Innovation And Thinking: How Can Daphne Break Through Under The Predicament?

In Greek mythology, Daphne is the proud goddess of laurel. But in reality, Daphne has fallen into the dust.

The noisy streets, the old-fashioned style, the messy furnishings, the "buy one get one" discount sign can be seen everywhere. The soprano announces the latest sales promotion message, which is now the appearance of the shop under the Daphne line in people's minds.

At present, the market value of Daphne is less than HK $300 million, which has evaporated 99% compared with HK $19 billion 500 million in the highest period.

Behind this is a continuous loss in four years and a total loss of nearly HK $3 billion.

In 2018 alone, Daphne's revenue fell 20.8%, losing nearly HK $800 million. In the past year, a total of 1016 sales outlets were closed, with an average of 2.8 outlets per day.

Although he has long been determined to reform and transform, Daphne seems to have never touched the doorway. Under the predicament, can Daphne break through?

　　 For every five pairs of shoes sold, one is Daphne.

Once, Daphne was the pronoun of fashion trend, and was once snapped up by young girls.

In 1988, Zhang Wenyi and Chen Xianmin from Taiwan sniffed business opportunities in the mainland and set up their factory in Futian, Fujian. Two years later, Daphne brand was founded. Relatively bold design and color matching came to the fore in the closed mainland of China, and was favored by consumers.

With the experience of deep foundry and shoe manufacturing and the assurance of the whole industry, Daphne's main advantage of "parity" and its relative fashion advantage quickly occupied the mainland market. Five years later, Daphne went public.

In 2006, Daphne copied the mainland's model to Taiwan, and invited SHE and Rene Liu to be the spokesmen of the two series of products D18 and D28 respectively. At that time, it was the golden age of SHE, attracting many fans to follow. The temperament of Rene Liu's intellectual elegance is also in line with the brand of Daphne.

On the sales channel, Daphne avoided the strategy of opening BELLE to shopping malls in the same period, and moved the store to the shops on all the streets. As a result, it not only dilute the cost, but also conducive to establishing consumer awareness and rapidly expanding online.

After 2003, Daphne expanded its speed at the speed of opening more than 300 stores every year, and the number of stores rapidly expanded from 739 in 2003 to 6881 in 2012. At the fastest time, there are 800 new Daphne stores open every year.

In 2005, Daphne sold 50 million pairs of women shoes in one year, occupying nearly 20% of the market share. That is to say, at that time, five pairs of shoes sold on the mainland market came from Daphne.

In 2012, Daphne's revenue exceeded HK $10 billion for the first time and its market value was HK $17 billion. This year is the most brilliant year for Daphne, but it is also the beginning of a turning point.

　 How did the goddess fall into the dust?

"Because I bought a pair of Daphne's high-heeled shoes, my boyfriend said it's bad taste." I don't know when it started. Daphne is hard to hook up with fashion.

In fact, it is not the taste of consumers that has become too fast, but Daphne has not changed.

All along, Daphne has paid more attention to the construction of sales channels. After the crazy expansion, the short board was exposed in the later stage.

At the same time, Daphne also faces incentive market competition. BELLE, hot wind, Lili shoe cabinet and other women's shoes brand in the new retail force. Some brands follow the fast fashion mode, keep up with the new rhythm, and wish to have a new one in two weeks.

People immersed in the impact of new products, Daphne's unchanging style is more and more dull and old.

In contrast, the production process of Daphne shoes is very long, and it takes more than six months from design to presentation to consumers. The whole process takes about 128 days in 2010, up to 188 days in 2012, and 198 days in 2018.

Because of the large volume, Daphne's new products are designed a lot earlier than a year ago. Many new products are designed. The designers only make fine adjustments to the old ones. If there are big changes, they need to communicate through layers, and the decision-making chain can no longer keep pace with consumption.

A year ago, the money had fallen behind in the eyes of consumers. Even in today's Daphne container, there are also shoe and rivet shoes that have only been popular for the past few years.

Although Daphne has established a perfect offline channel, once the more serious inventory backlog is faced, the operation cost will become more and more unbearable. Daphne 2018 annual report shows that in the number of core brand sales outlets, 2401 outlets, accounting for 91%. Such a "heavy asset" business mode, once the goods are unsalable, will cause huge inventory pressure.

In 2015 and later, in just four years, Daphne closed 3860 stores and closed 2.6 stores a day.

In addition, in order to clear up the stock, Daphne, "beautiful but not discounted, beautiful 100 points", has begun a crazy discount.

Under the line, buy one, send one, as low as 99 yuan to become the routine operation of Daphne. It is also a necessary choice to sell lots of goods on vip.com and vip.com. The reporters found that the footwear products on Daphne stores varied from 14 yuan to 62 yuan.

Closing stores and promotions have become Daphne's stop action, which is regarded as a "temporary suffering" for long-term development.

However, in this way, its brand image was created, and "cheap" and "local flavor" became embarrassed labels. The goddess finally fell into the dust.

Where is the way out?

As a traditional brand of women's shoes, facing the new consumption and market environment, Daphne did not want to change.

For example, the rapidly expanding storefront is shrinking rapidly, and the pedestrian street and Commercial Street shops are transferred to shopping centers.

In addition, Daphne is increasing investment in product research and development, launching more fashionable sports shoes and other categories.

Sadly, ten years ago, in order to focus on the development of women's shoes, Daphne had abandoned the agency brand of sports shoes and clothing, including Nike and Adidas. Today, sports is still a leading category, and BELLE's sport has even been listed again.

Daphne doesn't want to be abandoned by fashion. In 2017, Daphne updated its stores, replaced logo, and replaced the original flower design with a simple English DAPHNE. In order to attract young consumers, Daphne has launched a series of products with the US fashion brand OpeningCeremony. Last year, Zhou Bichang and Disney jointly launched cross-border products.

But such changes are far from effective. Zhang Zhiqiao, executive director of Daphne, once said, "Daphne can't become a fashion brand completely. Its historical brand value is still a cost-effective public shoe, and the market can not completely overturn it."

On the road of e-commerce, Daphne has also been in the wrong way.

Daphne is actually an early business developer. In 2006, it had co operated with Jingdong and vip.com, and the electricity supplier's performance reached 2 million yuan per month. However, since the beginning of 2010, Daphne strategy has invested in an e-commerce platform from Taiwan, "Yao point 100", investing thirty million in the stock market and 10%, and gradually closed its cooperation with other electronic business platforms.

However, the "shining point 100" business platform has not many people know. In fact, the shopping platform operated for less than two years and ended in July of 2012.

Missed the electricity supplier's card battle, today's competitive environment has been no longer the same, online accounting for less than 14%, the line is suffering from high inventory, Daphne to the crisis.

In the 2018 annual report, Daphne put forward the "new retail strategy" to integrate online and offline businesses and adopt a new information technology solution. And decided to launch more funds for online sales, and speed up cooperation with e-commerce and social networking platforms.

Daphne is paying the price for its detours. Under the besieged siege, where is the way out? Author: Zhang Hangying