CATDOLL : CATDOLL: Bedding Entrepreneurship Story

The selection of bedding is very important. It can not only create a comfortable sleeping environment, but also relieve fatigue from a day's work. So how to start a bedding business? The following are articles related to bedding entrepreneurship stories that I have compiled for you.

Case 1: Xue Weicheng: Bedroom supplies made him a fortune worth hundreds of millions

In the 1980s, Xue Weicheng, who was born into a business family in Nantong, Jiangsu, started buying pillowcases made by rural people and transporting them to the city to sell to department stores.

Typical grassroots entrepreneurial hero

The market was gradually opened up, and the business grew bigger and bigger. In 1985, Xue Weicheng sold pillowcases to Northeast China, Tianjin, and Shanxi. Shopping malls placed orders based on the samples, and his family organized production. Many department stores in various cities became his partners.

In those years, there were countless Nantong people who used the same method to "run business" outside, but why is Xue Weicheng the most successful today? In fact, he is not smarter than others, but he is more persistent, more focused, and more hardworking than others. The business methods are similar, and others put in 90% of the effort, but Xue Weicheng always puts in 120%.

In 1992, the two brothers moved the increasingly prosperous factory from the countryside to the urban area of ​​Nantong. More than a hundred employees were assigned to the factory, and the company was reborn. The business had a new look. That year, the bed sheet and bed cover business of the Xue brothers had reached nearly 4 million yuan. It was also that year. The two brothers took advantage of the situation and began to plan to attack the commanding heights of the market - Shanghai. Shanghai is not a fun place, and countless businessmen have returned from there in failure. At that time, many Guangdong brand products were sold in Shanghai shopping malls. The Xue brothers, who had just arrived, had no brand, but they fought with the Guangdong people in the shopping malls for position and popularity. There was a difficult struggle between the two, and the Guangdong people eventually failed.

Today, Xue Weicheng explained to reporters the mystery of "the weak defeating the strong": "In fact, the quality and color of both sides are similar. Whether they sell well or not depends on other subtle differences. Due to different regional cultures and language barriers, Guangdong people who always look up rarely communicate with the staff below them, and rarely consider the feelings of the front-line counter staff when handling problems. Therefore, the relationship between Guangdong people and Shanghai salesmen and counter team leaders is very bad, and the key to sales is the front-line salesmen. So no matter how well Guangdong people do public relations, the actual sales are not good."

The Xue brothers are different. They regard "all partners as their partners and family members" and treat each other sincerely. The salesmen try their best to maintain good relationships with everyone in the mall, from the leaders to the cleaners and warehouse keepers, and treat them all with respect and kindness. Invisibly, they have won a harmonious and healthy business environment.

"Does a person mopping the floor have anything to do with our sales? Yes. If the cleaners come to clean your counter with mops as soon as they see a customer, how can you do business? Cantonese people are rude to them, and they treat Cantonese people in the same way. Our respect and sincerity win their support. So once there is business at the counter, they will quietly leave even if they are cleaning."

"Let's talk about the warehouse keeper at the mall. At that time, new goods were uniformly stacked and shipped from the warehouse. If the warehouse keeper didn't have a good relationship with you, he would push your goods to the back. On a Sunday, a counter in a large mall could sell 30,000 yuan, and a smaller mall could sell 20,000 yuan. If your goods were pushed in, when the front desk asked for the goods, they would say they were crushed and couldn't take them out. In this way, you would lose 100,000 yuan in sales in a month!"

These two examples are a reflection of the big picture. When the Xue brothers' "partnership" concept permeates every level and detail of the business, there is no reason why the business will not go smoothly. At the same time, this also proves that they are more focused than others. "Think deeply and comprehensively about everything..." Such "partnership" and "focus" concepts are one of the important cultural genes that have made Luolai successful since its establishment.

Brand origin from Italy

In September 1992, business expert Xue Weicheng went to Italy. He needed to find inspiration there.

Although the products were selling well, the brothers still felt something was wrong. How could they make consumers want to buy the sheets and pillowcases that every household could make? Who should they sell the products to? What kind of brand should they create? With heavy questions in mind, Xue Weicheng hoped to find inspiration in Italy, the country with the most developed home textile industry in the world. Sure enough, an accidental visit to a church gave him a clear idea.

At that time, Xue Weicheng visited St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. The church was sacred and elegant. Wandering inside, Xue Weicheng was immediately fascinated by the peculiarity of European art - the colors used inside the church were very bright and strong, which seemed extremely exaggerated when viewed alone, but when combined with the people in the church, they presented an intoxicating beauty. This is a unique aesthetic application to create a certain overall spiritual atmosphere.

