Top Grade Discount: To Wechat, YES Said To The Counter NO

　　 Do you know what the store looks like in the future?

At the end of April 2014, the top grade discount, which was rooted in the department store discount chain store in Beijing, opened a new store in Hangzhou, calling itself the "future store". For inbound department stores such as intime department store, the top grade discounts for discount shops are still small, but this time, the younger generation took the prestige of WeChat and went directly to Ma Ying and Shen Guojun's base camp to begin to "teach their own friends".

The biggest feature of this "future store" is that it completely withdraws the cash register, abandons the way that traditional department stores make invoices at the counter, and pays to the cashier. It encourages customers to scan two-dimensional codes with mobile phones and pay with WeChat. The experience of paperless shopping, electronic goods and mobile ordering is a step ahead of traditional department stores.

In fact, since the payment of WeChat online last August, many retailers are eager to cooperate with WeChat to try the so-called online and offline convergence. But restricted by the traditional department store operation, most department stores only have a face in the payment link to access WeChat, unable to apply in depth, and fail to achieve a real O2O shopping closed loop.

The top grade discount WeChat experience shop simply withdraws the cash register, accelerates the popularization of mobile payment by pushing WeChat payment, and promotes the deep connection between retail and social tools. Other big department stores have reason to disagree: "WeChat can also be used for payment, rather than less cash register." But the top quality discount answer is, "what we really can do is single product management." The subtext of this sentence is that businesses can really tap into the maximum value of every commodity.

Is WeChat's practice of top grade just a special case? Can it lead a real change?

　　 WeChat demonstration store

Driving to the Xiasha District of Hangzhou Economic Development Zone, it takes about 40 minutes to drive from the center of the city. At the intersection of No. four street and five Avenue, a tall building can be seen far away. On the top of the building, there are two huge LOGO with "top quality" and "WeChat". Top grade discount WeChat experience shop is here.

As we all know, in addition to the large industrial area, Xiasha is also the largest university park in Zhejiang Province, with nearly 200 thousand college students. The post-90s college students and workers are the main target consumers of top grade discounts. They are sensitive to price, so the price per passenger is not high, but the base of shopping population is huge.

Hangzhou people have never heard of top grade discounts. This WeChat experience shop opens, and many people think WeChat has opened a shop under the line.

Indeed, the words "WeChat pay" can be seen everywhere. At the entrance, the "one yuan Cola" marketing booth was set up. Consumers entered the shop and bound WeChat to pay. Occupying three floors of shops, shoes and women's wear, men's wear and sporting goods are spacious and spacious, but shelf display and shop decoration are very simple. They are far from the dazzling counters in department stores.

It can be seen that the new store is in a hurry. This is a fact. After leaving Zhang for a month, the top grade discount and Tencent are still working on the details of the collision. In the end, how to cooperate with WeChat? In the more mature Beijing Zhongguancun store, Lai Guang Ying store or moving to the new store in Hangzhou, everything is not conclusive. At the end of March, Li Yan, founder and President of top quality discount, decided to take part in the SAP retail conference held in Germany on the original plan. CEO Shen Hui Feng and CIO Wang Huidi went together. Wang Huidi was in a hurry. The date of opening the shop in April 25th has been fixed. There is only one month left, but nothing has been finalized. At this time, we have to go to Germany. The Tencent is also anxious. Everyone is very anxious. But Li Yan insisted on attending the meeting. After returning home, the two sides finally decided to choose a new WeChat experience store in Hangzhou after some argumentation.

Li Yan said that the atmosphere of e-commerce in Hangzhou is strong. Hangzhou should be chosen for location selection, while many students in lower sand areas have strong potential for accepting the Internet. This is also the top quality discount.

Walk into WeChat experience store, you will find that there is no cash register in the whole store, and the shopping guide is a Pad (Android version of top grade discount), which is used to input the merchandise information that customers want to buy. The customer gives the merchandise to the shopping guide. After shopping, the shopping guide enters the system and generates a two-dimensional code on the Pad. When the customer opens WeChat, it can generate the order on the phone, then enter WeChat, and then it can take the goods away. If you operate skillfully, the whole process will be less than a minute. Considering the inherent consumption habits of consumers, stores have set up a service center on each floor. Customers who do not pay WeChat can brush their bank cards or pay cash at the service desk.

In order to encourage more customers to use WeChat payment business, top grade discount has also launched promotional activities such as "50 yuan, 10 yuan reduction". According to the data provided by top quality, the proportion of people who use WeChat in WeChat shopping experience accounts for 70%.

Some retail analysts believe that the current level of consumer acceptance of WeChat payment still stays in the stage of microfinance. Top quality discount products meet the needs of small payment, plus some promotional means, WeChat payment will be easier to promote.

According to Shang pin Fang, the cost of such a WeChat demonstration store is much higher than that of ordinary stores. In order to enhance the interactive experience, the store has installed about 200000 large LED screens, and the WiFi covered by the store costs about one hundred thousand yuan a year, plus broadband costs more than about one hundred thousand. In addition, the Pad in the shopping guide needs at least 1000 yuan, and nearly 800 shopping guides in Hangzhou store. In the future, in other stores, it is estimated that at least one counter will need about 300.

