Gu Beichun: Macaulin'S Principle Of Multi Habitat Survival

Whether it is "Mai Wang" or a physical store, Gu Beichun believes that a common operational magic weapon still lies in data base 。 This database contains members' points information, customer purchase records, etc., and can analyze and mine customer preferences, spending power, regional distribution, and brand preferences through software support, so as to carry out differentiated marketing.

Character name card:

Gu Beichun: Shanghai Macaulin President of International Mail Order Company

Optimizing the Commodity Structure: Macaulin's Fresh Revival Technique

For McCullin nine years ago, Gu Beichun's "Airborne" is quite legendary.

In 2001, Gu Beichun, 31 years old, had planned to start his own business when he left Bertelsmann. He took the business plan to find many investors. By chance, Gu Beichun met Sun Qiang of Warburg Pincus Investment. At that time, Warburg Pincus had already invested in Macaulin, a catalog mail order enterprise, and it was unlikely to reinvest in other projects. But the young man in front of him quickly attracted Sun Qiang with his sober and calm business vision. He strongly invited Gu Beichun to join him, hoping to give Macaulin a new look.

Young Gu Beichun was appointed. At this time, McCullin had only $2 million in cash on his books.

For the complicated body image at that time“ foreign nationality ”For McCullin, whether $2 million can revitalize it seems to be a crisis.

Gu Beichun began to carry out a comprehensive "look, hear and ask" for McCullin. He found that the clothing style of old Macaulin was closer to the "taste of the middle-aged and elderly in Europe", and the user range was far from reaching the requirements of scope. The number of users should reach at least 500000 to reduce the production cost of clothing. At this time, it was necessary to make a quick decision on the adjustment of the commodity structure of Macaulin. At this time, Gu Beichun quickly found a breakthrough point - reducing costs and repositioning the customer base. The company's target customers shifted from low-end markets to urban white-collar women.

At the same time, Gu Beichun found that the sales volume was growing, but in view of too many product lines, too many intermediaries and the rapid expansion of the company, the company's cash flow was decreasing. Therefore, he began to replace unqualified suppliers and cut down intermediaries.

The accurate judgment of the focus made McCullin quickly turn the corner.

In the fourth quarter of 2001, cash flow finally became positive, and after that, it was a compound growth rate of 50% for six consecutive years. This made McCullin's team look at Gu Beichun with new eyes. At this time, Gu Beichun's reform of optimizing product structure did not stop.

"Girls like to play with patterns, and we can help them achieve it easily." Gu Beichun said that McCullin registered the "EUROMODA" brand for its clothing, and its own design team was responsible for the design, then OEM production and direct distribution. In order to further enrich the fashion connotation of the brand, at the beginning of 2007, McCullin signed a cooperation agreement with Nissen, Japan's largest mail order company, to introduce the other party's seasonal design and produce it in China. In 2008, McCullin cooperated with the American fashion brand Rampage. Rampage's clothing design was characterized by individuality, which was complementary to the lady style of McCullin's own brand EUROMODA.

Today, there are thousands of products in each series of Macaulin. In addition to its own brand, it also acts as an agent for the products of well-known cosmetics companies, such as L'Oreal and Vichy, whose prices are lower than those of malls. McCullin also has a full-time beauty consultant to guide. All categories related to women and fashion, including fashionable furniture, accessories, etc., are involved in and constantly updated by McCullin, and a rich and flexible commodity structure has been established.

Parallel business model of "multi-channel composite marketing"

In fact, in addition to being able to rise from the dead and become more powerful, McCullin has established a business model of "multi-channel composite marketing".

As early as 2004, as the largest catalog mail order enterprise in China, McCullin was back on the Internet. This channel showed strong resilience in the face of the financial crisis in 2008, and also became a development opportunity for the entire website to become one of the main sales channels of McCullin.

Afraid of being affected by the financial crisis, Gu Beichun overturned the previous plan to launch new products in spring and summer, re planned the clothing style, production output and advertising quota, and also considered whether to change the sales channel.

