LAN Lamiu Dong Lu Business Story: Changing Business Close Fitting Business

First of all, I want to use the DELL direct selling mode to make the custom shirts, and then to represent Japanese women's underwear. brand Dong Lu, once working in Vc firm, wanted to sell these personal products to consumers.

If you look at Dong Lu's life history, you will be amazed at his ups and downs. He dropped out of university to go to Zhongguancun to sell computers, study in Japan, enter Goldman Sachs in Japan as a computer expert, go to Stanford University, read MBA, and return to work in and Vc firm, then in 2006. Entrepreneurship Selling shirts and women's underwear. "Actually, I am a conservative and traditional person." Dong Lu said frankly. As a matter of fact, he knows that these experiences are more than others, some life experiences, and no confusion about his career, especially after starting a business.

Dong Lu's business started with "love". From childhood, he rarely liked " Design "Clothing. After returning to work, Dong Lu found that compared with the fashionable and exquisite international brand shirts, domestic shirts are not only expensive, but most of them are monotonous in style and rough in workmanship, and they often worry about not buying the right shirts. Later, I had to design some styles myself, and then I went to tailor for the weekend. All the friends around Dong were very fond of those shirts designed by Tung Lu, and Dong Lu began to help them design. He gradually discovered that such a large market demand is a good opportunity to start a business.

According to the report of Dubei net, Tung Lu opened the Internet to investigate and studied a large number of similar foreign business models, and finally decided to use the Internet as a marketing platform to avoid the waste of traditional clothing industry in raw materials, logistics, inventory, manpower and so on. In July 2006, Dong Lu founded Beyond Tailors, the first Chinese company to customize business shirts.

Starting a business is a real battle. Dong Lu soon realized the cruelty of "war". He founded the clothing customization company to create a network "personal clothing consultant", which customers can not only directly order products from the Internet, but also enjoy on-site service. Tailoring is not only tailored to customers, but also based on customer's occupation and personality. This business model refers to the direct selling of DELL computers: to realize the unification of information spanmission, parts organization and production process on the network, and then achieve mass customization of products according to customer needs.

But soon, Dong Lu found that the success of DELL mode has a premise that cannot be ignored: the standardization of components. The custom of shirts is different from that of every customer. It is difficult for manufacturers to carry out such standardized manufacturing processes. At the same time, because of the inability to control the quality and delivery time of the customized shirts, it is difficult to scale the customized shirts. Most importantly, the scale of the market is not as large as Dong Lu began to imagine. In two years, Dong Lu only accumulated more than 1000 customers. Of course, DELL will not sell the computer to only 1000 customers. Dong Lu can only take the initiative to shrink the front line and seriously reflect on his gains and losses in the shirt customization project: there is nothing wrong with the direction of e-commerce in the field of clothing, and the prospect of customization is not wrong. The key lies in the realization of large-scale customized production. At that time, Dong Lu felt that women's underwear seemed easier to achieve than his shirt. Underwear increased more than 10 times in the market, but because of the high cost of channels and inventory, the net profit of traditional businesses was only about 10%. As for underwear, there is a large space for standardization, so the direct selling mode of DELL can be copied to this subdivision area. {page_break}

He set up a new company, imported a fashion underwear brand LA MIU from Japan, and found an example from the United States "secret of Vitoria" and ready to copy it completely. According to the female fashion media, gourd women reported that the American underwear brand was popular in Europe and the United States, with sales amounting to $7 billion in 2007. The secret of its sales lies in "three channels" - mail order, physical storefront and Internet sales.

In July 2008, the website of LA MIU was launched. In May 2009, LA MIU opened in the first line shop of Jun Tai Department Store in Xidan, Beijing. Dong Lu's business spanition from pure e-commerce to "light company" has a "heavy company" with a physical store. There is no doubt that this mode of investment is even greater. "A shop will be decorated with tens of thousands of light, and only a website is the price, and there are costs such as rent, staff salaries and so on." But the advantage of the physical store is also obvious - not only can it bear the brand, complement each other with the network and catalogue, but also bring real shopping experience to consumers.

At present, some of the products in the entity store are in line with the online products and the same price, and there are also products specially designed for offline development. According to Dong Lu's idea, people on line and offline are different, and products should be properly separated. He also has a purpose to distinguish LA MIU from those cheap underwear brands on the Internet through physical stores, because in most Chinese people's consumption concept, online shopping is often cheap.

Since its inception, with its experience in venture capital companies, his new company has won three rounds of venture capital totaling $5 million. Dong Lu spent more than 10 million yuan on advertising expenses for bombing style marketing. When he made his own shirt making business before, he neglected advertising marketing, so that when many competitors were born, no one remembered who was the first one to do it. Nowadays, the advertisements of LA MIU are appearing frequently in major websites, Taobao, Renren, and many women's magazines.

However, this practice has caused controversy inside and outside the company. Some people think that putting money on advertising is putting the cart before the horse, but Dong Lu thinks the money is very worthwhile. Each advertisement is linked to the website of LA MIU. Which advertisements bring about how many views and how many purchases are made at a glance, then decide whether to continue to invest or cancel according to the advertising effect. In the sales of millions of underwear sales on LA MIU, the contribution of e-commerce channels is the largest, bringing 80% sales volume.

"Now we are close to making profits, but like every entrepreneur, we worry about the chain breaking all the time." Based on Dong Lu's observation, there have been at least 20 companies with the same business model in the subdivision area. At present, the sales of LA MIU should be in the top three. Judging from the experience of his VC industry, the top three companies will not die at least. But consumers are mobile. I can't keep an eye on my competitors, but I can do my job well. The key to retail is details.

Dong Lu found that in order to make this bigger, it must be standardized like any McDonald's or KFC. If we start our business for the first time, we are faced with the standardization of shirts. The second venture is the standardization of people. For example, when a customer service member receives a complaint, he should explore what is the most comfortable answer to the consumer, and then promote the best answer to the standard.

But the standardization of human is very difficult: it is very difficult for partners to control, such as third party logistics companies which are complained by customers, and internal employees are also not well managed. Dong Lu felt tired that he needed to do everything in every aspect. He wants to understand products, understand sales, and understand technology, because he can not read "man" completely. Dong Lu now particularly envied the simple business environment of the United States and Japan that professionals provide the most professional and standard services. He needs to master many aspects of talents at the same time, and he should grasp uncertain consumers. For many years, Dong Lu has become a mature thinking person, but he has not yet been accustomed to Chinese style "pondering people".