Phoenix cycling channel warfare: after being sold, I don’t know where my consumers are.

Phoenix: bicycle network

One side retreats to the second and third lines, bypassing the e-commerce to establish a base area; the other side is on the line, confronting the e-commerce forces, and the Phoenix bicycle is playing a channel network war. At present, the linkage effect between the two militaries needs to be improved, and how to become a teacher becomes a problem.

In the mountain city of Chongqing, Mr. You is pushing a mountain bike into the light rail car. He will take the light rail to the foot of Gele Mountain. The other members of the club will gather there, and they will meet the hillside section of the 319 National Road.

The riding club where Mr. You is called calls "Phoenix" because all members of the "mountain" are Phoenix bicycles. For more than a year since the online shopping of this car, Mr. You has participated in six similar cycling activities. In his view, bicycles are no longer just a means of transportation, but have been treated as a way of life by a group of people.

There are many similar consumers in the country. With their support, the sales of Phoenix bicycles reached 3.02 million in 2016, an increase of 41.78%.

Retreat to the second and third line

Phoenix can have such a performance, it is inseparable from its nearly 1,000 terminal stores, they are distributed in urban suburbs and districts and counties across the country. Far from the high-cost areas feared by offline channels, Phoenix terminal stores maintain a relatively traditional operating status.

In an old district of a district and county in Chongqing, a phoenix store consists of two facades, the size of which is only twenty or thirty square meters. A variety of bicycles are displayed on the three walls and on the ground, leaving only a narrow aisle, and not many people enter the store in one day.

According to the owner, the local consumers are mostly parents, the users are mainly primary and secondary school students, the children group is second, and most of them are friends in the neighborhood. These consumers who go to the store to buy, generally only need to travel. Therefore, they only need to say the daily high-frequency travel route, the owner can recommend the corresponding style. All are acquaintance businesses, the owner honestly recommend products, consumers are almost 100% accepted, riding test drive and other requirements rarely appear.

When the store is the most lively, it is out of school every day. At that time, there will be many students coming over to do some tinkering: wipe the lubricant, tighten the screws, add some gas to the tires, etc. It’s like a student’s base, where the rice meets here, the school is here, and so on, and sometimes the appointment is here...

On weekdays, repairs such as changing chains and changing tires often occur. However, the owner will only charge for the spare parts, and the repair service will never charge. These services are seen by the owner, only a small busy between the neighborhoods. There are no novel concepts in their dictionary: value-added services, user experience, secondary consumption...

If they have competition, then more are dealers from other brands. Those on the network, those who share bicycles, are far away from them.

Time has pulled back to around 2010, and e-commerce began to radiate into the traditional bicycle industry. This is like a surprise attack. All kinds of big, medium and small brands are rushing in. Consumers are different from traditional big brands in the torrent of e-commerce. E-commerce shocks coupled with high cost of rent, the big brands of stores are more and more depressed, and began to lose ground.

Phoenix is ​​no exception. At that time, the number of terminal stores dropped sharply, and the city center store was almost completely wiped out, leaving only the storefronts on the edge of urban and rural areas. The total number of thousands of homes was only about 1,000. In Shanghai, “the store has retired from Central to the suburbs, and there are basically no stores in the central area.”

Go online

In this case, "Let's go online." This slogan is as popular as the "we go to the country". However, the Phoenix touches the net, a bit like catching a duck.

First of all, bicycle products are difficult to be directly Internetized. Borrowing the idea of ​​smart bicycle entrepreneur Liang Chen: All the product-type Internetization we have seen is only the Internet of sales channels, and the industry behind it cannot be changed.

Phoenix Touch Network, will change the distribution model, directly facing the C-end. For traditional industries, it is very difficult to fund only one. According to Liang Chen, an automaker with an annual sales of about 80,000 vehicles, with regional dealers, has an inventory pressure of around 100 million yuan, and does not include tens of millions of parts in stock. For Phoenix, which sells more than 3 million vehicles a year, offline dealers also play an important role in helping to share inventory pressure.

Secondly, after-sales service and market expenses will also follow. First, 90% of the traditional bicycle industry is sold by dealers. The online business has to do its own after-sales, the gap between the team and the funds is difficult to fill. Second, most regional marketing expenses are borne by dealers. In particular, sports and sports products such as sports bicycles must operate users and operate clubs. And these, the manufacturers simply can't do it.

Don't be big, first make a frame. Phoenix opened a flagship store in Jingdong and Tmall, and then began to rectify the details.

Assembly and transportation The assembly completion time of the previous products only needs to reach 75%. The remaining assembly will be reserved for the dealers, and the dealers will customize the assembly according to the needs of the consumers. Nowadays, Phoenix directly faces consumers, and it needs to be assembled to at least 99%, so that consumers can use the products directly.