"Can this European aesthetic be applied to the design of bedding?" Just as Xue Weicheng was realizing something, the church began to play the pastoral music of the famous 16th-century musician Cipriano de Rolle. After the music ended, Xue Weicheng shared his inner feelings with the church music director. The music director said, "Home textiles are definitely an art of life, and any art form must take human feelings into consideration. Everyone has a need to enjoy art. If you can inspire people's deep artistic temperament, you will definitely succeed."

At that moment, it was as if a flash of inspiration had occurred to Xue Weicheng! The sky above his head suddenly became clear. He finally realized the positioning of his career - to make mid-to-high-end European-style bedding. To create a home textile brand that "allows consumers to pursue the art of living". Such a style and idea is absolutely blank in the domestic market! After returning to China, Xue Weicheng named the brand after the Italian musician Cipriano de Rolle. At the same time, he adopted the profile portrait of Arachne, the goddess in charge of the textile industry in ancient Greek mythology. It was used as an auxiliary graphic of the brand to strengthen the cultural connotation of the European style. Thus, the Rolle brand was born.

If you want to do it, do it big! In 1994, Luolai invested nearly 400,000 yuan. It was the first among domestic home textile companies to design a CI identification system. Since then, the concept of brand management has penetrated into the blood of Luolai people. Subsequently, Luolai participated in many exhibitions such as the "National Needle Cotton Textile Expo". The grand and novel image and excellent product quality attracted the attention of textile managers from shopping malls from all over the country who came to the exhibition to "hunt for treasure". "Since then, we have gained a good reputation in the industry."

At the same time, Luolai increased its marketing efforts. They worked intensively to conquer the national market and adopted the office marketing model used by all industries at that time, which was flat. It was equivalent to direct retail by manufacturers, with huge profit margins. In the early stage, offices were set up in more than 10 regions such as Beijing, Taiyuan, and Hangzhou. The offices traded with shopping malls, with goods first and payment later, and retail prices of 500-1,000 yuan per set, with a credit period of 30 days. In just a few months, shopping malls in provincial capitals were equipped with Luolai products.

Soon, a new home textile brand emerged, and sales across the country soared. In 1995 and 1996, Luolai, with the momentum of successfully seizing the Shanghai market in the previous two years, created brilliant results in various places with the concept of "partnership, focus, and excellence". The eight major offices in Beijing, Wuhan, Taiyuan, Hangzhou, etc. defeated all opponents in the sales competition of home textile products in local major shopping malls!

In early 1997, Xue Weicheng, who was full of confidence, decided to expand his achievements and open up a blank market himself. He specialized in hotel textiles. The hotel bedding business was huge, and the profit from one order was considerable. Luolai was handed over to his younger brother. However, things did not go as he wished. The state-owned system of hotels was like a "roadblock", and Xue Weicheng, who was outside the system, had different ideas, so business negotiations always ended unhappily. After a year of hard work, the business did not make any progress. At this time, a crisis that Xue Weicheng had been worried about for a long time suddenly broke out - the entire office business collapsed like an avalanche!

Luolai's strategic transformation

The drawbacks of the office model are devastating if they don’t break out. This is what happened: around 1997, the continuous development of the social economy caused the Chinese market to change from a seller’s market with insufficient supply to a buyer’s market with oversupply. Goods were unsalable, and shopping malls generally began to delay payments. Luolai Office was no exception. At the same time, after years of operation, the office had a large backlog of goods, and all profits became inventory. Day after day, working capital was stretched.

In particular, in 1997 and 1998, Zhengzhou Asia and the Qiancun Department Store chain store closed down one after another, and other shopping malls were in a state of panic. Luolai had no way to recover the money owed for the goods.

During the "turbulent years", when Beijing Qiancun Department Store closed down, a supplier couple jumped to their deaths in public. Luolai could only recover more than 800,000 yuan worth of washing machines and watches. In 1998, Luolai's sales were more than 30 million yuan. The book profit was more than 2 million yuan, but in fact there was no cash profit, and the working capital was almost exhausted.

The situation was urgent and the company might go bankrupt at any time! Xue Weicheng, who was troubled by the hotel textiles, was shocked. He immediately shortened the battle line, stopped the hotel project and returned to Luolai to fight side by side with his brother. "At that time, I realized that the sales model must be transformed. Then the two of us went around to look for a way to save Luolai."

They found that a domestic peer was doing very well by adopting the franchise model of specialty stores. This model had a very obvious effect on reducing the pressure on funds and management, so the two brothers immediately decided to open a store to try it out. In January 1999, the first Luolai Home Textiles specialty store opened on Renmin Road, Nantong. It was the peak season, and the retail price of the set was raised to 700-1200 yuan for mid-to-high-end products. The price was already the most expensive in the industry, but the on-site transactions were hot. It was far better than shopping malls.

