Chapter 4 〇3. Light company

On Xujing Panzhong Road in the suburbs of Shanghai, there are several small white buildings standing on the open lawn. On the outer walls of three of them, the blue PPG logo stands out against the white walls. "We have two buildings for warehouses, and one for office buildings." David Lee, CEO of Pipiji Garment (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (PPG for short), presented the shirt company's profile to reporters in just 3 seconds. All belongings. If you have visited Youngor, the leader of the domestic shirt market, you will know how huge the "body" of clothing companies must be.You must know that Youngor has invested more than 1 billion yuan in the textile sector and the distribution and retail network. It even owns a textile industrial city covering an area of ​​500 mu, which is used for fabric production and textile printing and dyeing.

In contrast, PPG, which focuses on the men's shirt business, is simply challenging the limits of light asset operations: the total number of employees is less than 500, including 206 call center staff; no factory buildings and assembly lines are visible; only 3 A small warehouse; and I have never seen its door face in the mall.It can be said that this company is almost concentrated in such a small yard. However, PPG, which was established only a year and a half ago, is shaking up the entire industry: it can sell about 10,000 men’s shirts every day with just the call center and the Internet, and Youngor, which has the largest domestic market share, sold shirts every day on average in China last year. The number is only 13,000, but Youngor currently has more than 1,500 retail outlets, and invested 35 million yuan in channels last year, while PPG has no physical store but has quickly ranked among the top three in the domestic shirt market.According to PPG COO Li Yongjin, PPG's sales this year are expected to reach 1 billion yuan.

PPG has two magic weapons: one is that its price is almost half cheaper than shirt products with the same positioning and quality.Moreover, these shirts, whose average selling price is only about 150 yuan, have miraculously maintained a higher profit than others.The other is that PPG never produces its own shirts and outsources logistics, but it has created a quick-response supply chain. Its inventory turnover days are only 7 days. You must know that the average level of the industry is 90 days. "We are neither a clothing company nor an Internet company, but a data center, and you can even think of it as a server company." David said.

Virtual operations, e-commerce, and the supply chain of Just In Time, each component of the PPG model is actually not avant-garde when you think about it carefully, but if you can integrate these concepts together, and then create scale revenue and continue to grow, PPG is Show your own uniqueness. In David's eyes, the information flowing in more than 20 servers in his own computer room, as well as PPG's IT platform that closely matches the business, are the key catalysts for a bunch of concepts to finally become banknotes. This is the heaviest asset of this "light company".

The 32-year-old David Lee studied in the United States when he was young. After graduating from New York University, he worked for Lands'End, a famous mail-order and online direct selling clothing company in the United States. Later, he served as the president of Asia, responsible for developing Lands'End's business in Asia and organizing Source procurement. Since China is a big textile and garment country, with a complete industrial chain from cotton production to processing and manufacturing, most of Lands' End's products are procured on a large scale in China at extremely low prices.While in contact with the Chinese market, David realized that although China already has large-scale clothing production capacity, most clothing companies mainly focus on OEM processing and rarely have their own clothing brands.At the end of the 1990s, some clothing companies with keen awareness started brand building, such as Septwolves, Metersbonwe, Youngor, etc., but in order to occupy the market, they all invested a lot in channels without exception.

David has been inspired a lot by his work experience in Lands' End, a mail-order and online direct-selling clothing company, and he has always hoped to introduce this more "light" model into China.However, around 2000, China's online shopping environment was not mature.As a result, when David first started his business, he established an online wedding platform and sold it in time before the Internet bubble crisis in 2000, thus obtaining the start-up capital of today's PPG. In 2005, David thought the time had come, and PPG was born. From the first day he founded PPG in 2005, David made up his mind not to open any offline stores, but to sell shirts directly through mail order catalogs and the Internet.But even today, PPG's marketing model is almost risky in the domestic apparel industry.

Giordano Group, which has done the best e-commerce in the clothing industry, had an online sales revenue of more than 40 million yuan in 2006, which obviously accounted for a small share of its total sales revenue of 956 million Hong Kong dollars.Hou Tong, the information director in charge of Giordano's e-commerce, told reporters: "Although e-commerce is growing, it is only an extension of physical channels." Youngor, which has the largest market share in the domestic shirt market, is also trying e-commerce, but Chen Zhigao, the general manager of Youngor, admitted that he is not optimistic about this model.He believes that Youngor has been able to obtain stable income from a sound channel network. If e-commerce is implemented on a large scale, it will inevitably impact the price system of offline channels, and the management of terminal sellers will also become complicated.

