In recent years, some home furnishing stores have begun to shrink offline stores.
People can't help but ask, is the home furnishing hypermarket approach going offline?
The successor of the home furnishing industry is weak?
the answer is negative.
Walking into the home furnishing industry, the reporter found that this trillion-dollar consumer industry is by no means a sunset industry, but an evergreen industry worthy of continuous cultivation.
What is certain is that the large home furnishing industry is brewing a round of deep-seated reforms.
The new crown pneumonia epidemic continues to stir, real estate has entered a period of adjustment, and consumption habits have undergone profound changes... Affected by external factors, the home furnishing industry has been impacted to a certain extent in recent years.
However, the coldness of the external environment has not affected the heat in the hearts of practitioners.
In the Pearl River Delta where industries gather, China Home Expo (Guangzhou) and International Famous Furniture (Dongguan) Exhibition and other industry exhibitions have been held successively this year. The immersive experience scene demonstrates the strength of "one stop for a home"; furniture factories bring new products with different functions; designers, dealers, and even equipment manufacturing and maintenance platform companies talk to each other in order to create a new ecology of cross-border integration Finding the right partner... The scattered industries have gathered together like never before, just like the theme of this year's International Famous Furniture (Dongguan) Exhibition - Symbiosis.
This is the prelude to industrial upgrading.
The reporter has investigated the home furnishing industry in the Pearl River Delta for several days and found that most companies have adjusted their attitudes and strived to integrate into the three major new trends of "integrated development of the entire industry chain, online and offline multi-channel sales, and digital and intelligent manufacturing".
Open the era of lifestyle
If you want to know what new trends are blowing in the home furnishing industry, you might as well look at what the first-line brands in the Pearl River Delta are doing.
Coordinates Houjie Town, Dongguan Furniture Town.
Mousse Group, with the label of "healthy sleep", is no longer just a mattress company.
V6 Home Furnishing, a brand of Mousse, recently released a new strategy, announcing that it has entered the "customization 2.0 era".
"This is a brand new track we have opened." Yao Jiqing, vice chairman and president of Musi Co., Ltd. explained, "The whole house customization 1.0 era mainly solves the customization of wardrobe cabinets, and Musi'customization 2.0 era" will realize cabinets and software Integrated customization not only integrates style, but also solves the integration of functions and services. For example, sofas can be customized according to each person's body structure, sitting and lying habits." Mousse is starting to build an ecological platform that will integrate the boss, Household appliance brands such as Casarte have opened up the whole-scenario marketing of "furniture + home appliances" with a new cooperation model.
Coordinates Jiujiang Town, Foshan Furniture Town.
Lin's Wood Industry, which has been the sales champion of Tmall's "Double 11" residential furniture category for many years, recently changed its name to "Lin's Home Furnishing" to accelerate the layout of the comprehensive business format of "finished products + customization + household products".
"From furniture e-commerce to going public, Lin's is becoming a leading enterprise." Peng Liang, deputy director of the Design Professional Committee of China Furniture Association, marveled at its fast pace of transformation: "Lin's announced to enter the sleep industry, using the moso bamboo in Wuyi Mountain, Fujian, from the new Cut into the sleep scene from an angle; it is no longer just an e-commerce company. Under the epidemic situation, it has continued to open stores against the current. There are already 500 offline stores in South China alone, and more than 100 new products are developed on average every month, with nearly 20,000 single categories. indivual."
Coordinates Guangzhou, a major household consumption city.
Shangpin Home Delivery, a pioneer in the field of customized furniture, is expanding its "circle of friends" frequently.
Over the past few months, the offline home furnishing experience stores built by Shangpin Home Delivery and JD.com have successively landed in Xi'an, Hefei, and Beijing, solving consumers' one-stop needs from design, customization, supporting home appliances and furniture to decoration, and after-sales.
Shangpin Home Delivery has also reached a cooperation with LEELEN Technology, a leader in the smart home industry, to integrate the advantages of both parties and seize the new trend of "whole house customization + whole house intelligence" one-stop solution.
