Balabala Children's Wear Talks about New Channels, New Problems and New Attempts to Enter Shopping Malls

Cheng Xueguo's Sina Weibo certification information is “the senior manager of the Balambara Dongda District Minister and City Complex”. In fact, this is an old post; after the Spring Festival in 2012, the urban complex project team is independent from the sales region, and Cheng Xueguo is a group. long.

New channel

Cheng Xueguo, who entered Senma in 2003, has been engaged in the sales of the Balabala brand. In his opinion, after 10 years of development in Balabala, which was founded in 2002, both channel expansion and sales scale have reached a stage peak. .

Ten years after the development of traditional channels such as street furniture, marketers in Balabala found that rent costs are getting higher and higher, resources are becoming more and more limited, and emerging industries such as shopping malls are increasingly showing their value.

“Commercial real estate has entered a period of rapid development in China, and many department stores are also upgrading to shopping centers. The number of urban complexes and shopping centers in first and second tier cities is increasing, and it has infiltrated into third and fourth tier cities.” Cheng Xueguo said, Balabala The urban complex project team was established under this background.

In recent years, fast fashion brands such as Uniqlo, ZARA and H&M have been regarded as guests by many shopping mall developers, and consumers are rushing.

“Because of their good carrier, good shopping environment.” In Cheng Xueguo’s view, brands should be high and go upwards. Shopping centers are effective carriers. With this new channel, sales scales can be further enlarged.

“Clothing, Hershey, and Joyce’s brands are more of a selection of shopping centers and department stores, and they rarely open separate shops. Especially in the past two years, the development of a good hot air, its channel is to shop. Centers and department stores, its marketing department is to become a strategic alliance with these shopping malls." Cheng Xueguo said that the practice of brother brands gave them a lot of inspiration.

Today, Barablan, who has more than 3,000 stores across the country, most of whom are street shops, has also set his sights on this new channel and tried to try it out.

Cheng Xueguo said: “The department stores have developed more maturely and have higher stationing costs; shopping malls are relatively new and still in the development stage. For brands, there is plenty of room for choice.”

New issues

In Cheng Xueguo’s view, domestic shopping malls are in a period of rapid development, and the opportunities for retail brands to move in have greater room for selection and lower initial cost of entry. However, they also face greater pressure.

“A lot of shopping centers are newly opened and have a long incubation period; for the average brand, there is a lot of operating pressure. Sometimes it is difficult for sales to support rental costs.”

After the incubation period, the shopping center's operating team will re-determine the rent quota based on the retailer's sales.

“The unfamiliar market is responsible for financial risks. The mature market is responsible for the high rental risk.” Cheng Xueguo told the “clothing time” reporter.

For Barablan, the sub-categories of children's wear will also encounter problems when communicating with shopping malls: because of the small scale of the industry, the renting capacity of children's wear is limited, and its renting capacity is far inferior to men's, women's and casual wear. Brands of other categories.

Because the renting capacity is weak, the unit price for the children's wear brand can be low, so the floor to enter is high, and the single store area is also small. In fact, when Cheng Xueguo was in contact with some shopping malls, the other party often said to him: “We have a shopping mall that is young and fashionable and does not be a child business.”

In Cheng Xueguo’s view, this is unreasonable: “The future of shopping centers must be based on family consumption. Now that there is nothing wrong with positioning young fashion, we are facing the '80s' and '90s' consumer groups; but when When these consumers become parents, where do they go to spend? How does your fashion position continue?"

He believes that even if shopping centers are positioned young and fashionable, they should focus on cultivating follow-up consumers.

In addition, some shopping centers will question the profitability of children's wear brands and think that they cannot produce sales that match rent.

“This requires brands to upgrade their products when they upgrade their channels.” Cheng said that most of Barabara’s current flagship stores in the mall are full-category and full-scale flagship stores to achieve the goal of improving single-store sales.

New attempt

Since the establishment of the Urban Complex Project Team, more than a dozen stores have been opened in the shopping malls of Balabala. Cheng Xueguo believes that this is a useful attempt for the Balabala brand.

In recent years, drastic changes in market channels have exerted a subtle influence on the existing business model and competitive landscape of the children's wear industry. Obviously Balabala has noticed this. In one of their public reports, they wrote: The cost of terminal channels continues to increase, international well-known brands and domestic new brands continue to emerge, and e-commerce channels, commercial plazas, and urban complex channels continue to diverge. Clothing sales channels.

For Balla Bara, who is good at responding to the times and boldly innovating, it is not difficult to try hard on new channels. In fact, in the course of 10 years of development, Balabala has no shortage of innovations in the channel: At the beginning of the brand creation, he boldly adopted the virtual business model; in the domestic children's wear industry, he first introduced the store sales model; in 2006, he proposed innovatively. The channel strategy of “a small town opened a big shop, a big city opened many stores”...

Today, the emergence of a new agency for the urban complex project group is seen by the industry as a bold attempt by Barabara to adjust and upgrade channels.

"This is an attempt. This work has already shown its effectiveness. At least we have already made clear some operational mechanisms for commercial real estate and shopping centers. This is a good pavement for the company's later channel development." said Cheng Xueguo. .