Since the development of fashion boutiques in China, a unique ecosystem has been formed, and the number of stores has risen sharply to more than thousands today. While meeting the personalized demands of local consumers, these boutiques are also constantly reshaping the form of offline retail with innovative thinking and community sharing.
It is undeniable that the domestic buyer store ecology has undergone many rounds of upgrading and iteration in recent years, and buyer managers and brands are naturally the biggest promoters behind these changes, but we also need to see the survival status of buyer store sales and the significance of the role they play.
A salesman who did not want to be named revealed to us that he has been working in an international buyer's shop for more than 6 years, and learned that the basic salary of The shanghai buyer's clerk is generally within 5,000 yuan, and the basic salary of the Guangzhou buyer's shop is within 4,000 yuan, "Now the price is so high, the basic salary is no longer important, the most critical is the sales commission." "In addition to pre-sales and post-sales customer maintenance, it is also necessary to be familiar with brand information, clothing fabrics, and price ranges, responsible for receiving goods into storage, warehouse inventory, store display, and familiar with the increase or decrease of turnover every month." The difference between high-end buyer sales and luxury sales is that there is a unified system for sales training and services of luxury goods, but the buyer's store is a place that encourages you to be yourself. ”
He was quite critical of the current trend of buyers everywhere: "At this stage, I feel that everyone can be a buyer's shop, many new managers know a few brands, and the store will be opened after a patchwork, and this kind of unprofessional store cannot attract professional sales to follow." ”
Correspondingly, the sale of head fashion boutiques has become a glamorous profession in the eyes of fashion-loving young people. Caroline Jing, who works as a fashion brand planner, most frequents a boutique in Shanghai, at LE MONDE de SHC (LMDS) at 1 Taojiang Road, and she puts it bluntly: "If you don't think about income, your biggest wish is to work as a clerk at LMDS." Eric Yang, the founder of LMDS, revealed to WWD China that sales revenue varies from person to person." The top sales in the store can reach up to one million yuan in sales in the peak season, and the achievement alone can be very profitable. Sales without the ability to sell can only get a basic salary, which is not enough to support the daily expenses in Shanghai. Eric adds, "Without strong resilience and strong expertise, this job is not suitable. ”
LMDS
It is understood that the LMDS sales team has a huge background span, including small-town youth with fashion dreams, and some returnees who have been hired by a fortune 500 group and want to use the interval before entry to experience life. Similarly, they all have a strong passion for niche avant-garde fashion brands and are willing to take the time to diversify into the brand culture of young consumers. As a store owner, Eric needs to understand the development space of each employee, give corresponding career planning advice and salary treatment, and make sales as mobile as possible.
Chen Scar, the director of the innovative concept buyer's store In the PARK, said that there are more than a dozen salespeople in the two physical stores of In the PARK, aged 22 to 26 years old, and LMDS, with a variety of backgrounds, some of them are from the class, and there are also people who have worked in galleries, bookstores and restaurants. In addition to examining sales ability, In the PARK will also include the candidate's inspection of the outside world, the preference for streaming media, and the aesthetics of their own lifestyle. Chen Scar believes that sales are the embodiment of the personification of the buyer's shop, so the company will also give the clerk a quota of in-store clothing every quarter, as well as a discount on in-house purchases as a benefit.
In the PARK
Of course, there are also people who hit and bumped by mistake and "accidentally" became buyers of sales. Sergio Cheng was a salesman for a long time. In his senior year, Sergio was shortlisted for a buyer competition organized by a platform, and he found in the survey that "Dongliang" was the leader of China's buyers' stores, with a learning mentality, he knocked on the door of the store with his resume, unexpectedly, this became the beginning of his career.
Even if he didn't work directly in the buyer position of his choice, Sergio kept the team's mission of "conveying the beauty of China" in mind, and this slogan made the sales work particularly meaningful. "The philosophy of 'genuine hospitality' and 'recommending the right products to the right people' permeates our service process, as every customer who comes to the store is likely to have the purpose of understanding Chinese fashion. In addition to understanding brand knowledge, clothing wear, whether the display of the store is beautiful, whether the volume when speaking is comfortable, and whether the posture of holding clothes is professional, are all figurative embodiments of service awareness. ”
Sergio Cheng and designer Chen Xuzhi
Sergio believes that the sales status of domestic buyers today is that the sense of service needs to go further than the awareness of sales, because "fashion stores are still a niche field, and we are still in the stage of cultivating loyal consumers." So the first impression of sales to customers is very critical, and we don't have a second chance to make a first impression."
