After the outbreak suddenly came, Sun Chunlai, who has 337 offline stores and more than 2,000 employees, wrote a letter to all employees on the seventh day of the first month. He bluntly said that the two major expenses of store rent and employee expenses made him on the verge of collapse. He decided not to lay off employees and encouraged everyone to "find ways to keep the enterprise alive together" and "reduce costs and increase efficiency".
Affected by the epidemic in COVID-19, the local skin care brand founded by Sun Chunlai accounted for 75% of the sales of offline stores, which fell to 5% during the Spring Festival this year. Enterprises actively helped themselves and opened a cloud store online. More than 2,000 employees all worked online. Sun Chunlai personally got on the horse, led the shopping guide to open a live broadcast and "brought goods" with professional skin care knowledge. Fifteen days after the letter was sent, the sales volume was even higher than that of the same period last year, with an average of more than 3,000 new members added every day.
Offline freezing, online expansion, cloud selling houses, cloud selling cars, cloud chefs, cloud stores, etc. appeared intensively in a short period of time. In February, there were more than 100 occupations on Taobao Live, and merchants opened Taobao Live to sell goods by 50% year-on-year, of which more than 20% came from offline stores. Many occupations have been "forced" to go to the cloud. Can this short-term self-help means become an opportunity for enterprises to transform in the future?
Live broadcast allows enterprises on the verge of bankruptcy to save themselves in 15 days.
Sun Chunlai, who once bluntly said, "I won’t broadcast it live", went back on his word. The 50-year-old "old man" talked about cosmetics in front of the camera, but 60,000 people watched it and sold more than 400,000 yuan of products, which was "completely beyond imagination".
This is a typical brand whose sales model depends on offline stores. During the Spring Festival, it was originally a "golden week" for sales. However, due to the epidemic, the sales of offline stores were "frozen" and the whole company was "forced" to broadcast live: the shopping guide trapped in Wuhan’s home was broadcast live, and the shopping guide working in the store was also broadcast live, with remarkable results.
On February 1 ST, Sun Chunlai’s brand store resumed work in a comprehensive way. On the first day, they held a cadre meeting online, and on the second day, they held a video conference for all more than 2,000 employees to explain the way of transformation.
Not everyone can adapt to the new working condition at once. On the first day of the live broadcast, Sun Chun came to a live broadcast room opened by a shopping guide and found that there were only two of them in the live broadcast room. Although the shopping guide explained it professionally, the makeup displayed in the live broadcast was not professional.
They invited a professional team to help with the transformation and learn how to make up in the live broadcast, how to set the scenery, how to explain, how to make friends, and so on. The shopping guides gradually adapted to the scenes in the live broadcast, and the makeup displayed was gradually refined. They found that relying on professional knowledge to promote products and teach makeup artist online can also attract customers, and the online customer unit price can reach more than 1,000 yuan, which is a high customer unit price in the cosmetics industry.
Today, 90% of Sun Chunlai’s brand sales come from online.
The difficulty of change is that more than 2,000 people have to adapt to the "no meeting" cloud office. At first, everyone can’t find a working state without meeting. Later, the company stipulated that employees and bosses should also pay attention to appearance and have a sense of ceremony when working online. Cloud office has also revised the organizational structure of the enterprise, from the original hierarchical structure to the fact that people are now brought into the working group online at any time. After everyone adapts, the efficiency is higher than before.
Sun Chun said: "I originally expected that the cash flow would be gone in two or three months, but now it can be said that with the current performance, we can save ourselves."
Multi-industry rapid live broadcast with goods to earn and drink also puts forward new requirements.
It’s not just cosmetics shopping guides that are forced to broadcast live, but also real estate sales, car sales and kitchen chefs. Previously, most of these were sales models of "you can’t sell things until you get to the scene".
Affected by the epidemic, sales offices in more than 60 cities across the country were temporarily closed. Tang Lin, a real estate seller in Liuzhou, Guangxi, began to "sell houses in the cloud" on the Internet. Through the live screen, he led netizens to visit the real estate sold.
Tang Lin revealed that the highest live broadcast was watched by 60,000 people. After the live broadcast, more than 20 people added him to WeChat. Usually, he can only show two groups of customers a day offline. "The live broadcast brought good exposure and improved efficiency."
Real estate sales live broadcast is not simply moving offline to online, but changing from "one-to-one" to "one-to-many" introduction, and sales can not recommend products to customers with personalized needs. Tang Lin bluntly said that the characteristics of real estate decided that netizens would not make a down payment on the spot. At present, the live broadcast focuses on customers’ first understanding of real estate.
The catering industry is one of the industries greatly affected by the epidemic. On the day when Taobao Live announced the zero threshold, 31 well-known catering enterprises signed up for broadcasting. Dongpo, Meizhou was the first to move the kitchen to the live broadcast room, and let the chef teach netizens to cook Yuanxiao, Maoxuewang and other dishes.