"Integration", "one-stop", "lifestyle presentation"...Behind the hot words of first-line brand transformation are the profound changes in China's home furnishing industry after 30 years of rapid growth.
The home furnishing industry covers furniture, home appliances, lighting appliances and other industries.
Wang Dawei, chairman of the Sales Committee of the China Furniture Association, said that from the perspective of the furniture industry alone, in the past 30 years, the operating income of China's furniture industry has increased from 100 million yuan to trillion yuan in 2021, accounting for 37% of the world's total output value of the furniture industry. No. 1 in the world.
It is a consensus that the industry will enter a longer adjustment period next.
Under the epidemic, the home furnishing industry is facing extraordinary challenges.
The challenge first comes from the dependence of the home furnishing market on the flow of people.
"Whether it's a home furnishing store or a home furnishing exhibition, it needs popularity, and decoration also needs people to enter the community. The epidemic has led to fewer people in the store, some exhibitions have been suspended, and even decoration has been affected." Qin Zhan, president of the China Building Materials Circulation Association theory.
Another is the impact of the upstream real estate market on household consumption.
"The total capacity of the real estate market is in a downward trend in the long run, which directly caused the home furnishing industry to enter the stock market from the incremental market in the past." Wang Dawei said, "The stock competition is becoming more and more fierce, and the result is polarization-head centralization and Extreme specialization."
A deeper challenge comes from changes in consumption habits.
"The post-80s and post-90s are all Internet aborigines. The biggest challenge for the industry in the future is to shift from traditional stores to a new model of offline and online sales," Peng Liang said.
In this regard, the direct-to-consumer dealer group feels deeply.
"Channels are diverging. E-commerce, Douyin, Xiaohongshu and various live broadcast platforms have brought huge challenges to traditional dealers." Wang Dawei said with emotion, "The original channels are closely linked, from brands to shopping malls to home improvement companies, Building materials, etc. Now, the traffic flow of traditional stores has dropped sharply, and decoration companies have also entered the furniture sales industry across borders, and operating costs have increased significantly.”
But the challenge breeds explosive power.
In Qin Zhanxue's view, the home furnishing market has a special kind of resilience, which comes from rigid consumer demand.
Since the beginning of this year, the state has continuously introduced policies to promote the consumption of furniture, home appliances, and home decoration. Home furnishing companies are becoming more and more familiar with Internet channels, and the market is slowly recovering under the new sales model.
According to the National Building Materials and Home Furnishing Prosperity Index (BHI) released by the China Building Materials Circulation Association, from January to September, the cumulative sales of building materials and home furnishing stores above designated size nationwide were 945.874 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.35%.
The stock market is a challenge, and consumption upgrading is an opportunity.
The reporter saw at the exhibition that the design of the whole case and the customization of the whole house have become a track for fierce competition among brands, pointing directly at the core needs of new consumer groups.
"The logic behind it is that what consumers need is no longer a product, but a beautiful home. Enterprises are derived from their respective fields of expertise to the overall home, and are the presenters of a beautiful lifestyle. From the product era to the lifestyle era, This is the future trend of the home furnishing industry." Peng Liang said.
Jointly build a new industrial ecology
Want to "provide a home in one stop", even if it is a leading enterprise, it is difficult to do it by itself.
How can we seize the precious opportunity of this round of consumption upgrade?
The reporter's investigation found that many companies have realized that group integration and joint construction of a new industrial ecology are the feasible paths.
"The future must be to realize integrated design, customization and one-stop configuration. The industry will become more and more integrated, and soft decoration and customization, furniture and home appliances will form an overall package." Yao Jiqing said.
With more than 2,000 specialty stores, Coos Home has created an interesting full-category life experience hall, which is its next step in the transformation of specialty stores.
"Young people will become the main consumers of home furnishing in the future. The upgrading of the entire space and personalized iteration are becoming the mainstream. The industrial ecology should also be upgraded accordingly. The large home furnishing and large building materials industries must integrate with each other." Jiang Chunming, vice chairman of Coos Home Furnishing, said.
Experts believe that in the tide of integrated development of large home furnishing, two forces will lead the trend of aggregation of the entire industrial chain.
