M****z
发帖数: 1058 | 1 好久不来了，忙着开发，HN上看到的，可能对成衣业相关的朋友有用，对其他电商领域
的朋友有启发：
http://jamiequint.com/goodbye-wholesale-brands
JAMIE QUINT
Goodbye Wholesale Brands
OCT 1, 2013
The next few years of e-commerce growth are going to fundamentally change
the way soft-goods retail works today.
E-commerce has been growing rapidly for the last 6 years with equally rapid
projected future growth. To date the growth has been mostly powered by
existing brands moving rapidly online. Great direct-to-consumer brands like
J. Crew realized this early, got out ahead of the curve, and are reaping the
benefits. New companies selling other brands (e.g. Zappos) were notable as
well. For the most part these companies built revenues through leveraging
existing audiences (in the case of existing direct-to-consumer brands) or
taking advantage of SEO and paid acquisition opportunities (in the case of
wholesale retail). There is still some growth left to be had in this area,
but there is one segment in particular that will drive e-commerce growth
over the next few years: existing designer brands who previously only sold
wholesale moving into direct-to-consumer online.
How Retail Works Today
While direct-to-consumer retail on the internet has been an opportunity for
a long time, small-to-midsize designer brands that have traditionally sold
wholesale have been behind the curve. Brands that distribute wholesale have
not historically had core competencies in direct-to-consumer. This stems out
of the structure of a pre-internet retail industry where direct-to-consumer
was a large investment either for store build-outs or catalog operations.
Recently designer brands have realized the opportunity to increase their top
line with direct-to-consumer retail and have been exploring investments
there. The average markup of a designer apparel brand from the wholesale
retailer to the consumer is around 3x. If a designer brand produces a
product for $50, they may sell it to a retailer at wholesale for $100 now.
The retailer will turn around and sell this product for $300. Prior to e-
commerce, the effort required to capture this extra $200 margin at scale
didn’t justify the investment, but now brands are starting to realize that
consumers’ increasing willingness to purchase online makes these
investments feasible. Many of the brands are doing this poorly, but at least
they are making an effort.
Explaining why this shift is such a big deal first requires a brief
background on how these designer brands that sell wholesale work. Designer
brands create lines usually 4 times a year with 2 major lines, Autumn/Winter
and Spring/Summer. They show these collections to buyers from boutiques and
large retailers throughout the year via showrooms (mostly based in LA or NY
) and at the major trade shows (Project, Capsule, ENK) that occur bi-
annually in both Las Vegas and New York. Most buying is done around 5-6
months before product ships. At the trade shows or in the showrooms brands
are showing production samples from the factory; the clothes are not
actually produced yet. After putting in their buys, the buyers wait for ship
-dates to arrive They don’t actually pay for the product up-front, but
rather upon receiving it, or with financing terms depending on the brand and
the buyer’s history with the brand. For the Autumn/Winter tradeshow
occurring in February a buyer would probably be placing orders that would
ship on 7/1, 8/1, and 9/1. The product here is generally spaced out
seasonally with the 7/1 shipment being late summer/early fall styles and 9/1
being winter styles. This is why you often see clothes at retailers that
seem way ahead of the weather.
Once the brand has their orders for the season (they generally have a hard
cutoff date that is around 4 months before delivery) they take those orders
to the factory and produce them. Some brands will over-produce by some
percentage to allow for re-orders or some small amount of direct-to-consumer
sales, but many brands will just ‘cut to order’, producing just what the
buyers ordered from them. Generally once the orders are filled they are
packed up by the factory and shipped directly to the retailer; the brand
often never takes possession of the goods.