The PPG model seems a bit unique in the clothing industry, but David believes that as a new company, PPG does not have as many concerns as traditional clothing companies, or it can be said that it is free to make itself a "light company", and what it loses is only "shackles". . Even so, David still remembers that on October 23, 2005, the night before PPG's website went live, he was so anxious that he couldn't sleep all night, and he still felt uncertain about whether he could sell shirts by phone and the Internet.Fortunately, due to the more effective advertising before, on the opening day on the 24th, David received a sales income of 10,000 yuan.

At present, PPG, which is growing rapidly, has received two rounds of venture capital investment. The first round was jointly invested by TDF and JAFCO Asia in 2006. The second round of financing was in place in April this year. American KPCB venture capital company joined in. The scale of the two rounds of investment has reached Closer to $50 million.This gave PPG more fuel to rise rapidly. In the apparel industry, an asset-light and fast-response supply chain is almost a paradox.In order to speed up the supply chain and control every aspect of the supply chain, Youngor is almost constantly "increasing" assets.From upstream printing and dyeing mills, cotton spinning mills, to manufacturing plants, Youngor is firmly in control, and has extended its reach to cotton fields further upstream, gaining supply chain speed by investing in raw materials for garment production.In addition, Youngor is investing more than 100 million yuan to establish a logistics center, the purpose is also to create an efficient supply chain.

PPG's asset-light operations take a very different approach.From fabric manufacturing to production, PPG replaces the capital control of traditional clothing enterprises with the close connection of information systems. "Our supply chain responds quickly, thanks to the integration of upstream and downstream resources in the IT system." said Li Yongjin, COO of PPG.To build a fast-response supply chain, PPG first integrated the resources of the upstream garment processing factories and fabric suppliers. PPG interconnected the warehousing system, logistics, procurement and production with the IT system, and information could be obtained in this closed-loop supply chain. Fast turnaround, once the warehouse issues an out-of-stock alert, the procurement department will immediately organize fabric procurement and production.

