Xiaogou Electric Appliances, founded in 1999, has been developing for 22 years. As a leader among retail companies and a home appliance brand that joined the e-commerce field in the early stage, I believe that I have summarized a lot of successful experiences.
What sharing will Mr. Tan Chong, the founder of Xiaogou Electric, bring to fans this time, when he was a guest at Lao Gao’s live broadcast room? Let's wait and see!
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Now it is very difficult to go online and offline, and I am also in difficulty. All costs are increasing. We cannot return to the stage from 0-1. At this stage, it is highly compliant and hard-won. The cost will definitely be very high. It is not easy to go down at this time, and there are few choices, but it is also a good thing. For example, our competitor to Xiaogou Electric is Dyson.
In terms of the market, I also think that I should not squeeze too much into places. I should figure out where my abilities and advantages are . For example, saving money and cost is not my advantage, and skills such as brushing orders are not my advantage. My personality is more focused, and this personality is difficult to change. I am the founder, so I make such products with such personality characteristics.
Even if it is not Dyson, our competitors are either big Chinese brands such as Xiaomi and Midea, but they do not have an advantage in competing with them. Their brands are no longer needed to be established. Many channels can be shared. The basic pool is large and the price is not enough. These are not my advantages. I can't beat them, so I can only compete with Dyson, and I can't choose fate.
If I compete with him, I will demand myself in all aspects of service and product, and I have no choice. Should I be anxious? In fact, I was the number one in the vacuum cleaner track before 2015. We were very focused and persisted for more than 22 years. In recent years, we found that when working in multiple categories, we would be unable to concentrate and difficult to focus. The product requirements are fast, and we cannot take care of it, and the service is difficult to keep up.
This is Dyson's advantage. We are different. Compared with Dyson, focus and service are our advantages. My friends around me cannot understand why they don’t do some categories in other tracks. There are many popular things. Why put eggs in one basket? I explained to him that eggs are not necessarily good in many baskets. Many examples of expanding multiple categories are not necessarily good . In recent years, the competition in each sub-track has been very fierce, and the risk of doing everything is greater. It is not the logic of not being able to shine in the east, but the logic in China is often the opposite.
What should I do during the epidemic? The mind is very important, don’t panic. What I just talked about is defining the opponent. The problems I face are the same as everyone else. The promotion cost increases year by year. This is the common pressure for everyone. When the sales expenses are high, it will squeeze management expenses. One of the management expenses is R&D. We call sales management and financial management. The sales expenses include many items, one of which is traffic advertising and brand advertising.
A company cannot be without these, but it cannot be overly dependent. Otherwise, when will the investment order brushing be the end? Sooner or later, the company's efforts will be scrapped and the company's genes will be damaged. How do we control it? It is best not to brush orders, as it has an impact on the team's abilities and is dependent.
Interactive Q&A
1. What are the key factors that make a company bigger?
I don’t know what big is, but you have been in a business for a longer time, so don’t be too anxious. For example, our products will not cut prices wildly, nor will they reduce prices frequently, and will lose some sales, but the user experience will be better. If you are brand logic, not promotion logic, this should be the case.
Brand logic is that users can buy it sooner or later . You have to be confident that your products and services are good. Consumers are just slower and the time period is longer, so you can form your own loyal users. Why do you still have to promote it in this way? Is it right? Your gross profit is low and product research and development will not be much better. This is a reverse cycle. You will not be able to develop and serve, and you will deduct raw materials and your employees' wages will also be reduced. A series of problems will come.
Indeed, everyone is pursuing orders. We don’t pursuing it. We must know where the truth is, and then analyze it. We must be very calm about how many real sales are. Once we have pursuing orders, we will not be able to find our own position and will be anxious. We have been training our friends to analyze how much they actually sold.
2. How did Xiaogou Electric’s brand become?
The name of the puppy was registered at the Industrial and Commercial Bureau on July 15, 1999. This brand is easy to spread. In addition, there are many advertisements invested in the traffic bonus period. At that time, I didn’t put the money in my pocket, and I put all the money in promotion. In the PC era of JD.com, we see our advertisements every day, and Taobao also invests more advertisements.
At that time, the cost of advertising was low, and we invested in a lot of advertising, but now it is not appropriate to do that. It may not be possible to sell with advertisements. Products must keep up with them and services must be paid attention to. The service gene of puppies starts from scratch. For a bad review, I traveled thousands of miles to Hangzhou to figure out what is the reason behind it.
