From the emergence of department stores, retail stores, and mail orders in the second half of the 19th century, to supermarkets in the early 20th century, large supermarkets and warehouse supermarkets in the second half of the 20th century, as well as e-commerce at the end of the 20th century, and community and private domain in the 21st century, the way in which everyone participates and shares runs through the entire history of retail evolution.
The new changes in the current consumption trend have brought social new retail into a new era, with new opportunities and space.
However, in order to grasp this opportunity, the premise is to build humanized/personalized channels that meet the characteristics of the target group, face consumer needs directly, and meet consumer sentiment changes.
From cost-effective to heart-to-heart price ratio
"The essence of the entire history of retail evolution is to focus on the consumer-centric demand form and face the consumer directly. On March 20, at the scene of the "Perfect Say 2024 Annual Speech", Huang Lei, dean of Yicai Business School, founder of the Global School, and former president of Taobao University, said that in the current Wuka era (VUCA), the solution to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty and the construction of the new retail channel system is to focus on consumers. On the supply side, we will build humanized/personalized channels, while on the demand side, we will focus on consumers and grasp the emotional state of consumers at all times.
What makes a good channel?
"Through a sincere way, not to sell the brand, but to resonate with the value, is the most beautiful business model today. Huang Lei believes that in the current era of oversupply, it is becoming less and less difficult for consumers to choose goods, but the complexity of choice is getting higher and higher. Compared with cost performance, Chinese consumers also have a very important concern - the heart-to-price ratio, that is, whether the inner expectations of the brand and the services provided by the brand are cost-effective relative to the price.
Therefore, humanized/personalized channel construction has become the best means of linking, and community has become an important channel to convey brand values and establish emotional links with users today. Today, it is an era to better win the "hearts" of consumers.
This model coincides with the direct sales model adopted by Perfect (China) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Perfect Company") at the beginning of its establishment 30 years ago - to build a humanized channel, directly face consumers, and connect consumer needs and consumer emotions.
In 1994, Gu Runjin and his business partners decided to return to their hometown to start a business. In the beginning, the company had only a few employees and a small rented office. With the successive landing of the first branch, the first store, and the first production base, the new fashion of health and beauty brought by the first batch of products has attracted the first batch of loyal users, and the perfect "group of three or five" has spread all over the country, and the prototype of the big community has emerged.
Today, Perfect Company has invested in the construction of bases in China with a total area of more than 1,100 acres, with an investment of more than 10 billion yuan, with Yangzhou base, South China base, Huaibei base, Jilin base, and Shanghai Hongqiao Perfect Science and Technology Innovation Center, and has set up 34 branches, 6 offices, and more than 10,000 service centers (including shallots) across the country, and its product sales and services have radiated to Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, China, as well as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc., forming a huge social network.
Perfect Golden Eagle HQ
With the in-depth development of the digital economy and the accelerated integration of the real economy, Perfect Company continues to innovate and promote the construction of digital intelligence at all levels of the enterprise, create a "digital community" matrix, and share a healthy and beautiful life with more and more people.
In order to open the new retail era, since 2017, Perfect Company has invested 400 million yuan in digital transformation and upgrading. For example, in 2019, the "Shallot Mall" and "Shallot Academy" were launched to enrich various online tools and platforms to promote the integrated development of online and offline businesses, and in 2022, it reached a strategic cooperation with Tencent Smart Retail to launch the "Perfect Digital Marketing Project".
At the same time, with the theme of "Perfect Characteristic Health Management Concept", Perfect Company has created an offline salon of "health, learning, innovation, openness and sharing" in an all-round way, and took the lead in launching "Healthy China, Perfect Action" to popularize health knowledge and promote health management through multi-dimensional, multi-series and multi-measures, and devote "perfect power" to improve the health literacy of the whole people.
From three people to thousands of families. Gurunjin once said that every employee is a new force, every partner is a practitioner, everyone is the spokesperson of the perfect brand, and every innovation and improvement is making additions to the perfect brand.
