“The era of waiting for consumers to come to your door has passed.” As early as three years ago, many ceramic tile dealers talked about this topic in interviews with Zhongtaojun. The promotion of finely decorated houses, the popularity of the self-decoration model, and the rampant use of "masks" have made the building materials market with little traffic in the past become even more deserted, forcing dealers to change from the original "sitting business" to "trading business."
Some dealers bluntly said that these days, "the fragrance of wine is afraid of the depth of the alley", and only "multiple legs" and "going out" can open up the traffic entrance to consumers. At present, the terminal sales of ceramic tiles involve multiple channels such as retail, engineering, decoration companies, designers, etc. Almost every dealer hopes to achieve performance growth through multi-channel layout, but the ending always has some people happy and some worried.
Why do some dealers spend a lot of effort to develop channels but still cannot sell their goods? With this topic in mind, Zhongtaojun visited many brands such as Dajiulu, Qianghui, Huiya, Owen Lai, and Romario in the 2022 "Tao Xing China" national ceramic tile and slate market survey. According to many senior industry experts People's interpretation of the market has found two main problems. One is choosing the wrong direction, and the other is taking the wrong method.
01 Retail is a basic skill
It is an indisputable fact that the proportion of revenue from retail channels has dropped significantly. When the dealer's input and output are not proportional, phenomena such as store closures and lease cancellations will become more and more common.
Retail demand has shrunk, and some dealers will mistakenly think this is a signal released by the market and begin to invest all their energy in other channels. As everyone knows, store retailing is the foundation, and dealers with solid basic skills will have the advantage of omni-channel competition. "In East China or provincial capital cities, these markets with relatively high consumption power, the top dealers are doing very well in retail sales." Wang Baohua, deputy general manager of Romario Tile Sales, gave examples to support this view.
Image source: Summit Tile
In addition to the role of selling goods, retail actually also has extremely high brand promotion value. Samit Wuxi dealer Liu JiaThey all told Zhongtaojun that building a good store image and holding some marketing activities regularly will help accurately promote the brand to consumer groups. Even if conversion is not achieved immediately, it can subtly occupy the minds of consumers and pave the way for future success. Provide assistance alone.
Zhongtaojun also learned that most ceramic tile brands will still focus their channels on the store retail section, and there will be more actions to stimulate the vitality of retail channels such as national linkages and anniversary celebrations.
02 Home decoration is “1+N”< /p>
As people's living standards continue to improve, consumers have higher requirements for home decoration design. At the same time, they also prefer time-saving and labor-saving decoration models such as full-case design, whole-house decoration, Internet home decoration, and move-in-bag design. .
Decoration companies and designers not only control a large number of order resources, but also have a certain say in the selection of space materials. Therefore, if dealers want to operate through multiple channels, they must establish good cooperative relationships with decoration companies and designers. Some industry insiders describe the home decoration channel as a "1+N" structure, with project managers, semi-packaging companies, decoration companies, designer studios and other partners as "N". The final order transaction still has to go back to the store. 1" and play a complementary role with each other.
Picture source: Ailin Dressing
Of course, in addition to stores, opening up channels also requires dealers to meet many conditions. Nan Shunzhi, founder of Dajiaolu Ceramics, revealed that Dajiaolu has currently regarded the assembly channel as one of its key channels. In order to empower dealers to develop assembly channels, Dajiaolu has firmly grasped the pain points of consumption and focused on products. The entrance, assisted by national publicity and promotion, continuously improves the brand's channel competitiveness.
Embracing designers has become the only way for brands to go high-end, and many dealers are well aware of this truth. In recent years, there have been a variety of design competitions, design study tours, design forums, design salons and other activities led by brand headquarters or dealers. Regarding how to deeply link the designer group, Zheng Shousheng, the brand manager of Haoxuequan & Zhuchang Classroom, believes that product features, brand labels and operational services are indispensable.
03 Distribution needs to change its model
As we all know, the vast majority of regional general dealers rely on distribution channels to complete their sales tasks. In the past distribution channels, dealers relied on regional exclusive agent policies and logistics and warehousing cost advantages to obtain profits by "earning the price difference". However, in an environment of sluggish market and intensified competition, such an extensive business model has gradually declined.
In recent years, major manufacturers have not only paid attention to the third- and fourth-tier markets, but also continued to expand their network layout. Distribution channels have suddenly become a competition between brand headquarters and general distributors. Zhongtaojun learned that some dealers who used to have good distribution channels now have frequent fluctuations in their distribution network, or even gradually reduced. As a result, some industry insiders predicted that the distribution model may decline.
Picture source: Guanxing Enterprise
Qianghui Deputy Sales Manager Zhang Zhen said that based on the current market environment, it is not that distribution channels are difficult to develop, but that the traditional distribution model is no longer competitive. When distributors shift from pure product demand to product + service demand, the once "earning the price difference" distribution model becomes particularly outdated.
