Li Ning Tengyue E-commerce

In the office of Guo Jianxin, COO of Li-Ning Company, there are three pairs of sneakers prominently displayed. If they are all products of Li-Ning Company, if they have anything in common, it is that they are all online. It's selling like hot cakes.

The legends about these shoes are constantly being spread by word of mouth on the Internet, especially one of the concept version of Lei Feng shoes, which combines fashion and retro, every detail of its design, including its unique "Lei Feng shoes" "Shoebox" - Lei Feng bags, are all talked about on the Internet, and the price is even more than 5,000 or 6,000 yuan on the Internet.

Place these three pairs of shoes "greatly recognized by netizens" in his office, it is not difficult to see Guo Jianxin's attention and attention to the Internet customer base.

The reasoning behind this is not difficult to understand. The Internet is known as the greatest invention in the past 30 years. It not only profoundly affects everyone's work and life, but also affects the competitive environment and strategic choices of every enterprise. China's Internet users have exceeded 300 million this year, of which the proportion of young people aged 14-25 is the highest, much higher than that of other age groups. For them, surfing the Internet is as natural as breathing, and these people are Li Ning's Target consumers.

Another set of figures is that, according to a survey by a Beijing-based consulting company, clothing is the commodity with the largest number of online purchases and the highest amount of money. Nearly 60% of online shopping consumers have bought clothing online, and clothing accounts for all online purchases. about a quarter.

In this context, Li Ning Company officially opened its online store in April last year. The most important goal is to maintain close communication with the target consumer groups online and attract them to buy Li Ning products online. Although Guo Jianxin himself often buys things from the Internet, such as books, DVDs, and baby products, he spends tens of thousands of yuan each year on the Internet. But getting real e-commerce in your company isn't as simple as flipping a mouse when you shop online.

After the official opening of Li Ning's official online store in April last year, orders came one after another, and there were endless challenges. There are some difficulties in logistics, financial accounting, customer service, etc., such as repeated shipments and shipments without payment, such small confusions occur from time to time.

It was in this difficult and exciting year that Li Ning's e-commerce sales increased 12 times. Now Li Ning's official mall has exceeded its tasks every month. By the beginning of May this year, the number of members has exceeded 60,000. And Li Ning's official online store originally opened on another e-commerce platform, the daily transaction volume has long exceeded 100,000.

Guo Jianxin is very satisfied with this achievement within a year of opening, but he is not satisfied. His expectations are higher: "For traditional enterprises, 1% to 1.5% of online sales is relatively normal. But in my opinion, this is too low a standard, I think it is at least three times."

E-commerce is a brand new topic for traditional enterprises, and many enterprises are eager to try, but there is no certain rule. Since the economic crisis, e-commerce has suddenly heated up. In the past year of Li Ning's e-commerce business, all the troubles and gains are precious experiences for companies that are about to enter e-commerce or are already in e-commerce.

Opening an online store: a strategic choice

Before Li-Ning Company decided to open an online store, Li-Ning's products were already selling quite well online. "We scanned the Internet last year, and there were more than 1,000 stores selling Li Ning products," Guo Jianxin said. And these stores sold 200 million Li Ning products online last year. These two figures not only made Guo Jianxin see the huge potential of Internet shopping, but also made him a little worried: these shops are scattered in various corners of the Internet. It is also possible to disrupt Li Ning's offline price system.

Research This prompted Li Ning to consider the possibility of opening its own online store. Before the official online store, Li Ning has done a lot of research and investigation to study what kind of relationship is between its target customers and the Internet. As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the data obtained from different channels have proved a result: Internet users and Li Ning's target consumer groups have a great degree of overlap. "Many of the netizens are our target consumers. No matter whether they buy our things online or not, they are the objects we need to communicate with." Guo Jianxin said.

Lin Li, Director of the E-Commerce Department of Li Ning Company, added: "We have conducted a survey. In addition to normal work and rest, the most important behavior in leisure time of Li Ning's offline consumer groups is the No. 1 behavior. Internet access."

In other words, no matter from which point of view, Li Ning's consumer group is very consistent with the online group.