According to McKinsey's 2021 report, the outbreak has accelerated the pace of consumer migration from offline to online, but this does not mean the demise of offline, on the contrary, physical and emotional experience and residency have become particularly valuable. In this regard, Eric Yang put forward his point of view: "There are too many shops on the market to provide 'experiences' with art furnishings or installations, but for buyers, the most important experience is still to allow customers to harvest the good things he really wants to wear and use, which cannot be bought in other stores (even online), and sales are the 'curators' of this experience." ”
The location of LMDS is located in the Hengfu Landscape Area, which is not as crowded as the main roads such as Nanjing West Road, which means that LMDS is a purpose-oriented consumer place. Customers are like visitors who come to explore a fresh experience, and sales are guided tours of landmarks. Eric said: "The biggest difference between us and the buyers in the mall is that the consumer is mainly an old customer, which means that freshness is very important. Therefore, even if we have three years of experience in sales training, it is still difficult to form a very standardized system, which complements our store location and customer needs. ”
Sergio believes that it is generally believed that buyer sales need to know the designers who sell brands well, in fact, it should be the other way around, designers should go out of the studio and take the initiative to become friends with sales. "The first feedback you put your product into the market, what kind of customers are interested in you, and where these data are being sold." If sales are willing to share information, this will be of great help to designers in developing a new season of products. ”
Today, Sergio is still in the fashion industry, but he is more engaged in the direction of the market, but the experience of selling in the early years as a long-term leader still has a deep impact on him: "Sales is actually a kind of ability, its essence is to reflect the emotional resonance between the brand (including people who serve the brand) and consumers in the form of commodity transactions. The ability to quickly learn and absorb new things, the ability to express, the perception of the field, and the aesthetic ability cultivated in my sales work have all had a positive effect on my current career. ”
There are now more and more great boutique sales like Sergio, becoming the talent that the brand's marketing department is competing for. Chen Scar said that the buyers and marketing department heads of the park today are the first generation of sales of the store. She herself has been selling at other boutiques for more than two years.
The early feelings of customers and stores laid a solid practical foundation for buyers and market activities. "This is also the process of chickens and eggs, eggs and chickens, and more and more young people choose to start from sales and start from the grassroots, which will make the growth soil of the team more fertile."
in the PARK
In 2000, Eric's first job out of college was as a fashion editor. At that time, the atmosphere of the Chinese industry had not yet emerged, and many roles, such as stylists, had not yet been popularized, let alone professional buyers. At the beginning of the millennium, the first batch of well-known overseas buyers were ready to go. In 2002, the boutique Opening Ceremony was born in a small three-story building on Howard Street in New York's SOHO district, and became a booster for designer brands including Alexander Wang, Proenza Schouler, Rodarte and many others. OC's staff with distinctive personal characteristics has become a golden signboard.
Galen Dekemper is in the Opening Ceremony store
Galen Dekemper spent 7 years with Opening Ceremony, a New York-based boutique, as a store warehouse director. His job is to control the quantity and size of each item in the store in order to work efficiently with the sales staff. He shared his observations with WWD China for many years: "One of the jobs of sales is to become friends with customers, share common hobbies and insights, and only when you think the same frequency, you will really understand what customers want to buy." 」 Dekemper adds that OCs are a breeding ground for talent, and sales are no exception. For example, each season's new products will invite the brand marketer or even the designer himself to the store, ensuring that the sales staff has more brand knowledge than most fashion enthusiasts. OC's former sales and service staff mostly worked in second careers related to fashion in their spare time, and Dekemper was no exception, graduating from the prestigious Cooper Union, working tirelessly for many years, and founding the independent magazine Dollar Story. OC was the first brick-and-mortar store to offer Dollar Story, and Dekemper is grateful for that. OC is more like a home in New York than a workplace.
Chen Scar believes that it has not been abroad for a long time due to the epidemic, but the outstanding aesthetics and appearance of overseas buyers' stores have indeed left a deep impression. However, she believes that the overall environment in China has changed dramatically in recent years, and more and more young people studying art and design are willing to step into sales positions, which makes the difference in sales at home and abroad not very large.
In the PARK sells everyday wear styles
Eric went further on the basis of Chen Scar's point of view: "In the past, there was indeed a gap between the sales of our national buyers' stores and overseas counterparts. The reason is simple, this field is too new, we have not yet developed to the stage of precipitating talents in some niches. But that doesn't mean we're not doing a good job, LMDS is both a world and a contemporary version of Shanghai, and the character of our store and team can't be replicated in any other region. Eric also believes that after the epidemic, China's consumer culture has taken the lead, and all walks of life are producing more values and methodology outputs to the West, and the fashion industry is no exception. As a rapidly developing branch of the industry, the vigorous development of Chinese fashion boutiques will inevitably lead to more sales methods with local characteristics, and in the near future, the West will learn from China's strategy in turn.
Opening Ceremony，Howard Street
As a former salesman, Sergio responded to a very realistic question, the current sales of some of the top domestic buyers are gradually bloggers and Internet celebrities, will this become a common phenomenon in the industry in the future? Sergio believes that not all buyers can control the so-called "KOL clerk", sales do not have to become KOL, bloggerization should not be a necessity for sales - but a reasonable salary is. WWD
Written by Di Huang
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