Every Step Of Hermes'S Strategic Layout Is Closer To Selling Platinum Packages On The Internet.

Even two years ago, online shopping. Hermes Handbags may be an unthinkable thing.

Following the launch of the new European official website, which supports online shopping, the 181 year old French luxury brand Hermes launched its new Chinese official website in October 17th. It joined the Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Prada China electricity supplier camps, and officially began selling handbags online. Earlier, the official website of Hermes sold only silk scarves and accessories on the Internet. The official website of the new official website includes 8 categories of products, including handbags, garments, shoes, perfume, etc., supporting WeChat and Alipay payment, providing 7 days return and 30 day replacement service.

As expected, Hermes Birkin handbags and Kelly handbags, which are in short supply, are still unable to be purchased online. On the one hand, they are due to inventory reasons. On the other hand, they are obviously designed to maintain the scarcity and mystery of the brand.

Handbags have a very important strategic significance for Hermes, which is the biggest embodiment of Hermes' luxury attributes. Unlike other luxury brands, Hermes has a stronger dependence on the bag business, and any change of the latter will have an important effect on the brand. Therefore, the spanfer of handbags from the offline to the online is an important turning point for Hermes and even the luxury goods industry.

In fact, before the arrival of this time node, Hermes has been laying the groundwork through a series of digital water test moves, stepping into the online market that French luxury brands were not familiar with.

Last October, Hermes In WeChat public, WeChat Limited shop is offering WeChat Apple Watch Herm s Series 3, which is launched in WeChat environment. In fact, the online shopping launched in WeChat environment also laid the foreshadowing for the official official website shopping. Thereafter, Hermes It has opened 4 WeChat Limited stores, including scarves, watches and shoes.

Attempts to digitize include more frequent social media promotion and launch activities. In March, Hermes introduced small game App H-pitchhh to attract young consumers to enhance brand culture while enhancing consumer interest.

In September, Hermes launched a brand big window in Sina micro-blog to promote its 2018 autumn and winter advertising films. It is reported that the brand big window function or for the WeChat circle of friends advertising, touches a large range of micro-blog users. However, due to the differences between brand positioning and Sina micro-blog user positioning, the advertising film quickly caused controversy. Although the video has reached more than 32 million hits in micro-blog, more than 30 thousand forwarding comments have been made, but there are comments pointing to the deviation of the micro-blog advertising strategy.

For risk laden social media and online markets, it seems that Hermes is no longer hesitant and has begun a bold attempt. As stated in the Axel Dumas statement, Hermes It is imperative to jump out of the traditional shackles to narrow the digital divide between competitors, because the millennials have become a key group in the development of the luxury market in the next ten years.

To the industry's surprise, Hermes did not even exclude the third party e-commerce platform. Last month, Axel Dumas said in a media interview that it is considering selling products in China through the Jingdong platform, which means that the last fortress of the luxury goods industry refusing to enter the domestic e-commerce platform will be breached. It is noteworthy that in August of this year, the luxury brands of Hermes were located in Jingdong's official website and TOPLIFE.

　　 Hermes The fundamental driving force for accelerating the online market initiatives is still to return to the pressure of performance. It is also expected that the Asia Pacific region, which contributes about 35% of the group's sales and has become the world's largest market, will become the key entry point of brand digitalization.

According to Hermes's initial performance data released in the first half of this year, its operating profit rate was 34.5%, exceeding the analysts' expectations and a record high, with a net profit of 780 million euros. In the three months ended June 30th, Hermes's sales in the second quarter increased 7.2% to 1 billion 460 million euros, a 11.6% increase at fixed interest rates, 11% in the first quarter, and 5% to 2 billion 853 million euro in the first half, a 11% increase at fixed exchange rates. The group said that exchange rate fluctuations in the first half of the group generated losses of 165 million euros in group revenue.

It is noteworthy that the competition for luxury oligarchs is getting hotter. Hermes has maintained a high single digit growth in the second quarter of this year, but the core handbags and harness Department has slowed sharply. According to the fashion headline data, the sector recorded a 3.6% growth rate in the second quarter of this year, compared with the 10.5% growth in the same period last year, which has become the lowest growth department besides watch business.

