Is Daphne Addicted To Stores? The Death Of A Generation Of Shoe King!

"Every five pairs of women's shoes in China come from Daphne." In the "high light moment", Daphne claims to sell nearly 50 million pairs of women's shoes every year. Daphne has even been crowned "shoes king" for a time. This is not a brilliant generation of shoe king, who has recently been talked about is repeatedly closed shop rumors.

According to the news, in the past 4 years, Daphne has closed nearly 4000 stores. When the news broke the audience's tongue, the recent earnings report seemed to corroborate this fact.

In April 15th, Daphne International (00210) released its 2019 earnings report. According to the announcement, Daphne achieved a turnover of HK $2 billion 126 million in 2019, down 48% compared to the same period last year, gross profit of HK $781 million, down 62% compared to the same period last year, operating loss of HK $1 billion 19 million, an increase of 30% compared to the same period last year, and the shareholders' deficit should be HK $1 billion 70 million.

Daphne used to expand the number of stores by 9 times in 10 years, but lost half of it in 3 years. The store was once a proud and winning weapon of Daphne, but now it has not been able to bring about higher rental costs.

Changes in industries, consumer turnover, when changes quietly swept the globe, the defender has no escape. Behind all the market strategy failures, after all, is the lack of understanding of consumers.

Daphne, who was at its peak in 2012, may not have thought that the year would be a turning point in its own destiny, because after that year, the "Volkswagen shoe king" never recovered.

　　 After the scenery, Waterloo is full of scenery.

Since its inception, Daphne has adopted the way of "direct operation + affiliation + affiliation", and has begun to attack the city area, and its performance is also very good. In 2003, Daphne had only 739 stores.

By 2012, the number of Daphne stores has soared to 6881. In the past ten years, the number of Daphne's stores has increased by 9 times, which is amazing.

The consequence is that Daphne has to take the risk of losing money and risk the collapse of its brand image. When all the people in the street wear Daphne, it is far away from the image of "high-end, fashionable and atmosphere".

For brands, it is difficult to walk from low to high. It is easier to move from high line to low line, and channel sinking is a common strategy for clothing and footwear market development. Daphne's action is understandable.

But the key to the problem is that the low line market has low brand loyalty and pays more attention to price. In order to win the price war, Daphne not only discounted the sales of shoes, but also sold the new shoe products to stores for a month.

The decline of Daphne began with a landmark turning point: the first time in 2015, it was surplus and deficit. That time, the market electricity supplier industry war smoke four.

In 2015, Tmall's "double eleven" and Daphne's E-commerce Team handed over a transcript of more than 10 million on a single day. Nevertheless, compared with the status of "Daphne shoes" under the Daphne line, the share of Daphne's electricity supplier may not be as good as 1/10 of the whole plate.

But Daphne still has certain advantages in draining offline members to the Internet, and then carries out network marketing with the advantage of brand. However, all these seemingly beautiful ideas were stranded by Daphne group's investment in 100. Yao point 100 followed Taiwan YAHOO for B2C mode, no inventory, only selling. The foreseeable result is that it soon collapsed due to the fragmentation of capital chain and lack of experience.

At the same time, Daphne's share of the electronic business platform discarded by focusing on 100 points also has a lonely time. To this end, it was felt that Daphne's electricity business, from the rise to the full bloom, spent a full 5 years, and from full bloom to decline, only 10 months.

　　 But the camel will never be the last straw.

We all know that Daphne can grow up by relying on product advantages. However, in recent years, the quality and design of Daphne shoes have not been much innovation, which has always been criticized.

At home and abroad, all kinds of tide cards and jointly swept the Chinese youth market, sports shoes and board shoes have won a lot of consumption of loyal powder. Nowadays, Daphne's brand innovation ability and design ability are weak, so it can not keep pace with the upgrading of mainstream consumers.

The innovative design that has been popular with many 90's has been fading away. Even if Nicholas Tse has been invited to be the creative director at a big price, Daphne's design is also very old. From this we can see that one of the original roots of Daphne's going down the altar is blind expansion, resulting in a serious backlog of inventory.

On the other hand, the Internet accelerates the launch of new brands, making the brand cycle shorter. In order to meet the needs of consumers, some brands follow the fast fashion mode and keep up with the new rhythm. At that time, Daphne's design has been unable to keep pace with the rhythm.