One is a head enterprise, and the other is a specialized and special new enterprise.
Taking advantage of the trend has become a common experience of the two types of enterprises. They call on industry enterprises to quickly find their own position in the future industrial chain and become a recognizable brand in the new ecology.
Leading enterprises focus on building brand power and striving to transform to an ecological platform.
"Head enterprises must develop from industry brands to consumer brands." Yao Jiqing believes that Mousse, as a high-end brand in the field of sleep health, will integrate global resources in the future, develop towards an ecological platform, and use the huge customer resources accumulated over the years to meet Consumers improve their customized home needs.
More companies focus on diversified lifestyles and show their talents in market segments.
Liu Jingsheng, general manager of Haode CNC Machinery in the upper reaches of the furniture industry chain, can see clearly: "The whole house customization and assembly industry is a big blue ocean, but the ocean is very deep, requiring very strong comprehensive delivery and service capabilities, and it is more suitable for powerful large companies. Enterprises. Most small and medium-sized enterprises might as well choose to be the leader in the segmented industry, make small and beautiful, small and refined differentiated designs, or cooperate with upstream and downstream to make complete products for customers. Functional furniture suitable for the elderly and pet furniture are becoming consumer products. It has attracted the attention of many small and medium-sized enterprises."
The reporter obviously felt that large, medium and small brands are all interested in differentiated competition, and a fresh wind has blown in the home furnishing industry that was once severely homogenized.
For example, Dongguan Model Furniture, which has been in the high-end custom track for a long time, has created the core competitiveness of "intelligent integration".
"Komo provides personalized customization services from home appliance control, lighting control, curtain control and other aspects, and directly integrates intelligent functions into products, which has core advantages." said Meng Jihua, Marketing Director of Como Customization Department.
Another example is the brand poetry that quickly breaks through the circle by opening up the channel of designers. At present, it has established cooperation with more than 10,000 designers.
"The most important thing for Poetry to be able to overtake in a corner in the fierce competition is to have differentiated thinking." Said Liu Longxiang, Regional Manager of Poetry.
Platform Empowers Online and Offline
Home Furnishing Enterprise Opens Business School?
This seems to be standard for big brands.
"Mifei Business School opens live broadcast and short video training courses for free today. Dealers and friends can come to learn how to shoot the best video in a few minutes to empower store traffic." In an exhibition forum, Mifei Home Furnishing The person in charge of marketing talked freely about the brand's online channel drainage ability, and the audience was full of audience.
"The one who wins the channel wins the world". It is difficult to do business in physical stores, forcing brands to show their talents and provide dealers with systematic training and services to compete for traffic and grab entrance.
Dealers and furniture factories are also eager to learn from the brand side.
It is imperative to connect online and offline home furnishing sales.
"Most of the current business models in the industry are flying close to the ground, relying on shopping malls, locations, and activities. Our dealers must innovate in business thinking and integrate online and offline." Wang Dawei was at the China Furniture Sellers Conference a few days ago. call.
Young people are "shopping for a home online", but the home furnishing industry cannot simply move channels online like the FMCG industry, and must take the road of integration of online and offline channels.
Fang Peng, executive director of Foshan Electronic Commerce Association, took out a set of data.
"The penetration rate of online channels in my country's furniture industry has risen from 6.9% in 2016 to 13.5% in 2020. In terms of consumers' purchase channel preferences, they should first look online before buying in stores, and look at advanced stores before buying online. The proportion of 'online + offline' is as high as 48%, 35% for physical stores alone, and 17% for online purchases alone." He believes that for large-scale commodities such as furniture, although traditional stores are not good at traffic operation, but the advantages in experience, activities and services are irreplaceable, and online and offline must empower each other.
In Fang Peng's view, live streaming and short video delivery, known as interest e-commerce, can connect online and offline better than traditional e-commerce.
"In the past, buying furniture and searching on e-commerce platforms was 'people looking for goods'; while interest e-commerce planting grass is 'goods looking for people', which is pushed according to everyone's hobbies to form consumption. Today, interest e-commerce platforms such as Douyin have put The combination of the two makes the traffic conversion more accurate and efficient, so now there is a more complete ecology for entering the interest e-commerce.” Fang Peng said.
