In The Face Of Adversity, Attack And Defense Carry Out "Crossing The River Battle" Compared With XTEP.

The clarion call is loud and clear.

In terms of the supply chain system, compared with other footwear industry, whether leisure or formal clothing, the development of sports goods industry is relatively slow.

Wu Lianyin analyzed the unique attributes of the industry for us: "all sports brands start from the footwear industry, and are deeply influenced by the brands such as Western ADI, Nike and so on, thus establishing the rules of the industry's entrainment of scientific and technological composition design, usually one year ahead of schedule, and six months ahead of schedule, so the industry generally takes futures as the main form, and this form also hinder the enterprise's grasp of the market to a certain extent."

For such established risks, many brands expect to break them.

So many sports brands are starting to try the spot system, trying to make traditional futures account for only 70%-80%, while the rest are adjusted by spot supply, but the effect is not obvious.

The reason lies mainly in the psychological vision and interests of all parties: many agents are still used to take large quantities of goods, and on the other hand, based on the control and completion of their own sales tasks, the company's internal brand operators are more inconsistent with the small batch of spot supply, preferring to pfer risks to the channel providers.

Besides, manufacturers at the source of supply chain are not very compatible with such improvements.

However, considering the market competition situation and the pressure of the channel providers, the management of the company has to face up to this problem and play a game on the strategy and the interests of both sides.

In response to the urgent need for supply chain improvement and reform, Xiao Lihua, general manager of XTEP e-commerce and senior director of supply chain operation center, made specific explanations.

He pointed out that the one-time sale and purchase of enterprises can not emphasize the supply chain, but for e-commerce pactions, which belong to the long-term business of the company and run through the whole link chain, we must concentrate on E-commerce supply chain system.

In the current e-commerce sales mode, high selling out is a major and difficult problem for sports products and even many industries. Enterprises must use IT to collect information in time to respond to the market.

If the information feedback is delayed, it will be pointless to make up for the out of season issue until the product enters the promotion period.

Xiao Lihua compares the supply chain of traditional clothing industry as "order mode". No matter whether it tastes good or not, the final outcome is the same, that is, the sales situation is connected with the initial order amount and the stock, which is not linked to the temporary changes in the market sales.

"In some cases of backlog, shoes and clothing even sell in theory, so it is our expectation to achieve zero inventory based on supply chain."

Therefore, Xiao Lihua put forward a metaphorical idea that buffet is superior to the ordering mode, that is to say, small quantities of prepared dishes are prepared to alleviate demand, but this mode also has the risk of raw material inventory.

As a sports brand positioned in the "fashion", XTEP has higher requirements in terms of market reaction and supply. It is necessary to respond to changes in the market faster so as to maintain an advantageous brand line.

Therefore, since 2008, XTEP has embarked on the construction of a "fast supply chain system", through the supply chain integration and allocation of resources, timely response to the vagaries of market supply and demand.

XTEP's "fast supply chain" has two meanings, one is to shorten the whole supply chain cycle, and three months ahead of schedule is far better than the order of six months ahead. On the other hand, it is necessary to set up a certain mechanism after market launch, predict the market sales situation, deal with and respond to the order in time, and actively cooperate with the stage of product price sale, so that it will not be too late to enter the promotion period after a short month's positive price.

There are many adversities.

"The size of every XTEP shoe suit is probably at least tens of thousands of pieces," Wu Lianyin said. For example, the 300 to 500 sections of each season are listed, plus the doubling of color and size.

This large-scale production and demand of goods has resulted in the whole supply chain system's supporting resources for such a large volume of operation for a long time. Therefore, it is relatively difficult to improve the structure of the supply chain before.

From the perspective of R & D, R & D is also divided into band cycles, and can not be completely responsive to the market cycle.

Therefore, the decision-making level is trying to change the large scale phased operation into small batch continuous operation, that is to change the cart to the assembly line, to reduce the pressure and the weak execution.

Zara has a fast supply chain system that leads the development of the industry. If we want to really build a similar system, we must overcome the challenges of traditional management mode and operation mode. At the same time, we need external environment to match and identify such reform measures. Otherwise, it will lead to great risks and costs.

However, as the market competition intensifies, Wu will firmly believe that such a fast supply chain will be widely accepted.

It is gratifying to note that the introduction of the new fast supply chain mechanism has promoted the scientific management of XTEP. "But from the external financial system's data measurement, it has not really reflected its effectiveness yet". Wu Lian has combed the memories in recent years, and analyzed the factors that have been faced with the adversity of innovation: first, the current industry environment and old rules have restricted the specific landing of some improvement measures.

"For example, in the year of 09-10, we encountered" labor shortage ", the output was very tight, and the implementation rate of each brand futures was not high, only about 70%, and no guarantee of small single spot supply.

In the 2010-2011 year, the main strategy of XTEP management was to seek recovery and stability. By the beginning of 2012, the deployment of the new supply chain strategy was beginning to achieve some success.

"Competition forces us to push ahead with the cycle.

However, in the course of our repeated orders, manufacturers often get used to ordering production capacity through orders, and we estimate the shipment ahead of time, leading us to advance reservations, "Wu Lian Yin reluctantly told."

It can be seen that it is very challenging to break the established rules of the industry by relying on only one enterprise.

Second, the impediment to fast supply chain also comes from the inactive action of internal staff and departments.

Such as marketing team, channel business, general agent or even its subordinate franchisees are often reluctant to cooperate. They also hope that the goods are ordered earlier, so as to reduce their sales pressure.

Another thing to mention is that the cost of fast supply is also higher than that of a large number of futures, because the volume of goods is smaller and the information communication chain is longer. Therefore, it is not easy to maintain this mode in a large cargo supply chain system.

"But if we use another supply chain, it is not appropriate to find some small manufacturers to do the original work, because there is a lack of technical preparation," Wu added.