Before the phoenix was shipped to the dealers, it was semi-finished products, mass transportation and standardized packaging, and the scale benefits were prominent. Nowadays, every shipment is an irregular whole vehicle, and logistics transportation is more troublesome. In the evaluation of Jingdong Mall, some consumers have carried out spitting on collision marks, damage to accessories, deformation of the frame and so on.

Double-line same price In March 2017, Phoenix launched 12 new products, announcing the same price for the same line. Traditional competition emphasizes cost and price. Distributors get goods from manufacturers or regional agents. In the rental stores, they spend manpower on marketing. The cost is naturally much higher than online, and the price will rise. Online and offline double-line prices are the same, and dealers in developed areas of online consumption are somewhat unfair.

In fact, the real same price, the online and offline procurement platform, operating platform, customer relations, inventory, goods, service response will be consistent. As for the relationship between Phoenix and the terminal dealers, even the dealer inventory is difficult to understand, and the double-line price is still difficult.

In 2016, Phoenix sold nearly 750,000 vehicles online, accounting for about 25% of the total. However, how offline stores coordinate with the online market and further unlock their potential has become the biggest problem for Phoenix.

Bicycle 4S shop

Since its birth in 1959, Phoenix has never known where its consumers are and has never interacted effectively with them. Up to now, the beginning of the Internet transformation, who sold the product to whom, when it was repaired, how long it took to be scrapped, whether the consumer has purchased it or not, must be mastered. Internet competition is data and experience, and without the consumer's behavioral data, the user experience cannot be improved. If you want to keep the market back, you can't rely on the quality of the doorknob. Quality after-sales is also essential.

Originally, Phoenix had a "cycling 4S" idea. Phoenix wants to integrate more than 1,000 existing stores into a "4S shop model" for bicycles, or an offline experience store to open up the service value chain through product display, experience consumption, after-sales service, and community building. Build new retail.

The general content is: through the terminal store, the Internet, consumers buy the whole vehicle products, if there is any demand, they will be released through the App, and the O2O door-to-door service will be carried out by the nearest terminal store. When there are more riders in the area, the terminal store can set up a cycling club and organize offline activities to enhance the stickiness. In this way, Phoenix can collect a series of data such as sales, maintenance, daily riding, product feedback, and store re-consumption.

However, terminal dealers who have not even earned enough of the difference are not interested in such a model. You know, almost all terminal stores are mom-and-pop stores, or individuals. If there is on-site service, it means that he must close the door and lose more trading opportunities; not to mention the expansion of low-efficiency exhibition halls and the formation of boring clubs.

Phoenix's existing terminal dealers have a small distribution range and are basically misplaced with the online channel output area. Coupled with the dealer's resistance, the 4S shop model has been put on hold.

Can be resolved after sale. Consumers can't find offline after-sales outlets; mailing back to headquarters for repairs is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the consumer experience no longer exists, which will eventually lead to brand crisis.

In fact, traditional after-sales has been criticized by consumers. Whether it is contracting after-sales maintenance to a local repair station, or self-built outlets, due to the high cost of rent, manpower, etc., the store will always be located in a remote place that consumers can hardly find. Moreover, during the maintenance process, many outlets are using the "three guarantees" of the dice, changing the law charges.

Phoenix's rectification of terminal dealers and after-sales service will be a muddy and long process.

In the after-sales problem, the puppy appliance is mainly based on “poly”, adopting reverse logistics, promising all mailing costs and creating a central maintenance mode. In the bicycle field, the house stone that focuses on the bicycle market is dominated by “scatter” and uses crowdsourcing. Like the drop, a large group of bicycle maintenance personnel gather on the platform, and the user can make appointments for assembly, commissioning, maintenance and other services anytime and anywhere, and the maintenance personnel grab the door.

A few days ago, Ji Xiaojun, vice president of Phoenix, revealed that Phoenix will cooperate with Yafushi to build after-sales.

Shared bicycle

The cycling market has now added a new force – sharing bicycles. The traditional bicycle dealer who has not come out of the shadow of e-commerce is very grateful for the "aggression" of shared bicycles. The surge in orders, for them, can be described as a long drought. Flying pigeons, Fujita, Emma, ​​etc. all got orders in the shared bicycle market.

At the end of December 2016, Phoenix entered the game. The founder of ofo, Dai Wei, announced that he would cooperate with Phoenix to produce 20,000 bicycles for overseas markets. When the e-commerce came, Phoenix took the lead in transforming the e-commerce; the small yellow car came, can Phoenix also play a share? Ji Xiaojun’s answer is “NO”.

According to him, if you abandon the brand, give up the market and users, over-join the shared bike, and wait until the shared bike is closed, the Phoenix will have nothing. At present, Phoenix is ​​actively cooperating with shared bicycles and is wary of avoiding being a foundry. Between the two, a secret force quietly staged.

This means that the Phoenix is ​​bathing in the "three 昧 true fire." Reconstructing traditional industries, rectifying channel networks, and leveraging bicycles, a simple market, is facing complex thinking. Funds, supply chains, channels, after-sales... Various issues require a bicycle company to have a systematic solution.

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