Now we have applied for more than 1,500 patents, and we feel that the Chinese market is intra-compliant and we are doing globalization. The foreign market order cannot be decided by us Chinese. They have their own habits and market order. We established a team last year, and we went abroad based on brand logic. We are not selling goods, but Apple is the best case.
3. The prices of corporate e-commerce direct stores have conflicts with offline wholesalers. How to break them?
The same model and price on different online platforms must be the same . Don’t be confused by some resources or other reasons. You must take into account the same control within a small percentage range. In the second half of 2020, we canceled the KPI, so you may not need to refer to it.
Because we found that at that time, we wanted to sell more at the source of the chaotic price. This is the internal volume, and the internal volume is also the internal volume. We canceled it, and everyone will unite and take care of the overall interests. Just keep the process OKR. We have different online and offline models, so the price difference is not big. We staggered the online and offline products, and we will get offline goods offline. Online is a unified price for the entire platform.
4. If an enterprise wants to develop formally, does it necessary to have the added value brought by R&D to withstand it?
Of course, but it is indeed quite difficult, it requires the right time, place and people. In the early days, I knew where the dangers were in the future, so I actively built brands and products and services at that time. Otherwise, the pressure will be very high today. In fact, the pressure is also great now because the opponent is not easy to deal with.
We are doing foreign markets, and we will do it in the domestic market, but we will not do it for more sales. It is meaningless and makes our peers intra-competition, and everyone is not feeling well. The pricing can be designed, so everyone's costs are getting higher and higher. We have calculated whether it is advertisements on the site or advertisements off the site, and it is indeed not as good as before.
The high advertising cost will squeeze R&D costs, which has some impact on China's product innovation competitiveness. The country actually hopes to be specialized and refined, and the sales expenses should not be too high. Who will do R&D? Because the R&D is too slow, it takes several years to take effect, and the advertising needs to continue to be invested. Although I don’t know how tomorrow will be, at least I can live today and let you take effect on the same day. But this medicine is a poison and it is also very troublesome.
5. Want to hear about the management methods of General Tan’s enterprise?
I will have more management from a human perspective. From offline to online, we will suffer some losses in many aspects, and slow down. There will always be people coming and going, but overall, more tolerance will have a smaller impact on the team. Puppies have always been relatively stable and their cultural heritage has been preserved.
Team relocation is not just the entire team, it basically comes one by one. In the past, I recruited some core management positions, and they would try to bring some people over, and the efficiency would be higher. I said I didn’t want it, so I built another team to train it. Slower, this is also a kind of thing. Sometimes slowness will bring you something else, and there will be no messy and hurtful things happening.
I have simple management, no family members, no special interest arrangements, everyone comes from all over the world, doesn't know each other, and thinks they are all their own people, they are more transparent, and the pressure on management may be less. I oppose gangs and care about integrity. Married people should not come blindly in the company. They should set an example in management positions. The company's atmosphere and environment are relatively simple.
6. How do you view the advantages and disadvantages of brand agency?
Agency operations have certain advantages and have come into contact with many brands. If you don’t know anything about e-commerce , don’t do it yourself, as the cost is too high. Large-scale operations must make a little money, and small amounts must make it, so agency operations will not lose money, basically.
Our self-operated brands have certain historical reasons. We started e-commerce too early. At that time, fewer people were more powerful than us, so we missed the opportunity. So we have always done e-commerce by ourselves. A lot of information and data of e-commerce, as well as intuitive judgment, were established in this way.
Self-operation and handing over to agency operations are different. If you want to make money, leave it to others . It is more efficient and easy to make money. If you do it yourself, it depends on how many people there are, and you won’t work as hard as the agency operations. Their assessment is relatively simple and rough, so it is easy to achieve the short-term goal of profitability. However, the agency operation is not owned by the brand, and there will be no worries. It has some impact on the brand image, and it has both advantages and disadvantages.
7. There is no brand now, and I want to build a brand. How can I build a brand in the early stage?
In fact, it is really difficult. Building a brand has a large gross profit, but it may also lose money in the end. Because there are too many uncertain factors, and the social environment and market competition factors are uncertain, it is really difficult to build a brand. This also has something to do with personality, and it is very important whether you can persist.