On the contrary, peers are shrinking their battle lines, and McCullin still has set a higher growth target. Through the research on sales channels, Gu Beichun found that more and more customers choose online shopping, while Mai Wang still has a lot of shortcomings in customer application, interaction, human and material resources and other resource allocation.

So he decided to immediately adjust the company's business structure. In March 2009, McCullin established an independent e-commerce business department, which is operated by a professional Internet team. The first thing the new team did after its establishment was to make a new revision of Mai Wang. In July, Mai Wang began to put advertisements on the Internet. In the financial crisis, many brands have reduced their marketing budgets, so many websites have very vacant advertising spaces. The advertising space bought by Mai Wang is cheaper than before the financial crisis. It can be said that it has successfully copied media advertising.

In addition to "Mai Wang", Gu Beichun also showed a strong interest in retail physical stores. At the moment when e-commerce is in full swing, he chose to go against the trend and decided to expand to physical stores.

The problem is: the channel cost of online sales is relatively low. How can the low price strategy be replicated in physical stores?

Gu Beichun said that most of the Macaulin stores are located in the shopping mall. The rent is very fixed, which reduces the cost and greatly improves the operation efficiency, which makes the Macaulin stores profitable.

"At present, the situation of our stores in the first and second tier cities is not worse than that of Only and Veromoda, and the situation in the third and fourth tier cities is not worse than that of Yichun and Sima," Gu Beichun said.

"Even in a mature business circle, there are also the most expensive and cheapest brands. If the number of goods sold is very large, the rent is fixed, the price is overpriced, and the purchase rate of consumers is very high, the retail format can maintain a very high efficiency." Gu Beichun said.

In order to reduce procurement costs, McCullin procurement eliminates intermediaries. "We must see that products come down from the production line." Most of McCullin's suppliers are export trade enterprises. Under the tempering of the cruel export market, they have a good grasp of delivery time, a strong control of quality and cost control.

Today, with its strong supplier resources and logistics system, McCullin has opened more than 400 retail stores. In addition, whether it is "Mai Wang" or a physical store, Gu Beichun believes that a common operational magic weapon still lies in the database. This database contains members' points information, customer purchase records, etc., and can analyze and mine customer preferences, spending power, regional distribution, and brand preferences through software support, so as to carry out differentiated marketing.

Capital operation is not McCullin's ultimate expectation

When faced with the possibility of reporters planning to go public in the near future, Gu Beichun did not clearly recognize the listing plan itself. However, he made clear to reporters his attitude towards the capital market: McCullin followed his own established development strategy, the path selection and schedule of listing and financing, which will serve the practical needs of the established strategy.

In fact, as the only retailer in China that runs through three different channels at present, McCullin's multi-channel model has long attracted the attention of Shen Nanpeng, executive partner of Sequoia Capital China Fund.

In February 2008, Sequoia China acquired the shares of Macalline held by Warburg Pincus and other minority shareholders for 80 million dollars. So far, McCullin has become the "first work" of Sequoia China under the Buy out (holding acquisition) mode. He believes that diversified channels are a trend in the retail field.

"It's not easy to operate the multi-channel retail model." Shen Nanpeng believes that it needs many links. From product design to the establishment of the trading platform, different models have different retail skills, customer choices and trading methods, which pose a great challenge to the management, In his opinion, "Gu Beichun has strong macro control ability and good execution, and his team has strong members in various functions, from service to call center to product."

Can it be the logic and result of capital will driven that an innovative business model can quickly obtain capital support in such a short period of time, and at the same time, quickly return from light network to heavy exploration of physical channels?

In response to external speculation, Gu Beichun said that at the beginning of the cooperation with Sequoia Capital, he had written the strategic plan of Macaulin's direct marketing into the five-year development plan.

"We will accept their investment only when we get 100% recognition," Gu Beichun said. "Even if it comes to the market one day, it only represents the financing process of McCullin, not the ultimate expectation of McCullin. McCullin is absolutely confident to achieve this goal, because it already has very healthy cash flow and operational skills. McCullin will never go to the market for the sake of listing. Its high-quality channels can walk on multiple legs, and its anti risk ability and profitability have been proved, It has a tenacious ability to survive. "