At 23:59 on the 14th, Watson issued an apology statement on his official microblog.
Watson, a long silent traditional beauty retail trademark, is falling into a storm of public opinion.
The event originated in January 11th, and Watsons launched its mask promotional activities on the US platform. According to the rules of activity, from 5 to 8 in the morning of January 11th, consumers can use coupons at 0.01 yuan to buy any one of two mask products (5 boxes per person), and only support offline stores.
However, many consumers have claimed that they were blocked when picking up goods offline. Some stores directly tell consumers that they are out of stock and hope that consumers will refund. Meanwhile, the mask that was told that the shortage was still sold on Watsons online.
In January 14th, Watsons bought 1 minutes of mask activities and was challenged to catch up with micro-blog.
What further fermented the situation was that when many consumers went to Watson's live studio to ask for an explanation, they were insulted by the anchor of the live studio. According to a video posted on the Internet, Watson's anchor smiled and said to the camera abusive sentences such as "I want to collect something for a penny, bite like a \'mad dog\'," I\'m happy to kick you "and" deserve it ". During this period, another staff member should say to him, "when you collect it, you don\'t recognize it as cheap. If you don\'t collect it, you come here to bite.". This completely angered consumers and netizens who were concerned about the incident.
It is worth noting that the online transmission led to the event that the inventory could not support consumers to pick up the goods because of meituan system failure. On January 14, consumers reported that they received a 50 yuan coupon compensation from meituan, but at the same time, meituan customer service also responded that the activity price was set by the merchant itself and had nothing to do with meituan system. The compensation was not Watson's compensation scheme, but just to make up for the consumer's experience on meituan platform.
At 23:59 on the 14th, Watson issued an apology statement on the official microblog, saying that the activity had generated a large number of abnormal orders far exceeding the inventory in a short time due to system reasons. The company decided to continue to fulfill the remaining orders by replenishment. For the improper remarks in the live broadcasting room, Watson said that the anchor was a third-party organization personnel cooperating with the company.
A storm related to Watsons, but meituan took the lead in buying the order. Tiktok China has not updated its live broadcast of the Watsons platform in the shaking platform so far, and Watsons has an average of 1-2 live broadcast days before the event.
The system has inventory but can't give it to consumers? Stores have different opinions
On the afternoon of January 14, times finance visited two Watson stores in Guangzhou. A store guide said frankly that he didn\'t understand the fact that the anchor in the live studio abused customers, "this has a bad impact on our image. How can they do this?"
Both store guides admitted to times finance that in recent days, they have received many consumers who came to the store to pick up goods because they bought activity products, and only a few consumers got the goods in the store. Clerk Lili (a pseudonym) said, "there are indeed a lot of consumers asking, some are angry, and some consumers are willing to understand after our explanation. However, as a store, we can only say that we try our best to calm their emotions and constantly apologize."
She told times finance that at present, she has only received a number of notices issued by her superiors to let the stores do a good job in soothing customers' emotions. The subsequent specific solutions need to wait for further notice from the superior departments.
Lili bluntly said that most consumers don\'t buy only comfort, but she also said she was helpless: "in fact, the system shows that there is inventory, but we can\'t give it if the customer wants. The only thing we can do is to do well in the store service, and then wait for notice."
On one side, there is inventory, but because there is no notice, consumers cannot successfully pick up the goods, while the other store has a different view.
"Meituan's system made a mistake in price. Many consumers came to pick up the goods, and our inventory was run out." Clerk Li Ying (a pseudonym) recalled that two days ago, when the store was just open, a girl came in and picked up eight boxes, and the inventory in the store was in a hurry. "It's not that I don\'t want to give it! There are many people coming to pick up the goods, but because there is no inventory, we can\'t give it. We can give it to anyone with inventory."
As far as she knows, the store received the notice of "give it when you have it" and is trying to replenish it. She also said: "even if they buy it for a penny, they are also consumers."
