As the saying goes, all roads lead to Rome, but on the road to e-commerce entrepreneurship, no road can be smooth. Many e-commerce friends will encounter product selection problems, inventory problems, operation problems, and transformation obstacles ...Did you have a similar experience?
Let’s listen to the entrepreneurial journey of e-commerce bosses . Will you resonate with it?
Mr. Huang, born in 1993, is already a veteran of e-commerce . She came into contact with Taobao in 2010. The category she now works as her first job at work. When I first got into e-commerce, I met a noble man. Mr. Huang followed them and opened a Taobao mall. It took 12,000 yuan at that time, but he only had a few thousand yuan on him, and his parents were not very supportive. At that time, he relied on his youth and enthusiasm, and he had to fight for his thoughts to have what he is today.
Mr. Huang is a home fabric, sofa cushion, pillow, and tablecloth. Currently, the company has more than 180 employees. She does not operate many stores. She mainly has two stores, mainly in depth and breadth . These two stores are among the top 5 in the industry.
In the past ten years of e-commerce, Mr. Huang has not expanded his category. She said that this may have something to do with her personality and is less confident. Therefore, she has focused all her energy on what she is best at and what is most advantageous. Mr. Huang's performance has also increased this year. Tmall puts traffic at the top, and they are very focused on re-production and new products. She estimates that it will be about 300 million this year. Mr. Huang’s current time focuses on supply chain integration, products, strategies, company administration, etc., and he doesn’t care much about anything else, just look at the data. In the class sharing, she talked about some of the problems faced by her company and also shared the company's future layout and adjustments .
Summary of the questions:
1. Tmall's traffic has declined severely. Most of the hottest products in the previous stores are from their own stores. They are fighting on their own, which is difficult to increase. They have caused internal competition in the company, poor team atmosphere and poor cohesion.
2. The company’s second curve is not very good. Put all the “eggs” on Tmall. If one daycat is the same as the entity, then we can imagine the future.
3. Some old companies are not as hard-working as before, occupying an important position, and it is difficult for newcomers to rise.
Before doing cross-border e-commerce, Mr. Xiao had been doing domestic e-commerce for ten years. From 2014 to 2018, Mr. Xiao's company showed 1-2 times growth every year. Until 2019, Mr. Xiao felt fear in his heart because she saw the platform's traffic expenses become higher and higher, the profits are getting lower and lower, the domestic e-commerce market competition is getting bigger and bigger, and the company's time and output ratio is not as good as before.
Mr. Xiao began to find a new way out and could continue playing on the track for 5-10 years. She chose cross-border e-commerce . Before choosing cross-border e-commerce, she also conducted evaluation and analysis. She found that she could slowly work hard and work hard by slowly exploring and improving, which is very consistent with her company's genes.
Of course, this is not the most important thing. Mr. Xiao attaches more importance to the market space that has not yet been developed, which means that cross-border e-commerce will have a relatively long life cycle.
After making the decision, Mr. Xiao immediately left Guilin and went to Guangzhou alone to rent an office to build a new team and a new platform. He spent 3 months preparing shops, applying for qualifications, trials, etc. Because the shipping cycle is relatively slow, it also takes time for the product to be shipped overseas.
With a little bit of exploration, the team is also slowly getting on the road. After understanding the situation, cross-border e-commerce will not be difficult. Not counting the preliminary preparations, Mr. Xiao officially made efforts in cross-border e-commerce in September 2019. Because the preliminary preparations were sufficient, the cross-border e-commerce business developed particularly smoothly, and the break-even was achieved in 4 months.
After breaking even, the epidemic broke out, and new opportunities in the crisis followed. Mr. Xiao’s cross-border e-commerce business reached more than 200,000 in February 2020. By December 2020, in a full 10 months, his performance reached more than 2 million, a 10-fold increase.
This result is quite gratifying. Mr. Xiao predicts that it may develop faster and faster in the future, because the current cross-border e-commerce is like Taobao, which is in a stage where it can grow exponentially every year. Mr. Xiao has 7-8 cross-border teams. In 2020, he only built one platform on Amazon. It sells the same products as domestic e-commerce companies, all of which are catering-related equipment, and are mainly sold to the United States and Europe.