Explore how to start e-commerce, there is no certain model for traditional companies to follow. Li Ning has taken a tentative approach. They did not directly open their own official mall at first, nor did they outsource this work to other companies specializing in e-commerce like some traditional companies did. Instead, they chose a relatively popular e-commerce platform to open an official website of their own. shop. Lin Li said: "Because the popularity and traffic are all there, it means that we have saved the investment in promotion. We can immediately test the market's acceptance of Li Ning's own e-commerce." Lin Li used to be engaged in e-commerce in Shanda and Sina. Work, her experience in this area also brought valuable experience to Li Ning Company.

The results were surprising. As soon as Li Guan's official online store opened, many consumers went online to tell them about it. Many people left a message saying that when they bought Li Ning products online, they would worry about the credibility and fakes. Now Li Ning Co., Ltd. It finally opened. Lin Li said: "I feel that they have been looking forward to it for a long time, which also gives us a lot of confidence." In April last year, on the first day when the online store opened, it received more than 100 orders and made 30,000 orders. More business, far beyond the expectations of Li Ning.

The success of opening the official online store has given Li Ning a lot of confidence that this path is right and worth taking. So Li Ning immediately found an outsourcing company to help build its own official mall. Lin Li said: "It is impossible to build an IT platform, do code development by yourself, and build a network without 3 to 6 months." So Li Ning cooperated with outsourcing companies and borrowed mature IT platforms. It is about to establish its own official shopping mall. In June last year, Li Ning's official shopping mall officially opened for business.

In addition, Li Ning set up the e-commerce department responsible for the management of the official mall in Shanghai, because from the perspective of regional distribution, Li Ning's consumer group is mainly in the southeast coast, and the e-commerce department is located in Shanghai to reduce costs and improve Operational efficiency is good.

Recalling the decision to enter e-commerce, Lin Li said that the decision to do e-commerce was a strategic consideration, not an expedient measure. After the economic crisis, many companies want to do e-commerce, but if they are forced to do e-commerce purely because of the bad economic environment and regard e-commerce as a safe haven, they may not be well prepared, and their chances of success will be reduced. Greatly reduced.

Lin Li said, "It is necessary to analyze from a strategic point of view, whether your target customer group is consistent with the online shopping user group, whether your product positioning and cost-effectiveness are suitable for e-commerce, your company's IT system and human resources. Whether the equipment has the ability to do e-commerce in all aspects. A good analysis and judgment must be made in all aspects of the external and internal aspects. If you judge that it is suitable to do, then you can do it.”

Establishing internal processes: the biggest challenge

Although Li Ning made a lot of preparations before the launch, Guo Jianxin also personally bought a pair of running shoes and a windbreaker in the online store after the launch, and experienced it from the user's point of view It feels good, but Li Ning's e-commerce has encountered many unexpected difficulties.

Recalling last year's work, Guo Jianxin said, "We experienced many challenges in the first half of last year, and we had to solve many practical business problems." All the difficulties are due to Li Ning being a wholesale model company, and e-commerce is a retail model. The internal processes, financial accounting models, and logistics systems of the two models are very different.

The biggest challenge in logistics comes from logistics and information flow. Guo Jianxin said: "So far, Li Ning's established systems are all wholesale. More than 6,000 stores across the country are shipped through dealers, distributors, and through a delivery system. Whole batch. In terms of logistics, it was only necessary to find a transporter and a warehousing agent. He does not need retail capacity, single-piece distribution capacity, or picking capacity.”

In other words, From the process of processing to the ability of logistics providers, the original system cannot meet the requirements of e-commerce. This means that Li Ning must find a new logistics provider. And because orders come from all over the country, one logistics provider is not enough, and several logistics providers are needed. In short, all of this requires companies to build new logistics systems for e-commerce. As a result, Li Ning's e-commerce department set up a separate warehouse in Shanghai to deliver goods from its own warehouse, and established cooperative relationships with Home Express, Shentong and EMS.