The brothers were so excited that they immediately decided to transform the office into a chain franchise model. They could buy out the office's goods and become local franchisees. At the same time, they required franchisees to have both specialty stores and shopping malls to complement each other. A_R was a franchisee and could not be a wholesaler. This consolidated the value of the Luolai brand and laid the foundation for it to become the first in the industry in the future.

Although it was difficult, all offices were successfully transformed within a year. At the same time, Luolai began to recruit franchisees on a large scale, "grabbing territory!" When there were not enough people, more than 20 capable people were sent to major areas across the country to start intensive carpet-style investment promotion.

At the beginning of the investment promotion, the company had no money for advertising, and the salesmen relied entirely on their personal abilities to conduct unfamiliar sales. With a tenacious spirit, they traveled to various cities in the area, from one end of the city to the other, and persuaded the owners of the stores they were optimistic about to join. In order to make the franchisees successful as soon as possible, they helped with store design and promotional posters, selling goods during the day and training at night. Many people could not bear the hardship and left, and the second echelon filled the gap...

With the opening of new franchise stores in Guiyang, Dali, Changsha, Nanning, Chenzhou, Yangzhou, Wuxi and other places, by the end of 1999, the sales of dozens of franchisees reached more than 37 million yuan, and Luolai finally realized a profit of more than 3 million yuan in real money! Luolai's strategic transformation was finally on track. A chain franchise operation system was gradually formed.

Rebuilding brand competitiveness

During the interview, several executives said that they admired the two bosses Xue Weicheng and Xue Weibin from the bottom of their hearts. The wealth-creating ability of the Luolai brand not only turned the executives who had followed it for several years into the middle class, but also doubled the wealth of franchisees. The personal assets of a franchisee in Hebei Province increased from 10,000 yuan 10 years ago to 8 million yuan today! There are already countless stories of franchisees whose wealth has increased by dozens or hundreds of times.

At present, Luolai's franchisee system is being further developed, and to match it, its social image is also being fully improved. Over the years, Luolai has accumulated a good brand recognition, and large-scale public relations and charity activities have pushed Luolai's reputation to a peak. Luolai has always believed that doing charity is a social responsibility that enterprises should bear, and Xue Weicheng has a core value: "Let more people enjoy the fruits of corporate development." So, just like the two sides of a coin - activities that give back to society can naturally enhance the brand's public image; Luolai, which is willing to give, has ushered in a new platform.

In 2004, Luolai began to devote itself to public welfare. After the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, it donated more than 4 million yuan in supplies immediately. In July of that year, it also established the "Luolai Warmth Fund", which allocates special funds every year to help poor orphans. It also promoted this activity to Luolai network members, and launched the "You buy once, I donate one yuan" public welfare activity in more than 1,500 stores across the country, raising funds for the fund all year round.

Case 2: Why do Internet people make bedding? Online sellers make 30 million yuan a year

Feng Yi is a typical elite entrepreneur who chose the most challenging field - vertical e-commerce brand.

Outside Feng Yi's office is the sample room of Youman Home Textiles, which is filled with various pillows and quilts. "We have all slept on them." Her husband, also the co-founder of Youman Home Textiles, couldn't help but "complain" on the side, "Do you know how she 'tortured' me? For more than half a month, there were 20 to 30 pillows on one side of the bedroom and more than a dozen quilts on the other side. She woke me up every two hours of sleep, and took off the pillowcases, changed the pillow cores and quilts together, saying that only such intensive experience could distinguish the good from the bad. Sometimes I was too sleepy to remember what I felt, and I had to sleep again the next night. This is how the two of us and the backbone of the operation department selected products. Now even I have become an expert. I can help people choose a very suitable pillow by asking three questions."

The couple serves as bedding consultants for many people, such as Xu Xiaoping, one of Youman's angel investors. After Zhen Fund invested in Youman, Feng Yi and her husband visited Xu Xiaoping's home and found that the bedding he used was just average, so they carefully selected a set of their own products and sent it to him. When they met Xu Xiaoping again a month later, he praised him right away: "Since I have used your products, I realized how hard my life has been in the past 20 years."

The company, founded in August 2011, chose Qingsong and Zhenge from seven angel organizations in April last year. Two weeks after all the money was received, Zhenge led it to start its A round of financing - the financing is now nearing completion.

Why do Internet people make bedding products?