Mr. Xiao said that the difference between cross-border e-commerce and domestic e-commerce is that domestic e-commerce focuses on operations and marketing, while cross-border e-commerce focuses on products and supply chains . If the supply chain cannot keep up, the product is not good and you die very quickly. Mr. Xiao emphasized that there are two red lines for cross-border e-commerce that must not be touched, that is, the red line for order brushing and the red line for infringement. As long as the company touches, it will die miserably.
For domestic sellers who want to do cross-border e-commerce, Mr. Xiao recommends: First, you must evaluate whether you can take some of your energy and focus on cross-border; secondly, whether you have real diamonds, which mainly refers to a good supply chain; secondly, whether you have enough funds and whether you have the mentality of slow work and meticulous work.
Only by evaluating which type of gene you have at the beginning can you decide whether to do cross-border e-commerce. For those who are agenda brands or distribution products in China, please do not come in because there is no core category.
In Mr. Xiao’s opinion, the group of sellers who are the same as her who are engaged in Taobao have advantages in transforming into cross-border e-commerce, because these people have mature teams, mature operational capabilities, and systematic operational thinking in domestic e-commerce. I was just not familiar with logistics, policies, and platforms when I started working in cross-border e-commerce. Once I got familiar with it, it would develop very quickly.
Mr. Zhang, a girl from Beijing, has been influenced by the concepts of "starting a business" and "being a boss" since she was a child. However, because she is naturally timid and not good at communication, she can only silently hide this obsession and work as an employee in a company.
Gold will always shine, and people with dreams will try their best to carry their ideals, and Taobao is the best choice for those who are not good at communicating.
During an ordinary working day, Mr. Zhang was still facing piles of documents and tables. She had completed similar tasks many times, and the same things had long been smoothed out the freshness brought by going to work. Just when Mr. Zhang was careless, a male colleague in the company told Mr. Zhang and several other colleagues about his entrepreneurial story at the work station with an unconcealed smile.
"I opened a store on Taobao and JD.com, and now I can earn more than 2,000 yuan a day." As soon as I finished speaking, the entire office became boiling, and everyone showed envy, including Mr. Zhang.
Subsequently, many "spirited people" in the office helped the colleague brush orders on the grounds of learning experience, and even three girls opened Taobao stores while working.
Mr. Zhang is different from others. At this time, she had already written her resignation report and quit her job naked on Taobao .
Turnover boosted 10 times
With his decisive style of conduct, Mr. Zhang's performance grew steadily at the beginning of his business on Taobao and was favored by many customers in the pajama category.
In 2016, the store's turnover increased from 500,000 to 500,000 on Double 11. Mr. Zhang grinned and said, "I don't know why, it may be that the wind blows on my head."
At that time, Mr. Zhang's shop had become the number one in pajamas category, and the reasons such as being lucky and being smashed by the wind may be just the humble remarks of this little girl.
Mr. Zhang is an e-commerce seller who focuses on product details. In the early days of China, when people were still making autumn pants and autumn clothes, she had already introduced Korean-style home clothes to China. The novel style and good quality made the sales of Taobao stores soar to the sky.
The sudden high sales plays a double-edged sword at some moments. The sales of 500,000 yuan indicates that 10 people in Mr. Zhang’s team have to process 6,500 orders every day, and in order to cope with the current high order volume, she has set 10 days of goods. Although this is a normal operation, Mr. Zhang never thought that his supply chain, warehouse, team and other aspects could not keep up with the pace at all.
The goods that should have been delivered in one month have been reduced to the entire supply chain, and many users have started to refund the goods. When all the goods are rushed out, holding the warehouse has become the only choice.
You should know that in the two months before this, Mr. Zhang had already earned 800,000 yuan, which made her piece together a lot of confidence. Unexpectedly, after Double 11, she was trapped by 7 million yuan in goods.
Mr. Zhang, who has a really tender e-commerce experience, has no regrets at this time. She had never encountered such a big thing after work. She was nervous and afraid and did not dare to tell her parents, so she could only be stubborn and patient.