　　 Technology driven change

Since its establishment in 2000, top grade discount has opened ten stores in Beijing. Because of its mode of chain expansion, top quality discount is not difficult to open a new store within three months. Located in the department store discount goods, usually choose to open in the non core city business circle, the rent is medium and has the volume of people's traffic, the guest price is between 200-400 yuan.

Compared with large department stores, top grade discounts are small businesses. But in recent years, top grade has been moving ahead in exploring new technologies in department stores. In 2009, top grade took the lead in canceling the unified cash register, and simplifying the shopping process by Pad. The same year, online stores were launched, offline stores and online shops implemented the same price and shared the same stock. Last year, WeChat paid just one line, and top grade had access to WeChat's payment business in stores. In April, it opened the first WeChat experience shop in the country.

"Li Yan is a very sensitive person to technology," top grade discount CIO Wang Huidi told reporters. Because of this, she joined the top grade in January this year and acted as CIO. Top grade discounts set up CIO positions many years ago, which is rare in department stores. In May, at WeChat open class ShangHai Railway Station, Wang Huidi represented the top grade discount on the stage to share the new rules and new ways of Hangzhou WeChat experience store. She had a very strong sense of time and finished in just 10 minutes.

Many consumers are no stranger to WeChat payment. Wangfujing department store began to implement WeChat payment in March this year. Intime department store also opened WeChat payment function to some commodities. Consumers did not need to bring their wallets, nor did they bring cards. What is the superiority of top grade discounts and WeChat's addition?

　　 Wang Hui di It said, "all our products are O2O oriented. We can use WeChat shopping cart to shop in the shop. Although we are shopping in physical stores, we use online transactions, and we can use micro search to search all stores."

Behind this can be done by selling the single product management system, and realizing the online paperless operation. At Wangfujing department store, consumers still need to open a small ticket at the counter, and queue up at the cashier. The cashier sends the goods number to the cash register system to produce a two-dimensional code. The top grade discount WeChat payment, based on the single product digitalization, will generate a commodity two-dimensional code. In other words, the Wangfujing only transformed the cash register software in the store, while the top grade would really make each commodity electronic, and its circulation state could be reflected in the system in real time.

Secondly, the system of top quality discount enables customers to separate time and space in the purchase of goods and purchase behavior, making the boundaries between online and offline become blurred. Wang Huidi introduced that when consumers choose a product, they can scan the code into the shopping cart. The function of the mobile shopping cart is the same as the shopping cart of the shop, allowing you to hesitate, think about it, or share it with your friends for reference. In order to enhance the customer experience, the top grade locks the day's shopping cart to 8 o'clock on the second day. "That is to say, before second days and 8 o'clock, you can decide to buy and place orders, whether you leave the store, order from the restaurant, or go home, and you choose."

"If everyone orders the shopping cart, do not buy it?"

"We don't do this kind of malicious inference. What we want is to give consumers new shopping experience," Wang Huidi said. She called this experience "no pressure shopping", that is, where customers want to place orders and when they want to place orders are no longer restricted by stores.

Tencent marketing department told reporters that in such a shopping process, WeChat not only took part in the payment link, but also shared and social functions.

At the same time, the mobile phone order system supports the two ways of picking up and delivering goods. When customers choose the express way, they automatically jump to the interface of the receiving address and enter the address information. The store will send the merchandise you purchased to the designated address. This means that if you feel too heavy, do not want to continue shopping, or you do not want to carry shopping bags to attend a friend's party or meeting in the evening, you can choose to send it to your home or company.

What is online consumer and what is offline consumer is now blurred. The same commodity can be placed at home with a "micro search" order or shop code. So the same order, unless he told me, I do not know whether he is standing next to the shopping guide, or after going out in the coffee shop order, or go home to order. If we have to define what is online and what is offline, it is meaningless. Wang Huidi said.

What is not ideal is that in addition to each layer of "flash buying area", some goods have their own two-dimensional code tag, and consumers can directly scan the code. Most commodities do not have the "two-dimensional code identity". Consumers must rely on the shopping guide to import the goods number into the Pad of their hands one by one, so that they can generate two-dimensional code. The trainer who has just received training is obviously not proficient, so he often makes mistakes in the input process, so he has to check the product number repeatedly to find the product in the system. This means that if there are many customers, queuing up in the bank will become a queue in the shopping mall, and the so-called convenience and speed are not always possible.

Top grade discount CEO Shen Huifeng It is believed that the popularity of two-dimensional code depends on the maturity of technology and the promotion of consumer habits. When the environment is more mature, the brand chamber of Commerce considers that each commodity has a two-dimensional code of a single product, and further, even in the future, when a business produces products, it has a two-dimensional code.

　　 Difficult to get through

Since the retail industry began to pay attention to the Internet transformation, how to get through online and offline has always been a difficult problem. Many large department store companies are hard to overcome. Why can the top grade discount be achieved? Why can WeChat's mobile tool play a driving role in it?

