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Looking At The Shoe Market From Daphne'S Glory To Fall

2020/9/3 12:47:00 0

Daphne

Which pig girl did not buy a few pairs of Daphne when she was young?

Daphne's mid-term report of "Daphne in 2020" was released on August 25, which attracted the attention of Volkswagen.

According to the official clarification of Daphne later, Daphne withdrew from the retail business of medium and high-end brands, rather than the whole retail business. Daphne will focus on the operation of core brands such as shoe cabinet and Daphne.

Daphne bid farewell to high-end physical retail, on the one hand, is the result of the brand's "asset light" strategy transformation. According to yingshang.com, Daphne's store network has reduced from 2820 stores in early 2019 to 425 stores in 2020; On the other hand, Daphne's "fall" is also a common problem faced by the whole old brand clothing brands. The brands such as SEMAR, Yichun, JeansWest, metsbouray, etc. are gradually away from the current consumption environment.

The following is an interesting attempt to sort out the brand development of Daphne and try to find out the reasons for its "falling into the altar".

Time, place and people

As early as 2004, Daphne's sales reached its peak. There is a popular saying in women's shoe industry that "for every five pairs of women's shoes in China, one pair comes from Daphne". Daphne's market share is as high as 20%, which is Daphne's highlight moment.

Daphne can be traced back to Taiwan's shoe-making family. However, due to the small size of Taiwan's shoe-making market, it came to Hong Kong to establish Yongen group, which is the predecessor of Daphne. In 1990, in order to expand the shoe market more quickly, the three founders established a new brand named Daphne and moved the shoe factory to Putian, Fujian Province.

The three founders are family relatives of each other, and even today, Daphne has always had a strong family business characteristics despite the introduction of many external shareholders and capital.

Daphne's rise is mainly to seize the dividend of women's consumption power in the 1990s. In the early 1990s, Daphne's brand building and product design were commendable. At that time, there was a considerable vacancy in women's shoes brands in the domestic market, so Daphne's products became synonymous with youth and fashion.

In fact, Daphne's initial popularity in the mainland market was somewhat accidental. According to Zhang Wenyi, founder of the market at that time, Daphne entered the mainland market in 1992 because of too much stock for export and hoped to go through the mainland market for inventory. As a result, Daphne inadvertently realized the brand card position in the mainland and exported the "noble and inexpensive" function through strong advertising Household perception.

In addition to unintentional brand card positions, Daphne also vigorously developed the distribution system and rapidly expanded its dealers and offline stores. According to relevant data, from 2003 to 2013, Daphne's offline stores expanded 10 times, of which, from 2009 to 12 years, it maintained the speed of 1000 new stores every year. I believe many readers have the impression that many years ago, Bailey, Daphne, and various sub brands of Saturday occupied the majority of positions in the footwear area on the first floor of department stores. It has to be said that Daphne in the early days was indeed a smooth sailing in the mainland market.

Self operated e-commerce is in vain

The slowdown of Daphne's growth was probably caused by the financial crisis in 2008. At that time, Daphne's brand design had already appeared to be aging. In addition, due to the influence of external environment such as the economic crisis, as well as various changes in the internal personnel of early enterprises, Daphne's growth was weak and its share price fell sharply.

In the face of various problems left by the supply chain and dealers, Daphne management actively introduced external capital, began to sort out the financial and supply chain system, so as to make it more mature and perfect. At the same time, it also started the road of capital merger and acquisition, cutting into the high-end market through capital means. The effect of this set of combination boxing is obvious. Around 2013, Daphne's performance reached its peak, and various financial indicators were greatly optimized.

In the end, Daphne's strategy is worth mentioning.

Daphne has seen the importance of e-commerce in the early days. As early as around 2006, Daphne has been settled in Taobao, which is regarded as the pioneer in women's shoes industry. From 2014 to 2015, Daphne ranked top 3 among the 11 pairs of women's shoes brands. However, after 2016, Daphne's ranking declined step by step, and it never entered the top 10 after 2018.

Daphne did pay much attention to e-commerce. In the early stage, Daphne signed consignment agreements with dozens of e-commerce platforms such as Jingdong, haolemai and vipshop. Unfortunately, the proportion of sales volume of e-commerce accounts for less than one tenth of the total business, which can not save the flow decline and loss of offline stores.

Another misjudgment is that Daphne adopted the strategy of building its own e-commerce platform in 2009, and jointly built the "Yaodian 100" e-commerce platform with Baidu and Taiwan's Yahoo Qimo. Therefore, Daphne closed the distribution channels of advantageous online platforms such as Jingdong and haolemai in 2011. Now, this "mistake" is fatal. The self built e-commerce platform ended in failure, and Daphne also missed the development dividend period of Taobao tmall Jingdong and other platforms.

We might as well take a look at Daphne's old rival belle. Although Belle has experienced a period of "brand aging", its e-commerce strategy has been relatively clear. In 2018 and 2019, Belle even became the number one in the women's shoes list for two consecutive years. His, her, tianmeiyi and Scarlett all have good performance in online sales, and Belle has also grasped the category of sportswear Tuyere bonus, from 17 years delisting to today, is a brand rebirth.

