"I am a relatively filial person, I always want to buy something at home during the New Year's holidays, I think many people will be like me, Chinese are originally filial piety."
This year is the 6th year that Li Shike founded "Beauty in Old Age" to do middle-aged and elderly women's clothing, and when it comes to the reason for doing business, it must be to make the income higher and the life better, but the greater original intention is to serve the elderly in the third, fourth and fifth tier cities.
"Now that many young people are out of town, we hope to help buyers better pass on their filial piety to their families, which is something I find very meaningful."
In fact, not only Li Shike, we found that more and more merchants who originally did traditional men's and women's clothing have poured into the track of middle-aged and elderly women's clothing. Some are like Li Shike with a simple original intention, and some are looking at the industry opportunities brought about by aging and channel changes.
Tianyancha data shows that nearly half of the companies operating middle-aged and elderly women's clothing in the market are newly registered in the past five years.
On the one hand, under the trend of aging, the consumption demand and base of middle-aged and elderly people are expanding; On the one hand, after the middle-aged and elderly people "touch the Internet", the consumption vitality of platforms such as Douyin e-commerce has increased. In addition, the "filial piety economy" has entered daily life, and the activity of "mother's dress" is natural.
We found that most of the businesses that can take root and grow for a long time are inseparable from two labels: one is Douyin and the other is Changshu.
So, we came to Changshu, which takes "mother's clothing" as the business card of the industry, and visited several representative businesses to see their growth process and solutions for future sustainable operation in an increasingly competitive environment.
With no plans and ambitions, and no insight into trends, Li Shike, like most clothing bosses in Changshu, went from working in a garment factory to slowly doing his own business, just thinking about "working hard and earning more".
In 2020, Li Shike is still supplying online stores and physical stores, and the phased explosion of online business makes him feel good, but he noticed a phenomenon: many customers around him have given up their original online stores and started Douyin e-commerce, and have achieved much greater results than he imagined.
At that time, there were almost no people selling "grandma clothes" on Douyin, and Li Shike felt that this opportunity could not be missed.
The beauty of the old age Douyin live broadcast room
At the beginning, he didn't understand anything, so Li Shike learned speech skills every day and insisted on broadcasting. In order to accumulate more users in the initial stage, he operated in the form of profit concessions or even small losses, and launched "seckill".
Maybe it's because the product is powerful, maybe it's because the cost performance is really high, and soon, the live broadcast room of the beauty of the beauty in his later years will reach thousands of people online.
Li Shike has always encouraged the team to dig the foundation first to build a house, and making money is the next thing. Half a year later, the live broadcast room switched to flat broadcasting, and the fan base accumulated in the early stage maintained sales and began to make profits.
It was also after that that the beauty of her later years gradually got on the right track in Douyin e-commerce, and grew all the way to the head merchant of middle-aged and elderly clothing.
The beauty of the old age Douyin live broadcast room
When Li Shike was still "making friends", Li Geng had just entered Douyin e-commerce to explore.
This entrepreneurial veteran who went to Changshu in 96 to start a clothing business, laughed and said that he had more than 20 years of experience in "losing money", but in Douyin e-commerce, profits came faster than expected.
Li Geng's Douyin e-commerce started with down jackets, and there were not many down products on the platform at that time, and it was relatively cold in the winter of 20 years, so Li Geng, who had supply chain advantages, caught that round of outbreak. Later, I saw that my friend did a good job of making mother's clothes, so I switched to products and began to focus on mother's clothes.
"In fact, our fans cover a wide range of ages, from their twenties to their fifties." Thanks to Li Geng's more than 20 years of supply chain and development accumulation, all the products of Supai Shangpin founded by him are designed and developed by themselves, and it is precisely because of such a good product power that in addition to winning the favor of middle-aged and elderly groups, sometimes young people in their twenties will also buy them back and wear them themselves.
Despite this, Li Geng still took a lot of detours when he was doing Douyin e-commerce. "At that time, I didn't understand the portraits and labels of the crowd, and it was purely random at the beginning." At the beginning, he used his usual Douyin account to do live broadcasts directly, which caused the speed of the account to slow down a lot.