In fact, PPG has also adopted some means to reduce the difficulty of supply chain management.For example, most of PPG's shirts are in warm tones, focusing on the main international popular colors. Therefore, when purchasing fabrics, the purchasing department can specify specific color labels for fabric manufacturers and send them to fabric manufacturers in advance, so that fabric manufacturers can Produce and prepare goods according to the regular purchase quantity of the purchasing department, greatly reducing inventory risk and delivery time. In addition, the focus on men's shirts when setting up the business model has also greatly reduced the pressure on PPG's supply chain.Since men's shirts don't change much in design and color, and the style of PPG shirts has continuity, the risk of fabric manufacturers' early production will be far less than that of women's equipment.When the inventory of shirts in the warehouse is low and the alarm is issued, the information will be transmitted to the purchasing department at the first time, and after the purchasing department calculates the fabric demand, the information will be transmitted to the fabric supplier in real time. Since PPG has set limits for fabric color, texture, etc., and the information on fabric production volume is real-time and accurate, it is possible for fabric suppliers to deliver raw materials directly to Garment processing factories, and each garment processing factory will process in batches within 96 hours, and then deliver the finished garments to PPG's warehouse for packaging and distribution. In this way, for mass-produced fabrics, PPG has successfully avoided the cost of setting up warehouses and fabric backlogs.In addition, in order to quickly respond to some small batch production, such as personalized customization business, or to avoid a temporary shortage of certain fabrics, PPG has set up a small warehouse for temporary replenishment of raw materials. Starting from the southwest corner of Shanghai, it takes 40 minutes to reach Rome Garment Co., Ltd. in Pinghu, Jiaxing.This garment enterprise mainly engaged in OEM processing has 8 garment factories under it, with 46 production lines imported from Germany and Japan, with an annual output of 4.2 million pieces of various garments.According to Director Zhang, who is in charge of production, Roma currently mainly manufactures Korean and Japanese clothing brands, and also OEMs for brands such as Li Ning, Metersbonwe, and Kappa.Roma produces about 1 million shirts a year, of which Korean brands account for 70%. "We have too many OEM brands, and we can't do it at all, and some small orders won't be accepted at all!" A staff member in charge of the warehouse told the reporter.In the accessories warehouse, the reporter saw several boxes of PPG trademark labels.Workers told reporters that there were 23,000 of these tags—clearly not a big deal.In fact, due to the rapid growth in scale, PPG is constantly expanding its production suppliers, and these 23,000 shirts are the first cooperation between PPG and Rome. According to Director Zhang, for each garment processing factory, shirt production is off-season in May and October every year. Obviously, cooperation with PPG at this time can ease the operating pressure of garment factories in the off-season.And PPG is obviously aware of this, and then relying on its stable real-time procurement and commitment to continuous procurement, this large factory has taken over the "small business" of more than 20,000 shirts. "Our shirt profits are much higher than those in the same industry!" Both CEO David and COO Li Yongjin are very proud of this. "First of all, our inventory turnover is very fast, with a cycle of 7 days, which allows the factory to maintain a steady stream of production orders without the difference between off-season and peak season." David believes that this is the biggest advantage of his rapid response supply chain , and this advantage directly brings about the reduction of procurement costs. It is understood that Roman Company is the same as other garment processing factories in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. According to the different fabrics and styles of clothing, the processing fee for each shirt ranges from 5 yuan to 40 yuan.Due to the fast turnover, rapid increase in quantity, and little seasonal impact on production, even for shirts of the same quality, PPG's procurement costs are naturally lower than others.According to the analysis of a person in the clothing industry, the shirt processing fee for PPG's large-scale production is likely to be around 10 to 15 yuan.The raw materials and manufacturing cost of each shirt of PPG add up to about 30 yuan. Distance is also a key point for PPG in supplier selection. PPG currently has a total of 7 ready-to-wear suppliers. Except for a casual wear supplier in Guangzhou, the other 6 suppliers, like Rome, are located in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, within an hour's drive from PPG. "Lands'End travels across the ocean to purchase, and the procurement time and logistics time become very long, but PPG's processing plants are distributed within an hour's drive radius, and we can respond quickly." David believes that although the PPG model It is the same as its former owner Lands'End, but PPG obviously has more advantages in integrating the supply chain. Relying on the voice brought by the real-time supply chain, PPG does not have a raw material warehouse but can guarantee the smooth supply of raw materials, and does not have its own factory but can guarantee low-cost procurement, which constitutes an important part of PPG's competitiveness. Li Yongjin believes that traditional channels need to prepare inventory in each store, and there are so many links that the cost remains high.After a piece of clothing is produced from a factory, when it is transferred to consumers through channels, the price often increases by 6 to 7 times.And PPG saves investment in physical channels, "The price of shirts is half of the price of similar shirts in shopping malls." In the domestic apparel industry, there are usually three channel models: agency system, direct sales and franchise.The agency system refers to the development of general agents in the main sales area, and then the development of secondary or tertiary distributors. Septwolves and Jiu Muwang develop regional markets through agents; Youngor mainly develops the direct sales model, and currently has more than 2,000 Sales terminals, of which more than 40% are counters in shopping malls and directly-operated stores.Both Heilan Home and Metersbonwe have adopted franchising for rapid development.No matter which model is used, huge channel construction costs will be invested. Although franchise franchisees can recover funds faster, they also need to invest more resources in brand building and franchisee management. In PPG, the first "sales place" is the product catalog and website. In order to attract consumers, PPG's product catalog and website are mainly based on international trends. Some people in the clothing industry pointed out that PPG's