In recent years, there have been many new consumer brands, and there have been very few in more than three years, and many of them are promoted by capital. To build a brand, it depends on your product capabilities. It has strong product strength, excellent service, and the funds are ready. You can't make mistakes. There is nothing to control when entrepreneurship, marketing is the most uncontrollable, only products and services can be controlled.
The product has a good appearance only one aspect. For example, there are several related products we make. First, the brand is related, and it cannot be separated from the brand or be imaginative. It must have brand symbols, brand genes, and brand logic; second, patents are related, and whether there are risks in foreign patents around the world; there are also performance related, experience related, market related, maintenance related, etc.
Appearance is very important when choosing quickly. A brand power is supported by the content, which is more profound. The barriers to performance and patents are relatively high. When the in-depth research of the product is relatively high, it is not just the appearance. Some internal structures are related to the past. If you haven’t practiced for more than ten years, it is impossible to know where so many pitfalls are. Some pitfalls can only be discovered in three years. Some people understand that the patent is superficial and think it is non-infringement, but in fact they lack the understanding of infringement.
8. What are the core values of Xiaogou Electric Appliances?
I have a logic of earth, wood, water, metal and fire. Earth is the first priority, wood is teamwork, water is whether there is any change, gold is integrity, and fire continues to burn. For more than 20 years, Xiaogou Electric has been insisting on doing this thing on one track. There is too much pressure. It is really difficult not to be half-hearted in the face of pressure. There are also many temptations when it is in glory. Today is a chance to get rich, tomorrow is a chance to get rich. It is difficult to stick to this one!
9. How does the e-commerce department of Xiaogou Electric Appliances divide and manage it?
We have a domestic business department, and the operation is e-commerce, JD.com and Taobao. There is no outsourcing or swiping orders. We are quite busy every day. We do a lot of e-commerce things and have strong analysis capabilities. We will not panic when we are in trouble. I took care of the planning and vision. Now I don’t care about it so finely. Our vision is not so good at the beginning. It is all accumulated bit by bit. I took care of industrial design and vision.
Our e-commerce department’s customer service is separate, and we also encountered some problems. The customer service has made user experience and is too Buddhist and no longer promoted. This is based on our brand philosophy, but now we feel that we cannot be too Buddhist and we are also walking forward appropriately. The entire e-commerce team has always been relatively stable. We train our own craftsmanship design and we can recruit outstanding talents. The foreign business department, like the domestic one, has some new businesses and also does sales.
10. How do you view the future e-commerce? Is it pessimistic or optimistic? How do you view live broadcasts?
I'm neutral. There is still a desire for growth for several major e-commerce platforms . Our costs will definitely rise, and the real economy will also be in difficulties. I think sales expenses are too high. There are more than ten items such as drainage, branding, warehousing, logistics, etc., and they are controlled within a certain range, such as within 20 points, which is healthy.
Now it seems that everyone has a difficult situation. If you don’t do R&D, there will be no future. If you do R&D, there will be no today. Today, you have to brush orders and do some marketing and traffic. If China is a game of chess, e-commerce will have some problems as a whole. Nowadays, people can actually understand that this depends on the national means and there is a mechanism for rolling operation. I'm not pessimistic, either, and I'm still neutral.
Live streaming is a very good sales channel, so you must pay close attention to it . I participated in a ByteDance event before, and I was the last person to ask questions. If Douyin assumes that a fixed amount of money can be earned in ten years, can it be put into five years to earn? Later, Zhang Nan took over the microphone and the answer was probably a market factor.
Actually, what I mean is that it is possible to adjust if the pace is slowed down. If you want to make this money in the short term, there will be a problem. Your pool is not big enough, users’ consumption habits have not been formed, and the channels are not completely ingrained. From 2003 to 2008, Taobao spent five years very quietly to build its sales ecosystem. There was no profit model and I don’t know how to make a profit. It was all free.
11. What do you value in the process of building a brand?
The brand is a virtual impression, an imagination, and a symbol. The brand thinks of him asking him to buy it. If he clicks in, he doesn’t know what it is, then it will definitely not work if it depends on traffic. Brands must first remember. Memory is not enough, and the advertising cost is so high, so it is a bit difficult to build a brand.
There is also real behind the brand, and the real thing is products and services. Service requires effort, and good products take time, and it takes many years to really cultivate them. How to make a good product is not only the supply chain, but also the product definition ability. Without deep insight, what you need consumers is what you impose on others, not what they want, and the definition is wrong.
