods and the unit price of customers, and achieve sales growth. In the commodity planning stage, combined with the category trend of tmall's industry, reduce the Red Sea commodities, transfer the budget to the blue ocean market, and improve the commodity efficiency; In the fast reaction stage, combined with the trend product chart generated by the intelligent AI design of Dharma Institute, the similar products in the supply chain and product library are found, and the design and transformation are carried out quickly to complete the supplement of market demand in the shortest time.

[shoe industry trend] industry overview: from the industry side, the shoe market is relatively saturated, with high online penetration and high overlap of brand supply chain. Brand power and commodity efficiency determine the profits and growth rate of merchants in tmall.

Product trend: the biggest decision-making factor for consumers to buy shoes is category. The supply of goods attaches importance to richness. The industry will select about 400 blue ocean racetracks according to the efficiency index of goods supply, including crowd, scene, style and category. Based on the attributes under the category, personalized design can be made for different businesses to ensure the general trend, category, style, scene, etc If the large population is reasonable, improve the richness of commodities.

At the same time, we should seize the opportunity of AI design to avoid the difference of AI design, and help businesses to design with the same quality. At the same time, AI design integrates the spot centralized purchase, integrates the redundant supply chain, adds new industry supply from the industry side, enables production-oriented businesses to carry out precision commodity research and development, and provides spot / fast response supply for tmall merchants and anchors.