The top priority for dealers is to change the original distribution model and establish a team of professional service distributors to help the distribution outlets, mainly "mom-and-pop stores", transform and upgrade. It is worth mentioning that brands such as Dajiulu, Guanzhu, Samit, Eagle, Oceano, Nengqiang, Guanxingwang, Huiya, Asia, and General are currently building central warehouses across the country to promote distribution Business operators have completed the role transformation from "agent" to "service provider".
04 The project will be broken and then built
The engineering channel is what dealers often call the "construction site". When finely decorated houses were not yet popular, the group that received project orders were mostly terminal dealers. They initially provided ceramic tile products for some small local projects in the back-of-store model.Later, when these dealers have accumulated a certain amount of financial strength, they will begin to participate in bidding for large projects.
For a long time, dealers who have done well in engineering channels have not only received more attention from the brand headquarters, but also have a higher status in the industry. A dealer who did not want to be named once told Zhongtaojun that dealers who do engineering projects are beautiful on the surface, but they are actually under a lot of financial pressure. Some people rely on high-interest loans to purchase goods and urgently need to recycle project funds, while real estate developers Project fees are often not paid on time. If you can make it through, it's fine. But if you can't, you may end up back before liberation overnight.
Picture source: Visual China
Since the real estate companies represented by Evergrande have been hit by thunderstorms one after another, many manufacturers have held a lot of high-value commercial bills from engineering channels. Not only are they facing the risk of overdue commercial bills, but their profits are also A loss occurred. This is true for powerful manufacturers. It is conceivable that the situation of dealers who mainly focus on engineering channels is not much better.
“I think that thunderstorms for real estate companies are not a bad thing. It is indeed a period of pain, but the previous business model was deformed, and the damage to manufacturers and dealers will only be deeper in the long run. As the saying goes, after breaking, we stand. This round of thunderstorms among real estate companies is conducive to the standardization and rationalization of the game rules of the construction channel," said You Jun, general manager of Haosheng Enterprise Brand Management Center.
05 New retail is the breakthrough point
In 2014, the e-commerce model in the ceramic tile industry began to emerge, with large and small brands entering the market one after another. Some even predicted that e-commerce would subvert the original dealer model. In fact, the carnival died down not long after, and e-commerce did not have much impact on offline ceramic tile stores. Today, brand promotion has become the main role of e-commerce official flagship stores.
In 2020, live streaming became popular throughout the industry, and various brands followed suit and started live streaming. This time, their idea is to use online live broadcasts to attract traffic and orders to offline stores. However, a Suzhou dealer of a certain first-tier brand complained to Zhongtaojun after the live broadcast event, saying that he participated in the headquarters live broadcast event and only received a deposit of 1 yuan for 2 units.
Picture source: Qiantu.com
Some people in the industry believe that the attributes of ceramic tiles determine that this product is not suitable for e-commerce and live streaming, and that new retail is just a false proposition. In fact, consumption patterns are constantly changing with the age groups of consumer groups. Understanding brand and product information through the Internet has become a must-do step for today’s consumers when purchasing ceramic tiles. From this perspective, new retail still has a head start. of.
Jian Qianmin, deputy general manager of Huiya Tile Marketing, revealed that Huiya launched an online and offline new retail project directly operated by the headquarters this year to help dealers keep up with changes in the market and consumption habits. Unlike traditional e-commerce, the core battlefield of new retail now comes to new media. It is understood that Huiya has settled on platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Zhuxiaobang, Haohaozhu, and Yidoutang, and uses new media channels to attract traffic and empower dealers.
From WeChat group blast marketing, to e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.com, to short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, to new media methods such as Xiaohongshu and Yidoutang, it is not difficult to find that new retail will always be A break point worth a try for dealers.
After analyzing the current status, challenges and opportunities of retail, home decoration, distribution, engineering, new retail and other channels, Zhongtaojun summarized 5 pieces of advice for dealers:
1. Times have changed, and those who stick to the rules are destined to be eliminated. Because in addition to changing times, the competitive landscape of the industry and consumption patterns are also changing. Only by advancing with the times can we survive in the new environment; those who stick to the rules are destined to be killed.
2. In different periods, channels should have different focuses. Multi-channel operations are not achieved overnight, but focus on different channels at different times and in accordance with current conditions. Multi-channel operations that do not lay a solid foundation step by step are actually "throwing away the watermelon and picking up the sesame seeds."
3. There is no point in just working hard. In the process of deepening channels, we should focus on tapping the potential of channels and the potential value of consumer groups to maximize resource utilization. If you just keep working hard, you will miss many opportunities.
4. Making trade-offs is the price of building a high-return model. Although each channel complements each other, there are certain conflicts and contradictions. The high-return model and the small-profit-quick-turnover model are destined to be unable to coexist, and there is always a trade-off between profit and unit volume.
5. Controlling risks and achieving performance are not the ultimate goals. Everyone knows that the longer the payment settlement cycle means the higher the risk. Some dealers will feel sorry for missing orders, but in fact, some businesses are losing money.It hurts even more to do it.