At present, all orders in Li-Ning's official mall are all shipped from Shanghai. In Li Ning's plan, in the future, the warehouse of the e-commerce department can be connected and shared with the company's large warehouse to achieve local delivery. For example, if consumers place orders in Xinjiang, they will be delivered from Xinjiang, but it involves the interests of local distributors. Issues such as distribution and whether the product is in stock locally need to be further resolved. Guo Jianxin hopes that local delivery can be achieved after next year, but since there will not be all the goods in various regions of the country, even at that stage, some products will still be shipped long distances.

The financial retail model and the new logistics system have brought new settlement methods to Li Ning Company. For example, the pricing of single-piece flow is different from that of wholesale logistics, and the online sales method for individuals also requires the company to require a large number of external payment systems... This has brought pressure to the company's original financial management system.

Lin Li said: "For example, finance used to issue invoices once at the end of each month, and it was enough to focus on issuing invoices once for some dealers, but now it doesn't work. Every day, hundreds of thousands of invoices are issued every day. It's an incredible thing for them." Financially, there are many more trivial issues like this. Li Ning Company realized that the financial process must be adjusted accordingly, and new processes and new transaction methods must be established according to the characteristics of e-commerce.

In order to completely solve the problem of financial accounting, at the beginning of this year, Li Ning established an e-commerce company. "Before we operated as a department, we found that the financial operation was very, very troublesome, and there were very big problems in financial accounting. In the end, we said no. It seems that we need to set up a separate company, which will be clearer in terms of financial accounting. A little." Lin Li said.

Another challenge for customer service comes from customer service. Li Ning's business was very good after opening the store online, which completely exceeded expectations. At the beginning, there were only two customer service personnel in the e-commerce department, which was completely overwhelmed. At that time, even the front desk was volunteering to help with customer service work. "When it's exaggerated, a customer service chats with 50 people at the same time, and it's impossible to talk." Lin Li said, "Some netizens began to scold us, saying that we were big and ignored people." So Lin Li quickly negotiated with human resources, Replenish manpower. After the initial confusion, Li Ning e-commerce has now handed over the customer service part to the outsourcing company, and the deployment of manpower has become much easier.

IT system logistics, finance, customer service, etc. all need the support of a good IT system. At the beginning of Li Ning's e-commerce, it was necessary to borrow the company's other systems, because such a system was not tailored for e-commerce, and initially every product sold had to go through a tortuous process in the background. Lin Li said: "I am a retailer, but I want to borrow the functions of group purchase and wholesale in the company's IT system, because the original system does not have the function of retailing at all." Such an approach not only feels that the e-commerce department feels that It is not smooth, but also affects the efficiency of the company.

Since the second half of last year, Li Ning started to cooperate with IBM to develop its own e-commerce platform. The first phase of this platform was launched on June 1 this year. This platform has strong support for the background management of commodities, inventory, logistics, finance, orders, customer service, etc. In the second phase, it will have more support for B2C functions, such as various ways of product display, diversified promotion methods, and personalized web pages for customers' consumption habits. Guo Jianxin has high expectations for this system, "I expect this to be a milestone in China's e-commerce system."

In fact, launching e-commerce is equivalent to establishing a new retail company for Li Ning. The processes for this new company had to be built from scratch. Lin Li said: "Li Ning's e-commerce is to use the Internet to do offline business, and the goods are still real. From this perspective, the work is done very carefully, such as how fast the flow of capital flows and how efficient the logistics is. To quickly deliver products to consumers, these very detailed tasks need to be solidified with processes. Only with scientific processes can we ensure that the consumer experience can be maintained at a high level and that the company is in It operates on a healthy and benign basis."

Now, the logistics and customer service of Li Ning e-commerce have been outsourced, and the financial system is also on the right track. Everything started to get organized.

The support of the organizational structure Behind the rapid establishment of these processes of Li Ning e-commerce is the support of the organizational structure. E-commerce is a very new business for a traditional enterprise like Li Ning. The reason why Li Ning's e-commerce develops smoothly is related to the fact that the e-commerce department is directly linked to the COO. Lin Li said, "The COO will balance and consider from the perspective of the highest level of the company. When encountering some problems, he can mobilize the resources of various departments of the company to cooperate with e-commerce."