In essence, single product management is the biggest obstacle for traditional retailers to do O2O. According to the general transformation path, retailers will set up their own online shopping mall. But when consumers place orders online, every transaction of each commodity is visible and data oriented. In essence, e-commerce is the default of transactions under the single product management system. But when a company owns two platforms online and offline, trouble arises. Lu Xingtai, deputy director of the retail research center of Peking University, said that the traditional department stores use non single product management. A brand is a SKU, and the goods within the brand are not within the scope of the department store's management. This leads to the fact that the management of the store is very extensive. The manager sees the sales data, not the sales track of every commodity, nor can it connect with the online platform.

　　 Shopin Initially, like department stores, traditional and extensive management mode was adopted. But in 2009, when the company was ready to open shop on the Internet, it encountered great problems.

According to Shen Huifeng, at the time, top grade was the same as other retailers, setting up a department to do e-commerce, responsible for the sale of online stores. "At that time, the goods were not managed. When the customers placed the order online, what color and sizes were required to be inquired by the stores, and the efficiency was very low."

Li Yan decided to input all the goods into the system to realize the digitalization of the single product. In 2009, the top grade shopping guide was equipped with a handheld PDA device, requiring all merchandise information to be entered from PDA, and then gradually evolved to the Pad terminal based on Android system.

After the online shopping of the top grade products, the integrated operation of the same price and the same price on the same line will be realized. This means that the whole single product management system will reduce the inventory quantity of the product, whether online or offline, and online and offline.

Simple entry is only a basic job. The real change is that all managers and salesmen require online and offline access, and those who are only responsible for the sale of offline stores are now exploring online retailing.

"When Li Yan described the scene of online and offline integration, almost everyone objected, first of all, the idea that single product management could not be done." In fact, the whole retail industry in China can do nothing less than that. "For top grade, the biggest upheaval is still behind. In the process of real connection between the real stores and the electricity providers, some management left, and they thought they could not do it. Shen Huifeng said.

Previously, the sales frontline staff at the store face different online drainage methods and sales rules, which requires two kinds of thinking and two skills online and offline. Their past experience can not be applied to online, and many people can not accept this change.

Li Yan insisted on this idea, "you have to work and do it."

Pressure also comes from outside, and brands are unwilling to cooperate at the beginning, worrying that their business data will be leaked. Because this single product management system requires every brand operator to enter detailed data entry and update in real time, so as to grasp the detailed operation information of goods.

Wang Huidi said, "retailers do O2O, can not do without the management level of the huge SKU, which will not only face high costs, nor is it easy to manage enterprises to manage, suppliers may not be willing to provide commodity information data to you. This means that at the retailer level, the difficulty of doing O2O will be much more than that of the brand dealers. Can we do a good job of seeing the ability, courage and overall planning power of the enterprises, and dare to move their knives on themselves?

Shen Huifeng thinks that the traditional department store can manage the single product technically, and the real difficulty lies in whether the management level, from the top to the bottom, will conflict with this change. "First of all, the unity of ideas and the transformation of organizational structure. It's not hardware, it's "soft".

Liu Changxin, vice president and CIO of Wangfujing department store, said to Chinese Entrepreneurs: "it is unrealistic to have a unified entry of merchandise from the mall to the brand, and the single product management must rely on the brand counters to complete this link. Their practice is of reference value, but there is a big difference from quantitative change to qualitative change. In terms of the magnitude and complexity of the goods, the big department stores are quite different from each other.

For large department stores, it is self-evident that the project of single product management is huge. The Xiasha restaurant, which takes the top quality discount, has only about 200000 SKU, while the department store's SKU is often more than ten times the top grade.

However, even if the online and offline businesses are opened up, the traditional retailers will face an awkward situation, that is, the online shopping platform they have worked so hard to do is no longer the first choice for the general consumer shopping. In the case of Tmall, Jingdong and other large e-commerce platforms maturing, it is a slow move to go online after the business. In reality, few online retailers can get the same attention and scale of offline stores.

Tracing the source, the purpose of opening a shop is to get closer to consumers. With the advent of the mobile e-commerce era, offline retailers can use WeChat's platform to "get through" offline stores and mobile terminals, thus achieving "bend overtaking" for e-commerce in the PC era. According to the data released by Tencent, WeChat's active accounts account for 355 million, and many government agencies and enterprises are doing business through WeChat's interface.

On the basis of single product management, the next step of top quality discount WeChat experience store is to make deep member management and membership graded marketing according to the customers' consumption behavior and membership data, and completely break the traditional management mode of brand leasing and commercial real estate.

Wang Huidi said, "when a single product is managed, when will the goods be sold and when will they be sold?" If a product has not been sold for a long time, it will consider replacing it with the supplier. " But in the past, a shop only knew how much money the customers paid, and did not know what they had sold.

In the member level marketing, the industry thinks that the top grade discount will learn from Tencent's experience of QQ member management to add different "gameplay" and precise positioning according to the consumer data obtained.

"Will you understand what consumers want to buy at the moment, and then push them accurately?"

Wang Huidi shrugged and refused to comment. "This is actually a paradox. Everyone is talking about doing data analysis, analyzing who the user is and what he needs, but who really wants to be pushed to the consumer level? "