In terms of short video shooting, at first, I tried jokes, street photography and other content to no avail, but then Li Geng started to shoot the daily life of the live broadcast room, and it slowly took a turn for the better.
When he turned to make a mother's outfit, Li Geng also experienced the exploration of product selection and replacement, and then slowly got on the right track. "No matter what industry you do, you have to stick to it, and I think Douyin e-commerce still has a lot of potential." Li Geng has seen too many friends around him leave the scene hastily and fall short, and he feels sorry because he didn't persevere.
Today, the profits of Supai Shangpin have multiplied several times compared to the traditional business in the past. Although many friends are persuading Li Geng to develop more platforms, he is worried about losing big because of small things, so he has been focusing on Douyin e-commerce. Even in order to avoid the broadcast of other platforms, it will be specially labeled as "Douyin Supai Shangpin".
A short video of Supai Shangpin's Douyin
Fate also gave Li Wei a similar script.
"When I first started doing it, I didn't have a clue, and the video didn't work very well, but one day during the live broadcast, I suddenly had an idea to shoot the live broadcast clip into a short video, and the traffic went up." Li Wei's turnaround also came from a change in the way he filmed.
Later, he analyzed, on the one hand, the picture in the live broadcast room is more realistic, and the picture sense is better; On the other hand, it may be that many users did not know that this account had a live broadcast at that time. He didn't expect that an unintentional move would make his account popular, and the live broadcast room would increase from less than 100 people to more than 1,000 people online.
As early as 2018, Li Wei did live broadcast e-commerce on other platforms, and at that time he was still making men's clothing, the plate was relatively small, and the anchor couldn't recruit him, so he finally failed. Later, the profits of his online store became lower and lower, and he had experience in live broadcast e-commerce, so he switched tracks to Douyin and started to wear a mother's outfit.
"At the beginning, I made a mother's outfit because the requirements for the anchor's image were not so high, and it was easier to recruit." But the unfamiliarity with middle-aged and elderly clothing still made Li Wei suffer. "At that time, we had only been in contact for a few months, and all aspects of the supply chain were still figuring it out, which caused us to miss the node of the outbreak."
In the case of the industry's explosive orders, Li Wei once faced unsalable because the supply chain, team and other aspects were not in place. But after all, he is an "e-commerce professional", Li Wei quickly entered the state, killed a characteristic track of plus-size mother's clothing, and established his own brand - complex clothing.
Complex costumes Douyin live broadcast room
Starting from Xiaobai, experiencing losses, stagnation, and confusion, insisting on exploration and evolution, and finally seeing the light of day, these three strange but intertwined fates of "Boss Li" represent the epitome of an industrial group being changed by Douyin e-commerce.
Changshu, which has witnessed the glory of the offline clothing wholesale era, has now found a second spring in live broadcast e-commerce. Today, almost half of the middle-aged and elderly women's clothing in Douyin e-commerce comes from this city that has completely embraced live streaming.
"The support of Douyin e-commerce has also helped us a lot." Li Geng said frankly that he has been able to get to this day, insisting on investment is one thing, and the opportunities and support of the platform are also very important.
Today, with the help of a series of support programs such as "Meet Good Domestic Products", more small and medium-sized businesses and high-quality domestic products are accelerating out of the circle.
Li Wei also agrees: "Douyin e-commerce is a decentralized platform, which is still very friendly to small and medium-sized businesses, and the support is also very large. ”
Opportunity tends to favor only those who are prepared. In Douyin e-commerce, although it is often possible to encounter outbreaks of chance, it also needs to be able to undertake it in order to achieve sustainable development.
"If the capabilities in all aspects are not updated and iterated, they will definitely decline slowly." As Li Wei said, this is why we can see a lot of accounts or IPs that are "the peak of debut", and the traffic has risen in waves and quickly disappeared and been forgotten.
What kind of capabilities are needed to continue to operate and keep up with the increment? When we tried to find the answer from these "Boss Li", we found that no one had any exclusive operation secrets, and the most mentioned products and services were the products.