Suicidal overdraft brand

Daphne played a very stable brand in the early stage of brand marketing. It can be regarded as a brand that accompanies the post-90s generation to grow together. I believe that many people can still think of S.H.E. when they mention Daphne. Daphne has also invited stars such as Liu Ruoying, Gao Yuanyuan, Quan Zhixian, Xie Tingfeng, and Liu Shishi.

In 2005, the endorsement of S.H.E. brought Daphne great success. Her song "laurel goddess" is Daphne's commercial song, which is regarded as the pioneer of star endorsement. Daphne also copied this set of marketing methods back to Taiwan and entered the Taiwan market.

However, around 2010, online marketing began to rise rapidly. At that time, the Internet promotion of VANCL and other brands was impressive, while Daphne was relatively conservative and did not invest too much in new Internet media. Later, "you from the stars" became popular. Daphne still spent a lot of money to invite Quan Zhixian to speak for her. Coupled with her outdated product style, the marketing effect will never return to the grand occasion of S.H.E.

However, it is the control of the price system that causes great damage to the brand. Due to the problems of supply chain and channel management, Daphne has created a large amount of inventory. Coupled with the pressure of the capital chain formed by rapid expansion, Daphne's products are often reduced rapidly, which is undoubtedly a loss of brand value.

Of course, we should not simply define price reduction as price management, because behind it are the external manifestations of a series of problems such as channel management, capital chain management, supply chain management, inventory cycle management and so on. But in short, the price side of the instability, resulting in Daphne brand confusion, and the product turnover cycle is too long, so Daphne quickly cut into the field of fast fashion.

Now Daphne's "asset light" transformation strategy, in fact, is still aimed at solving the above problems, especially the inventory turnover problem. According to media reports, the inventory turnover period of Daphne in 2015 was 218 days, while that of Belle International was 134 days. However, it only took 14 days for the low-cost popular shoe brand "Dadong" to go from shoe design to shelf launch.

It is not difficult to find that in addition to "brand aging", Daphne's more serious problem is the tendency of "brand sinking". Surprisingly, Daphne's products have performed quite well in pinduoduo channel, and the best-selling sandals have exceeded the sales volume of belle, hot air, skykey and Dadong.

On the other hand, Daphne is also constantly trying to be high-end and younger. For example, Daphne's offline store design has become more simple and modern, and has also made cross-border product attempts with Disney, Zhou Bichang and other stars. However, if Daphne wants to turn the brand back, Daphne undoubtedly needs more comprehensive enterprise reform, which is undoubtedly still a great challenge for the brand management.

According to Daphne's official statement, Daphne will try new retail scene mode in the future, such as cooperating with emerging media platforms such as Shuo Yin Kuai Shou to increase the traffic exposure and communication of online platforms. This transformation itself also reveals a lot of helplessness. This year, affected by the epidemic, offline consumption scenarios have been blocked. Increasing investment in online and e-commerce has become the choice of most traditional brands.

There are obvious differences between online sales logic and offline logic. There are still a lot of uncertainties about whether the "asset light" strategy can successfully transform and lead Daphne out of the quagmire.

What did Daphne miss?

It is not difficult to find out several "mistakes" made by Daphne in the process of falling down. However, it is interesting to remind us that these "wrong" decisions made at that time did have their legitimacy and particularity. If they were to do it again, Daphne might not have made different choices, which is also the wonder of business.

First of all, Daphne "missed" the e-commerce outlet. At the beginning of 2000, Daphne was in the period of e-commerce platform war. Although she saw the importance of e-commerce very early, she finally chose to build her own e-commerce platform and terminated the distribution cooperation with other e-commerce platforms. Finally, she missed the flow dividend of Taobao and other platforms, and lost the growth point of e-commerce business.

Second, Daphne has missed the outlet of sports fashion. In recent years, sports wind has become the fastest growing vertical category of clothing and shoes. However, Daphne has not invested enough in sports fashion products. At the same time, the design of traditional fashion women's shoes is relatively outdated, which leads to the continuous sinking of its own brand, and it is difficult to increase the premium.

The third is that Daphne has the sales agency business of adinike around 2008. From today's perspective, it will be a valuable cash cow business, which can alleviate the problems of the enterprise's own capital chain. However, Daphne finally gave up this business, while its rival Belle went on with it. Finally, Belle split and listed taobo.

Fourth, brand and price management issues. A large number of discount products have impacted the normal sales channels, making Daphne brand tend to be cheaper, and also affect the sales of new products. Of course, the price management problem is the concentrated embodiment of a series of supply chain, channel providers and capital chain problems behind it, and it is not just a simple matter of adjusting prices.

However, the reason why "Daphne" does not keep up with the times is also the fundamental reason why the product is not up to date. Looking at the whole market, the traditional brands that accompany the post-90s to grow up are facing very similar problems.

The rise of the brand is the product of the times. Today's online brand is the traditional brand of tomorrow. The times are constantly changing. How can the brand keep up with the times and even surpass the era is a problem that every brand can not escape.

Website editor: Li Yuanyuan

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