Various new collection stores and beauty shops have sprung up. The traditional beauty collection stores represented by Watson seem to be going downhill. A live rollover has sent Watson to a hot search. The reporter of Beijing Business Daily found that Watson has opened stores intensively in recent years, but the same store sales have been declining. It is not smooth to embrace live broadcast and reach young consumers. This time, it also overturned due to running in with a third party. The analysis points out that under the background of the rapid development of new retail, traditional beauty shops need to change the existing model, not only in the channel, but also in the store product layout.
live broadcast running in of rollover and third party
Live broadcasting is the fastest way to contact young people, but it often has problems because of running in. Because Watsons sold the “1 cent promotion mask” on the US platform, refused to deliver the goods, and also called the “mad dog” in the live broadcast room. Watsons was pushed to micro-blog hot search. Watson’s official platform issued an apology, pointing out that the live anchor comes from a third-party company and will strengthen the audit and supervision of third-party cooperative companies in the future.
In view of the relationship between Watson and live shopping guide and whether to cooperate with MCN institutions, the reporter of Beijing business daily sent it to relevant personnel in the form of interview outline, and did not reply before publishing.
But fundamentally, consumers dissatisfied with Watsons’s live broadcast of the “1 cents to buy mask” activities can not be fulfilled. The reporter of Beijing business daily saw in the black cat complaint that there were nearly 2000 complaints of “no write off when goods are available” for the above activities. Watson publicly replied that it would replenish the out of stock goods.
Watson’s live rollover is not an example. With the rise of live delivery, all kinds of chaos emerge in endlessly. During the “double 11” in 2021, L\’Oreal brand overturned the car in the live broadcast room of Li Jiaqi for the slogan of “maximum strength throughout the year”; Luo Yonghao put on the shelf a rose product that took some time for e-commerce to subscribe to flowers in the live studio. However, when consumers received flowers, they found that the flowers had withered. Later, Luo Yonghao and took some time to apologize urgently and make compensation; On May 1, 2020, consumers purchased Gree air conditioner in the live broadcast of “Gome’s official flagship store”. At that time, it was marked that it was delivered on May 28, but it was not delivered in the end and ended with a refund.
Insiders admitted that many times, brands blindly rely on a third party when developing live broadcasting, which will lead to conflicts or embarrassing events when MCN anchors do not fully understand brand values and product information. Therefore, when cooperating with third parties, brands should strengthen contract constraints and training, or train their employees in the development of live broadcasting.
same store sales decline
Watson is eager to reach more consumers through online channels whether it cooperates with a third-party live shopping guide or enters the meituan New Year Festival. By combing Watson’s performance in recent years, it is found that from 2016 to 2020, Watson has hundreds of new stores in China every year, and the same store sales show a downward trend as a whole. In particular, with the emergence and popularization of online Hongmen stores such as KKV and toners, the diversion phenomenon is more obvious.
According to the financial reports released by Watson’s parent company Changjiang Hutchison Industrial Co., Ltd. over the years, as of December 31, 2020, Watson’s annual income was 133.532 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6%, the largest decline since 2016. Among them, the revenue in the Chinese market was 16.72 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 19%. Since entering China in 1989, Watson has operated more than 4100 stores in nearly 500 cities in the mainland by the end of 2020.
From the perspective of store opening plan, Watson will add 168 stores in 2020, which has slowed down compared with the average number of more than 300 stores per year in previous years. According to the financial report, as of December 31, 2020, the number of Watson’s stores in the Chinese market was 4115, compared with 3947 in the same period in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 4%; From 2018 to 2019, the number of stores in the Chinese market increased by 9%.
In terms of same store sales, in 2020, Watson’s same store sales in China market decreased by 21.8% year-on-year; In 2019, the same store sales increased slightly by 2%; In 2018, the same store sales continued to decline by 1.6%; The same store sales in 2017 decreased by 4.3%; In 2016, store sales decreased by 10.1% year-on-year.
The annual performance of 2021 and the layout plan of 2022 have not been officially announced. In the interview outline, the reporter of Beijing business daily asked questions about the layout plan of Beijing and the whole country and the operating benefits of Watson’s offline stores. As of the time of publication, he did not reply.
From the comparison between the store opening plan and the change of the same store sales, the number of offline stores increases, but the same store sales are declining. Therefore, online layout and strengthening the digital reform of existing stores have become the top priority of Watson’s current task. The reporter of Beijing business daily saw that Watson tested the functions of code scanning, unmanned shelf and AR makeup on the digital. It also developed the cloud store system through cooperation with meituan, hungry and other platforms to further open up Wuxi Online Offline Communication Information Technology Co.Ltd(300959) .
product channel change stimulates shopping demand
To really return to the attention of consumers, Watson may also need to work on multi-channel and personalized products. Wu Daiqi, CEO of Shenzhen siqisheng company, pointed out that from the perspective of beauty retail, consumers will not wait for beauty products to be used before buying new products. Therefore, if the brand wants to expand new channels and inspire consumers to buy, it needs to adopt new products with special selling points and increase the publicity of online channels, so as to stimulate consumers’ purchase demand.
“If an enterprise wants to launch a takeout platform, it should first consider buying food, while other daily products are difficult to think of, so it needs to spend a long time to cultivate consumers\’ shopping habits.” Wu Daiqi suggested. For cooperation with third-party platforms, most platforms have arranged community group purchase and cooperated with multiple brands, so the possibility of forming “next day arrival” is relatively high, which is still higher than some e-commerce platforms in timeliness.
From the perspective of live broadcasting, we can’t rely only on third parties or MCN institutions. Insiders admitted that the brand should adopt the mode of combining self broadcasting and third-party anchor with goods in the development of live broadcasting, which will become the channel for the brand in the future. Among them, self broadcasting can not only reduce the cost of live broadcasting, but also better understand the product content. When promoting explosive products and online red products, the authority of the head anchor is better.
Zhou Zhengguo, an independent financial commentator, pointed out that the development of traditional beauty retail enterprises can be compared with the garment FMCG industry. Traditional enterprises like Wanning, Watsons and Sasha international need to actively face the development of emerging e-commerce. If they can’t adapt to online development, they will be eliminated sooner or later.