Let's start with the product. Li Geng pays attention to the product because he has suffered losses in it. "I learned the lesson of opening an online store before, and the loss of the online store at that time was because the product was not good, and the investment was not done well, so after entering Douyin e-commerce, I put the product first."
Although many people around him pay more attention to anchors and live broadcast rooms when doing Douyin e-commerce, Li Geng doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of the past, this time he prioritized products before the live broadcast room, and spent a lot of energy on the screening of the supply chain. Relying on word of mouth, integrity, and no arrears, Li Geng slowly attracted a group of high-quality supply chain partners.
According to his review, whether it is the explosion of the down jacket category in the early days or the later victory in mother's clothing, it is all caused by supply chain differences.
Because of this, after the industry environment has deteriorated in the past two years, his response is to focus on product development, not only the order volume of the live broadcast room has been steadily increasing, but the frequency of explosive models is also getting higher and higher.
The latest hit of Supai Shangpin
In the past few days, a short-sleeved off-the-shoulder T-shirt has exploded again, and 17,000 orders were sold that night, Li Geng attributed it to the original design and strict quality control, "Everyone is almost the same way to play, and the product is king." ”
At this point, Li Shike also made the same choice. Since last year, he has been talking about exclusivity with upstream fabrics, printing and other manufacturers, and many of the popular models in the beauty live broadcast room in his later years have been prepared since the second half of last year.
"In fact, there is no technical content on the operation side, and the core still depends on the product. We can only continue to communicate with the supply chain and constantly improve our products in order to have more room for development. "With the current account influence of the beauty of his later years, he can make the volume larger, but Li Shike still maintains restraint and hopes to continue to make the quality of the goods better.
A new Chinese suit for the beauty of old age
The improvement of quality has also brought due returns. Recently, the weekly sales of a national style short-sleeved suit in the beauty of the past years have increased by more than 2 times, and as the output of explosive products becomes more and more stable, such a result is no surprise to Li Shike.
In his view, it is difficult to sustain the model of low price with inferior products, and only by continuing to do a good job of products and screening out customers who accept slightly higher customer unit prices can it be possible to continue to deepen design capabilities and development capabilities, so as to go further.
"Most of our users are bought by their children to give to their parents, filial piety is priceless, so we have been very strict in the control of product quality, I dare to say that the quality of our products can beat 95% of merchants." In his view, enterprises want to make money and survive, but making money must come from bringing good things to consumers.
This is also the reason why Li Shike was unwilling to reduce the quality of the product even if he lost money at the beginning.
Li Wei's insistence on product quality has received more direct positive feedback. "Many buyers in our live broadcast room have reported that our quality is very good, and they have bought it for many years. There are also many who buy one for their mother first and find that the quality is very good, and immediately buy another one for their aunt or aunt. "For example, a summer suit in the store with the third highest repurchase rate has nearly 20,000 repeat customers.
A new summer look for intricate clothing
Perhaps it is the recognition of these users that motivates them to continue to work the product.
And then there's the service. Li Wei has never been stingy in service and experience, not only the customer service salary is higher than others, but the refund and compensation policies of goods are also better than others, for example, in some cases, other families do not give refunds, but he can; Sometimes there is a small problem with the clothes and he needs to compensate 5 yuan, and he takes the initiative to compensate 10 yuan.
Therefore, the reputation of complex clothing is maintained above 4.8 all year round.
"In the early days, when the platform did not have this aspect of assessment, many peers treated customer service as soon as they wanted to, and did not accept it if they didn't want to, resulting in a very poor dynamic word-of-mouth score." However, paying attention to customer service and after-sales is the principle that Li Wei, who has rich experience in e-commerce, has carved into his bones.
He knows very well that after the early stage of traffic explosion, the real life and death is not only the product but the experience of the service.
He also often looks at video reviews or asks customer service if there is any user feedback, and sometimes buyers want to have deeper pockets and longer trouser legs, and as long as they receive feedback, he will definitely make adjustments and changes. Later, many popular models and patterns were inspired by user interactions.
In contrast, Li Shike is even more "aggressive" in this regard. "I'd rather hire a few more people to sit there and not work, and I don't want to go unanswered when a customer has a question." Li Shike now regards customer service as the most important thing to reflect the brand value.
