Inspiration From The Cooperation Between The World'S Third Largest Luxury Goods Group And Italian Luxury Goods E-Commerce Group

PPR, the world's third largest luxury goods group, recently announced the establishment of a joint venture with YOOX, an Italian luxury goods e-commerce group. The new company will manage the official online flagship stores of some luxury brands under PPR Group. Including Bottega Veneta Yves Saint Laurent. Alexander McQueen. Balenciaga and Sergio Rossi. The official online flagship stores of Sergio Rossi and Bottega Veneta will be launched before the end of 2012. By the end of 2013, all official online flagship stores will operate worldwide, including China.

YOOX Group entered China in 2010 and currently operates in China luxury goods Brand network flagship stores include Armani, Marni, Bally, Dolce&Gabbana, Y-3, Dsquared2, Alexander Wang, etc. In addition, YOOX Group launched the regular luxury integrated online store thecorner.cn in September 2011, and plans to launch YOOX luxury discount online store in China in the second half of this year. Federico Marchetti, founder and CEO of YOOX Group, believes that China will become the third largest market of YOOX Group from 2016 to 2017. "PPR and YOOX set up a joint venture, not an acquisition. In fact, some of PPR's brands have cooperated with YOOX for a long time, and YOOX relied on Luxury brand Started by providing one-stop e-commerce services. In this way of cooperation, luxury brands control brand, publicity, goods and prices, while YOOX provides IT, logistics warehousing, customer service center, marketing and other services. In fact, the establishment of this joint venture is a collection of previous decentralized cooperation between various brands and YOOX, which facilitates PPR's overall control and centralized management of e-commerce channels. It cannot be said that it is the beginning of "counterattack", but the brand hopes to try to optimize the management of channels after it has achieved initial results in testing e-commerce. " When talking about the "counterattack" of luxury goods on distribution channels, Qu Xinyue, general manager of Hurst China market and digital media, told our reporter.

halt the troops and wait

Although the major luxury brands are very optimistic about the Chinese market, they are cautious in specific operations. In western developed countries, luxury brands have carried out e-commerce business for many years. Louis Vuitton Hermes Both in Europe and the United States have online shopping business, but they have not taken any action for the Chinese market, which is related to the immature Chinese market.

In this regard, Ravi Thakran, the chairman of LVMH Group in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East and the managing partner of LVMH's private equity fund L Capital Asia, said in an interview at the Singapore Asia Fashion Forum this year that Louis Vuitton stores around the world choose the best locations to present in the most perfect form. For China, Louis Vuitton We also hope to find the most perfect way of presentation on the network. Louis Vuitton will not easily carry out online shopping on the official website until we find a practical way. So far, no luxury brand under LVMH Group has opened an official online shopping business in China. The brands of Richemont Group and Swatch Group have not taken any action in official online shopping, and the first tier brands such as Chanel, Dior and Prada have not moved.

ice breaker

It is inevitable for luxury brands to enter the field of e-commerce in China. For many big brands, their development in China mainly faces two problems: first, brand awareness. Many brands, even first-line brands, lack brand awareness in second and third tier cities. Second, China has a vast region, with more than 600 prefecture level cities. It is difficult for luxury brands to open physical stores in every city without sufficient brand awareness. Therefore, e-commerce platform is the best market and sales channel. As an online platform, brands can not only transmit brand information to consumers all over the country, but also provide purchase channels for customers who suffer from the lack of local brand retail stores.

By 2012, luxury brands had realized that the current situation was too late. As Federico Barbieri, vice chairman of the e-commerce department of PPR Group, said, "The current problem is not" when "to enter the e-commerce field, but" how "to establish innovative and original solutions in the digital space, so as to provide our brand customers with a truly luxurious online shopping experience, rather than just staying in the creation of a good online store."

Road selection

There are two kinds of brands operating their own e-commerce. One is to parallelize global e-commerce platforms, such as Burberry. Although it launched Chinese online shopping as early as the first half of 2011, its operations were carried out in the UK headquarters, and there was no media publicity in China. Last year, our reporter asked Burberry about online shopping related business, but no reply was received. "The advantages of brands operating e-commerce themselves lie in their own use of brand resources, control of goods sources, and special additional services that can be provided to users. The barriers are technology, logistics systems, and Internet marketing experience, which can be solved through in-depth cooperation with Internet professional and mature partners. Luxury brands operate their own brand online stores, If legal means are not used to control brand supply and channel (i.e. "authorized sales"), it will not have a major impact on the current pattern of luxury e-commerce. " Qu Xinyue said.

This method is relatively low-cost, and the brand headquarters is easier to manage to ensure the unity of the brand image. However, for markets with high localization requirements, consumer acceptance is relatively low. The other is to build local self built platforms, such as Bally's and Armani's self built stations in China. Although they are more suitable for the Chinese local market, they consume considerable manpower and material resources.

Wang Hao, CEO of Maxi Fashion, pointed out that the two models have a common problem, that is, at present, major brands in China do not play the best role of e-commerce. After the establishment of many websites, there is not enough manpower to operate and manage them, and there is no plan to invest any market resources to promote sales. Therefore, the e-commerce websites of these brands have become empty shelves. It is said that the monthly sales of several independent brand websites are only 5 digits.

However, for luxury brands, the flagship store on the official brand website is not only a sales channel, but also a place for brand image display. Therefore, the flagship store on the official website should play an additive role to the brand, and sales may not be the primary consideration at the initial stage. "After the channel problem is solved, the competitive point of luxury e-commerce will turn to services, including professional sales and after-sales services for users, as well as the help of mature logistics systems for distribution and delivery services. Will users expect the door-to-door service of delivering GUCCI bags to be the same as the door-to-door service of delivering rice? New profit points will come from customer relationship management (CRM) for old customers 。 Luxury is a ladder like sales pattern. When top luxury truly recognizes e-commerce as a reliable and controllable retail channel, we will find more luxury brands to embrace online consumption in the future. " Qu Xinyue said.