Last year, the biggest news in the industry was that Hermes's income was overtaken by Gucci, which took only two years. From the second quarter of last year, Gucci earned its first single quarter income over Hermes, and officially released Hermes in 2017 with a 6 billion 200 million euro annual income. According to the 2017 earnings report, Hermes annual sales increased by 6.7% to 5 billion 500 million euros at a constant exchange rate. In 2016, the income of Hermes was 5 billion, and Gucci's income was only 4 billion 378 million euros.

Therefore, it is not groundless for Hermes to turn positive on the online market. "We have to step back and ask ourselves where our customers are," said Sara Gergovich, vice president of Hermes digital and electronic commerce earlier this year. The answer to this question is obvious online. But in the Internet age, luxury brands have to consider the problem of consumption scenarios.

Lyst CEO Chris Morton, a fashion business provider, also told Reuters in an interview last year that a luxury brand that avoids the Internet is actually refusing to cooperate with consumers. Although they spend a lot of time and money, they are not listening to the needs of consumers, which is dangerous for any consumer oriented industry.

But what is often overlooked by luxury brands is that online shopping and online shopping are not once and for all. The biggest challenge for the electricity supplier market lies in its sustainable business capability. Consumers will directly compare the luxury brand official website shopping experience with other online shopping experiences, especially when the third party electricity supplier shopping experience has developed relatively well.

Most luxury brands enter the online market from scratch. Whether the product's online visual presentation, copywriting description, web fluency, or product sales and brand story combination requires brand long time exploration. From the latest official website of Hermes, it is still a very simple sales platform, which is scarce in terms of product category and content.

Unlike the third party electricity providers who have different concerns about the consumer experience, luxury brand official website still seems unable to unload the shelf. Starting from the shopping experience of consumers, it takes into account how consumers can buy fifty thousand yuan handbags through three pictures and four lines of products, especially when consumers voluntarily sacrifice their service experience. After entering the online market, how to make up or even exceed the service experience that consumers enjoy in stores is another problem that luxury brands need to think about.

Nathalie Remy, a McKinsey partner, pointed out earlier that "the problem is no longer whether luxury brands should enter the online market, but how to enter." If you want to add one more sentence, that's what to do after entering. Some analysts believe that the brand must match the content and sales, create a smooth and consistent brand image throughout the website, which is the most lacking in recent years.

There are also differences in the luxury industry. According to the latest financial times report, Italy luxury brand Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri has made it clear that the brand will not cooperate with Alibaba and Jingdong's electronic business platform, because the two are full of fake goods. He also stressed that luxury brands joining the third party e-commerce platform will dilute the most important uniqueness of luxury brands, which is not a risky business.

5 years ago, if consumers did not go to the store, it was difficult to know what new brands launched, and they did not know the price of each style. The sense of distance of luxury brands has become the reason to prevent many consumers from entering the stores. But with the rise of purchasing agents and the rapid development of social media and other sharing platforms, the mystery of luxury brands has been divested by half. We can see that there is only a gap between luxury attributes and consumer preferences, and luxury brands need to be carefully maintained.

The Boston consulting company mentioned in a report that the digital development of luxury goods group is a contradictory process. They must face and overcome the tension and contrast between the exclusiveness of the traditional luxury brands and the popularity of the Internet. The more the products are exposed on the Internet, the easier it is to get them through the electricity supplier, and the easier the brand image is to be cheaply.

It is undeniable that luxury brands are famous for their emphasis on physical store experience and services. At present, the store is still the best medium for consumers to win customers. The use of radical business expansion, the impact on physical stores is unpredictable and irreversible, luxury brand vigilance is not without cause.

In terms of brand history, which luxury brand is not old. Just like middle-aged people, luxury brands have great anxiety for rapid change, backwardness or even being eliminated. There are two kinds of dangerous reactions to this anxiety: one is to stick to their positions, the other is to rebounded radically toward younger ones, and more accurately grasp the trend of the times.

In the long run, every step of Hermes is closer to selling Birkin handbags online, but the next step may not be the answer to the brand itself, after all, luxury is being redefined.