双11结束，春节将至。招不到人发货的张总犹如热锅蚂蚁一般，焦急如焚，回想当年的场景，张总有些不好意思地笑道：当时急得要死，我甚至在办公楼下随便抓一个人就问他，给你200一天帮我发货，干不干。
From helplessness, to depression, to irritability, Mr. Zhang knew very well that if this batch of goods could not be cashed in before the Spring Festival, many people would not be able to celebrate the festival. She was getting more and more crazy and kept forcing herself to sell goods, and removed the products from the shelves, reduced sales, and used all kinds of methods and channels to clear the stock. Until the Spring Festival, she sold 5 million yuan. Although she barely survived the crisis, she still left a lot of shadow on Mr. Zhang.
Mr. Zhang has been working hard in the e-commerce field for 8 years, with an annual turnover of 70 million yuan. And some of the 7 million yuan batches of goods that year are still lying in the warehouse. According to Mr. Zhang, the popularity of styles changes year by year, and selling not only leads to inventory reduction is very common.
In the subsequent development, Mr. Zhang believed that the corporate values must be decided early, and he could not start from a small workshop like her. He neglected his values to make money, which made it difficult to self-consistent in subsequent management. As Lao Gao said: a company must have its own culture, and only with culture can it be managed. Today, Mr. Zhang's company is still adapting to its values.
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Mr. Liu once worked in a domestic CD application software company, growing from dozens of people to more than 300 people, and his industry ranking has also risen to the top two. Although the company has developed quite well, as a B2B application, this is not big enough for Mr. Liu.
"The market capacity of B2B is limited, and I hope to reach the B2C range. The competition in this area is actually quite fierce, but once it is done well, it is still very interesting," said Mr. Liu.
If it is a traditional B2B company, its radiation range is far from the C-end of the Internet, but in addition, Mr. Liu has a greater "universal" approach.
"CD software is only for enterprise applications, and in addition to material needs, people's needs also have health needs and spiritual needs. We cannot do this, but there is still some way to achieve health needs." Mr. Liu described his lofty ideals.
This vision gave Mr. Liu more courage. At the right time, he saw a Japanese protective gear brand DM who wanted to establish a medical and health product bond between China and Japan. However, the brand is not widely known in China at present, but Mr. Liu didn't mind at all because this company matched his ideal portrait, so he decided to stay and do it a little bit, hoping to do it well in the future and help more customers.
Japanese century-old stores enter China's e-commerce
In this way, an online agency engaged in Sino-Japanese health products was born. Although the protective gear brand belongs to a niche industry, Mr. Liu believes that the quality of life in China is increasing at present, and the three generations of old, middle-aged and young have higher health needs, so the DM he represents has enough entry points and good future development trends.
As Mr. Liu said, protective gear is indeed a niche industry. During the six years of development, its product sales have been very stable, people's living standards have been constantly improving, and concepts such as quality life and health care have emerged one after another, but people's awareness of protection is indeed a little bit less meaningful. In response to this, Mr. Liu also faced it calmly, " We are indeed not as fast as ordinary e-commerce, and we do not have enough experience. This is actually a lot different from the way we think about B2B at the beginning. Its way of thinking is actually different from what you think about e-commerce. I can only say that we need to constantly learn and improve. "
Regarding the problem of entrepreneurial setbacks, Mr. Liu said that due to the product characteristics, he has never encountered too many problems. In fact, the most involved in imported goods should be the purchase and sales. "For example, after you purchase too much, the capital will be more occupied and the inventory pressure will be greater, but for us, the inventory problem is still good because it has a longer shelf life and can be sold in three months and half a year," Mr. Liu replied with a smile.
"Talent is the core competitiveness of the enterprise. It is our enterprise's value. We are still relatively advanced in terms of talent cultivation, management and construction. Many friends in the community will come to our company to learn."
With talent, bread and milk will naturally be there, which is one of the secrets that Mr. Pu has been engaged in e-commerce for many years. The latest operational methods and management methods on the market are all given by outstanding talents. Therefore, General General attaches great importance to talents and has clear and clear implementation standards for recruiting talents.
