- Chief Business Intelligence
- Chief Business Intelligence
Introduction: The real estate downturn, and the upstream and downstream industries related to it have no good life? No, the crisis of the upstream cement enterprises is not over, and the downstream has come to the bad news that the home furnishing companies have run away.
A well-known home furnishing brand called "Youfan Art" suddenly announced the closure of its online flagship store, leaving behind consumers who were waiting for delivery and ran away.
Two days ago, its flagship store was no longer visible on major online shopping platforms.
In recent years, the real estate industry has been galloping on the downhill road, and it can't stop the car at all, and the upstream and downstream industries related to real estate have also ushered in a performance winter.
The front foot cement industry has not yet come out of the giant swing, and the back foot home furnishing industry has ushered in a "big reshuffle".
In the past two years, companies in the home furnishing industry have continued to go bankrupt, and it is not uncommon for dealers to run away, but I didn't expect that now it will have an annual sales of 1 billion, and the industry "dark horse" that once topped Tmall Double 11 can't hold on!
Falling from the clouds to the bottom, what happened to Youfan Art?
Can furniture also be sold as a "work of art"?
When it comes to Youfan art, the most impressive thing about this brand is "art". Furniture can also be sold as a "work of art", what did its founders think?
Don't you say, the founder of Youfan Art is not simple: he graduated from Tsinghua University, and decided to resign and sell his house to start a business in order to spread the "warm life aesthetics" to the world, with the purpose of being an "affordable art home" for consumers.
He also threw out a question in an interview with the media:
"Would you rather buy a home that is cheap, sells a lot but has a very ordinary appearance, or would you rather buy a special home that is a little more expensive, but has a very artistic sense?"
It stands to reason that it is more artistic than the general home, and more cost-effective than other artistic homes.
But "the aroma of wine is also afraid of deep alleys", if you want consumers to see its good products, I'm afraid you have to work hard!
In order to quickly enter the market, Youfan Furniture has thought of a different way: directly into online shopping!
It has cooperated with Ali since it entered the artist home in 2014, and has eaten up the dividends brought by the rapid development of the Internet, attracting countless fans on online shopping platforms such as Tmall and Taobao, and the fan conversion rate is very high.
In particular, the positioning of "affordable art home" has attracted a lot of middle-class families who want to buy "different home", as long as they pay a little more, they can buy furniture with completely different styles.
Not to mention the continuous increase in per capita income in those years, the budget in the hands of the young middle class is more, and it just looks like the other products of Youfan Art, this brand is really firmly riding the east wind of consumption upgrading.
But there is more than one of them selling art homes on the online shopping platform, how can Youfan Art stand out from the crowd of home furnishings?
They came up with a clever idea: to help customers design an application scenario, consumers can see the 3D pictures of Youfan Art's products integrated into the overall decoration through their mobile phones, and feel the effect of combining with different home furnishings.
Originally, you can only see a picture of the online shopping furniture suddenly three-dimensional, which greatly enhances the customer's sense of experience, and even better is that Youfan Art can allow consumers to DIY the scene they want, to others that is buying home, to Youfan Art, which can also be their own designer!
Not only that, Youfan Art is also very good at marketing activities, holding designer salons, and 11 brands such as mushroom rental, betta live broadcast, iQiyi and so on to create theme rooms.
If online shopping can't be touched after all, consumers are still a little uneasy, Youfan Art has also opened a number of offline experience stores, specifically for the middle class living in first- and second-tier cities to take a look at the store, sit down, it can be said that all aspects have been considered.
This set of "combination boxing" has made Youfan Art a great success, and in just a few years, it has laid a foundation in the home furnishing industry, not only achieving annual sales of 1 billion yuan, but also topping the Tmall American home furnishing sales list in 2018, and completing nearly 100 million yuan A round of financing a year later, with an average annual compound growth rate of 111%!
Youfan Art's career is so successful that it has even been included in the Harvard Business School Teaching Case Library!
At this time, the art of Youfan is called a day in the sky, and the future is bright, but if you think about it carefully, you can find that something is wrong, and there is actually a hidden crisis under the pomp.
Success is also "art", defeat is also "art"
The rise and fall of the home furnishing industry has a strong correlation with real estate, when the economy is developing rapidly, the house sells hotly, and the home furnishing industry can also eat meat, and the property market ushers in a cold winter after the epidemic, and the good days of the home furnishing industry are over.
