On September 3, the 12th China Real Estate and Pan-Home Industry Cross-Border Summit with the theme of "New Opportunities, Big Brands" and the 2022 "Top Ten Brands of Building and Sanitary Ceramics" Award Ceremony were successfully held in Foshan Ms. Hou Dingwen, a practical marketing leader in the home building materials industry and founder and chairman of Guangzhou Jianzhong Enterprise Management Consulting Co., Ltd., was invited to attend and gave a speech titled "Through the Cycle, the Way to Breakthrough".
The following content is a transcript of Hou Dingwen’s speech (not verified by myself):
As real estate shifts from the incremental era to the stock era, the ceramic industry will also face the first cycle of growth in its history. The key theme I share with you today is about how to view this industry cycle and how to find a systematic way to get through the cycle, so as to realize the evolution of enterprise life and death fission.
01
Black swan events such as the normalization of the epidemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, air crashes, extreme weather, and real estate thunderstorms have caused many ceramic companies to face the dilemma of stagnant performance, difficulty in growth or even decline. In the face of a century of major changes, we can only adapt to the situation and be prepared for the present. We cannot predict the future, nor can we regret the past. The only thing we can do well is to do well in the present. We must have a particularly positive attitude towards generation, which is a better way to break the situation.
The problems that companies face from 2020 to 2022 are stagnant, declining, or growth that does not meet expectations. Part of the reason is the problem of the general environment, and most of the reasons are that the boss’s lack of crisis awareness leads to an insufficient sense of urgency in the organization, thus failing to Build the ability to cope with changes. Because the organization's sense of urgency is not strong, the boss has never experienced going through a cycle, so he does not know the pain of going through a cycle. The organization lacks a sense of crisis, so it has not built the ability to face changes. This year, all business organizations should establish a capability called an anti-business organization, which means facing uncertainty and a sharp decline. Can your organization have the ability to withstand pressure, the ability to innovate, and whether it can survive in such an environment? The one who can achieve the same desires as the superiors and inferiors will win. This is the key.
Also, I want to tell you that you will never make more money than you know. In other words, the level of cognitive level determines a person's behavior. Whether you can recognize the huge changes in today's market, and before these changes,Whether your ability to iterate determines how you behave.
Today, everyone still sells ceramic tiles as ceramic tiles. If you have not thought about the more possibilities of ceramic tiles, there is no way to make this money, unless it is all about luck, but the money earned by luck will sooner or later. Will lose it. Nowadays, many professional managers only have traditional offline capabilities and traditional 4C brand communication capabilities. If professional managers do not have the marketing capabilities in line with this global era and master product sales strategies, let alone strong segmentation capabilities, then they will His professional life will soon be over.
02
Everyone has asked this question in the past two years, where have the customers gone? But in fact, the passenger flow has never decreased, it has just been dispersed from the tube type to the full network.
We conduct in-depth research every year. In 2022, decoration users under the age of 40 account for 86.9%. This shows that the post-80s and post-85s have become the protagonists of the market. This is a group that grew up with the Internet. They want both a one-stop solution and personalized decoration. In addition, 63.7% of consumers will choose finely decorated houses when buying a house, and their preference is for houses with an area of 90-130 square meters. Self-pleasure, paying for interests, pursuing personalization, pursuing "lazy" technology, and pursuing health and safety have become the labels of consumers in the new era. Some ceramic companies have also discovered these characteristics and have launched a series of ceramic tiles with healthy concepts such as negative ion ceramic tiles, but unfortunately they have not really been implemented.
The result of the changes in users is that the traffic is particularly scattered. The traffic structure has changed from pipeline traffic in the past to network traffic, and the emergence of the epidemic has further accelerated this process - consumers are moving from offline channels to globalization. This change can be seen from the data on the channels through which users obtain decoration information. The three-day average compound growth rate of the home building materials store channel dropped by 22.1%, the home decoration company channel increased by 13.7%, the relatives and friends channel increased by 6.3%, and the Internet home decoration platform The channel increased by 42%. In the past, many people thought that buying ceramic tiles still had to go to offline stores. However, after the past three years, consumers have begun to purchase low-frequency products such as ceramic tiles in large quantities online. So what are the results of this change?
The first change: decoration companies will become decoration retail companies
Now a large number of decoration companies have begunEstablish material exhibition halls of 30,000 square meters, 40,000 square meters, 50,000 square meters or even larger. During this year's research, I found that traditional stores have almost no customer flow from Monday to Friday, but the customer flow of beautifully decorated material exhibition halls is 2.2-2.3 times that of traditional stores. Traditional stores can no longer survive by collecting rent alone. Therefore, many traditional stores have turned into comprehensive home lifestyle stores, or have turned into retail decoration companies. Some customization companies such as Oppein, Zhibang, and Shangpin Home Delivery have all Starting a decoration company is one of the future changes I want to tell you.
The second change is that the decoration companies have moved from semi-packaging to full packaging
The rise of complete decoration is closely related to users' one-stop decoration needs. There are nothing more than two marketing models for complete decoration, one is complete package marketing, and the other is BBC square meter pricing. Why is the whole decoration so popular among users? One is because of convenience, and the other is because of cost-effectiveness.
