Last year, the theme of the LED lighting industry was still e-commerce, and this year has quickly turned to how to achieve O2O.
Last week, Li Junjiang, the financial director and director of the listed company Zhou Ming Technology, said at the 2013 annual performance briefing that the company will actively explore the development of the lighting e-commerce O2O model and make a large investment this year. On May 20, the listed company Xuelaite (002076.SZ) also announced that the company's wholly-owned subsidiary Foshan Xuelaite E-Commerce Co., Ltd. has set up Zhongshan Snowlight E-Commerce Co., Ltd. to expand e-commerce sales. O2O is important. direction.
In the face of O2O, the popular fried chicken business in the mobile Internet era, like Zhouming Technology and Snowlight, there are more and more LED companies planning to transform O2O in 2014. However, not all companies are optimistic about O2O. Foshan, general manager of Foshan Electric Lighting Marketing, advised enterprises not to blindly transform O2O, because the LED product line is relatively narrow and cannot meet the needs of consumers for one-stop shopping.
The new power of e-commerce is considered to be the best substitute for incandescent lamps. The support of policies and the maturity of technology will quickly ripen the LED industry. At present, the production capacity is over-capacity and enters the industry integration period, which is reflected in the sales side and competition. Extremely intense. However, traditional brand enterprises have formed a mature and perfect sales system because of many years of hard work. Originally, traditional enterprises are not keen on e-commerce; on the contrary, enterprises with less influence on brands have more active channels for e-commerce, and have carried out more Try, the effect has begun to appear.
At 11 o'clock in 2013, the sales of Tmall's single store had exceeded one million yuan. At that time, the sales of champion Ou Pu Lighting reached more than 49 million yuan. Although the sales target of 100 million yuan was not completed in 2013, it is still male.踞 LED lighting brand sales top position, followed by Ao Duo lighting, the transaction amount of 34.88 million yuan, sales also doubled year-on-year.
As mentioned earlier, different companies have different attitudes toward e-commerce channels. However, it is undeniable that the confrontation between emerging LED lighting companies and traditional lighting companies has started. Judging from the current situation, emerging companies are more proactive and have seized the advantage of online sales. According to statistics, the brand awareness and sales of companies such as Ao Duo and Zhou Ming are stronger than those of well-known companies such as Philips and NVC.
At present, there are two views on the LED enterprise touch net. Opponents believe that LEDs are scene lighting, and there must be physical stores to bring consumers an intuitive feeling. At the same time, the distribution, installation and after-sales service of LED lamps are very important. If you only pay attention to network promotion and lack the support of physical stores, enterprises need to bear a lot of risks. At the same time, in lighting products, LEDs are relatively expensive products, and they are also niche products in the market, and there are not many buyers. However, online sales pay attention to price transparency and price comparison. It is generally considered that the risk of products on the high-end route is difficult to assess on the e-commerce platform. Some platform e-commerce companies also need to receive commodity trading commissions, and the company's access to space is also greatly reduced. Moreover, although the initial input cost of entering the e-commerce platform is very low, the hidden costs such as promotion and marketing are very high, and the profit cycle cannot be determined. Based on the above three points, many people believe that LED companies will use e-commerce as an auxiliary channel, which is conducive to enterprises to seek differentiated road development, but if e-commerce is the main channel, it will give up the main battlefield of LED lighting.
In fact, most of these views are brand enterprises that occupy a strong position in traditional channels. Because, currently LED products are still online and offline in two different sales markets. The mainstream of offline LED sales is government procurement, large project engineering, design institutes and designer channels, mainly B2B, and the B2C market has not yet opened, which is a typical niche market. Dr. Pan Wenbo, who has been engaged in the lighting industry for more than 20 years and founded the world's largest lighting exhibition, Guangzhou International Lighting Exhibition, believes that online sales are mainly aimed at C-end customers. In fact, online and offline sales are not contradictory to enterprises, just because they are emerging. Enterprises and brands do not have mature and stable sales channels, and rarely get engineering orders. Naturally, they are more willing to invest in online sales. However, e-commerce platforms also need brand support, and establishing online brands is still the key to the success of e-commerce channels. For enterprises, the cost of website construction is only a small part of the investment. The establishment of a brand requires companies to invest a lot of money and spend a lot of time on online promotion, so there are not many companies that can make a profit in the short term.
