Is Mobile E-Commerce The Antidote To The Transformation Of Domestic Fast Fashion Brand Meibang?

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Meibang, Jay Chou, the star, Zhou Chengjian, the chairman of Meibang, and Zhou Bangwei, who is regarded as the future successor of Meibang, jointly released the "exemplary" app (picture). "Youfan", born in the spotlight, was named by "A Tale of Wonderful Flowers", and was ridiculed by Ma Dong, Gao Xiaosong and Cai Kangyong to push into the world of "post-90s", "post-00s" and even "post-10s". After the success of the campaign, the performance of Meibang has been miserable all the way. There are 10 days left before the reorganization plan of Meibang. Will this "model" with Internet genes and the business logic of the "post-90s" become the antidote or poison for Meibang to continue its transformation?

High input and low output

"Youfan" App is the most influential one launched at the 20th anniversary celebration of Meibang Clothing in 2015. "Youfan" App, which is positioned as a fashion e-commerce platform, is regarded as a key product for the transformation of the Internet by Meibang, but it is high Marketing Under the investment, it failed to bring gratifying returns.

Before the "Model" App, Meibang launched the vertical apparel e-commerce platform "Banggou" in 2010. However, the Banggou network, which cost more than 75 million yuan, was abandoned by the group because of profit difficulties less than a year ago. Now "Youfan" App has taken over the banner of Meibang's transformation of the Internet.

As the latest attempt of Meibang to transform the Internet, "Youfan" App has high hopes and has invested heavily in marketing. In 2014, Meibang won the title of the first season of "Odd Flowers" with 50 million yuan, setting the highest naming fee for online variety shows. With the popularity of "Odd Flowers", we can imagine how much the winner "Youfan" App has invested in the second and third seasons.

However, the two seasons of "Qipa Says" with more than 1.1 billion views did not bring about substantial user growth for "Fan" App. The Youmeng index shows that the total number of downloads of "good" apps is less than 1 million. Although "Youfan" appeared on the hot search list of apps on the night of the second season of "Qihua Shuo", according to the Youmeng index, "Youfan" app ranked 61 among online shopping and payment apps There are more than 1000 user comments in the store.

The reporter of Beijing Business Daily saw on the "Fan" App platform that most of the popular items sold less than 10 pieces, and the number of brand collectors with the largest number of collections was more than 2000. As for the actual revenue of "Youfan" App, Meibang kept quiet and only mentioned it in the semi annual report with the words "The company launched the fashionable social+shopping platform" Youfan "App, and rapidly improved the popularity of" Youfan "App through the online entertainment program" Qihua Shuo ".

Marketing hard to transfer flow

Clothing vertical e-commerce is not like high-frequency O2O platforms such as taxi taking, which can burn money for traffic first. Including "Youfan" App and Meilishuo, the huge advertising expenditure has not put the platform on the "right track".

On April 30 last year, the "Model" App was officially launched. Zhou Chengjian, CEO of Meibang, said that the "exemplary" business model is to convert hundreds of millions of people's customer flow and 10 million members brought by the Group's 4000 offline stores into platform users, and make profits by sampling points from brands settled in and sharing with sellers through various cooperation methods. It is estimated that the platform will have more than 1000 brands and more than 40000 pieces by this year, and users can match and share them by themselves. If adopted, they can get revenue sharing.

Ma Gang, an independent clothing analyst, said that the marketing of "Fan" App was relatively successful, but the user conversion rate was low, and the crux was the platform itself. On the one hand, from the perspective of the product manager, the user experience of "Fan" App is good, but the clothing information on the platform is still biased towards the PGC mode (professionals produce professional content), lacking interaction with ordinary users, and the habit of users' active sharing of matching is not enough, leading to a low rate of user retention; On the other hand, as a trendy e-commerce business, the current content and products of "Fan" App are not rich enough, and the matching degree with the targeted audience is not high, making it difficult for a large number of offline store customers and advertising customers to convert into platform users.

Capital market suffered

stay internet Under the thinking, the favor of the capital market has become a standard to test the success of traditional business transformation and upgrading to create new concepts. Although compared with the previous transformation of the Internet, the launch of the "Model" App by Meibang shows its determination to "break the nerve", such determination has not won the recognition of the capital market.