These changes did not occur because of the epidemic, but had already occurred before the epidemic. Identifying a 10-fold change in an element is the key to corporate strategic insights and accurate trends. There are two elements in the ceramic industry that have experienced 10-fold changes a long time ago. The first element is consumer iteration; the second is Real estate changes, from incremental to stock. The changes in these two elements began to occur 7 or 8 years ago, so the boss of the company must be the duck that predicts the spring water heating duck. When these elements first begin to change, you have to smell it. , and make arrangements in advance. This is the essence behind all the stories today. All the difficulties faced by the company today are caused by this essence.
There are four biggest dilemmas we currently face. The first is that real estate drives industrial changes. Why is it difficult for ceramic companies to grow their performance? This is because real estate has brought changes to the ceramic industry, seizing the entrance and traffic of ceramic companies; the second is the rise of BBC's precise 2B channels, which has changed the entrance to retail; and the third is the complete dispersion of customer flow in the entire Internet era. The ceramic industry has entered an iterative period of a long-term business cycle. During this iterative period, a number of companies will be eliminated, and companies with trillions and hundreds of billions will appear. I definitely believe that hundreds of billions of companies will also appear in the ceramics industry. It’s just that It will be slower because it is a bit more personalized.
The fourth is that a large number of companies have failed to grasp the trend of this wave of younger user groups who demand more convenient services. On the surface it seems to be these reasons, but the real reason is just one sentence: the boss’s thinking is notIn keeping with the changes in the deep market, the ability to organize changes and iterations has not been established. No matter how bad the times are, there are companies that do wonderful things, and no matter how bad the industry is, there are companies that do particularly innovative things. This is human wisdom, so we must believe in our own creativity.
03
Several phenomena have emerged under this kind of market change. The first is strategic confusion; the second is to take advantage of the trend for change; the third is to increase business; the fourth is to seek medical treatment urgently. However, the market’s underlying logic for making money in the past has changed. Past operations and methods cannot solve performance growth. We need new money-making logic and strategies.
In the past, we relied on attracting investment and opening stores, the most traditional and business-oriented channel model, to win the opportunity to make money, but now it is very difficult to rely on one trick. , all the problems that arise today are the butterfly effect caused by two factors, user changes and real estate moving from incremental to stock. So what is the logic and strategy for making money today?
The strategy is to keep up with customer needs, seize user needs, and always put users at the core. User thinking is also the most mentioned topic in the Internet era. Taking the space popular style as an example, the reason why modern minimalist style has become mainstream now is that China's post-85s user group was born in New China, grew up under the red flag, has never been hungry, and has sufficient material foundation, so they have a better High spiritual pursuits, a deeper sense of cultural identity, independent aesthetics and extreme self-confidence.
Strategy is to focus on the main channel to maintain competitiveness, and to focus on your core capabilities to maintain competitiveness.
Strategy is choosing what to do and what not to do. This is also important, choosing what to do and what not to do.
Strategy is to grasp the trend, follow the rhythm and dance with the times. Companies that have not been killed by competitors, and companies that have not been tortured to death by themselves, are all companies that have been eliminated by the times.
Strategy is how to live longer, these are the views of many people. I have read countless books on strategic management and consulted countless experts. What is strategy?
When I saw Drucker’s words, I quickly understood that strategy is not about studying what we do in the future, but about studying what we do today to have a future! Many companies aim to achieve 1 billion or 10 billion in three to five years. This is called a goal, not a strategy. Mr. Drucker's sentence is particularly classic. Strategy is to study what we do well to have a future!
Under the guidance of this thought,How do we break through?
The first one is breakthrough, achieving the ultimate in a market segment, such as making rock slabs. Can you achieve the ultimate? From the earliest ultra-white bricks in the investment industry to imitation stone, jade in the past, and then to rock slabs, I believe there will be better categories that can be created in the future, but this category must have an attribute that is the use of multiple scenes. China is such a big market, and there are endless possibilities to capture the key points of any market segment.
The second is global marketing. Traffic has become networked. You can no longer fish, you must cast a net, so we need all marketers here to understand what casting a net is.
The third is in-depth service capabilities. How to provide customers with deeper service capabilities. If we use rock slabs as the core and provide customized solutions for more scenarios of home furnishings, can we do it in depth?
The fourth is organizational fission. If people’s creativity is stimulated to the extreme, solutions can be achieved. This is what I want to tell you about the breakthrough in the ceramic industry.
Finally, I want to tell you something: No matter the past is good or bad, there is no turning back! No matter how difficult tomorrow is, we must move forward! If you don't change, the market won't give you a chance; if you make a breakthrough, your dream will come true!
Use this passage to encourage people in the ceramic industry to iterate and evolve themselves. You will definitely be there in the world of ceramics. We should not remember the past, nor should we be afraid of the future. We can only do our best in the present, evolve every day, go all out every day, and work hard to provide users with the best products and services. We will surely survive. Get better, longer!