Although Youfan Art continues to increase its marketing efforts and plans to build its own "new retail channel" in order to save the cost of online shopping platforms, it has long been unable to return to the good old time of 1 billion annual sales in the past.
has 1.61 million fans, but since 2020, the sales of Youfan Art have been declining, and the once proud "million-level members" and "high fan conversion rate" can no longer be boasted!
This is not the end, along with the decrease in sales, there is also the market prospect of Youfan Art.
Before the epidemic, the economic development momentum was good, and the middle class was willing to buy Youfan Art's home furnishing products for aesthetics and mood, and the dividends of consumption upgrading made it a first-line brand.
But now the wallets of the middle class are not so bulging, everyone has become more cautious in using money, and they pay more attention to the quality and cost performance of products, and it is not so easy to make money from the middle class just by "art".
After fading the halo of "art", the products of Youfan Art are not so glamorous.
Youfan Art once relied on the high appearance of the product and the aesthetic value of some of the old brands, but important factors such as the practicality, user experience, quality and service of the product have become deduction points!
The praise of users on the Internet is mainly focused on the visual elements such as fashionable appearance and unique style, but there is no praise in the comfort and other user experience, and there is a lack of "careful thinking" of the design, and at the same time, there are frequent negative reviews such as "the smell does not disperse" and "the quality is problematic".
"Zara in the home furnishings" can't do much about it.
You must know that the technology gap between home furnishing companies is not open, and after the industry downturn, large and small manufacturers have also begun to roll up the cost performance and fight the price war.
Although it claims to cooperate with "top factories", the production cost of Youfan Art must not be as low as that of its own old home.
Even if the price is forcibly reduced, it will not be impossible, but it will lead to a decline in the quality control of the product, which in turn will affect the reputation of Youfan Art.
I don't know if Youfan Art has really lowered the price of the manufacturer, but judging from the content of the black cat complaint, I'm afraid it's more or less!
Not having its own factory also means that the after-sales service of Youfan Art will also encounter certain difficulties, coupled with the attitude of after-sales service is not good, it has been repeatedly criticized in this regard.
In 2020, there was a serious accident in which the door of the Youfan Art wardrobe in a customer's home fell down, and even the wall was smashed out of a pit, which would be terrible if it hit someone!
It took more than a year for this wardrobe to arrive, and after a year of use, there was a serious problem, and the customer service continued to bargain, and was willing to change a cabinet under constant requests.
Although I don't know if these consumers accidentally bought shoddy products, these bad reviews obviously affected the reputation of the brand, making the already unoptimistic sales even worse.
In addition, Youfan Art has not caught up with the trend of home intelligence, and has given up a great opportunity to add scientific and technological value to its own products.
There is neither functional improvement nor cost-effective advantage, and before the epidemic, the middle class would still pay for "art", and after the epidemic, the added value of "art" was the first object to be abandoned by consumers.
The "dark horse in the home furnishing industry" has also been reduced to running away
Youfan Art, which once shouted "bring art to consumers", has accurately eaten the dividends of middle-class consumption upgrading, but the dividends will always be exhausted one day.
I don't know if Youfan Art thinks that this dividend can last forever, or if it is too focused on R&D and sales, and it is not accidental that this brand will fall to the point where it is today.
Nowadays, the sales route of Youfan Art has no market advantage, but the problem of online stores is becoming more and more prominent, and the lack of physical stores and the lack of its own factory have become its eternal pain.
Now it's quietly running away, leaving consumers who have already paid a deposit in place.
A large number of consumers who have paid a deposit cannot get the goods and cannot refund the money, and Youfan Art does not warn or guarantee the delivery, but guides customers to refund to the Tmall platform.
You must know that Youfan Furniture cooperated with Tmall at the beginning, but now it wants the platform to help it solve the problem, which is a bit unkind!
However, Tmall doesn't buy it, consumers can't refund through the Tmall platform, the platform and merchants insist on their own words, and the consumers who are caught in the middle are finally hurt.
It is a pity that Youfan Art can't support the cold winter of the industrial and real estate industry chain, but as a well-known and well-known brand, Youfan Art's approach is also problematic, which not only hurts consumers, but also gives other industrial enterprises a bad start.
Write at the end
The founder of Youfan Art once let consumers choose between cost-effective furniture and art furniture, but now it seems that consumers still want a furniture with good quality and on-time delivery.
After the economic downturn, the middle class also had to tighten their belts, after all, it is fundamental to live a good place, and art and distance should be put aside for the time being.
Have you ever bought the furniture of Youfan Art, what do you think of its products? Welcome to leave your comments in the comment area.
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