Lin Li said that there are many In traditional enterprises, e-commerce is linked to the marketing department. The boss’s starting point for thinking about things is market-oriented rather than sales-oriented. In this case, it may eventually become a full-priced flagship store that sells all new products, which deviates from the electronics industry. The intent of business. Some are hung under the sales department. When there is any conflict between it and offline channels, e-commerce will become a victim, and it is easy to fail or die in the middle.

"So I think traditional enterprises must have a relatively high-level leader to lead directly at the beginning of e-commerce, so as to ensure that you are given enough time and space to grow and grow when you are very weak. It doesn't matter who leads, because you already have the ability to survive independently." Lin Li said.

Price System: Consistent with Offline

The Internet has two effects on existing distribution channels: substitution and expansion. Substitution is obviously what Li Ning does not want to see. "We hope that there will be no conflict between online and offline." Guo Jianxin said. To this end, Li Ning adopts the same price system as offline in e-commerce. For new products in the current season, the full price is adopted; for out-of-season products, there is a certain discount.

Consistent price policy online and offline Many people think that the online price must be lower than the offline price to have a market. The practice of Li Ning Company shows that this is not the case. They have adopted a consistent online and offline price system. Lin Li said: "We are not entirely based on price as a magic weapon."

They can also attract a large number of customers by doing so. In addition to the advantages of online shopping, which is not limited by time and space, there are two important reason.

First, there is the appeal of the brand. Despite the rapid growth of the Internet and the ubiquity of cheap goods, brands are still the target of consumers. Li Ning Company has done a survey, consumers can accept the price of the company's official direct-operated malls by about 10% higher than ordinary online stores, which is because of their trust in the Li Ning brand.

Secondly, the product categories of online stores, whether it is new products in the current season or discounted products after seasons, are much richer than those in offline brick-and-mortar stores. For offline physical stores, no matter what the price is, the types of products and the range of energy radiation are limited. It is impossible for a store to sell all Li Ning products, maybe only three or five hundred varieties. The product categories of Li Ning's official mall are increasing every month. By the beginning of May this year, there were nearly 700 varieties. Guo Jianxin said that Li Ning has 8,000 new products every year, and in the future, these 8,000 will be sold online. Some netizens can buy goods online that they cannot buy locally.

Three types of online stores Under the guidance of a unified price policy, Li Ning Company divides online stores into three categories according to the characteristics of online shopping.

The first category is the flagship store of the Li-Ning brand. Many consumers buy Li Ning products, but they may not have a deep understanding of its brand culture. The online flagship store is responsible for spreading the brand to consumers. Guo Jianxin said: "We need a way for the majority of netizens and consumers to have a deeper understanding of Li-Ning's product culture, the technology of Li-Ning's products, the design of Li-Ning, and the value of Li-Ning's products." In the flagship store, introductions, videos, etc. can be used. , showing the professional, fashionable and oriental characteristics of Li Ning products. In addition, the latest and most complete products of the season can also be seen in the flagship store. Some netizens can buy the latest products that cannot be bought locally.

The second category is category stores. This is related to online circles. For example, Li Ning has a basketball community on his official website and a women's fitness community, with more than 100,000 active members. These people are divided into different circles, and the people in each circle have common hobbies and similar needs for products. Category stores will be more targeted and more in-depth to launch related products to Li Ning fans.

The third category is the discount store. It has a relative price advantage and mainly sells out-of-season products. This type of store mainly promotes some products with better value for money. The online and offline discount systems are also exactly the same.

These three types of stores are aimed at different consumer groups and correspond one-to-one with the offline system. Currently, Li Ning has offline brand stores such as the Wangfujing flagship store in Beijing, as well as discount stores and category stores. in the plan.

Of course, compared with offline physical stores, online stores can be free from time and space constraints and adopt more flexible promotion methods, such as lucky draws, gifts, points, membership discounts, etc. A lot of popularity, revenue has grown exponentially.

The results of Li Ning's online sales also proved the correctness of Li Ning's price strategy. In the online sales, the proportion of second- and third-tier cities is gradually increasing, and the proportion of EMS is increasing. "What kind of orders do we use EMS for? It's the places where general orders can't reach." Lin Li said. This shows that orders in remote locations are increasing. For example, the farthest orders may be from remote towns in Xinjiang, Tibet, Guizhou and other places.

