Wen | Jiang Xuefen
Editor| Fan Tingting
"One pier per household" has not yet been realized, but in the Sichuan-Chongqing region, it is not unusual for one mahjong machine per household.
Nowadays, not only the middle-aged and elderly people love to play mahjong, young people are also abandoning KTV and script killing, turning their heads to sit on the mahjong table, especially during the New Year, they have a lot of leisure time, whether it is visiting relatives and friends, or friends gathering, playing a few laps of mahjong at home, which is much happier than drinking tea and chatting awkwardly.
He Zehui, who has been a mahjong machine for 18 years, sold more than 6,000 mahjong machines during the New Year Festival, many of which are young people, and directly sent the mahjong machine back to his hometown, "can't wait to go back to his hometown to play mahjong." And in addition to Chinese, the enthusiasm of foreign customers to place orders this year is also very high, and one purchase is hundreds of units.
This year's Spring Festival, mahjong machines not only appeared on the "Taobao Top Ten Hot New Year Goods Report", but also selected as "Overseas Consumers' Favorite Top Ten New Year Goods". It can be seen that playing mahjong regardless of age and youth, regardless of nationality.
Bonanza
He Zehui, who is in his 40s this year, comes from a small third-tier city in Hunan, and since he was a child, playing mahjong is a leisure and entertainment method that he and his family like. After graduating from university, he went to a company in Guangzhou to do smart device program development work.
In 2002, China's mobile phone market has not yet ushered in the wave of touch intelligence, mahjong machine market is still the world of manual mahjong machine, but He Zehui in the work but coincidentally contacted the smart mahjong machine program. Watching the intelligent mahjong function developed by the cooperative factory automatically shuffle, convenient and interesting, he has been fascinated ever since.
In the following years, the concept of the Internet of Things came out, smart phones entered the public life, and He Zehui judged that intelligent products were the trend. In the program of developing smart mahjong machines, he found that its operating principle is the same as that of smart dining tables and other devices, which are automated manual programs and have no major technical problems. He judged that the smart mahjong machine is "a rich mine", and if there is a large-scale output, coupled with marketing, the development of smart mahjong machines will enter the fast lane.
But in reality, most manufacturers do not smell the smell of intelligence, there are only a few brands on the market selling smart mahjong machines, the output is very small; and, earlier cooperation in several smart mahjong machine research and development factories, but also because of poor management is facing closure.
He Zehui decided to try it. He imported a batch of goods from the factory facing closure, opened a specialty store offline, and sold smart mahjong machines. In the following years, the offline market competition was fierce, and foreign agents heard the news, purchased goods from He Zehui, and put them in their own stores for sale. He Zehui also opened more stores.
Offline business soon encountered bottlenecks: stores could not break through geographical limitations, it was difficult to form a national brand; the agent wholesale model, the account period of receiving payment was not easy to control, affecting cash flow.
In 2009, the number of online shoppers in China exceeded 100 million, and Taobao also ushered in the first "Double 11" shopping carnival. Seeing the explosive power of e-commerce, He Zehui expanded channels online, founded the brand "Shihe", and opened an online store. He remembers that at that time, there were only two stores on the whole network selling automatic mahjong machines, and the other was a well-known brand in the industry, "almost using the online store as an image display window, and did not invest in special personnel operation." ”
Originally, he only wanted to "see if he could sell it", so he hung up the second-hand mahjong machine in the physical store, a few hundred yuan a piece, and as a result, he received 10 orders a day.
trust
In addition to his surprise, he also found many problems in selling large items online. Unlike offline can directly see the goods, inspection, online customers can not see the physical goods, in order to win orders, first of all to gain trust.
In the process of communicating with buyers, he realized that transportation is not the biggest challenge for the mahjong machine business. "At that time, there were only a few logistics companies, and the delivery of mahjong machines was generally sent to the city, and the buyers were willing to pick up the goods in the city by themselves, and the delivery was not a problem."
"The biggest obstacle is after-sales service", buyers will always ask how to install before placing an order, there is a problem in the use process, and there is no local personnel to repair it. "Many manufacturers know that they can sell mahjong machines on the Internet, but they feel that they can't get the after-sales service, so they dare not touch the net."
With more and more orders, it is imminent to solve the problem of after-sales, once the worries of consumers are eliminated, he believes that automatic mahjong machines will become a hit. He opened the information of agents across the country, called and communicated one by one, and invited agents to become local after-sales service points.
This process is not achieved overnight, He Zehui spent 5 years, so that Shihe laid out about 3,000 after-sales service points across the country, with annual sales of more than 10,000 units.
After building a sound after-sales system, he felt that the brand could support a larger market and was always looking for opportunities to explode. In 2013, juhuasuan ju customization and jujia decoration activities were in full swing, he Zehui participated in the activity, "sold at once, 7 days sold thousands of units."
He finally breathed a sigh of relief: the market turned out to be so big!
Fighting
In He Zehui's cognition, mahjong has gone through a thousand years of time, from octogenarians to ten-year-old children can play, not only entertainment puzzle games, but also carries a unique Chinese culture, is the essence of the country. The market verified his original vision, and brands that had previously been in a wait-and-see attitude also began to enter the game.