Outsourcing Like Crazy
There are two reasons why designer brands have been late to the online game:
technological competency and operational competency. Until recently brands
have not had to know how to build a website, market it, and ship things to
consumers. Designer brands are often much smaller operations than most
people realize. Many brands operate with just a designer, a couple people
managing production, and a couple sales people to represent the brand. Often
times even the brand representation is outsourced to different ‘showrooms
’ or agencies which operate actual physical showrooms in NYC and LA as well
as presenting the product at trade shows. Even the production management is
outsourced sometimes. At many brands the only internal core competency is
the actual product design. The showrooms/agencies sell the product to
consumers, a consultant manages the factories, and the factories make the
product and ship bulk orders to retailers. Realistically, given their
propensity to outsource, most brands are not going to build e-commerce
capabilities in house. However, the complexity of building a direct-to-
consumer e-commerce business makes outsourcing this process both expensive
and arduous, which is likely why brands have been slow to make the leap.
E-commerce Changes Everything
The brands that succeed in the future will have two major operational
differences versus the brands of today. First, these brands will hold
inventory. Second, these brands will control fulfillment. As designer brands
come online and build out their direct-to-consumer presence they are going
to have to do a lot of things they have never done before. Successful brands
in the future will need to forecast direct-to-consumer sales, produce
additional product, manage shipping to customers, manage returns, and more.
It is likely that more than a few smaller brands will mis-manage this
process and end up either shuttering all direct-to-consumer operations or
simply going out of business. However, the brands that succeed at running
direct-to-consumer operations will be in an unprecedented strategic position.
Historically retailers have had very inflexible relationships with designer
brands. Retailers have been required to forecast their buys far in advance
of when they’re buying inventory, they have had to take deliveries (and pay
for them) at specific times, and they’ve been unable to re-order styles
that were working due to ‘cut-to-order’ policies. All of this equates to a
lot of risk on the retailer side, for which they have been compensated with
very high (from a consumer’s perspective) markups of around 3x on average.
This is a hidden issue for the brands as well: it means that to avoid
channel conflict - retailers don’t like it when the brand undercuts them on
price and vice versa - designer brands must sell their product at the same
price that the retailer would regardless of whether the purchase is direct-
to-consumer from the brand itself or not. This initially sounds great from a
brand perspective, but in a world where it is now possible to launch a new
‘designer’ brand direct-to-consumer online these brands must be cognizant
of upstarts undercutting them with new brands that have cachet, while still
providing a strong price/value component. It’s the innovator’s dilemma at
work: in this case the thing that is better is price/value and the thing
that is worse but will improve over time is brand equity.
Goodbye Wholesale Brands
These disadvantages are just byproducts of the old model of how brands were
run. If the old brands want to survive they will need to re-imagine the
wholesale/retail model. In a new world where brands hold and ship inventory
the existing wholesale/retail model will collapse.
Right now inventory risk is pooled across all the retailers, each of who
hold a piece of liability for the goods they have taken in. This model doesn
’t make any sense in the new world. Just as insurance companies pool
individual health risk for a large profit, smart brands will bring inventory
risk in-house and take the risk premium off the top.
In a new world where brands manage inventory retailers should be able to
commit to a partial buy with more availability for re-orders instead of an
entire buy up-front like they are required to now. Retailers should receive
part of their order, but have the rest available on demand, with fulfillment
enabled by the brand’s newfound shipping capabilities. In exchange for
offsetting this risk the brand should be able to sell at higher prices to
retailers. This is a good deal for both parties. Each retailer gets less
risk and the brand gets more revenue.
Who Will Win?
This model shift will give brands more price control. They can either
capture the additional margin or give it back to consumers in the form of
lower prices and/or higher value. With the growing prevalence of online-
first brands who sell direct-to-consumer, providing value will become
increasingly important consideration for brands. The tradeoff between
designer brand and price/value is falling away and increasingly consumers
will have the option of choosing to buy brands with both a strong brand and
strong value. The new world will increasingly favor brands that are not
price constrained by wholesale model channel conflicts. The brands that
aggressively shift to direct-to-consumer retail and agile wholesale
relationships and pass the benefits back to the consumer in the form of
lower prices or higher value are the ones that will win. | w***5
发帖数: 8282 | | B*D
发帖数: 5016 | 3 你觉得这个文章有道理么?
我有些怀疑
除非放到几个大平台上,自己搞网站的品牌,流量比零售店差很多?
