This Year's "Severe Winter" Consumption Outflow Has Become A Predicament.

This year's economic "severe winter", Chinese consumers can also bring a strong "warmth" to the global luxury industry.

Not since the 2009 financial crisis. Luxury brand We will say that we do not attach importance to the Chinese market, and increase our efforts to establish stores in China. Behind this is the hope that China can bring more profit margins to the brand.

However, the opposite is true. Recently, the Research Institute of wealth quality released the "2015 China luxury report". The survey results show that in 2015, Chinese luxury goods consumption for overseas consumers amounted to US $91 billion, an increase of over 12% over the same period last year, which means that 78% of Chinese consumers' consumption of luxury goods occurred overseas, and the cost of consumption went further.

One of the reasons for the outflow of consumption is that many consumers think domestic tariffs are too high, resulting in a very high price difference at home and abroad. On the other hand, the reason is that the brand overestimates the Chinese market, and at the same time, there are too many "intermediate links" in China. Luxury brands have come to the age of full acceleration of channel flattening.

Consumption outflow dilemma

For most Chinese luxury consumers, there are basically overseas buying experiences. Factors such as worship of native countries, speed of style renovation and price gap are the main reasons for considering overseas purchases of luxury goods. This phenomenon began quietly more than 10 years ago. With the increase of domestic anti-corruption efforts, luxury consumption has exceeded business gifts, and overseas shopping extravagance has intensified.

In 2015, despite the stimulation of a series of government policies, domestic consumption rebounded, which is expected to reach US $25 billion 800 million, up 3% over the same period last year. luxury goods market The share of the global luxury market decreased further from 11% in 2014 to 10%. However, the purchasing power of Chinese consumers is still strong. In 2015, the consumption of luxury goods by Chinese consumers reached 91 billion US dollars, up by 12% over the same period last year.

In most people's impression, the price of luxury goods abroad is much lower than that in China. But this situation has changed a lot now. Zhou Ting, President of the Institute of wealth and quality, told reporters that in 2011, when the wealth quality first conducted luxury research, it found that the price difference between most domestic and foreign luxury goods was 50% to 60%, and the highest was 80%.

At the beginning of 2015, Chanel took the lead in upgrading the price of European products, and the Chinese mainland did not rise or fall. In addition, many Swiss watches brand also implemented the "three places and the same price strategy", coupled with Gucci[micro-blog, and other brands to strengthen the discount, to a large extent stimulated the sales of Chinese stores. "Nowadays, most luxury goods at home and abroad differ in price range from 20% to 30%, mainly due to exchange rate factors and certain operating costs." Zhou Ting said.

However, this series of measures has little effect, and the industry believes that this needs a long-term and continuous process to reverse the buying habits of local consumers over the years.

20 years ago, luxury goods entered the Chinese market, mainly through the introduction of several luxury agency groups. At that time, the Internet had not yet emerged and the information was seriously asymmetric. "Buying low and selling high" is the essence of commercial circulation. In order to earn more profits, agents raise the retail price from luxury brands to the wholesale price, while luxury brands also overestimate the Chinese market and acquiesce in such behavior. Even later, the brand gradually withdrew the agency, but it still maintained a high retail price for a period of time.

The "bad fruit" is finally reflected. The Institute of wealth quality predicts that the phenomenon of consumption outflow will peak in 2016 and gradually decline in 2017. In the past two years, for luxury enterprises, one of the important tasks is to "go to the middle", change dealers, and achieve "one network and the whole world".

Business mode transfer

Chen Kai is a certain Italy. Men's wear brand Beijing sales director, he told reporters that clothing and leather goods, watches and other brands are different, the impact of extravagant shopping tide is relatively small, but even so, the single day retail sales of less than 10000 yuan has happened this year, "but never before, sales personnel are often busy."

Today, retail sales decline, but also led to the instability of the sales team, recruitment, training, assessment, resignation and re recruitment...... Now, almost to such a dead circle, personnel changes are large, so that many customers feel that domestic services are much worse than abroad.

After several considerations, including the LV brand big guy, in 2015, China has adjusted its stores in China, closed down some shops with poor profitability, and concentrated on opening the flagship store. Zhou Ting told reporters that it is expected that in the next two years, the number of luxury stores will be the largest in two years. At the same time, the brand will also make some changes to existing stores, increase the scale and function of existing stores, and transform traditional stores to lifestyle experience and customization centers. Many brands strive to transform themselves from product suppliers to service providers through this transformation, and finally to become a customized brand of all lifestyle lifestyle, so as to realize the transformation of business mode from B2C to C2B.

Some luxury brands represented by Hermes, LV and Patek Philippe have been keen to open "HOME" for two years. The brand side is very taboo. Consumers continue to call this new business status "shop". They do not think that this is a place where sales are the main ones. They want more consumers to soak in here. Whether they are reading books, coffee or meeting with friends, they are good choices. They are more and more like high-end clubs.

With the popularity of this format, the offline stores of brands have gradually become the display centers of brand culture. Insiders believe that this is better than advertising in traditional magazines. In addition, the store has become a product experience center and a customer care center, which has spawned the development of customized business.

It is reported that 2015 is a year of unprecedented development of customized brands. The number of high-end customized brands is about 20 times that of traditional luxury brands. But the scale of these brands is relatively small, 40% has a history of more than 10 years, and 40% of the history is less than 3 years. The global high-end custom market currently accounts for about 20% of the global luxury market, of which clothing and jewellery are the most important custom products.

Jin Bei, the economist and China newspaper managing director, believes that in the industrial age, there are no business models and prospects for personalized customization for only a few people. But with the help of the Internet and big data, the products of homogeneity have been screened out from fragmented individual needs to achieve small-scale industrial production, and the business mode is clear. Insiders told reporters that within the LVMH group, they began to break the relatively independent status of brands, realize the sharing of customer needs and resources, and exploit big data to explore customer value.

This year, the merger of Yoox and Net-a-Porter's two largest luxury electric business is also preparing for digital and achieving synergy. There are, of course, some third party platform vendors who are dedicated to customizing brand services. They are also eager to make use of the power of capital, which has set off an entry competition for C2B, and even domestic Internet companies are unwilling to lag behind.

To a large extent, this impact on traditional luxury brands. "Maybe a few years later, there is no vague concept of luxury in China. There is a clear classification of all kinds of products. Many luxury brands are constantly changing into fashion products." Zhou Ting said, in the group of open cloud, many small brands quickly restore their customized business. In addition, it has rapidly transformed into a comprehensive lifestyle. Behind all these changes, we should speed up the channel flat, make the relationship between the brand and consumers closer and communicate more smoothly, so as to enhance their local consumption power.