Du Junhui, director of the e-commerce department of Dongpo, Meizhou, said that the live broadcast was originally to avoid the risk of returning to work and add fun to people living at home. I didn’t expect netizens to like it a lot. From 0: 00 pm to 7: 00 pm on February 17th, the sales of its Tmall flagship store increased by 1400% compared with the same period of last year, the sales of lunch meat increased by 2175% compared with the same period of last year, and the sales of sausages increased by 1561% compared with the same period of last year. The new product, braised pork with plum vegetables, which has just been launched, has entered the top three of the best-selling goods in the store. The turnover brought by another well-known catering brand "Xiaolongkan" through Taobao live broadcast on February 17 increased by 1200% compared with January 17 a month ago.
4S shops selling cars have also been closed due to the epidemic, and it is difficult for many car companies to attract customers to the stores by sending masks. They have also joined the ranks of live car sales, and many car companies have introduced discounts for online channels. According to incomplete statistics, 23 global automobile brands, such as BMW and Audi, have started to sell cars, with at least 100 live car broadcasts every day.
Yintai Department Store requires all the shopping guides to take up their posts, and specially opened a Taobao live broadcast special for 10 Hubei shopping guides. The whole live broadcast lasted for 3 hours, attracting 75,000 consumers to watch, which is equivalent to the weekend passenger flow of a top shopping center.
Enterprises facing operational pressure under the epidemic seize the "life-saving straw" of live broadcast, hoping to increase their income and expand new channels. The live broadcast platform seizes the opportunity to attract new members and help enterprises transform.
Jane Rou, the head of the Taobao Live Cloud Work Project Team, said that the project team is now docking a new "cloud career" every day, and according to the special circumstances of different industries, it has opened up various resources and technical forces to help them "work in the cloud" smoothly.
The reason why so many industries have switched to live broadcasting with goods is because the epidemic has temporarily changed people’s consumption scenes and constrained people’s offline consumption. Most people stay at home, but the demand for entertainment and shopping still exists, even more vigorously.
Experience and service should keep up with live broadcast or become a must for sales.
Although live delivery is very popular, some consumers think that this is a "no way" under the current situation.
Consumers are used to online shopping, but due to the limited logistics under the epidemic, consumers who are attracted by live broadcasts cannot receive the goods, which affects the shopping experience. Consumers who like offline shopping prefer the beautiful offline experience, such as online cosmetics stores, in addition to shopping, they can also enjoy on-site skin care, guidance and other services.
There are also some live broadcasts that can’t really "bring goods". This is true for large-scale consumption such as selling cars and houses. The live broadcast only helps consumers to understand the products conveniently and quickly at home, but it can’t meet the needs of consumers to touch and see them on the spot. After the epidemic has passed, consumers still need to go offline to purchase, and finally place an order online, just for the online preferential price.
If sales want to transform through live broadcast, they also need professional knowledge and services, and prepare for online display. In the interview, the reporter found that the shopping guide trying to broadcast live is not simply "building a mobile phone". Most of them have experienced the process of self-improvement. Appearance, style, professionalism and fan accumulation have become the means for cloud shopping guides to stand out from the encirclement, which is also inseparable from the professional help of the live broadcast platform.
The data of Yintai Department Store also shows the advantages of "experienced" shopping guides. The number of consumers who open a live broadcast service is equivalent to the passenger flow who has returned to work for six months, and the sales generated by a live broadcast is equivalent to a week’s work in the store.
In addition, a large number of live broadcasts of sales transformation also bring homogenization concerns. Jiang Xinjie, commercial assistant president of Yintai Department Store, believes that live broadcast is a process of digitizing people, and people’s different needs will naturally be diverted to head customers and waist customers, which can be seen from the data. The new retail industry has changed from focusing on goods and shopping malls to focusing on shopping guides and consumers. In the future, all members of Yintai’s shopping guides will try to broadcast live.
Jane Rou believes: "Taobao live cloud work started because of this epidemic, but it will not end because of the end of the epidemic. Many companies and individuals have seen their potential through cloud work. "
Another point worth noting is that most of the enterprises that currently broadcast live are well-known big brand enterprises, and they "bring their own traffic", and there are very few small and medium-sized brands in the live broadcast. In addition, the anchors also show their talents, and it is not only relying on professional knowledge that can highlight the encirclement, but sometimes relying on other talents or characteristics to "suck powder".
However, it is foreseeable that enterprises will include live broadcast in the future after this special period of last resort.
Sun Chunlai’s brand has adjusted the development direction of the company because of the success of live broadcast. Not only will the live broadcast be normalized in the future, but also a new offline store renderings will be designed within a few days: the new store will cancel the checkout counter and shelves, leaving only the display stand and turn the store into a live broadcast room.
"This year, the number of offline stores will not be reduced, and the performance requirements will not be reduced. It is just a complete transformation of the store model, improving digital live broadcast, transaction, promotion, publicity and customer service, and one more way to communicate, interact and communicate with customers." Sun chun said.
Zhongqingbao Zhongqingwang reporter Lareina C Source: China Youth Daily
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