In the face of all these heavy blows, from 2015, Daphne embarked on a large area of shop closing, and gradually fell to the altar.

　　 The "noble" leather is not inferior to the "cheap" fast fashion.

The founder of Da Yun FA said that he defeated all opponents but lost to the times. Daphne and BELLE compete for the position of shoe king for decades, and finally lose to the times. With the rapid popularity of e-commerce and mobile Internet tools, people's shopping methods have undergone tremendous changes.

From all over the world, a variety of fashionable footwear brands have emerged in an endless stream. They play the role of comfort and dignity, combine life and art, and quickly capture the hearts of consumers with an extremely new sense of experience. The core products of the local shoe industry represented by Daphne are still leather shoes, and even "shrunk" leather shoes, and their competitiveness is very weak.

At the same time, UNIQLO, ZARA, H&M and other fast fashion have entered China one after another. In this big market, they are "catching up with the city" and driven by rapid store expansion to drive sales growth.

According to incomplete statistics, in the first half of 2017, there were 25 fast fashion brands opening new stores in the Chinese market.

Among them, UNIQLO, ZARA, H&M, MJstyle, UR, C&A, Forever21, GAP and other 10 fast fashion brands opened 157 new stores, an increase of 16.3% over the same period in the first half of 2016. The core competitiveness of fast fashion brands is obvious because its mode of operation can provide massive single products, and consumers have a wider range of choices.

At the same time, fast fashion brands will transform the popular design elements of T into their own shoe line and even home design products. In the end, it is because of their "cheap" advantages and fashionable fashion elements that bring high cost performance, and the brand premium is relatively low.

As a result, for fast fashion brands stationed in China rapidly, they are threatening to become the spoiler of this industry. Chinese consumers are also buying it. In the fast fashion stores, the endless stream of people shows the success of these brands.

Fast fashion grabs the market and makes Daphne's market share weaken. Daphne realized a few years ago that the times have changed and consumers have changed.

Perhaps it is not that they do not know the crisis, but that they have not made timely adjustments. Or, due to temporary setbacks and failures, the courage of adjustment or confusion has slowed, and slowed down.

Rigidity, inertia and the shading of vision make the once brilliant enterprise lose the ability to innovate and change or pursue innovation.

　　 Daphne:

　　 A good era, the last thing to stick to.

In the age of industrialization, the typical mode of shoe enterprises is mass production, which will be sold to franchisees or direct stores through orders, and will be new in the quarter or half a year. And sales are tier one, two or three line, four or five tier tier tier cities, discounted layers of digestion and stock.

But in the new consumption era, it is no longer scale but speed.

The era of a super brand that serves all users is gone, and new brands of small batch of trial, error, and quick turnover are eating up the users of traditional shoe enterprises in small plots.

In recent years, more and more traditional star shoe enterprises are falling down. In the face of the changes of the times, their reasons are much the same: strategic mistakes, too long battlefields, lack of focus on the field, lack of innovation and Internet thinking, and fragmentation of capital chains.

The reason why the old company is in a crisis is that it has not grasped the trend of the times. In other words, there may be a way to succeed, but failed brands have their own absurdity.

If faced with the surging business environment, Daphne has explored a road of its own; if the slogan of "subversion and return" has been shouted earlier, the understanding of consumers will be more profound.

However, the commercial world is cruel, if not. No, but there is no certainty. While more and more shoe companies are being eliminated, some brands will find their own way of development.

Like Lining and Anta, after years of labor pains, they played a new trick on the old brand. They went to the international fashion week to take the lead in GAI. Finally, this year has ushered in its own high-speed growth.

All these brands have gone through Waterloo before, but they have made efforts to adjust their attitude and get back to the right track. In the past two years, they have handed in a beautiful transcript.

Haier CEO Zhang Ruimin once said: "the unsuccessful enterprise, only the enterprise of the times". Times have changed, and those who are able to withstand changes in the times have become classics.

The example of Daphne tells us that both enterprises and individuals should maintain a sense of crisis, seek opportunities in change, constantly adjust their strategies, and remain dedicated and attentive. Only in this way can we remain invincible in the future.