Stimulate consumption potential
Coincidentally, Gu Runjin returned to his ancestral country to start a business and established a perfect company in Zhongshan, Guangdong Province In 1994, the classic book of management "Evergreen" was published for the first time, and one of the authors was Jim Collins, an American management scientist.
In December of that year, Jim Collins visited Peter F. Drucker, the father of modern management, and had a classic conversation in management. Collins said, "Everybody is asking, how do I succeed?" and Drucker is asking, "How do I contribute?" Everybody else is asking, how can I make myself worthy? Drucker is asking, how can I be valuable to somebody else?"
As Qin Shuo, an observer of humanities and finance, the initiator of Qin Shuo's circle of friends, and the co-director of the China Business Civilization Research Center, said, business civilization is people-oriented value creation, and it is necessary to be able to continue to create value for society, the environment, and others. An important embodiment of entrepreneurship in China today is to provide consumers with good products and services and stimulate potential consumption.
How to continue to create value for society, the environment, and others? Perfect Company provides a sample.
When he returned to China for the first time, he found that people here rarely used shower gel, and most hotels and homes used soap, so he decided to make daily chemical products. With the understanding of the Chinese market, he found that many consumers are troubled by skin discomfort and other problems, and aloe vera has unique effects and a wide range of applications, so at the beginning of its establishment, Perfect Company established aloe vera series products as the main development direction, and applied aloe vera to health food, personal care products and other product fields.
In the past 30 years, Perfect Company has focused on the big health track, through technological innovation to original research, through intelligent manufacturing, lean production, and continuous product upgrades, to meet consumers' iterative pursuit of health and beauty.
At present, Perfect Company is entering the era of technology originality based on life sciences, from "building platforms, establishing projects, and attracting talents" to self-developed raw materials, exclusive patents and academic achievements, building a perfect scientific research moat.
Through the joint national scientific research institutions, scientific and technological innovation platforms, well-known universities at home and abroad and other high-quality resources, around the four major fields of "bioactive peptides", "natural plants", "traditional Chinese medicine" and "microecology", five scientific research platforms have been established: material & microbial analysis center, quality research & testing center, function & safety evaluation center, formula & process research center, and frontier science and technology research center.
Perfect Life & Health Technology Research Institute
Launched on August 25, 2023, the Zhenhui Essence Rejuvenating Series is the first set of skin care products developed by Perfect Company based on the transformation of skin science research results, and the leading group standard for bifida yeast lysate raw materials is the first group standard in China, filling the gap in the industry standard of this raw material, and building a full-chain core technology from core raw material research and development to industrialization and formula application.
Memory Flower Essence Rejuvenating Skin Serum, which was launched on December 20, 2023, was rated as the "2023 Anti-Wrinkle and Firming Serum" of China's Good Formula.
In the past ten years, Perfect Company has invested more than 1 billion yuan in scientific research. At present, it has 18 innovation platforms and 10 joint laboratories. It has obtained 55 overseas authorized patents, more than 300 authorized patents in China, 543 accredited projects of national accredited laboratories (CNAS), participated in the formulation of 67 national standards, 30 industry standards and 54 group standards.
In October 2023, Perfect Company's project "Key Technology and Industrialization of the Whole Industry Chain of Aloe Vera Health Product Creation" won the second prize of the 2022 Guangdong Provincial Science and Technology Progress Award.
Innovation as the engine, scientific research as the drive. While deeply cultivating the big health industry, in the face of the ever-changing consumer market, Perfect Company empowers industrial upgrading with "digital intelligence perfection", promotes the gradual development of enterprises from automated production to "intelligence + digitalization", and achieves a 46% increase in per capita output value. In 2022, Perfect Company passed the Level 3 certification of intelligent manufacturing capability maturity.