website and the old version of the GAP website page similar.Such "store decoration" is obviously in line with PPG's positioning, because unlike other domestic shirt brands, PPG's shirts are mostly made of warm-colored fabrics, especially Oxford fabrics. All shirts are made of pure cotton, emphasizing European and American styles. . As for PPG's other most important channel - the call center, due to PPG's recent continuous strong advertising, sales continue to expand, and 206 people have been unable to meet business needs.The person in charge of the call center told the reporter that the capacity will be expanded to 300 seats soon.This is the first stop for PPG to contact customers. Through telephone communication, PPG can directly ask customers for details, including information such as region, age, consumption habits, occupation, etc. These are analyzed and predicted for the marketing department, and then fed back to the upstream production. Procurement provides important back-office support. Compared with the channels of traditional apparel companies, PPG's light channels also have an advantage in that they can save a lot of inventory costs.When selling clothing in offline physical stores, each retail terminal will always distribute goods and have an appropriate amount of inventory. For a traditional clothing company with a large retail network, the total inventory of all stores is amazing. Direct sales through the Internet and call centers The model does not need to store goods in offline stores, which will inevitably reduce PPG's inventory risk, and the reduction in inventory is also shrewdly used by PPG to build its own special advantages. Taobao's No. 1 men's clothing store 19Shop's shop Jiang Bo is a "fan" of PPG.He has always been concerned about the comparison between PPG and traditional stores. He pointed out that PPG provides more models and colors than shirt counters in shopping malls. It offers sizes from 37 to 47, and pants from 28 to 44. "Usually, the shirts sold in shopping malls are generally concentrated in size 4, and the models of pants are generally concentrated between 28 and 34, while the models of PPG more abundant.” Jiang Bo believes that the choice of customers has been greatly increased, which is very beneficial to sales. "PPG currently offers 3,600 SKU (stock keeping unit) styles, and I believe it will increase to more than 10,000 by the end of the year." PPG's CTO Qin Binbin revealed. PPG's IT architecture was planned and designed by him, so he knows every important data well. However, the increase in styles did not actually increase PPG's inventory.Due to the fast supply chain support behind it, PPG does not need to produce a large number of garments of different sizes like traditional clothing companies. Therefore, PPG can display more models in the virtual space of the Internet for consumers to choose without worrying about inventory risks. .In addition, the PPG website also provides personalized customization services. Although the current proportion is very small, accounting for less than 5% of sales, this strategy can greatly increase customer satisfaction. Although catalog sales currently account for 70% of PPG's total revenue, according to David, consumers in Beijing and Shanghai purchase from the Internet and call centers have reached 50% each.The PPG recently launched an online franchise program is likely to further enhance the purchase from the network. A website that joins PPG only needs to put PPG's advertising Banner, and PPG will provide franchisees with exclusive account numbers and passwords for them to check the traffic brought to PPG at any time.Every consumer who connects to PPG from the franchise website, as long as the product is ordered, PPG will return 5% of the sales to the franchisee. PPG is also quite optimistic about the prospect of this online franchise store. Low manufacturing costs, fast-response closed-loop supply chain, outsourced production, logistics, and quality inspection allow PPG to respond to market changes with ease and obtain high profits.These independent and not new concepts, how does PPG connect them in series and highly integrate them?For "light companies", this ability is precisely the heaviest asset. "Our business platform is Just In Time, and its high degree of collaboration allows business departments to share the most direct data PPG gets from the market, and use powerful data analysis functions to accurately predict the market." David said. In traditional clothing companies, all information is backtracked, that is, the headquarters of the company can only know which styles the market prefers by summarizing the information collected by each retail terminal and conducting a comprehensive analysis.However, the agents and terminal sales points of many enterprises are widely distributed, and it is difficult to convey the market strategy of the headquarters to the end of the organizational structure in a timely manner. Meeting demand and capturing market response is a headache for every clothing company CEO. Under normal circumstances, the new product promotion of clothing enterprises is based on spring, summer and autumn and winter as the two main clothing seasons. For some fashion brands, there will be more new product seasons.When the products of each season are designed, clothing companies must first hold an order meeting to collect orders from channel suppliers in advance, and then organize small batch production.Often the first batch of goods is used to test the market reaction, because the market sometimes seems very nonsensical, and the styles that are favored at the order meeting, but no one cares about them when they arrive at the store, and the styles that are left out at the order meeting may be popular for a time . In the lengthy process of designing—ordering—small batch production—collecting market feedback—adjusting strategies for mass production, it usually takes at least 90 days for a new product to actually reach the market.Therefore, clothing companies often prepare new products two seasons in advance, for example, they have already arranged the production and sales of autumn and winter clothing in early summer. In PPG, in order to maintain the inventory turnover period at 7 days, reduce storage costs and avoid the risk of overstocking, the starting point must start with market forecast data. PPG has no sales department and no physical channels. The marketing department has become a key department. In addition to formulating advertising and marketing strategies, the most important function of the marketing department is to collect data from various business departments and predict the next 7 days. The production scale and forecast parameters include the products recommended by advertisements, the purchasing preferences of repeat customers, and the geographical location of consumers.When a large amount of customer information is registered through the website and call center and entered into PPG's IT system, the marketing department can see and use the data immediately. At the same time, the procurement department will share data from the marketing department