Ten years of gestation, garan blooms

In China's cosmetics market, foreign brands are very popular, and they are far ahead in terms of market share and brand awareness. In contrast, the performance of Chinese brands is bleak and disappointing. Even once-sound brands such as Yuxi, Xiaonu, Ding Jiayi, Dabao, etc., will eventually be acquired. However, Zheng Chunying, chairman of Jialan Group, has successively established four brands of Jialan's Meisu, Natural Hall, Yageribai, and Yiting in the process of losing power in his peers, and has changed the pattern of China's cosmetics industry with his own practice.

Zheng Chunying is quite proud of her entrepreneurial experience: "I have always believed that the original intention of an entrepreneur to start a business determines the future of the enterprise. This is like a person's character, which is innate and may last a lifetime. It can't be changed. The original intention of Jialan's business is to be a world-class brand. This is the goal set by Jialan when it was established in Shanghai in 2001, and it has never changed for so many years."

With this lofty ideal, Zheng Chunying is very low-key, "In the cosmetics industry, I am still a student and I am constantly learning." However, it is such a modest "student" who continues to create "firsts" in the domestic cosmetics industry one after another: cosmetics with the largest number of counters in department stores, KA stores, cosmetics stores, pharmacies and other channels in China Enterprise; the only Chinese enterprise that has won the "Platinum" member unit of BASF; the only cosmetics enterprise in China that has won the 2010 Shanghai World Expo exhibitor...

Doing real channels

In the fast-moving consumer goods industry, channel expansion and control It is very important for Jialan, and the reason why Jialan can achieve today's results depends on its channel strategy that constantly adapts to the development of the enterprise.

In the early days of the business, in order to make its brands accepted by the channel, Zheng Chunying proposed the business idea of "exchanging profits for the market". To this end, Jialan took all the profits and invested them in the construction and maintenance of channels, and gave them to channel partners. With support and help, we can grow together. "We believe that in the early stage of enterprise development, profit is not our goal, so we will try our best to use profit to meet the interests of agents." try. Jialan once held a "trial sale first, then join in" activity: a total of 1,500 stores were allocated across the country and allocated to each agent, so that they could find some stores and provide free product trial sales for one month. If you think it's not enough after a month, just bring the empty bottle back. If you think this product is very good, then join the purchase. In the end, all 1,500 stores joined. If you do not have confidence in the quality of your own products, you will never dare to have this confidence.

The so-called "what you give up will give you what you get", the temporary abandonment of a part of the profit, in exchange for a broader growth space for Jialan. Under the close cooperation with the channel dealers, the natural hall brand under the Jialan quickly realized through the form of specialty stores. its coverage in the national market. However, in Zheng Chunying's eyes, such achievements are certainly gratifying, but for building a world-class brand, the ability is far from enough. Therefore, since 2006, Jialan has made a major breakthrough in the channel. On the basis of retaining the dominant position of the previous specialty store, Natural Hall began to enter the department store and KA channel (large-scale chain channel).

In fact, the realization of this breakthrough is inseparable from the support of the distributors. Zheng Chunying said: "With the company's profits at the time, it was impossible to support the investment in commercial and supermarket channels. Under such circumstances, some of our agents began to become our partners, and both parties took part of their respective gross profits. Participate in it together."

In the beginning, it was extremely difficult for Jialan to enter the supermarket channel, which is a scarce resource. From 2006 to 2007, in the two years, the number of natural halls in the country has only developed more than 100 counters. After summarizing, Jialan concluded that the lack of understanding of the Zhantang brand by the supermarket channels is an important reason for their reluctance to accept the Zhantang brand. So in 2008, Jialan invited the heads of more than 400 shopping malls across the country to gather in Shanghai, from the aspects of product quality, brand image, brand development planning, etc., to explain what kind of brand Natural Hall is and what kind of enterprise is Jialan Group. .

Zheng Chunying said: "I always feel that if you are a company with ideals, if you are a company with a mission, you may influence many people, inspire many people, and you will let many companies support you. "With the deepening of the understanding of Jialan, in 2008, the number of Jialan counters increased by more than 300. The successful development of the supermarket channel has helped the natural hall to enter the stage of rapid development. As of the end of April 2011, the natural hall has set up counters in more than 1,030 shopping malls and KA nationwide.

With the help of the form of specialty stores, the natural hall brand has achieved considerable development. Under the circumstance of obtaining a certain market foundation, the brand value has been further improved through the expansion of shopping mall channels, which in turn has promoted the development of specialty stores. The supermarket channel and the specialty store channel go hand in hand, which are two complementary channels without conflict, which also lays a solid foundation for Jialan's goal of building a world-class brand.