The altruistic concept of creating value for society, the environment and others has promoted Perfect Company to grow into a modern multinational enterprise integrating R&D, production, sales and service, covering the Asia-Pacific region. As an overseas Chinese-funded enterprise, Perfect Company continues to play a leading role in overseas Chinese businessmen, actively participates in the wave of high-quality economic development, and also drives other overseas Chinese businessmen to invest in China and promote the high-quality development of China's economy. At the same time, adhering to the public welfare concept of "taking from the society and using it for the society", Perfect Company has also created a sustainable three-dimensional public welfare ecology, actively serving the development of the country and benefiting the society with actions. By the end of 2023, Perfect has donated more than 955 million yuan in China.
Meet the emotional changes of consumption
Focusing on emotional satisfaction and pleasure has been a prominent feature of consumption decision-making in recent years. Providing consumers with sufficient emotional value has become a major force of current brand marketing.
Yu Zhiling, a senior media commentator and psychological and emotional expert, explained that the era of personal value is coming, but in this era of more and more abundant materials, with the advancement of industrialization and digitalization, production efficiency has increased rapidly, and it is difficult for people to have time to enjoy an emotion slowly in high-speed operation. Therefore, emotional value is extremely important. In addition to providing customers with good products and services, be sure to give emotional value.
Perfect aloe vera gel has become a classic case in the eyes of experts.
As a super single product of Perfect Company, according to incomplete statistics, in the past 30 years, the cumulative number of Perfect Aloe Vera Gel sold through Perfect Company's officially authorized channels has exceeded 500 million.
The raw material comes from Yuanjiang, Yunnan, the "hometown of Chinese aloe vera" at 23 degrees north latitude. During the harvest season, freshly picked aloe vera will be sent from the perfect planting base to the perfect processing base, and it will be fed and processed according to the golden 6-hour rule to maximize the nutritional activity of aloe vera, lock in the natural ingredients, and ensure efficacy.
At the same time, 1,500 kilometers away in Zhongshan, Guangdong, and 2,400 kilometers away in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, in the perfect intelligent manufacturing workshop, an average of 6 aloe vera gels will walk off the production line in less than 1 second, and nearly 100,000 aloe vera gels are sold to more than 100 countries and regions around the world every day.
"According to an 8-year economic cycle, the single product of Perfect Aloe Vera Gel has gone through four economic cycles, surpassing different consumption patterns and even industrial iteration cycles. Huang Lei said that in the rapidly changing market situation, a product can have such a long life cycle and endure for a long time, which is very rare and remarkable.
In 2023, Perfect Aloe Vera Gel was selected as the 20th (20th) China's 500 Most Valuable Brands, with a brand value of RMB 5.227 billion in 2022.
But such an "old brand" will also win another special award in 2023 - the Interesting Brand Award, which is an award for the consumption choices and preferences of young people nowadays.
Why do young people choose perfection?
"In this era, everyone is their own protagonist, everyone is willing to stand in the center of the stage, the perfect customer is in the center of the stage, you have to have the courage to help him shape a stage that makes him excited and accomplished. The product makes his life healthier, and every day of communication makes him mentally healthier, which is the perfect logic. Huang Lei said.
Therefore, this "Interesting Brand Award", on the one hand, represents the timelessness of the classics, and on the other hand, it grasps the core value of the brand, which is the confidence in the product, the confidence in the corporate vision and concept carried by the product, and the cultural confidence in the national tide. This self-confidence once followed the excellent expatriates to the world, returned to Zhongshan together, started anew, and blossomed throughout the Chinese market.
Over the past 30 years, Perfect Company has adhered to the "three unchanged" principles: the concept of providing consumers with high-quality products and services, the concept of providing career development opportunities for Perfect Venture Partners, and the concept of investment and long-term development in China.
"There is no perfect thing in the world, but we take this as the goal, and continue to innovate and pursue until it is close", this is the original intention of the perfect company, with the arrival of a new era of social new retail, a hundred years of perfection is also "coming".