宣传等都是不可忽视的投入.除非指的是已经成熟的品牌?
【在 w***5 的大作中提到】
: mark
| b******y
发帖数: 9224 | 4
我也有这个怀疑。我觉得只有新人和新的business, 但Internet以前就有的商业模式，
并不会随着Internet的发展就消失的。
比如说文章里说的，自己搞网站品牌，cut middleman等，这些理论上挺美好，但实际
吗？不见得。因为有很高的cost. 一个business，能够focus到一件事情上，做好做强
，就不错了。一个品牌，如果上游下游都做的话，是不是有点当年二战德国的东西两条
线作战? 最后结局可想而知了。
【在 B*D 的大作中提到】
: 你觉得这个文章有道理么?
: 我有些怀疑
: 除非放到几个大平台上,自己搞网站的品牌,流量比零售店差很多?
: 宣传等都是不可忽视的投入.除非指的是已经成熟的品牌?
| w***5
发帖数: 8282 | 5 现在流行的是线下体验，线上销售，至少中国是这样的。
美国的ecommmerce落后中国5年了。 | L********r
发帖数: 758 | 6 版上还是有肯动脑子的人啊。e-commerce模式取代传统零售模式和小designer有啥关系
么，只不过是换个老大继续混么。客户去实体店买还是在网上买，是macy's和amazon该
掐架拼命的事。要是哪个马仔自以为可以披个马甲带个墨镜就冒充大哥，其实就是被卖
马甲和墨镜的忽悠了，刚上去就被crossfire打成筛子了。
其实现实是，e-commerce的上扬势头造成了时装界潮流翻新的速度大幅加快。designer
被逼得更要专心于创新，谁要是分心花钱花力气搞自己完全不擅长的前端，谁就是最先
倒下的那个。在这个internet速度渗透到各个领域的时代，小弟们该干的是push
yourself to be more specialized, and pay for the professional services as
they are getting cheaper with exponential speed。整合的事留给活下来的几个老
大做就好了，这种capital intensive的事少碰。
【在 b******y 的大作中提到】
:
: 我也有这个怀疑。我觉得只有新人和新的business, 但Internet以前就有的商业模式，
: 并不会随着Internet的发展就消失的。
: 比如说文章里说的，自己搞网站品牌，cut middleman等，这些理论上挺美好，但实际
: 吗？不见得。因为有很高的cost. 一个business，能够focus到一件事情上，做好做强
: ，就不错了。一个品牌，如果上游下游都做的话，是不是有点当年二战德国的东西两条
: 线作战? 最后结局可想而知了。
| c*****a
发帖数: 447 | 7 看了这篇文章有种很奇怪的感觉。 因为大部分品牌都有自己公司的网站直接销售自己
的产品。 作者写的好像这是什么新主意似的。 作者选了很多人不是很了解的服装行
业来说话而文章并没有体现出对这个行业有很深入的了解。 其实想一下更熟悉的电子
行业。 sony, samsung, dell什么的。 都有自己的网站直销。 也没见他们从bestbuy
退出来。 不做wholesale了。
文章说他是什么公司的ceo什么的。 可作者说话的风格是很标准的想创业可从来没有
get hands dirty 亲手去做过事的人。 文章中就只看到 一件批发价$100的衣服零售
可以卖到$300. 但在这么多品牌有直销的情况下， 没有提供任何自己直销到$300 的
附加成本是哪些， 是多少。 我个人是不喜欢说话没依据的人。
另外有很多公司一直只做直销。 不批发。 绝大多数的奢侈品牌都是。 他们直销
的原因绝对不是这篇文章作者所想象的给客户更好的 price/value. 而是自己控制价
位， 可以宰顾客宰的更痛快更容易。 看着我朋友穿着$200 的 t-shirt, $300 的牛
仔裤， $800 的鞋， 拎着$2000的包。 怎么也看不出来 price/value. 原因很简
单， 这些奢侈品牌是大牌。 人家可以耍大牌。 就跟当红明星一样， 人家可以自
己出资出唱片， 拍电影。 （即使可以， 实际上那么做的很少。） 而这篇文章
是在告诉那些在街边唱歌的人们， 不要签约唱片公司。 他们赚你的钱。 你自己出
唱片。 然后网上卖。 赚的钱都是自己的。 | b**j
发帖数: 20742 | 8 if everyone leaves the "capital intensive" things to the "lao da"s, that'll
be the online version of walmart and its suppliers where walmart dictates yo
ur price and keeps all the profit
i think this is not a one-solution-fits-all situation. every brand needs to
do their own research and make their own decisions that's best for
themselves.
