Where Is The Future Of Shoes And Clothes Agents?

Every crisis will bring some unrest, but at the same time, it will bring a new reform to the industry. Today, with the global economic downturn, the mode of agency and franchise channel of shoe and clothing industry has been pushed to the cusp of the waves. "Going to agents" has become the choice of many enterprises.

　 Economic environment triggers "agitation" again.

The world bank has lowered China's GDP forecast to 8.2% this year, and the growth rate of GDP in China has declined rapidly. The macroeconomic downturn has finally appeared in the retail market, the price war in the retail market, the backlog of channel inventory and the decline in performance growth. Even a well-known listed company wants us to intervene in their short-term performance improvement projects to "optimize" the report.

On the other hand, we see that as a whole retail market The important link - "agent" has been pushed onto the board to become the fish under the knife, and has the potential of "going back to the country".

In August 28th, a number of city franchisees in central Shanghai gathered in Shanghai, protesting the Daphne headquarters to "break the bridge" and "round the price" in the form of "full 99 yuan" to force the franchisee to surrender their franchise.

In 2011, Qipai resumed the Henan agent and set up a direct branch company. During the period, only more than 70 stores were recovered, and a large number of resources were invested to develop the market.

In 2012, a famous body brand secretly discussed whether to accept agents.

Some clients recently contacted by Shanghai billion consulting company have repeatedly talked about "self run", which seems to have become the strategic focus of these enterprises. Is this the only choice for enterprises? Is the agent who has done so much to be killed?

The explosive growth of the past has never gone back in today's environment. It hurts the managers of enterprises, even though they will not admit it. But this kind of "tingling" has been existing in cooperation with agents.

New challenges faced by agent system promote transformation -- towards retail transformation

The business cost of China's retail market has risen year by year. According to the statistics of Shanghai's consulting retail research department, the average store rents increased by 15% in 2012 compared with that of last year, and the prosperity of commercial real estate directly or indirectly increased the cost of employees, the rise of total body cost and the decline of purchase intention.

We see that with the development of the market, the two core components of the value chain of footwear industry are facing new challenges.

Challenge 1: industry competition is grim. Growth pattern Encounter bottlenecks. For many years, the growth of the horse race enclosure has encountered bottlenecks; the traditional "enclosure" sales strategy will first encounter challenges at the terminal of high cost and low profit, and this challenge will quickly spread to the agent until the corporate headquarters.

Challenge 2: "agency system" determines that the last mile of enterprises depends heavily on agents, and the expansion of their willingness to decline will hinder the pace of enterprise development. Agents are the "transportation hub" of enterprises to consumers, and assume the "half way" of the entire value chain. Their stagnation makes enterprises somewhat hard to get used to.

Challenge 3: the wholesalers are lack of standardized chain operation ability, the strategy of enterprises can not land, and terminal potential can not be maximized.

However, these challenges should not make the agents a victim. Blind "agent" may ultimately affect the business results of enterprises. We know very well that agents have many advantages over enterprises in many aspects, such as operation cost control ability, social connections of human resources, local consumption control ability, and the ability to grasp the development of stores. If the agent is replaced by a self run branch, it will lead to an increase in operation cost. The introduction of professional managers has a great risk to increase the cost of individual agency, which is not apparent on the surface of the enterprise. "Going to agents" is more risky for enterprises that start with the general agent system in provinces.

What we really need to do is to make up for the inadequacy of certain capabilities of the agents, such as store operation capacity, value-added business development capability (promotion and promotion, brand building, etc.), and regional business management capabilities. That is to say, the correct solution is to revolve around "retail" instead of simply "self run".

Even if the impact of the economic environment is ignored, consumer branding and channel flattening are inevitable in a limited market. This trend will also force agents to transform from "pure sale" to "brand operation", from "extensive wholesale" to "professional retail". The first choice of enterprises is to help and promote the transformation of agents into regional brand retailers.

{page_break}

　 Management transformation of agent channels Proprietary management

In the current stage of channel development, it is unrealistic to rely solely on agents' self transformation. To achieve the goal of overall change through the transformation of agent management mode will be a sound and realistic choice for enterprises. On the one hand, it can strengthen the retail function, on the one hand, it can cultivate its own retail team. Therefore, what enterprises need to do is not to "go to agency", but to manage the agents as self operated subsidiaries and manage franchisees as self operated stores.

Emphasis on self management

One of the key points is to supervise and guide the transformation of "extensive management" to "standardized management of companies" in the management mode. According to the experience of Shanghai billion consulting, there are three key tasks.

1, optimize and adjust the organizational structure in order to seamlessly link and improve the functions of both sides based on the key business chain of headquarters and agents.

2, design a salary performance system based on retail transformation, import retail management indicators into the company performance system.

3, through the optimization of management system, we support agency companies to strengthen commodity management system, channel management system, retail operation system and regional promotion system.

Two key contents: under the guidance of the overall strategy of enterprises, we should promote the three core competencies of agents:

1, establish a standardized and standardized store operation model, and push the model to channel and terminal execution.

2, enhance agents' brand promotion ability in the region, and support enterprises' transformation from wholesale to brand retail.

3, help agents to establish a demand oriented, commodity life cycle as a weathervane of commodity management capabilities.

The way of self management.

After all, agents are not the branches of enterprises. Franchisees are not self owned stores. In the way of self-management, we need to adopt a combination of consultative and paternalistic mode. Provide advisory and professional advice to the members of the agency, and use the paternalism to urge the agents to carry out the reform measures.

The way to realize self management

In order to realize the self management of agents, enterprises must gradually establish a long-term management system for agents, improve the control and control ability of enterprises' headquarters to agents, and then push agents to implement the strategy and strategy of regional headquarters of enterprises. This includes two key actions: the construction of organizational strength and the establishment of management index system. Organizational strength can include cross sectoral professional and managerial professionals, and these forces can even be embedded in the agency organizations. The index of agent management is no longer a simple order and return, but covers market indicators, retail indicators, product indicators, management indicators and other aspects, and put these indicators into the management system of corporate headquarters to agents. Of course, a very important point is that both the organizational strength and the establishment of the management index system are based on the analysis of the performance of the agents at the corporate headquarters, which is also the premise for the operation of proprietary management.