Home Furnishing Industry "Electric Shock"

Just after March and April of furniture , the news about home e-commerce continued one after another: first, a furniture president announced a high-profile entry into e-commerce this year; then there was news that home building materials decoration e-commerce website or the acquisition of some stores in Dongfang Jiayuan, Develop offline physical stores.

In fact, since last year, the pace of home furnishing companies' involvement in e-commerce has gradually increased, including home appliances such as Red Star Macalline, Jinhaima, Jisheng Weibang, Jimei Home Furnishing, Lanjing Lijia, Xiyingmen, etc. Various attempts have been made.

The rush of home furnishing companies to e-commerce channels does not mean that they ignore the maintenance of traditional channels such as stores, stores, and distributors. For the industry, the diversification of sales channels will gradually become the norm for development, and the lack of offline compensation online. In the long run, it will be a development trend for home furnishing companies to take the path of e-commerce.

Industry leaders covet e-commerce opportunities

According to data from the China E-Commerce Research Center, sales of e-commerce websites for home furnishing and building materials in China in 2009 were approximately 17.67 billion yuan, accounting for 2.5% of the entire home furnishing and building materials industry; in 2010, it reached 22.85 billion yuan, accounting for the home furnishing and building materials industry About 2.9%; this figure reached 70 billion yuan in 2012.

The explosive and rapid development of e-commerce , especially the "Double 11" shopping carnival, the Alipay transaction amount of 19.1 billion yuan is amazing. Of the 19.1 billion yuan in transaction value, the turnover of the home building materials branch venue exceeded 1.2 billion yuan, allowing many people in the industry to reactivate their thinking and offensive on e-commerce as if they discovered the New World.

Since last year, the cooperation between the home furnishing industry and e-commerce channels has become more extensive and close. Furniture, bathroom, home textile and other industries have all tasted the sweetness on the road to the "net" and gradually explored the way to success. At the same time, home furnishing chain stores are also following the trend, exploring new models of online and offline cooperation.

An executive vice president of a group said that many industry leaders have turned their attention to the new growth point of e-commerce, and will also take the opportunity to intervene for hundreds of years and will not ignore e-commerce. A group center is planning to open an online store.

At the end of last year, IKEA, known for experiential marketing, also announced that it is considering entering the e-commerce field. In response, the manager of a furniture marketing department in Shenzhen said that there is no clear timetable for opening the e-commerce business in the Chinese market. Once the Chinese market is confirmed to operate, IKEA Shenzhen will actively strive to become the first batch of pilots.

"No one doubts the proportion of e-commerce in the entire channel." Li Chunguang admitted that with the increase in the proportion of young consumer groups, social buying behavior has changed dramatically. The industry also generally recognizes that e-commerce is the industry's development trend, but companies need to enter this industry at an appropriate time.

Traditional channels still dominate

The prosperity of new circulation channels will weaken the circulation advantages of traditional channels to a certain extent. Considering the contradiction between "e-commerce and traditional channels", some companies dare not invest heavily in e-commerce, which has long been an open secret in the industry.

Mo Daiqing, an analyst at the Online Retailing Department of the China E-Commerce Research Center, said that the first thing that traditional enterprises such as home building materials and other water companies face when trying to test water and e-commerce is the contradiction with traditional channels. Business penetration may break this balance of interests.

A few days ago, in a conference called "China Home Furnishing New Perspective Forum" held in Shenzhen, industry leaders started a fierce discussion on the competition and symbiosis between traditional channels and e-commerce channels.

Most of the guests at the meeting believed that no matter how e-commerce develops, for home furnishing companies, the dominant position of traditional channels will not be shaken. Zhang Jingfu, chairman of Meichao, said that e-commerce will inevitably be the new development direction of home building materials, "but it does not represent the entire market, especially as a manufacturer, we pay more attention to the maintenance of traditional channels." He believes that the channel life of an enterprise needs to solve two key points: one is to treat consumers, and the other is to treat dealers.

"I think that there will be no word for e-commerce in five years." According to Wang Xian, chairman of Longfa Decoration, e-commerce will become part of the normal channel of home furnishing companies in the future, and will be promoted to a sales channel for corporate profits.

Some insiders hold a conservative view on the prospects of home e-commerce. Hou Kepeng, Dean of Shenzhen Furniture Research and Development Institute, said that compared with traditional marketing models, online sales on online sales platforms are indeed a "new way" and will also be a new industry trend. However, at present, online home purchases are still limited to simple and easy-to-install home furnishing products, because the e-commerce channel itself still has relatively large limitations, and buyers of large-sized and hard-to-fit home furnishing products have no real experience online.

"Online + offline" multiple channels win-win

Facing the bleak market situation, taking a diversified road seems to be a major trend for home furnishing companies to seek a way out in the winter.

Traditional channels and emerging channels have their own strengths and weaknesses. For stores, how to attract passenger flow and gather popularity has become a problem that traditional channels must face; for e-commerce, how to overcome the shortcomings of low product experience is also a barrier to the development of this emerging channel. Many home furnishing companies are actively exploring ways to maximize synergy between traditional channels and emerging channels.

In terms of using the e-commerce platform to “pick up customers” for physical stores, Liu Guoxiong, the managing director of Jiajule Cabinet, shared some of Jiajule ’s practices in cabinet customization: through the e-commerce platform, Jiajule provides network customers with more value The discounts have prompted this group of people to be more willing to pay attention to Jiajule's e-commerce platform, allowing customers to communicate with offline service providers, thereby increasing customer traffic.

The strong coverage of e-commerce provides a more effective and economical way to attract customers to physical stores. On the contrary, how should e-commerce strengthen cooperation with terminal physical stores to make up for the defects of development?

A general manager of an electrical appliance believes that the future development of the industry must be that manufacturers are getting closer and closer to customers, and service providers are increasingly leaving the channel of manufacturers. He analyzed that there is no real separation between physical stores and online stores. In the future, e-commerce will become a platform for manufacturers to approach customers, and physical store dealers will increasingly become service providers. However, this change in role and division of labor will not destroy the traditional dealer system. At that time, the relationship between service providers and manufacturers will also change. The two will be separated by a certain distance, but manufacturers cannot leave all service providers apart.

In response, the chairman of a ceramic pointed out that this change in channel role is not only to solve the existing problems of emerging channels and traditional channels, but also an inevitable trend of conforming to consumer needs and industry development.

Mr. Feng expounded the future needs of the ceramic industry for the change of the role of the channel: "tailor-made will become the development trend of the ceramic industry, especially the middle and high-grade ceramic industry in the future." This development of tailor-made will bring manufacturers and With the concept of service provider cooperation, manufacturers can solve online and offline designs through the Internet. Service providers directly communicate with customers and provide solutions directly online and offline, which may form a new trend in the development of the mid-to-high-end ceramic industry.