Product definition capabilities are very important, and supply chains are also very important. If the products and services are done well, the business will be slower. If there is no brand at the beginning, it will be done slowly. Of course, we must also survive. Today's brand must be globalized.
12. Why did you choose this industry? Can you share the logic of choosing this industry?
I didn’t love making vacuum cleaners, I accidentally made a vacuum cleaner. I am an advertiser and an art student. Our customer makes vacuum cleaners. It is a listed company. Now I don’t have vacuum cleaners. I became their general agent. Later, I registered my own brand the next year, which is also my own life path. I had no choice because I had this resource at that time, and I happened to like me and thought that I could be an agent and there were channels. The big choice in life is not your own choice, but it is all accidental.
13. We make nuts, with sales of about 200 million yuan per year, and the quality of the products is relatively ordinary. How to build a brand?
It's a bit difficult. Three Squirrels are a category-based approach and are made by quantity. Liangpinpu has good offline channels and Baicaowei is also very strong. The minds of these brands in the nut field have been posted and users have also been formed. The market may not be large, but there are opportunities. The traffic cost of this track is very high. These companies have money, and I think it's difficult to do it.
How to build your own brand in e-commerce
Nowadays, online or offline sales are all about brand effects. How should e-commerce merchants build their own brand? In today's Internet era, many brands are popular once, but they are fleeting. How to use the Internet to operate customers and build a brand image? If you do the following well, the brand effect will not be a problem.
1. Brand positioning. No matter when, you should know what your brand is, what position and level is in the industry, and what competitors are there. You must do a good job in market environment analysis, product advantage analysis, product USP sorting, segmenting product markets and analyzing the impact of products on the market.
2. Use media to enrich branding. In addition to traditional media and communication methods, you can choose emerging self-media. This is a better way and only the right talents are needed.
3. Pay attention to team-based operations. Brand operation is one aspect of enterprise development. The product faces users directly, which requires the joint support of the entire team, which can also make the team better.
4. Make a good reputation. The Internet era has changed from the traditional face-to-point marketing model to the point-to-face conversion. Through an ultimate product, the ultimate reputation is created and the brand is shaped from the inside out, making it easier to attract users and form "hard-level" users.
5. Continuous innovation is needed. A major feature of the Internet industry is "fast". It is difficult for a product to eat in one move. Only innovation is the driving force for continuous progress. Continuous improvement of products and give new connotations to products.
6. Post-maintenance of the brand. After the above steps, the creation of an Internet brand has been basically completed and can be a better user. In fact, the brand’s post-maintenance is also very important, which also represents the brand’s future development potential. To ensure brand reputation and loyalty, you can absorb many new users and maintain old users.
Where should we start to build a brand with cross-border e-commerce?
Cross-border e-commerce is now very popular, and companies that do cross-border e-commerce hope to build their own brands. So, how can we successfully create a brand? You can refer to the following points.
1. Market research is the key
Market research is the best way to understand this industry and its competitors. If you do a survey, you can position yourself more accurately. The products of cross-border e-commerce are often of multiple categories. Through market research, you can know the advantages and disadvantages of various categories. Choose the categories that suit you and do cross-border, so that the subsequent development will be smoother.
2. Clarify the target customers and markets
Target customers can be divided according to age groups, including children, adolescents, middle-aged and elderly people, and people of different age groups have different interests and hobbies and behavioral tendencies. The market can choose from European and American markets and regions such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
3. Brand positioning and brand story
Before building a brand, you must first position your own brand. Brand positioning determines the future development direction of the brand. Once the positioning is done, all future developments must be worked in this direction. As for brand stories, you can choose emotional stories, which can easily arouse emotional resonance among the audience.
4. Brand packaging and design
Brand packaging can showcase the brand image, which is also beneficial to the development of the company. When designing a brand, you should pay attention to ensuring consistency in style and not change it, otherwise it will be easy for people to remember it.
5. Product Planning
If cross-border e-commerce wants to build a brand, it is necessary to improve the quality of the product, and it can also create a brand by creating hot products. Without hot products and market share, it will be difficult for a brand to be successfully built.
Therefore, if you want to build a brand through cross-border e-commerce, you might as well refer to the above points to achieve better results.
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