Youngor brand channel

“What is a brand name? In Shanghai, at least 10% of the market share is also required. What is a brand? A gay man needs to buy a shirt and buy a suit. The flash in his mind is the Youngor brand. But now it seems that There is some distance between these two points."

Spend 152 million yuan to buy a store on Nanjing Road, Shanghai. Is this the end of Younger's channel "downsizing"?

Li Rugang, Vice Chairman of Youngor Group, Chairman of Clothing Co., Ltd. Compared to his brother Li Rucheng (Youngor Group Chairman), his personality is more outgoing and he is now in charge of the domestic sales and wool spinning of Youngor's clothing brands. Li Rucheng is "mainly managing the strategic direction of the Group and coordinating domestic and international strategies and sales."

In recent years, one of Li's main tasks is to integrate Youngor's apparel sales channels.

Under the influence of the market, Youngor's stores nationwide have over 5,000 "thin" models to more than 2,000 in the past few years. For this time the "weight loss", Li Rugang is not taboo, and Frank Younger channel "slimming" effect has been quite good. Obviously, Youngor’s sales are still steadily rising after the water is squeezed out.

At the same time, the reforms also have a schedule for personnel. Now Youngor's management model is “three-level management”: head office, regional market leader, and city branch. In this two-year period, Li Rugang has transferred more than a dozen directors from the group to more than 30 heads of branch offices.

“Every unqualified supervisor will be responsible for the branch company; the branch manager will be the salesman and the salesman will look at the warehouse. There is nothing wrong with this. At the same time, in order to be able to discover problems in various regions in time, Responsible person intermodulation."

After the “extensive expansion” of 78 years ago, Li Rugang thinks that it is time for Youngor to consider how to “fine-tune”.

Channel "slimming"

On Christmas Eve, Youngor opened Youngor’s flagship store in the Zhongbao Silver Building bought a year ago. Group Chairman Li Rucheng stated that this was “achieving one of his long-cherished wishes”. In order to build Shanghai's base area, Youngor is willing to give more money to consolidate channels. It has a number of flagship stores in East China with a business area of ​​more than 600 square meters, and this flagship store with a business area of ​​1200 square meters is just one of them.

Prior to this, Youngor had more than 40 specialty store properties in Shanghai, which could bring sales of 40 million to 50 million yuan each year. However, only two of these stores were purchased by themselves. According to Li Rucheng, leasing properties does not favor Younger's rooting in the Shanghai market.

Another background of the opening of this store is: Youngor's basic "downsizing" is completed, followed by an intensive expansion.

“In a large shopping mall, the highest ping effect (unit area sales) can reach 100,000 yuan per square meter per year, but the lowest is only 10,000 yuan per square meter.” And according to Youngor’s estimate of the other brands’ effectiveness, It is between 7,000 yuan and 3 yuan per square meter. Therefore, Li Rugang believes that now Youngor's investment in the sales channel has been sufficiently large. The next step is how to integrate resources and intensively manage the business.

Since 2000, Youngor's stores nationwide have been reduced to more than 2,000 in five years. Li Rugang divided the more than 2,000 in four different categories: store-in-shops in integrated malls, self-operated chains, franchise stores, and a small number of group-buying stores. Among them, there are more than 1200 shop-in-shops and self-operated chain stores in integrated malls, while the remaining two categories account for about 20% of the total. In the past five years, "store-in-shop" and "self-operated chain stores" have been shrinking at the same time.

In the 1980s, Youngor was a very good partner with more than 4,000 department stores all over the country. However, over time, many department stores have withdrawn from business, and some even went bankrupt. Youngor’s partners are getting more and more Less, this trend continues. In addition to some shopping malls in Changchun and Harbin in the Northeast, many other malls have closed down. Li Rugang believes that in this situation, Youngor can only open self-operated stores.

But at the same time, Youngor’s more than 400 specialty stores are also facing challenges. At the end of 2005, Youngor had more than 2,000 storefronts. The latest number of self-operated stores was about 300, and more than 200 of them owned property rights.

