I've been engaged in furniture manufacturing for 13 years. Talk about your views on the industry.
Behind this problem, reflected the current situation of furniture sales industry
Goods in physical stores are expensive and ugly, but cheap and beautiful online. But can't see, can't touch, always have some guilty. It's not just a consumer problem, it's an industry problem.
Before the emergence of DY, it was difficult to rely on individuals to conduct marketing for the business of physical stores. The way for entity operators to advertise was to buy some advertising space on external walls in stores and then participate in some local furniture small group buying exhibitions. In the face of the local market, when the furniture store is not saturated, waiting for the door business, so it is really enough.
But when more and more furniture stores, beyond the market demand. Operators in the industry, it is impossible for everyone to make money. Compared to online consumers facing the whole country. Brick-and-mortar stores have no incentive or willingness to lower prices, because even if you sell them at a lower price, you won't be able to sell many more people. The cost of services will rise. In this case, the entity store furniture is naturally ugly expensive occupy the mainstream.
Then casually look at the online appearance level of thousands of dollars sofa, and did not deliberately find particularly good-looking products, is just a random cut, now 2021, in most of the third and fourth tier cities in China, so fashionable products, you can not see in the store. For non-economically developed cities, the aesthetic of physical stores is seriously lagging behind.
The furniture that we often say, it is to point to mobile kind finished product furniture.
Include, bed, sofa, TV cabinet, tea table, dining table and chair, bed, desk, bookcase, makeup table, shoe cabinet (activity) wardrobe (activity), bucket cabinet, meal side cabinet, porch cabinet. These products.
After furniture is finished by factory production, face terminal consumer, inevitable meeting experiences channel. Channel providers provide display, promote products, direct service to users, at the same time bear business risks, earn price difference (service fee).
Both e-commerce and physical stores are channels, which may be operated by franchisees or factories themselves. As long as there is sales activity, there will be channels. All kinds of exhibitions, group buying, ordering, factory sales are also a kind of channel.
In principle, the lower the channel cost, the higher the theoretical possibility that consumers can get benefits.
For years, online furniture sales have relied on low prices to gain users. Because compared with the operating cost of stores, it is cheaper for e-commerce companies to complete the same sales volume. Operators are allowed space.
It is said that the cost of acquiring customers through train is high, but do you know that the commission starts at least 10% with a transaction customer in offline stores?
If users skip the middleman and go straight to the factory, the theoretical probability of getting a bargain is higher. However, how do users know about the factory? It is "we media", "friends' reputation", "neighborhood neighbors" and "designers". Or who? Do these people want food? I always take a cautious attitude towards ordinary users purchasing directly from factories, which seems to save a lot of money. Furniture factory is actually an assembly factory. The supply chain supporting furniture production includes wood, plate, sponge, hardware, fabric, down, bent plate, punching, paint, etc. Each link may have a huge price difference. I have been engaged in furniture manufacturing for 12 years. I've never seen an enterprise do this all by itself.
Many small factories do not have the advantage of supply chain, or even stability, while large factories with the advantage of supply chain do not receive personal business at all.
There are thousands of furniture suppliers on both sides of the G325 national highway, don't be naive to think that they are all factories. Even if the factory is opened, can the goods inside be guaranteed to be produced by the factory?
For consumers, if they do not want to experience the pleasure of buying, then all that remains is to weigh the cost of time. Time costs vary widely among different users. This is why it is so convenient to buy mattresses abroad, but some people still choose to buy imported mattresses from domestic counters.
For professionals, even in physical stores, you can also buy highly cost-effective products. But furniture industry is a low-frequency industry, we cannot ask consumers to have a very high degree of professionalism. So the advantage of buying furniture online is revealed, first of all, massive goods compete with traffic, through the natural screening of market rules. Survival of the fittest, coupled with more and more accurate big data push (in effect, lower delivery costs), often end up presenting users with products that meet their needs and are cost-effective. Combined with the shopping experience of physical furniture, the above confusion arises.
Imagine if most consumers could find the style they like in a physical store and afford the price for an item as important to their experience as furniture. Why should move to buy online.
When the budget reaches a certain level, that is, high-end furniture in the traditional sense, the proportion of online purchase drops off a cliff. The more high-end furniture, the proportion of channel cost decreases, while high-end furniture consumers are less sensitive to price. High requirements for experience and service, high-end furniture 1 yuan 3 cents goods value can be recognized. This is also the reason why high-end overseas furniture e-commerce companies have basically failed in operation in recent years.