In response to the message of meituan system error, on January 14, meituan customer service responded to the media that the commodity price was set by the merchant itself, and the "wool collection" had nothing to do with meituan. At present, the US group is negotiating with Watsons on the "1 cent promotion mask" incident, and the result of the consultation has not yet been reached. Meituan customer service said that even if the order was automatically closed on January 18, meituan would give a solution to the matter.
The number of stores has increased, but the performance has declined. Watson is experiencing a "middle-aged crisis"
In fact, with the rise of new beauty collection stores in recent two years, Watson, who entered the mainland market in 1989, is experiencing a "middle-aged crisis".
According to the financial report, Watson's performance growth in the Chinese market has not been satisfactory since 2016. From 2016 to 2019, Watson China's revenue was HK $20.914 billion, HK $21.783 billion, HK $23.855 billion and HK $24.591 billion respectively; Excluding the impact of exchange rate, the growth rates were 2%, 5%, 7% and 7% respectively, all of which were low digit growth.
In 2020, Watsons suffered a critical blow during the epidemic. According to the financial report, its revenue in China fell by 19% to HK $19.984 billion, even less than HK $21.713 billion in 2015.
The types of products are relatively traditional, and the poor experience of stores is the current consumers' intuitive feeling of Watson.
"I don\'t have a good impression of Watson. No matter what you want, the clerk keeps trying to sell you what she wants to sell. I said what I want to buy. The clerk can\'t hear it. If she doesn\'t buy what she recommends, she will be white eyed." Make complaints about micro-blog products, and many netizens start to talk about Watsons chicken ribs.
Some consumers directly said that they would never spend any more Watson's money, "earn the money of consumers and scold consumers as\' mad dogs\', and I won\'t go to you Watson to spend another penny."
During the visit of times finance, it was found that there were only three customers in a Watson store with an area of more than 100 square meters, which was far from the crowded scene in Watson's store in previous years.
In contrast, Watson's number of stores is increasing. By 2016-2020, the number of Watson's stores in China had increased from 2929 to 4115. Meanwhile, the same store sales growth of Watson's stores in China were - 10.1%, - 4.3%, - 1.6%, 2% and - 21.8% respectively. Except for 2019, the continuous negative growth means that while Watson's stores are crazy in China, the single store profitability of Watson's stores is rapidly declining.
At the same time, in recent years, Watson has also faced "encirclement and suppression" of a new generation of beauty collection stores in China, such as the colorist, wow colour, Haydon black hole and harmay Huamei. Most of these brands were founded from 2017 to 2020.
Haitong Securities Company Limited(600837) the research report shows that the new beauty collection stores are more favored by young consumers and capital. Their single store area is basically more than 200 square meters, including 1000 square meters of black hole stores in Beijing Road Business District, Guangzhou. There are more brands and SKUs than traditional beauty stores.
Some analysts pointed out that, on the one hand, the new beauty collection stores are more tolerant of cutting-edge brands and cooperate with many online red beauty brands full of design sense and personality; On the other hand, the new beauty collection store provides consumers with a high face value scene convenient for social clock in through highly styled store decoration.
According to the 2021 China Beauty Collection store industry research report released by iResearch consulting, 73.5% of consumers go to the new beauty collection store because they can buy brands and products that the traditional beauty collection does not have, and 66.3% and 49.5% of consumers will go to the new beauty collection store to buy small samples and on-site trials.
The balance of capital also tends to new beauty collection store brands. The research report shows that in 2016, the colorist obtained a pre-A round of financing of RMB 15 million from Shenzhen Venture Capital. The investment boom of beauty collection stores continues until 2020. Previously, KK group, the "head player" of the new retail industry, submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong stock exchange. It has four independently incubated brands, including the colorist.
It is worth noting that according to the latest financial report of Watson's parent company Changhe industrial group, as of June 30, 2021, Watson's retail sales in China were HK $11.599 billion, a year-on-year increase of 21%, which seems to be rebounding. However, times finance found that this retail sales is still less than HK $12.512 billion in the same period in 2019.
Now, with the continuous fermentation of the topic, Watson is on the cusp again.