It can be seen that the Internet channel has formed a great expansion trend for Li Ning's offline channels.

Network channel environment: unified management

Traditional enterprises often have a traditional way of thinking, thinking that doing e-commerce is to open an official mall. Actually it's much more than that. Creating a benign network channel environment is also a work that must be paid attention to in the promotion of e-commerce.

As mentioned above, there are now more than 1,000 stores selling Li-Ning products online. An important thing that Li-Ning is doing is to certify and manage these more than 1,000 online stores step by step. To ensure the consistency of Li Ning's brand image.

There are more than 1,000 online stores, some only sell Li-Ning products, and some are comprehensive stores that sell many products, but only a few pieces of Li-Ning. Before last year, the source of the products in these stores was not managed, some were opened by Li Ning's dealers, and some did not know where to get the products. On the other hand, Li Ning Company has no way to master their marketing methods. "If we felt that this situation could not be managed at the time, our brand image on the Internet would be affected," Guo Jianxin said. And if this is left unchecked, Li Ning's own online channels will also be disrupted.

So from last year to this year, one of the core tasks of the e-commerce department is to manage online channels. First of all, it will conduct investigation and analysis on these online stores, classify and manage them, and focus on large and small, ranking the top dozens of online stores. , Communicate one by one to understand whether the source of his goods is legal and whether his discounts conform to the rules of Li Ning Company.

These online stores are then certified based on three bases. First, the goods must be managed by Li Ning Company, and it must be guaranteed to be Li Ning's products; second, the price must be managed by Li Ning Company, and the pricing must be a policy with the offline; third, the marketing strategy must also be included in the jurisdiction of Li Ning, How to promote, how to discount have a consistent strategy. On these three foundations, Li Ning certifies online stores, and now dozens of them have passed the certification of Li Ning Company and have been incorporated into their system.

Lin Li said that the certification of online stores is not only for their management, but also for their services, "so that everyone can make Li Ning's business bigger and bigger with the help of Li Ning, and it is a very healthy way to grow. Make it bigger."

Future: True Internet Marketing

In Li Ning's plan, the above work is only the first stage of e-commerce.

In addition to the e-commerce department, Li Ning also has a department closely related to the Internet that must be mentioned, that is, the digital marketing department. What does this department do? Do community, do brand promotion, do Internet brand communication. In addition to having its own community on its official website, Li Ning also maintains very close communication with forums such as Sina and Tianya. They will organize some customers to participate in product evaluation meetings, and organize fans from forums to go to Lijiang together. and other activities. On the one hand, colleagues in the digital marketing department have to communicate with them and collect their information to guide product development and design.

Next, the activities of the digital marketing department are combined with the sales of the e-commerce department. Guo Jianxin said: "Whether the product culture and design culture can be passed on to consumers is an important link in the formation of purchase and consumption." Lin Li told us that the e-commerce department is discussing with the digital marketing department, "How to put Li Ning The users of the official website community communicate with the users of our mall, how to flow in both directions, and how to give them a VIP consumption experience.”

Guo Jianxin has mentioned many times that the circle culture of the Internet is very popular, such as the circle of basketball fans, the circle of running enthusiasts, etc., and they are familiar with their needs and hold targeted marketing activities to communicate at multiple levels and angles. , in order to form an effective emotional connection with them, thus prompting them to experience the product.

Li Ning has already begun such an attempt. For example, in the first quarter of this year, the Digital Marketing Department conducted an online fitting event for InnerShine women's sportswear for female consumers, which attracted a large number of Li Ning fans to participate, as well as colleagues from the e-commerce department. When the digital marketing department does other activities online, it will also set up relevant links to guide consumers to the official mall. Brand communication and product experience are becoming more and more connected.

In Guo Jianxin's plan, the e-commerce department should be organically integrated with digital marketing to form a "precision marketing and precise communication for different consumer groups that runs through from brand culture to product experience" . Guo Jianxin said that this is the real network marketing.