The daughter took over for 7 years, and the company's net loss was nearly 3.2 billion!

On January 22, Shanghai ushered in the first snow of 2024.

In the cold wind, Meibang Clothing (002269. SZ, share price 1.67 yuan, market value 4.196 billion yuan) in Zhoupu's new headquarters park is silent, and this "young" building complex that is still under renovation is about to witness a return of "power".

During this period of time, Zhou Chengjian, who was nearly 60 years old, ran in Shanghai and Hangzhou to run for the transformation of Meibang clothing. At about two o'clock in the afternoon of January 22, Zhou Chengjian wore a white jacket and walked quickly into the conference room.

At the second extraordinary general meeting of shareholders of Meibang Apparel in 2024, after voting, Zhou Chengjian was elected as a non-independent director of Meibang Apparel with 99.9736% of the support rate. On the evening of the same day, Meibang issued another announcement, announcing that Hu Jiajia, who had resigned as chairman, would resign as president and be replaced by his father Zhou Chengjian.

At this point, the "Zhou Chengjian's return to power", which has been speculated for a long time, has landed, and the power within Meibang clothing has once again gathered in the hands of Zhou Chengjian.

"Hu Jiajia will not hold any position in the company, and I will do some specific things by myself. Talking about the division of labor between Hu Jiajia and himself, Zhou Chengjian told the reporter of "Daily Economic News".

What are the considerations of Zhou Chengjian, who has returned to the stage? What will happen to Meibang Clothing, which has accompanied a generation? On the afternoon of January 22, a reporter from "Daily Economic News" (hereinafter referred to as NBD) chatted with Zhou Chengjian.

It's true that there have been a lot of things that haven't been focused on in the past few years

It's not a simple chase for big hits

The store was closed, the revenue declined, and in the more than 7 years since Hu Jiajia took over, the performance of Meibang clothing has been declining. According to incomplete statistics, over the past seven years, the cumulative loss of net profit attributable to the parent company of Meibang Apparel has been nearly 3.2 billion yuan. The national brands that once occupied the wardrobes of young people have gradually become "marginalized" in the era of e-commerce. With Zhou Chengjian's return this time, what will Meibang look like?

NBD: The apparel industry is iterating rapidly and the degree of segmentation is getting higher and higher, what is the positioning of Meibang now?

Zhou Chengjian: Meibang's products have always been functional, diverse, and comfortable, and the positioning of a young and trendy brand will not change. The functions include rainproof, sunscreen, and windproof, and we will not change the functional products around these paths, which is the inherent gene of Meibang. The second is diversification, and our IP cooperation, printing, and cutting will not change. The third dimension is comfort, we are talking about the basics, and this will not change.

NBD: Last year, a lot of functional clothing, including jackets, was very popular, and Meibang was doing it ten years ago, why didn't it "run out" last year?

Zhou Chengjian: In the past few years, we have indeed had a lot of things that we have not focused on, and relatively speaking, there are more points to be done. This is also why I have understood the link from the retail side to the supply chain side and then to the brand product strategy side in the past few months. We can not start from scratch, but also to meet the demands of the current consumers, and at the same time to be more in line with the DNA (gene) of Meibang, how to get through this thing? We summarize in 6 words, function, diversity, comfort, around these 6 words, from the quality of the product, cost-effective, better presented to consumers.

NBD: Where will Meibang's next big hit appear?

Zhou Chengjian: I don't think we can simply go back to the logic of a pure online single channel brand - that is, the problem of how to make a single explosive product. In recent years, the success of some brands has indeed come from focusing on a single explosive product and completely opening up the supply chain, which is indeed a very good success story. However, it may not be suitable for Meibang to take this road, Metersbonwe still wants to take on the recognition of national brands, and we can't go to a single category all at once and become a supply chain category.

There is no longer a clear distinction between offline and online

On the first day of officially returning to the helm of Milbank, Zhou Chengjian sent a letter to all Milbond employees. In the letter, Zhou Chengjian mentioned digitalization many times, saying that he would use digitalization to raise the awareness of the new retail strategy in the whole domain, use digitalization to help the supply chain improve quality, reduce costs and increase efficiency, and use digitalization to reshape organizational efficiency.

Since 2023, Zhou Chengjian has taken a lot of classes on live broadcast e-commerce, and has mixed with a group of post-95s and post-00s. Although he has a lot of daily work to do, he hardly missed classes in the Douyin e-commerce course. "On the first day, I was also very psychologically resistant, and when the time came, would I be able to adapt? Will I understand? What is everyone's opinion? We are all sitting there, am I like a 'monster', an old comrade. ”

After more than a year of study, Zhou Chengjian began to promote the reform of Meibang. "The first one is to change a perception that there is no longer a clear distinction between offline and online, which is an important point that I have realized when I have learned new retail knowledge in the past year. ”

NBD: What is the future business strategy?

Zhou Chengjian: The first thing is to pull in cognition, in the past 5 years, everyone talked about the distinction between online and offline, today I think there is no distinction between offline and online, and each scenario needs to strengthen the cognition of new retail.

There are discrepancies in some of the principled cognitions of Meibang in the past ten years, and we only understood it as offline real shelves and online electronic shelves when we did online, but in fact, this logic is not the same, it is actually an ecological change.

Content e-commerce is to find people, search e-commerce is to find people, our offline traditional stores, from a certain point of view, it is actually a brand looking for people. Consumers come to your store (because) of the brand's cognition, and then go to the second link to find the goods, which can also be said to be people looking for goods. From this point of view, we will start from content e-commerce, each store has a cloud store, and the cloud store should do a good job in the shopping mall and open up the offline and online links.

The second level is the supply chain. The reform of the supply chain is extremely important, so I have been in Shanghai a lot recently, mainly around the restructuring of the supply chain to meet the needs of new retail, which is also something that we have not crossed over in the past so many years.

NBD: What is a cloud store?

Zhou Chengjian: The stores that open live broadcasts in various places are called Yunmen stores. In principle, we use the original shopping guide to cultivate (anchor), because the original shopping guide understands the brand and the product.

Nowadays, live broadcasting, especially these cloud stores, is more direct and needs to create a scene of interaction and communication between products and consumers. Therefore, the former cattle store manager, cattle shopping guide, and fashion consultant, this group of people are better seedlings.

We also have a few cases where the owner of a franchisee in Huaibei, Anhui Province, turned out to be a clerk. Since the first day of opening (his own store), he has been broadcasting live by himself, and he has broadcast more than 10,000 yuan on the first day, and now the average GMV (gross merchandise transaction) per game is about 30,000 yuan.

Next, our first task this year is to study how to replicate our successful new retail cases in the franchise market more extensively.

NBD: How will the new plan be implemented?

Zhou Chengjian: Traditional enterprises are more of an emotional assessment and emotional assessment plus time investment assessment, rather than quantifiable assessment, and even we have not done enough work in this aspect of the company's goal determination and goal dismantling.

The core of this year is to disassemble the goals and match the performance. In the past few months, we have broken down our 2024 targets from annual to monthly, and then further to departments and individuals.

National Business Daily