Falling down on the introduction of talents but getting up

As an enterprise determined to build a world-class brand, Jialan has never stopped thirst for talents. "Based on the Chinese brand market, I think we should gain more useful experience from international brands, so the introduction of talents from international brands is very important." Zheng Chunying said.

However, in fact, Garan's road to talent introduction has not been smooth. "We also encountered some problems when we first started, and the conclusion is that an important reason why some talents cannot be used well after introduction is that the expectations for them are too high." Zheng Chunying said frankly: "For most talents, In other words, their main capabilities are generally concentrated in a certain field. If you expect that by bringing in one or two people, you can copy all the things of those international brands into your enterprise, it is a big mistake. ”

How to make the talents introduced from outside be able to quickly integrate with the culture of Jialan is also a problem that once troubled Zheng Chunying. "When we first started introducing talents, we blindly asked them to do exactly our way, and the result was very bad. Later, I thought, since I brought them in, should I just follow their method? It turned out that it was not right. After all, their approach can only be adapted in the previous enterprise."

After a long period of exploration and thinking, Jialan found a suitable talent introduction path. Before the external managers enter the company, they will conduct internal research and talk to the employees of each department. This approach enables them to have a more comprehensive understanding of the characteristics of the company when they formally undertake the mission. Integrate some of the previous methods of dealing with problems with Garan's culture to achieve consistency with Garan's entire management system. At the same time, Galan employs talents and does not put too much pressure on talents, so that they can integrate into the enterprise calmly and give full play to their value.

Ensure execution through communication

To achieve today's achievements, Jialan cannot do without a strong execution force, which stems from the mature communication mechanism within the enterprise. In Galan, as long as it is an important matter related to the development of the enterprise, the group discussion method is used to communicate before the decision, and the most crucial point is to let the people who will actually implement the decision in the future directly participate in the discussion. Zheng Chunying believes that "you can't make a decision yourself, and then let the people below implement it. If the executor does not understand the decision, then he will not go all out when implementing it."

Take the new makeup decision made by Nature Hall as an example. During the two years of discussion and research, from consumers, salespersons, to trainers, makeup artists, sales executives, and provincial managers, all participated in it. Fully listened to their views on the price, packaging, color and other aspects of the product. The reason for this is to allow those who specifically promote the product to truly accept it first. If they themselves do not accept the product, the effect of the promotion can be imagined.

Zheng Chunying introduced: "Jia Lan emphasizes three unifications: first, the unity of understanding, that is, everyone must understand what is going on; the second is to achieve unity of thought, that is, everyone can agree with this In the end, it is the unification of actions." In the actual operation process, the "three unifications" are not easy to achieve, and it is almost unavoidable to pay a lot of communication costs, but Zheng Chunying believes that such costs are absolutely worth it. In his view, no matter how high the communication cost at this stage is, it will be much lower than the cost of making mistakes in the execution stage.

Building a consumer-centric platform company

"Zheng Dong is not a person who likes to talk about the past, he prefers to talk about the future of enterprise development", a person familiar with Zheng Chunying told reporters.

For the future, Zheng Chunying made no secret of his ambitions: "We want to become an international daily necessities company. In the past ten years, we have been making skin care products, and in the next, we will build a large daily chemical company." According to Galan's plan, the two brands, Meisu and Zhantang, will launch makeup this year, and Zhantang men's skin care products will also be launched in August and September this year. In addition, a department dedicated to washing and care products will also be established this year, and it will take two to three years to build a new brand.

Building a world-class brand is not limited to the expansion of product lines. The continuous improvement of Jialan's brand management philosophy is also worthy of attention. On February 21, 2011, in the Shanghai International Convention Center on the bank of the Pujiang River, the annual meeting of the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the Galan Group was held. Starting from a higher strategic level, the theme of the meeting was determined as "Consumer-centric Terminal Management. change".

"In the process of rapid expansion, it is easy for everyone to ignore the essence of business, which is to create value for consumers," Zheng Chunying believes. In order to realize a consumer-centric business model, Galan continues the view it has pursued since the beginning of its business. On the premise of ensuring the profits of agents, more resources are invested in the sales terminal: more Professional knowledge training to better provide consumers with more professional skin care consulting services, improve the image of terminal storefronts and counters, and provide consumers with a more comfortable, warm, comfortable and humanized consumption experience.

"Dealers may not be very motivated to do these things in the early days, but we must insist on making them return to the consumer-centric track. Galan is now a platform-based company, and he We must help the above agents and distributors to improve their management level, provide employees with better development opportunities, and create greater value for the society, in line with Jialan's goal of building a world-class brand." Zheng Chunying's ideas are all from a world-class brand.