"There are already tens of thousands of merchants on the Douyin home furnishing track, and more and more businesses from Dongguan, Foshan and other places are joining this track." said Luo Bingkun, operations manager of the Douyin e-commerce consumer electronics home life industry.
Statistics show that among my country's 1.03 billion Internet users, 930 million watch short videos and 460 million watch e-commerce live broadcasts. Interested e-commerce has become a track that home furnishing practitioners cannot ignore.
However, some furniture factories said that they do not want to enter the market. The problem is that furniture is not like clothes, and it is difficult to form impulsive consumption. In addition, whether it is content production or logistics services, interest e-commerce has a high threshold.
In this regard, Luo Bingkun said that in the past two years, Douyin e-commerce has focused on creating a platform that is more friendly to the home furnishing industry, improving logistics services, changing the rules of large-scale furniture control, and attracting more merchants to enter.
"In the era of graphic e-commerce, it is difficult for traditional furniture manufacturers to both plant and pull weeds, but now Douyin is both a content platform and a sales platform, and it can be a one-stop solution from planting to weeding. In 2021, Douyin e-commerce furniture The industry is growing rapidly, and there is a strong demand for talent to bring goods during the marketing promotion period.”
How do traditional home furnishing practitioners play with interest e-commerce and connect online and offline?
In the eyes of professionals, in addition to forming short videos and live broadcasting teams to make good content, there are two more critical points.
One is to choose the right track, try to enter the blue ocean track and avoid the red ocean track.
Luo Bingkun, who has served a large number of furniture companies on Douyin, suggested that we should aim at the needs of strategic groups to cultivate.
Who buys furniture on Douyin e-commerce?
Luo Bingkun revealed that Douyin categorizes furniture consumers into eight strategic groups, mainly concentrated in the senior middle class, young people in small towns, exquisite mothers, and middle-aged and elderly people in small towns.
"You should consider your own advantages and choose a track with potential. For example, the high proportion of young people in small towns and middle-aged and elderly people in small towns shows that the sinking market still has a very strong consumption power waiting to be released; the delicate mother crowd is worth cultivating, and the share of children's furniture is currently Its proportion in the market is not high, and there is great potential for interest e-commerce around mothers and babies." In addition, we can also observe many outlets from Douyin, such as more people working from home during the epidemic, which has given birth to families' demand for office furniture. Demand; the weather is getting colder, and the demand for coat racks is soaring; outdoor furniture is even more popular this year... It is easier to make short video content for these popular categories, and it is worth trying to cut into interesting e-commerce.
The second is to have a clear positioning, precise traffic instead of chasing general traffic.
Young people aged 25 to 35, the first house, and all categories, Lin's Home Furnishing relies on a clear positioning, coupled with new media marketing that fits the young people's "dare to think and play" attitude, such as moving the show to a glacier lake The top of the road, the "road live broadcast room" that creates an immersive experience, etc., captures the hearts of young people on various channels such as WeChat video account, Tmall, and Douyin.
"Big data algorithms are very precise, and the key depends on whether they have a clear understanding of the target group." Luo Bingkun found that some companies can't play Douyin because they have a vague understanding of the target group.
"For example, most domestic first-home buyers may have a budget of 50,000 yuan to buy the whole house furniture. If you want to do business with this group of people, you must pay attention to the total amount of the whole set of furniture."
Maizi, a social live broadcast expert, feels the same way.
"In the past two years of serving the home furnishing industry, I found that many people have fallen into a misunderstanding: just thinking about how to increase fans, but ignoring the conversion rate is the fundamental." Maizi pointed out that the platform data shows that the furniture consumption decision-making cycle is particularly long. From the search It takes an average of 3 to 6 months to place an order. Most people are most concerned about after-sales service and quality when buying furniture.
Therefore, it is important to first circle accurate users into your own fish pond, build trust, and then transform them through services.
The more accurate the label, the more accurate the crowd distributed by the platform.