The company will focus on the age group in some key positions. For e-commerce companies, the younger generation has been bathed in the Internet environment since childhood, and the innate sense of internet and vitality cannot be replaced by people of other age groups. Just like the project manager position of General General Enterprise, I am now an employee in 1991, and the next person to take over may be a talent from around 1993-94.
Like other companies, General General Manager recruits people, nothing more than campus recruitment, internal recommendation and social recruitment. But the difference is that he requires the company to inject fresh blood every year. Not only that, he himself will go to the front line to recruit people in person every year.
"We insist on recruiting people every year, and we must not break. If we don't need people, then we can recruit less."
Being obsessed with the collision of new and old thinking and styles and bursting out new sparks is the concept that General Manager believes in. For an e-commerce company with R&D attributes, it is particularly important to change the company's atmosphere and way of thinking from time to time.
The greater the investment, the greater the reward
Recruiting people is one of the links, and subsequent training and employment are also very important.
For this purpose, Mr. Pu specially created an internal business school for the company, mainly targeting the learning and training of corporate employees. When the sports expo is held every year, other companies are senior executives and bosses to experience it, while General General takes more than a dozen or twenty people to study and observe.
At the same time, the company encourages employees to actively improve themselves, so it provides benefits that can be reimbursed unconditionally by buying books. Whether it is humanities, philosophy or quantum mechanics, as long as you can better sublimate yourself, the company will pay for it. To this end, the company has also set up a reading corner to allow everyone to contribute the finished books and share them with other colleagues in need.
In addition, the company's organizational structure will be divided according to the project, and each project team has sufficient rights and can decide the management method by itself. Employees are like establishing a new company and are in charge of their own business.
Only by putting people first, treating them with care and putting themselves in the shoes of employees can employees repay with sincerity and give with sincerity. Only when employees are satisfied and energetic will the company prosper and prosper. As such, General Manager General Manager 's team has grown from 30-40 people to nearly 100 people in a few years.
Facing the camera, Mr. Pu recalled that he would shout the slogan of hitting N10 million next year every year. After joining the Laogao e-commerce club , Mr. Pu no longer pursues turnover because this is obviously wrong.
As long as the products and services are getting better every year, you will never worry about turnover. Moreover, the company is an organization with profit as its purpose, and its starting point and destination are profits. The turnover of countless digits is far less than that of real profit income. His operation team does not use turnover as an indicator, but they all exchange profits for commissions.
One mistake brings wisdom
Mr. Pu , who joined the e-commerce business as soon as he graduated in 2012 , relied on the supply chain introduced by his acquaintances to start an e-commerce business that is distributed on behalf of others. Although he couldn't even settle the accounts in those two years, except for basic manual expenses, he still had profits. However, when he entered the fitness equipment category in 2014, he was inexperienced and increased his investment during the off-season, resulting in a loss of 1.2-1.5 million yuan per month during the off-season. This kind of behavior that violates market laws did not really come back to its senses until 2017.
"We can't say that we don't know (off-season), but we just don't want to believe that if we operate normally, we won't lose so much."
As the saying goes, one's mistakes lead to wisdom. Every time a general makes a decision, he will analyze the risks, pros and cons, and even failure will not hurt the root cause.
Just like downstream suppliers and manufacturers, maintaining good cooperative relationships through frequent communication, greatly avoiding the risk of supply cuts. In order to ensure that there is no accident, General Manager also chose many supply chains for emergencies.
More Information
In mid-March, the Laogao E-commerce Club organized a study tour in Zhongshan, and Huangguo from Changsha went to participate. Participating in this study tour made Huang Guo feel that he gained a lot. He discovered that e-commerce companies now have a common trend.
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Since all e-commerce platforms have done well, Wuji participated in the lecturer assessment and was also the first batch of lecturers to be assessed by Pinduoduo. Wuji said that there are many lecturers in the e-commerce training industry now who are students he incubated back then and who are his apprentices. However, Wuji is not a complete transformation lecturer. Whether it is Taobao, Pinduoduo or Douyin, he is still doing his own e-commerce now. This is also his persistence, because he firmly believes that sharing and teaching on a certain platform. If there is no practical operation of this platform, the content output is unsustainable, then he is not a qualified lecturer.
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