In July last year, Meibang announced its plan to raise 9 billion yuan, of which 6 billion yuan will be used to build the O2O omni channel platform, and "exemplary" App is an important part of the project. Four months later, the amount raised by fixed increase was reduced to 4.2 billion yuan, of which 1.591 billion yuan was used for O2O omni channel projects. The reason for the adjustment was vague, saying that it was based on the comprehensive consideration of the capital market and the actual situation of the company itself. Up to now, Smith Barney has not announced the progress of this planned increase.

Not only was the capitalization operation frustrated, but the stock price of Meibang also fluctuated to a new low after last year's stock disaster. On April 10 last year, in the context of the bull market, the good news of "Fantastic" App made the stock price of Meibang rise to a high of 28.35 yuan on April 10. On May 12, the stock price of Meibang rose to another high of 13.37 yuan on August 14 after the ex right of Meibang. Since then, with the fluctuation of the stock market, the stock price of Meibang has been in shock, and fell to a new low of 5.53 yuan before January 5 this year, which is only slightly higher than the lowest price of 5.04 yuan last year when the stock market crash occurred, and the decline compared with the high point after ex rights reached 58.64%.

Yang Dayun, President of UTA International Fashion Brand Investment Company, said that at present, most of the main businesses of the local listed apparel enterprises are facing difficulties. Enterprises generally adopt the mode of capitalization operation to try to achieve the transformation to the Internet or change careers, "either maintain a good market value and share price, and then reduce their holdings and cash out; Or it is to transform into the Internet field and gradually break away from the clothing industry. For example, Xinur's acquisition of Galaxy Internet for 11 billion yuan will surely turn clothing business into auxiliary business in the future.

Yang Dayun believes that one of the purposes of Meibang's promotion of "Model" App is to propose the concept of Internet to attract more investment, but more than 90% of Meibang's revenue comes from offline clothing business. This asset heavy model determines that Meibang cannot focus 100% on the development of "Model" App. "Platforms like Yoho are born with the Internet gene. As a traditional enterprise, Meibang's huge offline business will become a burden for the development of 'exemplary' apps when transforming the Internet."

The slow development of "Model" App has not stopped the pace of capital operation of Meibang. Recently, Meibang announced that it would issue a plan for major asset restructuring before February 5. Industry insiders said that although Meibang did not disclose details, "Youfan" App is a big chip of Meibang in the capital market at present. This restructuring must focus on "Youfan" App, but the development status of "Youfan" App may be difficult to give investors confidence.

Intended to be a family successor

Zhou Bangwei, the son of Zhou Chengjian, was also popular with the "Youfan" app. This young man, who had been branded "Meibang" from his name, came to the front.

Previously, it was reported that Zhou Bangwei was the leader of "Youfan" App, and Zhou did it himself. This 19-year-old "post-90s" not only launched the "Youfan" app with Zhou Chengjian and Jay Chou, the chief fashion consultant of Meibang, at the 20th anniversary celebration of Meibang, delivered a speech, but also personally participated in the "Wonderful Work" titled by the "Youfan" app. This move was interpreted by the outside world as Zhou Chengjian pushing Zhou Bangwei to the public to pave the way for his succession. Zhou Chengjian also expressed confidence in Zhou Bangwei.

In Yang Dajun's opinion, "Youfan" App is just an exercise for Zhou Bangwei, who is still young, and he will not directly participate in the operation of the platform. "It is normal for Zhou Chengjian to push his son through the 'Youfan' App, which is a tradition in most Chinese enterprises. However, it also makes the success or failure of the 'Youfan' App more important".

In fact, Hu Jiajia, the daughter of Zhou Chengjian, is already one of the major shareholders of Meibang. according to Smith Barney The latest announcement shows that Shanghai Huafu Investment Co., Ltd., jointly controlled by Zhou Chengjian and Hu Jiajia, holds 50.20% of the shares of Meibang, which is the largest shareholder of the Group. Hu Jiajia personally holds 8.91% of the shares of Meibang, which is the second largest shareholder of the Group. A person close to Meibang implicitly told the Beijing Business Daily reporter that in some domestic family businesses, there is often a leader's point of view to replace the development direction of the enterprise, which leads the enterprise to go astray.