From Huge Losses and Selling Her Home to TOP1 in Plus-Size Women’s Fashion: A Comeback Story

2024-11-27

Lao Gao wrote it in front:

Not every e-commerce person can travel through a 20-year cycle.

She once faced huge losses. She bent on her way, sold her real estate, and made a comeback. She started with a team of several people and became the leading seller in the industry. Her e-commerce peers around her went bankrupt one after another, but her company's performance soared...

This is the story of Mr. Chen from our Golden Crown Club. It seems inspirational, but behind it is the little-known reflection, courage and transformation, especially the ultimate polishing of the products, which is worth learning from by all e-commerce bosses. The following is a compilation of Mr. Chen’s oral description, with some deletions.

Oral description: Mr. Chen’s large-size women’s clothing category billion-level seller and member of the Golden Crown Club

Source: Golden Crown Club

Couple joins together and starts a business with electric bikes

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<span id="fxbarea_0.84310300" style="font-family: mp-quote, -apple-system-font, BlinkMacSystemFont, " helvetica="" neue",="" "pingfang="" sc",="" "hiragino="" sans="" gb",="" "microsoft="" yahei="" ui",="" yahei",="" arial,="" sans-serif;font-size:="" 16px;color:="" rgb(0,="" 0,="" 0);letter-spacing:="" 2px;"="">In 2006, under the platform's targeted invitation, we settled in Taobao. The founding team was only two people, my husband and I, and rented two bedrooms and one living room as an office. In the early days, we sold a lot of things, such as beauty, skin care, household goods, etc. By chance, we came into contact with a foreign trade final order and began to embark on the road of "large-size women's clothing" .

Back then, I didn’t understand clothing, management, and had no source of supplies. I had to work hard on myself. Operations, art, customer service, and warehouse management were all under our responsibility. We didn’t have the first employee until 2009 to help us pack.

I was deeply impressed. One night, the wind was biting cold and my husband and I were wrapped tightly. We rode an electric bike home. When we met the employee, we found that the electric bike he rode was better than ours! Although the conditions for starting a business are difficult, I was very happy during that period of struggle.

Back then, no one did the category and it was relatively easy to do. I searched the four words "large-size women's clothing" on the website, and the stores displayed were all ours. We have not done any promotion, but sales are growing, and office spaces are getting bigger and bigger, from two bedrooms and one living room to three bedrooms and two living rooms, to two villas, a 600-square-meter factory building and a 2,000-square-meter factory building, it has been quite smooth until the crisis emerged in 2019...

An operation backbone resigned and returned to his hometown. The professionalism of store operations dropped sharply, and the company's sales had a big problem - e-commerce pallets, marketing and promotion were still operation-centered, and all our expectations became "recruiting operational talents, and the store can survive."

There are few people in Shanghai who make clothing, and coupled with the impact of the epidemic, there are many people leaving Shanghai. From 2019 to 2022, the company has been on a downward trend. In the past three years, I lost all the money I made in the first decade. At the most difficult time, I sold a real estate in Shanghai.

During the epidemic period, I stayed at home for three months and reflected on myself: Why did the company reach this point? Is it because I am not capable of it or is it another reason? What are the core competitiveness and differentiated advantages of our company? Why do I run this company? What should the future development path look like?

When the epidemic was over, I came out to communicate and met a member of Laogao E-commerce Club in Guangdong. He also made clothing, and we talked a lot.

I said: It’s very difficult to recruit a fashion designer in Shanghai, and there are not many choices.

He said: Your situation is too exaggerated. I interview more than a dozen designers a day, and the positions are also in line.

That meeting deeply "stimulated" me and made me suddenly realize! What we lack the most is good products! !

Moving to Hangzhou? I had this idea, but I didn't have enough determination. My husband and I are both from Shanghai. Our home is in Shanghai, and our parents and children are in Shanghai. We always feel that we cannot live without this city.

Later I thought about it. Hangzhou is very close to Shanghai, so my husband and I came here first. After selling that house, we had more than 200,000 yuan in working capital, rented an 80-square-meter office, and started to recruit employees. I clearly remember that the first two employees were designers, and the third one was operating... and then we came step by step.

As the team continued to develop, I realized the importance of management, so I signed up for the presidential class of Laogao E-commerce Management School. I learned a lot of lessons with Teacher Zhan Guang to open up my ideas and cognition, and I re-planned and adjusted the company's organizational structure.

In 2023, our performance increased by more than ten times, with a size of over 100 million. In 2024, our team size exceeded 100 people, and our performance doubled. In September 2022, when we first came to Hangzhou, our store ranked 4436 in the Taobao women's clothing category, and this year we ranked among the top 100; we firmly ranked in the top three in the large-size women's clothing category and often won the top 1.

Lao Gao has always said that you cannot make money beyond your cognition. The boss must see through the essence of business and be a long-termist.

I am a firm long-termist and the company has always been committed to developing towards branding. If I want to make "quick money", then I can also make money by forming a live broadcast team in Hangzhou and selling goods, but the path will be different.

In recent years, there are more and more large-size women's clothing merchants. If you are not professional and have no characteristics, you will be eliminated. I have experienced the dividends of large-size women's clothing and experienced the industry's cycle from blue ocean to red ocean. I know that in the era of intra-collecting, the company can develop well.

When I used to make clothing, I didn’t know what styles were good to sell, and I would do whatever styles were popular on the market. Gradually, I would feel confused and painful because I always had to guess the needs of customers.

Later, we clarified the product positioning and style, and the insight into the needs of target consumers became more and more accurate. The data can be reflected: we "release" about 30 new styles every month, and our peers launched about 200 new styles every month, but we sold better than them, and the rebate rate reached 95% - this is rare in the women's clothing category.

What you fear most when doing women's clothing is inventory, so merchants are generally worried that they cannot see the styles and want to do everything, and they will test them every day to gain the probability of hitting the market. Our approach is to calm down and design the layout, colors, fabrics, etc. The entire product development process is very long and the R&D cost is very high. I have not seen any clothing company "made the version" five or six times like us - a normal company has passed twice, because our main feature is tolerance and comfort, not just good-looking, but we must achieve a relatively perfect state in terms of wearing experience.

Large-size girls are fat differently. They may have thick necks, thick legs or thick arms, big buttocks, or big belly. Our design will first start from the user's pain points and adjust the details of the layout to meet the needs of users, such as "covering the hips", "not showing the belly", etc.

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In fact, doing e-commerce is quite lonely. There is no one around you to communicate with and keep working behind closed doors. Join this circle and you will see how outstanding peers solve problems similar to you. After coming to Hangzhou, I have been to many other circles, training classes, and private board meetings, but Jinguan gives me a different feeling. Everyone gets together and has no "utilitarianism". Everyone is really making friends and helping each other.

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From Huge Losses and Selling Her Home to TOP1 in Plus-Size Women’s Fashion: A Comeback Story

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