Be cautious about O2O
The consumption pattern in China has changed, and the single channel is no longer competitive. The multi-channel of online and offline collaboration will become the mainstream, and the e-commerce trend is unstoppable. If the new LED brand wants to face the traditional channel competition, it must be over the mountains and the odds of winning. What we can do is to do the fish in the opposite direction, change the battlefield, change the gameplay, and start the game again. Mei Zhimin, the brand director of Chau Ming Technology, repeatedly called on LED companies to actively embrace e-commerce.
From the initial fear of being injured, to the obvious sales increase brought by e-commerce, the willingness of lighting enterprises to e-commerce has been significantly enhanced, but the online sales pattern has already begun, and the leader has achieved obvious advantages. However, the rise of the O2O concept provides an excellent counterattack opportunity for companies with traditional channels.
The core of the O2O model is to bring online consumers to the real store to order or pay for offline goods and services, and then to enjoy the service. Enterprises provide information and services through discounts, and push the information of offline stores to Internet users, thus converting them into their own offline customers. Because traditional enterprises have a large number of physical sales points, it is easier to provide offline consumption experience, which is more convenient than O2O for online companies.
Before the advent of O2O, traditional e-commerce companies relied on the network to complete the purchase and use of products. They have been criticized by users for lack of consumer experience. O2O combines the two functions of online consumption and offline service to form a complete consumer experience.
However, at present, LED companies such as Chau Ming, Hanyuan, and Laiwei Optoelectronics, which are the first to open the O2O model in the industry, have few successful cases of traditional brand enterprises. Of course, this is also a common phenomenon in various industries.
Liu Kefeng, vice president of high-end lighting brand Meiwei Lighting, and vice president of LED lighting indoor lighting center, believes that at the current stage, e-commerce is only a purchase channel in the entire lighting industry, and consumers generally pass known purchase channels. After learning about the brand information with the traditional media, we will purchase high-quality products through the e-commerce channel.
However, the attitude of the old lighting company Foshan Lighting to O2O also indicates that not all companies are optimistic about the O2O model. Xue Sal, general manager of Foshan Electric Lighting Marketing believes that lighting companies should not blindly transform O2O for three reasons: First, there are few brands in the lighting industry, and some of them are also industry brands. There are not many public brands that consumers can recognize. And it is very vague, it is difficult to attract consumers to offline stores with a single brand, it is likely to buy another product after going. Second, the current sales channels for lighting are mainly lighting city models, and there are not enough brand stores. A consumer wants to buy lighting products and finds that there are many choices in this market, and they don't need to buy them at one store. Also, do you need to go to the experience store to experience a light bulb? Third, after the O2O model is used to drain consumers to the store, the product line of the specialty store is relatively narrow, which cannot satisfy the one-stop purchase of consumers. In the end, it is better to purchase it in one place. Therefore, Xue salary suggested that companies and their blind transformation of O2O, it is better to try online sales. Because the high-profile O2O model fails to bring about de facto performance growth, the crisis effect it causes will further expand with the Internet.
Regarding the salary point of view, Huang Yuanpu, the founder of the professional O2O research institute Yiou.com, agreed in part because the lighting for individual consumers is a low-priced product with low unit price and low frequency of purchase, which does not reflect the unique advantages of O2O. However, he believes that this situation is mainly because O2O has not affected the lighting industry. The industries such as furniture, electrical appliances and jewelry have completed e-commerce, and with the development of the industry, the continued exploration and practice of the channel will be the case. Changes will occur, such as the intelligent lighting that has already appeared, which is very suitable for O2O mode. At the same time, O2O is not just as simple as diversion. When O2O based on big data plays a role in guiding the production side from the sales side, the role of O2O will become more apparent.