After completing his master's degree in biology at the University of California, Berkeley, Feng Yi switched to TMT because he felt he was not suited to research. In 1999, he was admitted to Stanford Business School, where he was a classmate of Zhang Fan, who co-founded Sequoia Capital China with Neil Shen, in the Stanford MBA. He returned to China in 2001, but was not satisfied with the top-down CEO mindset at McKinsey, so he returned to Silicon Valley to work from the bottom up, and spent 10 years shuttling between major Internet companies in China and the United States.

When she was still in Silicon Valley in 2006, she had set her sights on China's e-commerce market and recommended it to many VC friends. When she started her own business, e-commerce became her only choice. There are three types of people doing e-commerce in China: the first type is to do shopping malls, such as comprehensive or vertical B2C platforms that are shrouded in price wars; the second type is to sell goods, such as distribution and shopping guides under various platforms; the third type is to do branding, such as "Taobao brands". The first two types are mostly Internet people who are good at grabbing users, while the latter are mainly traditional industries and Taobao stores. According to common sense, since Feng Yi has accumulated so much Internet experience, she should do platform or service. But she thought in reverse. Since there are few people who understand the Internet, are willing and able to use Internet methods to build brands, this is her opportunity.

Of course, this is not the only basis for judgment. First of all, she thinks that the time for building a comprehensive platform has passed, and she is unwilling to build a vertical platform that burns money. In addition, she is tired of being engaged in the virtual economy for a long time and hopes to be down-to-earth, so she chooses to build a brand in the vertical field. In addition, she attaches great importance to fashion and quality of life, and is very obsessed with and particular about home furnishings and daily necessities. After returning to China to live, she found that her needs could not be met in the domestic market. She is used to using bath towels made in Europe and the United States, which are very large and soft, and are converted into RMB 400 to 500 yuan, such as Ralph Lauren. The same thing is sold for 1,000 or 2,000 yuan in Shin Kong Place, and there are very few choices. The other extreme of the domestic market - supermarket goods that cost dozens of yuan, thin and hard, she can no longer accommodate.

After research, she found that home textiles is a huge market worth over one trillion yuan, which is highly fragmented. The top ten brands have limited market share, with the largest one having annual sales of just over two billion yuan, and users have low brand awareness. The progress of the Internet in the industry is not as fast as that of clothing, and almost all e-commerce companies are still traditional brands, which means there are opportunities from both market and e-commerce perspectives.

"Home textiles are very skin-friendly and close-fitting. Good fabrics and bad fabrics feel completely different when they are worn on the body. Once you have tried them, you will know that it is difficult to get off the habit once you have tried them. Moreover, only you know how good and expensive your home textiles are, unlike clothes you wear outside where you can show off your brand name to others. The quality of Chinese home textiles is still many years behind that of Europe and the United States, but with the improvement of living standards and consumption capacity, after external vanity is satisfied, the pursuit of inner feelings will surely catch up." Speaking from her own experience, she frankly said that she is optimistic about the space for home textiles in consumption upgrades, and said that what she wants to do is to use the Internet to eliminate channel costs and face consumers directly, so that Chinese consumers can enjoy the same quality of life as Europe and the United States at an affordable and reasonable price.

Discuss financing during confinement

The background of Youman’s core operating team is similar to Feng Yi’s: some have been engaged in the Internet industry for more than 10 years, and some have been engaged in retail for more than 20 years. Some are returnees, and some are locals. Shareholders and investors also have experience in two industries and two identities.

Feng Yi found out she was pregnant just after Youman was registered. The company's start-up period coincided with her entire pregnancy. The angel round of financing was negotiated while she was in confinement. But last year, Youman had sales of 30 million, a growth rate of 300%.

At present, Youman's main sales channels are B2C platforms such as JD.com, Tmall, and No.1 Store. Different products are launched based on the differences in age, region, and average order value of the audiences on each platform. Youman does not promote its own official website, but has begun to develop offline business. However, the functions of the official website and offline business are more for display, so that users can see or experience them, and they are not the main sales channels.

Feng Yi feels that operating a brand e-commerce business is similar to building a large Internet platform in the past: both are 2C businesses, and both require personnel management, scheduling, online bug testing, and fault repair. The role of more supplier backups is equivalent to having redundant servers. The quality control team does the same testing as in the past. The logic is the same, but a new group of people from traditional industries have been replaced. Facing this group of newcomers, she believes that what she lacks relatively is brand marketing and supply chain management capabilities, which is why she is committed to introducing shareholders and VCs with retail backgrounds. At this stage, her most important job is equivalent to that of a product manager at an Internet company: the purchasing manager of a general e-commerce company has the right to place orders, but at Youman, she takes a group of purchasing managers who have been working in the home textile industry for many years to place orders, even if the SKU exceeds 1,000.