The beauty of the old age Douyin live broadcast room
In fact, he also calculated that according to the existing business scale of Beauty in his later years, 5 customer service is enough, but he recruited 10 people, and invested a huge amount of money in building a customer service team and weekly customer service training.
But when Li Shike first entered Douyin e-commerce, to a large extent, he was the group of people who "neglected customer service" in Li Wei's mouth.
At that time, Li Shike felt that one day shift and one night shift of customer service was enough, but once there was a problem in the factory, which caused a batch of goods to not be sent, and many users came to ask about the situation, but the customer service did not have time to reply, so all the information was blocked.
After a while, Li Shike saw that the rate of negative reviews was getting higher and higher, and he found out about this problem. "I didn't sleep all night, and I felt that I had failed a lot of users." Since then, Li Shike has repeatedly emphasized internally that service always comes first, and laziness and inaction are never allowed.
"The biggest weakness of human beings is self-deception, and I hope that when we encounter any small problem, we will not let it go, and we will seriously solve and optimize it." Li Shike said frankly that in the past few years, he has seen too many friends and classmates around him go bankrupt and go into debt, and found that many enterprises finally went to extinction, all of which fell on inconspicuous small problems.
Therefore, he also pays attention to listening to user opinions, and adjusts the shortcomings and development direction by paying attention to the video comment area and a large number of after-sales evaluations. "I think there are two core points, product quality must be OK, customer service must be OK, and it is difficult to go on well without one."
In this era, many people dig out their minds to seek an operation cheats and traffic password, but from these three Boss Li, we see that "magic skills" are difficult to achieve quickly, and many times detours are also the only way.
After all, the environment is changing, users are changing, and the operation strategy itself needs to be constantly changing. "If I have to say anything, I think there is only one thing, and that is to be flexible." In Li Shike's eyes, there is no definite method of operation, and everyone's approach is similar, and what can be compared is the ability to adapt quickly.
Li Shike recalled that he had followed the growth of the platform all the way, and Douyin e-commerce was always "forced" to respond faster and ship faster, and many people couldn't adapt to it and complained, but this did force the company's capabilities to become more comprehensive.
When he reflected on his own, he also felt that it was not necessarily a good thing to sell a product for three years in a traditional online store in the past. "Without it, you will be forced to move forward, and there will be no new opportunities in the future after holding the old model for three years." Adapting to the rhythm of Douyin e-commerce has improved his innovation ability and development ability a lot.
Li Geng has a similar view. "The law is to invest in the flow and test products, new products are test products, and they are tested and invested, in fact, everyone does this, and what can be compared is the professional ability in every link."
In addition, paying attention to change and being more willing to try is also one of the principles that Li Geng has always adhered to. "Basically, we have a good grasp of the time for every reform and transformation of Douyin e-commerce, and we have not missed any opportunities."
For example, when many people didn't know about the Selected Alliance, Supai Shangpin was able to steadily get thousands of orders a day from the Selected Alliance. Including after Douyin e-commerce vigorously developed the shelf field, Li Geng soon began to lay out, and so far the sales of pictures and videos of Supai Shangpin are considered high in the circle.
The mall orders of Supai Shangpin have been rising steadily, and now there are hundreds or thousands of orders every day even if they are not live-streamed, why can they continue to seize these new increments? Li Geng doesn't think he has any tricks, "A lot of people may not pay attention to these changes, or they don't take them seriously, but we try to make every change." ”
Their story continues, Li Shike is learning to do IP recently, but he has no clue for the time being, Li Geng and Li Wei are continuing to study the shelf field, trying to increase the proportion of the mall in the overall business volume.
But one thing in common is that they all believe that Douyin e-commerce is still a battleground for merchants, and as the platform's services become more and more mature, Douyin e-commerce is becoming a more suitable position to calm down and do a good job in long-term operation.
Compared with many people who only see the environment involution, lying down passively, or only focusing on a temporary outbreak, we will look at these Boss Li from the perspective of growth, and we will find that the secret of Changhong is "endless".