Interest e-commerce is a challenge to traditional home sales, but also an opportunity.
"What is currently lacking in Douyin is not traffic, but consumption habits. As long as there are offline stores and online windows, and actively establish their own short video digital assets and service system, they will be able to cultivate their own super users." Maizi Say.
Luo Bingkun is more optimistic: "In the future, furniture is likely to develop into a fast-moving consumer product, which may require the efforts of several generations."
Transform and upgrade to digital intelligence
Whether it is consumer demand shifting to "furnishing a home" or the differentiation and integration of sales channels, it all points to a capability that the large home furnishing industry needs to improve—digital and intelligent capabilities.
"Integration of intelligent and intelligent manufacturing is the only way for furniture companies." Li Jun, a professor at Nanjing Forestry University, believes that the rise of the concept of whole house customization means that the information recognized by end consumers must go directly to each production workshop and warehouse material control position; At the same time, dealers' requirements for furniture companies are also constantly increasing. From quality, delivery to service, profit sharing and even risk sharing, meeting these requirements also requires intelligent integration.
The industry generally believes that a reborn digital and intelligent revolution is imperative. Only by using digital and intelligent technology to penetrate the front, middle and back ends of the industry and form a closed loop, can home furnishing enterprises hope to leap from the manufacturing business to both ends of the industrial value chain.
In fact, all the furniture companies in the Pearl River Delta that are currently among the top are relying on strong digital manufacturing and management capabilities.
In Mousse's Industry 4.0 factory, about 5,000 mattresses are produced every day, with different models, soft and hard. Customization and large-scale integration are highly integrated. The workload that originally required four to five hundred people is now less than 20 people. It can be completed; Shangpin Home Delivery relies on powerful software capabilities to support the entire business model.
"From customer acquisition to measuring scale, scheme design, then to transaction, overall design, construction scheduling, hardware installation acceptance, and finally to furniture ordering, dismantling, production, delivery and installation, every step has been digitized. We It took 16 years to build this whole set of process system, which runs through 3 bases and more than 3,000 stores across the country." Said Qiu Quan, deputy general manager of Yuanfang Software of Shangpin Home Delivery Group.
However, there are still a small number of home furnishing companies that can run through the front and back ends through digitalization, and more companies have just begun to partially explore on the road to digitalization.
"As a traditional industry, home furnishing lags behind in the field of intelligent manufacturing, and Mousse's exploration of digital transformation has also gone through a difficult no-man's land." Yao Jiqing said that when Mousse built an Industry 4.0 manufacturing base in 2015, he searched for A world-class smart manufacturing solution provider hopes to solve the problem of standardization process, but others say that there is no mature case in this field, and in the end, Mousse can only try as a pioneer.
The difficulty for enterprises to penetrate the front and back ends reflects the reality that the upstream and downstream of the large home furnishing industry chain urgently need to realize digital intelligence upgrade as a whole.
"It is necessary to solve the core equipment innovation problem of the upstream industry." Peng Liang said, "Furniture companies buy imported edge banding machines or assembly lines, replace parts and software upgrades are in the hands of others, and work for foreign equipment all their lives. To make high-end equipment have 'Chinese Heart'."
It is encouraging that the upper, middle and lower reaches of the home furnishing industry chain have begun to join hands.
At the end of July, the China Furniture Association Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment Professional Committee was established in Dongguan. Furniture associations, furniture manufacturing equipment companies, and software companies from all over the country gathered together to discuss how to establish a benign mechanism for cross-industry interaction and promote digital intelligence in the industry.
The home furnishing industry cluster in the Pearl River Delta is also entering the new blue ocean of digital intelligence under the leadership of leading enterprises.
In Foshan, led by companies such as Weishang Furniture, in conjunction with service providers such as Meiyun Zhishu, Yuanfang Digital Technology, JD Cloud and many other home furnishing companies, the industrial chain collaborative digital transformation project of customized home furnishing clusters was launched in June. Pool, guide the upstream and downstream enterprises of the cluster to jointly transform and upgrade, and win in the era of digital intelligence.
(Economic Daily reporter Zheng Yang)