there's no magic bullet here
designer
【在 L********r 的大作中提到】
: 版上还是有肯动脑子的人啊。e-commerce模式取代传统零售模式和小designer有啥关系
: 么，只不过是换个老大继续混么。客户去实体店买还是在网上买，是macy's和amazon该
: 掐架拼命的事。要是哪个马仔自以为可以披个马甲带个墨镜就冒充大哥，其实就是被卖
: 马甲和墨镜的忽悠了，刚上去就被crossfire打成筛子了。
: 其实现实是，e-commerce的上扬势头造成了时装界潮流翻新的速度大幅加快。designer
: 被逼得更要专心于创新，谁要是分心花钱花力气搞自己完全不擅长的前端，谁就是最先
: 倒下的那个。在这个internet速度渗透到各个领域的时代，小弟们该干的是push
: yourself to be more specialized, and pay for the professional services as
: they are getting cheaper with exponential speed。整合的事留给活下来的几个老
: 大做就好了，这种capital intensive的事少碰。
| l******1
发帖数: 723 | 9 说的很搞笑。苹果公司都没有自己垄断渠道，还是需要依托分销商进行销售的。 | b******y
发帖数: 9224 | 10
己的产品。 作者写的好像这是什么新主意似的。
这种文章都是误导。老美的理论家不要太多哈
【在 c*****a 的大作中提到】
: 看了这篇文章有种很奇怪的感觉。 因为大部分品牌都有自己公司的网站直接销售自己
: 的产品。 作者写的好像这是什么新主意似的。 作者选了很多人不是很了解的服装行
: 业来说话而文章并没有体现出对这个行业有很深入的了解。 其实想一下更熟悉的电子
: 行业。 sony, samsung, dell什么的。 都有自己的网站直销。 也没见他们从bestbuy
: 退出来。 不做wholesale了。
: 文章说他是什么公司的ceo什么的。 可作者说话的风格是很标准的想创业可从来没有
: get hands dirty 亲手去做过事的人。 文章中就只看到 一件批发价$100的衣服零售
: 可以卖到$300. 但在这么多品牌有直销的情况下， 没有提供任何自己直销到$300 的
: 附加成本是哪些， 是多少。 我个人是不喜欢说话没依据的人。
: 另外有很多公司一直只做直销。 不批发。 绝大多数的奢侈品牌都是。 他们直销
| | | j**s
发帖数: 1028 | 11 Thanks for sharing. I think this is great article. | M****z
发帖数: 1058 | 12 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6477137
Some comments on Hacker News, if you are interested.
【在 j**s 的大作中提到】
: Thanks for sharing. I think this is great article.
| b******y
发帖数: 9224 | 13 看了楼上的hacker news的评论，亮点是:
1) Inventory killed more Jews than Hitler
2) The author says that a brand holding its own inventory is the "new"
industry model. It is actually one of the oldest and most dysfunctional, and
fraught with risk. | w***5
发帖数: 8282 | 14 关键问题在于inventory是谁花钱，大retailer可以有更久的赊账期，designer不接受
的话，就可以开辟自己的渠道直销。
美国的消费者上网买服装的毕竟还是少数，在店里面试身和在家里面试身的成本比例还
是不大。在线销售不可能在短时间内取代实体店。
而中国的环境就比较奇怪了，实体店在暴涨的租金和入场费的压力下大幅加价，大量消
费者踊跃尝试线上消费，廉价的物流又提供了这个方便。 | m*******g
发帖数: 410 | |
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