With the intensification of business competition, more and more traditional enterprises have begun to seek help from professional management consulting companies, and it is reported that Many outstanding consumer brands such as Yadi, Feihe, and Bosideng have the experience of seeking help from strategic consultants. What can strategic advisors bring to brands, especially local durable consumer brands that are facing the international big names and are not strong enough?
Recently, the relevant person in charge of Junzhi Management Consulting Company was interviewed by Blue Whale Finance and talked about how a domestic water purifier brand broke the experience of the circle. It is reported that in 2020, Junzhi and the leading domestic water purifier brand Angel befriended, the two sides jointly opened the road of strategic upgrading, breaking the water purifier field, the high-end market was divided by A.O Smith, Yikou and other international big names, smoothly "out of the circle".
The pain points of the industry are significant, and international brands dominate
Junzhi said in an interview with Blue Whale Financial Reporter that in the water purifier industry, domestic brand technology and standards are not inferior to foreign products, but the price is lower than foreign products, the core reason is that the brand power is not strong. The homogenization at the product level is serious, and the design and function are almost the same. Channels also converge, mainly in home appliance stores, and the decoration style of terminal stores is copied from each other. The brand features are not prominent, and the recognition is not high.
From the consumer side, customers generally turn a blind eye when they have no demand for durable goods, and even if there is advertising, it is difficult for FMCG to have a strong association and interaction with consumers. The low frequency of customer purchases and the consumption only once every 3-5 years have led to low attention in the water purifier industry.
However, the category participation of water purifiers is very high. After there is demand, consumers will frantically collect information online, inquire and consult, which also leads to a long decision-making cycle, and pays more attention to after-sales installation and sales of filter elements.
From the market point of view, the overall sales of water purifiers in the past two years have declined. According to the data of Aowei Cloud Network and prospective industry research institute, the retail sales of water purifiers in mainland China showed a trend of increasing year by year from 2013 to 2018, but its growth rate decreased year by year. From January to November 2019, the retail sales of water purifiers in mainland China were 28.49 billion yuan. In the first half of 2020, the retail sales of water purifiers in China were 9.15 billion yuan, down 33.8% year-on-year.
The size of the market has shrunk, and the enthusiasm of enterprises is not high. According to the data of Tianyancha, in recent years, the number of registrations of water purifier-related enterprises has decreased year by year. In 2018, 19,000 new related enterprises were added, 15,000 in 2019, more than 8,200 in 2020, and only more than 2,500 in 2021.
The market has become smaller and the number of enterprises has decreased, but the competition in the industry is still fierce. The data shows that there are many brands in the mainland water purifier industry, mainly by foreign brands represented by AO Smith and domestic brands represented by Midea and Haier, and the "halo effect of home appliances" is more significant, and small and medium-sized domestic brands are facing huge competitive pressure.
Although it encounters market bottlenecks, the industry will have more space after the breakthrough. The data shows that the penetration rate of water purifiers in China is very low, only about 20%, compared with the level of 80% in developed countries, there is still a lot of room. At present, there is homogeneous competition and low-price competition in the water purifier industry, and many home appliance brands have not focused on the development of water purifier business, so consumers lack the preferred professional brand.
Multi-touch to grab consumer minds
Angel needs to jump out of the original operating ideas from products, channels and brands. Junzhi's strategic direction for Angel is "high-end water purification expert with leading sales volume". Give priority to the brand mentality of "high-end water purification experts". Among them, "experts" are the top priority, distinguishing them from other brands in terms of "human design" to achieve differentiation.
No matter how good the strategy is, it is just empty talk. In this regard, in the operation link, let customers perceive the differentiation of the enterprise, which means that the enterprise should care about every contact point of the customer's purchase decision chain, including the communication end, the channel end, the operation end, the terminal shopping guide and sales, but all the contact points related to the customer need to be controlled.
Junzhi believes that Angel cannot be used as a water purifier, but as a digital product and a technology product to formulate a strategy to "build a water purifier like a technology product". Angel wanted to be the first to jump out of the circle of durable goods, to stand with technological digital products, based on this concept, Angel completed a turnaround.
At the R&D level, Junzhi strengthened Angel's cooperation endorsement with China Aerospace, and conducted in-depth research on the innovation and upgrading of aerospace water purification technology and technology research and development.
On the product side, Angel's original long-term reverse osmosis membrane technology breaks the monopoly of foreign technology and achieves a water purification effect that does not decay for five years. At the structural level, the split water purifier is the first to be introduced, and the appearance is greatly different from the traditional water purifier. At the color level, through a third-party professional design team, the color matching will be made scientific and professional. At the functional level, Angel cracked the small pain point of water purifier water, and was the first to launch the A7 series of large water purifiers, ranking first in the industry at a price of 4500 yuan per unit.
On the channel side, angel in addition to entering the KA channel, but also layout the building materials market. Angel became the first domestic brand to switch to the building materials market, and in the past year, the number of stores opened in major building materials markets exceeded 1,000. At the same time, we open a large store of science and technology image, train the shopping guide, pay attention to the brand demonstration materials of the terminal, and support the high-end image of the brand as a whole.
Junzhi's strategy and key battles helped Angel achieve the "out of the circle" effect in just one and a half years. The data shows that Angel has jumped from a volume of 1 billion yuan to a volume of 2 billion yuan, and the industry ranking has jumped from the fourth place to the second place. In addition to the increase in C-end customers, B-end large customers have also been attracted by Angel, such as: Bird's Nest, Beijing Daxing Airport, Haidilao, Huawei, SF and so on. Some of the dealers of friendly businesses in the city also began to switch to Angel.
Other brands have begun to imitate Angel's model and will soon enter homogeneous competition again. In this regard, Junzhi believes that eating any model thoroughly requires a lot of human and material investment, as well as the courage to dare to trial and error, which gives Angel, who has completed the transformation, the development space in the next 5-10 years.
This article originated from Blue Whale Finance
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