In almost a decade, the large-scale manufacturers of smart mahjong machines have grown from two or three to more than a dozen, but He Zehui's online store sales have led the way and are firmly ranked first online.
Since 2016, he has clearly felt that the market has entered a stage of price war. "A mahjong machine is priced at 2500 yuan offline, and we sell for 2200 yuan." As soon as the new merchant came in, they bargained, and one sold for 1400 yuan. ”
Players fight, and some even lose money to sell, grabbing market share. Since the beginning of 2018, the thousand-yuan mahjong machine has been selling hotly, and the merchants with the popular price of card slots have more advantages in sales, and the first throne has changed hands.
But He Zehui is very calm: the brand will not be limited by sales, and it will not pursue the first in quantity. He has confidence in the service system he has built over the years.
First, he considered that the online price is relatively low compared to the offline, and cannot completely ignore the profit margin; second, the online after-sales cost energy, low-profit products are not conducive to the brand to provide more offline services, which will affect the brand reputation in the long run.
More importantly, he found that mahjong machines have more and more overseas customers. China's national essence swept the world, foreigners also use it as an entertainment puzzle game, customers in the United States, Australia through Taobao, Tmall orders, and foreign countries have also developed a number of dealers, a total of more than 500 units. Some also sent customized requirements, such as American customers asking for a voltage of 110 volts, and some customers also let the mahjong cards be marked in English.
In the intelligent program development industry for more than ten years, he has not heard less about foreign products, such as the smart toilet lid in Japanese shopping malls being robbed by the Chinese people, and how good foreign technology products are. Nowadays, watching China's mahjong machines sold overseas, foreigners have learned "HU", and he sighed: There is cultural self-confidence in Chinese mahjong machines.
Mahjong instruction manual for foreigners
He wants to do a good job of Chinese brands, in the price war crazy years, in addition to a 1,000 yuan of drainage in the store, the price of the rest of the styles remains unchanged, in the product, continue to choose to use higher cost brand motherboard, electrodes, plastic parts.
Online competition is becoming increasingly fierce, many mahjong machine brands invest in new style research and development, Shihe also accelerated the speed of research and development, the development of 10 to 30 new products a year, products covering manual folding, electric folding mahjong machine, but also launched a heating, mute and other functions of mahjong machine.
In the past two years, the mahjong machine as a whole has changed to the home style, and he has developed nordic style, Chinese style, coffee table type, table type mahjong machine, which has the functions of entertainment and home decoration.
Last year, the store launched a high-end aircraft of more than 7,000 yuan, imitating the first-class design of the aircraft, improving the aesthetics and increasing the privacy of users. As soon as the new product was launched, it became a small hit, selling more than 2,000 units.
In one year, his mahjong machine sales exceeded 50,000 units, and his customers spread to more than 80 countries around the world, including agents from the United States, Australia and Dubai, as well as mahjong fans in Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia and other places.
Out of stock
In the past two years, affected by the epidemic, more and more people play mahjong at home, and the mahjong machine market has ushered in a wave of sales peaks. In addition to the buyers of Guangdong, Sichuan, Hunan and Hubei in the past, there are also buyers in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Hainan who have also placed orders online, many of whom have bought mahjong machines and given them to their elders to meet their wishes of staying at home for a few laps.
Through background data, he found that female consumers accounted for 60%. "Probably men like to go out to play mahjong, women prefer to play mahjong at home", and female consumers have higher requirements for aesthetics and functions, such as not too noisy, mahjong machine and the decoration style of the house are consistent.
Each area of the card type, table size is different, "Sichuan customers like to use 60 (6 cm long) mahjong, prefer 108, 112 cards of the card type, Hainan to play 52 mahjong, 144 cards, Jiangsu and Zhejiang customers will customize tens of thousands of yuan of solid wood."
In shihe's 60,000-square-meter production base, tens of thousands of mahjong machines are stored. In the 2020 New Year Festival, sales increased sharply, seeing that the inventory was in a hurry, in order to control sales, the product also rose a little price. But the orders are still continuous, and the New Year's Festival is not over, and the store is out of stock.
In the 2021 New Year Festival, the mahjong machine market is still hot. According to Taobao statistics, "mahjong machine" became the most popular New Year goods in the Spring Festival of 2021, with daily sales increasing by more than 130% year-on-year. Tmall Taobao overseas data, in the 2021 New Year Festival, the sales of "mahjong machines" sold overseas through Taobao have more than doubled compared with 2020.
This year, the brand also participated in the "Spring Festival does not close" activity, the New Year's day, overseas consumers are also consulting about the delivery of matters, helpless international logistics suspended services, overseas orders have to be scheduled until the next year to ship.
In He Zehui's view, nowadays, everyone's mobile phone does not leave their hands, their eyes do not leave the screen, it seems that the Internet is lively and extraordinary, in fact, it is weakening feelings, and people are becoming more and more indifferent. But playing mahjong is different, everyone has to put down the mobile phone, full attention, it is not a cold tool, but a communication tool with temperature, can increase the feelings between people.
As people's understanding of mahjong became more comprehensive, he believed that the whole world would fall in love with mahjong culture. In the future, he plans to make the company a public company.
"It's a big market and it's worth digging into."