"The market will be eliminated naturally." Li Rugang said, "Jiangsu, Zhejiang town-level self-operated store business is not good, they can only be closed; and North China, northwest store after market testing, found only to expand to the city level ."

Currently, Youngor's more than 300 self-operated stores can be sold with more than 800 store-in-shop sales, accounting for 80% of Youngor's overall sales. More than 50% of these stores are located in East China. Li Rugang said that even if it continues to purchase property-stores, it will only consider buying in East China.

Now Youngor has invested 156 billion yuan for the purchase of stores in order to create terminal sales channels. Li Rugang expects that Youngor will spend two or three hundred million yuan each year to purchase stores.

Redefining brand goals

After spending 152 million yuan to buy the Zhongbao Silver Tower, if Youngor sells the building downright, it can immediately recover 250 million yuan.

"In just 1 year, I can make a net profit of 100 million yuan. If I don't want to do it, then what is the goal of building my brand? I am afraid it will be even more distant."

“There are a lot of Wenzhou companies that want to brand their shoes as Youngor, and they can pay me 20 million yuan a year. There are brand-named Youngor T-shirts that give me 10 million yuan a year. If I promised, making money is easy, but Xin The hard-working brand will not only fail to improve but will also decline," said Li Rugang.

Li Rugang has a clear understanding of Younger's current situation: “Now Youngor has not actually reached the level of the brand.” “What is a brand name? That is, in Shanghai, at least 10% of the market share. What is a brand? A male Comrades want to buy shirts and buy suits. The younger one flashes through the minds of Younger's brand. But now it seems that there is some distance between them."

The position of textile and clothing in Youngor’s entire group is increasingly important. Last year, Youngor achieved sales of 13.9 billion yuan, of which property sales were 3.5 billion yuan. This year, Youngor targets sales of 15 billion yuan. At present, in addition to textile and clothing, Youngor's "two wings" are real estate and international trade. Among them, real estate is obviously extremely vulnerable to the influence of policies, and international trade has not always occupied the most central position in Youngor's territory.

The textile and apparel industries that have always dominated have been relatively stable. Therefore, Youngor has always opposed the stock speculation or entrusted financing. Some investment institutions have proposed that they would be forced out of the door by merging with Youngor's partnership. According to Li Rugang's description: Textiles and clothing are more specific and hard, but the growth is stable. The previous growth rate was 50% and 60%. Now it may be only 10%. At the same time, the average profit rate is also down; so we can only rely on improving products. Added value to get more user groups.

In order to protect the brand, now Youngor Garments will further enhance its brand image and gradually fade out of the mid-range apparel market. Li Rugang hopes Youngor's products "climb forward." Now that Youngor’s new generation of products sells for more than 600 yuan per item, Li Rucheng believes that this is a product that is a bit distant from the general public, and that it will continue to develop new products.

Of course, the best solution is to be able to create several brands at the same time, each brand targeting different consumer groups, and then conduct market segmentation by entering high-end shopping malls, mass department stores, and supermarkets. However, Li Rugang said that this kind of thinking is still difficult to achieve at this stage. Before the Lomon women's brand was put on the market, sales were not satisfactory.

Although Li Rugang still has many ideas, for example, the factory in Ningbo now pays at least 20,000 yuan per year for each worker, and if they can build factories in foreign factories, they can reduce costs. However, it is clear that to achieve this level of "virtual management", Youngor still has a lot of integration work to do. In this regard, Li Rugang’s understanding is more sobering. He said: “Primary school is well enough to study in middle school.”

When the reporter proposed a timetable for Li Rugang to give his younger brother a brand, he said that perhaps 8 years, maybe 10 years. However, to achieve this leap, the first depends on the maturity of the consumer; the second is how much Younger can do.

At present, Youngor continues to integrate upstream, midstream and downstream. After experiencing macro-control in July, August and September, some textile and garment production small factories are on the verge of collapse, and Youngor hopes to integrate these resources.

Li Rugang said: “My older brother (Li Rucheng) is 55 years old this year and can still do it for another 10 years. At that time, I don’t know how many able young people are coming out.” He hopes for the textile and clothing road, and thinks Youngor Long-term development can be achieved under a healthy management framework.