How Should Smart Shoe Companies Cope With The Downturn?

The wearable industry began to appear weak after entering the last quarter of this year. First is the smart Bracelet field, early November, the logo smart bracelet. brand Misfit was fashion Brand Fossil acquisition. Another big Jawbone of smart bracelet was also largely laid off at the end of November. About 15% of the company's employees were forced to leave Jawbone.

The smart watch field also reported bad news, according to IDC data, children's smart watches in the 7 and August explosive growth, in September, the market sales began to decline sharply. At the same time, CCTV's negative news about children's smart watches has cast a thick shadow on the whole industry. The quality and safety of children's watches has become a hot topic of public opinion.

In addition, the capital market also ushered in a cold wave. Stocks in the US were in a collective downturn and A shares continued to be turbulent. Investment institutions were generally affected. Most investment institutions chose to reduce investment or postpone investment plans before.

The overall environment of the wearable industry is declining, and the investment environment is not good. This undoubtedly gives a cold water to the smart shoe start-ups this year. How should smart shoe companies cope with the downturn in the industry?

　　 Selling smart shoe hardware to make money

Just entered Smart shoes The start-up companies in the industry, especially the Internet Co, will set the price of their smart shoes at a low price, hoping to attract users like millet at a very low price, and ultimately make money by obtaining big data from users, but this idea is obviously not reliable.

Most start-ups sell smart shoes at a very small initial stage, and those data accumulated are of no great value. Coupled with the value of data obtained from smart shoes, there is no way to compare with the data value of mobile phones and the Internet.

Because of this, the first thing for smart shoe companies to consider is to make their products profitable rather than losing money. Now the cost of shoes has been very low, the price of smart shoes components is not high, if it is Bluetooth components, you can control the cost of the entire pair of shoes does not exceed 100 yuan. But this is a very low-end shoe, and the quality is not guaranteed. Lining's red rabbit intelligent running shoes sold for 199 yuan at the beginning. According to our calculations, the material of its shoes plus the components of millet can only be achieved without losing money.

If Internet start-ups did not have the resources of traditional shoe companies at the very beginning, the cost of making the same level of smart shoes would be higher. It can be said that the Internet start-ups are born with a lot of disadvantages compared to the traditional shoe manufacturers who are transforming into the producers of smart shoes. With the cooling of the capital market, the investment they can win is less and less. In the coming winter of wearable industry, there is not much time left for them.

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　　 Warm up with traditional shoe companies

In recent years, the traditional footwear industry is also not very good. The pressure of economic downfall has brought down the sales of shoes and clothing industry, including Daphne, BELLE, and so on. The big brands have fallen into the predicament of poor performance and frequent shop closes, let alone the foundry factories downstream of the industrial chain.

The emergence of the concept of smart shoes gives them a glimmer of light, including Lining, 361 degrees, double Chi and other traditional shoe companies have coincidentally launched this year's smart shoe products, trying to seize the initiative in this new market, to open a market for their enterprises.

Data show that in less than a year this year, at least a dozen brands of smart shoes appear on the market. The search for smart shoes on Taobao has had thousands of results. Among them, the smart shoe products ranked before the sales volume are basically the smart shoes launched by traditional shoe companies. The sales of smart shoe products launched by Internet companies are dismal.

It can be seen that the brand awareness that traditional shoe companies have accumulated for many years is not comparable to that of Internet companies. In the field of smart shoes, there is no brand support, and it is almost impossible to rely solely on Internet companies to fight alone. But if we can cooperate with those traditional shoe companies to launch products together, we may have a chance to survive. And the traditional shoe enterprises can also help themselves out of the mire of losses with the help of new forces from Internet companies.

So how can traditional shoe companies cooperate with Internet companies? Is it better for manufacturers to build an Internet team to take charge of smart shoe products? These problems are gradually solved with the emergence of intelligent shoe incubation platforms.

　　 Intelligent shoe Incubation Platform

The smart shoe hatching platform is a new concept recently launched to open up the technology of smart shoes so that shoe factories can borrow the technology. And if the company has a good smart shoe project, it can also provide support for R & D, design and even capital.

According to Bloomberg's report on the difficult transformation of manufacturing in China: Putian sample, the existing intelligent shoe hatching platform is supported by the Putian Footwear Association, which can borrow local shoe industry resources, including dual business and support from soft parts teams from Shanghai, Shenzhen and Fuzhou. The main purpose is to allow footwear enterprises to develop in an intelligent way, to get rid of the dependence of most small and medium shoe enterprises on foreign trade orders, and to enhance the technological competitiveness of shoe companies.

This is also a better opportunity for smart shoe start-ups. Today, under the environment of the economic downturn, there is a professional and precise platform for intelligent shoes hatching, and their smart shoes projects are more secure.

It is understood that the intelligent shoe incubation platform has provided free offices for 5 teams, opening up resources for their design, manufacture and sales. Local shoe companies in Putian have worked with these teams in varying degrees. It is expected that new smart shoe products will enter the market early next year.

Of course, all this is just the beginning. As Bloomberg reported in the report, the whole manufacturing industry is declining, and the shoe industry can only be truly transformed and upgraded so as to ultimately save the declining core manufacturing industry. For smart shoe entrepreneurs, this is also their opportunity. Perhaps the best smart shoe product will come out here in the future?