and other business departments for timely formulation of procurement strategies.In PPG, all business systems are interconnected. The front-end call center system includes the business process of product ordering and receiving services. It is connected with the warehouse management system. After an order arrives, how does the warehouse distribute and deliver goods? , which goods have priority can be reflected in the system. Under the precise data forecast, PPG can always quickly formulate new market and procurement strategies.When these strategies were formulated, PPG began to display its ability to integrate the supply chain. In order to control upstream suppliers more effectively, PPG has only selected 7 garment processors. Although it is currently expanding the scale of suppliers, PPG is still cautious to prevent too many suppliers from losing control.After all, Metersbonwe, which is also a virtual operation, has more than 200 upstream suppliers. In order to sort out the supply chain, Metersbonwe spent several years.For PPG, which is "traveling lightly", a few years is obviously intolerable. Since online shoppers have higher expectations for product performance than offline shoppers, product quality is also strictly controlled by PPG.In the domestic garment industry, garment manufacturers generally have their own supply chain, that is, they purchase raw materials themselves and only need to deliver the garments.However, in order to control the quality of garments from the raw material procurement stage, PPG has signed a contract with its own fabric processors, and through the procurement department, it connects the close cooperation between fabric suppliers and garment manufacturers. According to David, each of PPG's garment suppliers has opened an exclusive factory for PPG, and PPG makes decisions on production planning, process, scheduling and other work. PPG has outsourced the quality supervision to a third-party quality monitoring company SGS-CSTC (General Standard Technical Service Co., Ltd.), and PPG’s own quality inspectors will also check the production line and process in the early, middle, and late stages of shirt production, but More quality monitoring details are still to be completed by SGS. SGS has set up a PPG project team and dispatched a quality inspection team to each factory. SGS supervises and inspects every aspect of the process, production line, and order completion every day. "What we have done is to integrate the business better." David believes that from the perspective of organizational structure and business process, there is no essential difference between PPG and other asset-light companies. The only difference is that through the IT system, PPG integrates a Just In Time's business platform, which gives PPG a keen ability to quickly respond to the market. The garment industry is a relatively mature industry with light asset operation, which is determined by its industrial background of overproduction. China has always been the main production base of the world's clothing production. Since China's accession to the WTO, my country's textile and clothing enterprises have been struggling with the increase in raw material costs, the continuous appreciation of the renminbi, and the severe export environment caused by trade frictions. Many OEM-based Small and medium-sized enterprises have shifted from export to domestic sales under tariff barriers, which has directly caused the continuous surplus of domestic garment production capacity. The loss of the OEM paradise, because many garment manufacturers need to find new outlets, to some extent caused a substantial increase in the number of domestic clothing brands in the past five years.In this process, the asset-light operation of enterprises has become a very attractive direction, because not all enterprises can bear the heavy pressure from actual production plants to actual sales stores. The main line of the asset-light evolution of apparel companies is that the core organizers have weaker and weaker control over the capital of the entire chain, but stronger control over information and management. In the past 10 years, the asset-light companies in the domestic apparel industry have actually gone through three generations—from the initial outsourcing of production and channel functions to the asset-light operation of the entire supply chain. In the apparel industry, when it comes to light assets, everyone will naturally think of Metersbonwe.In fact, when Zhou Chengjian outsourced Metersbonwe's production and channels in 1995, he himself did not expect that this model would one day become a classic case of virtual management in the domestic apparel industry. "The business model of each enterprise is closely related to its own natural resources." When recalling why he chose to operate light assets, Wang Quangeng, vice president of Metersbonwe, believed that under the conditions of Metersbonwe at that time, the production Outsourcing to garment manufacturers, attracting franchisees through channels, mastering high value-added design links, and vigorously promoting brand image, this kind of asset-light virtual operation is the only feasible way. When Metersbonwe was registered in 1994, the registered capital was only 500,000 yuan, and there was only one small factory under it. At its peak, it had only close to 200 workers.At that time, domestic apparel companies were mostly OEM-based, with little awareness of their own brands.Zhou Chengjian, President of Metersbonwe, believes that only by creating a brand can clothing gain higher profits, so he spares no effort to promote Metersbonwe, a casual wear brand for the young market. When it was gradually accepted by the market, Metersbonwe's own production began to be tight. "The production of small factories has been difficult to keep up with the rapid growth of sales, and the management of product quality and process is very troublesome, so we decided to find OEM factories in the Pearl River Delta." Wang Quangeng recalled. In terms of channel development, Metersbonwe has also experienced the evolution from small-scale direct sales to large-scale franchising.In the first two or three years, Metersbonwe opened several chain stores in Hangzhou, and later expanded the stores to Shanghai.As the channel scale increased, many problems also came one after another. For example, the investment in store rent, personnel wages, and taxation was huge, and it was difficult to solve it with Metersbonwe's meager strength at that time. So Zhou Chengjian The current situation of the enterprise has chosen a development strategy of independent design, brand management, and outsourcing of production and channels. Zhou Chengjian's asset-light operation comes from simple business thinking.Later, he realized that Metersbonwe's model was similar to that of Nike, so he further regarded virtual operation as an unchanging corporate strategy, that is, Metersbonwe focused on design and building brand influence, while other links were outsourced. Today, Metersbonwe has more than 200 garment manufacturers upstream, of which more than 20 are strategic partners and dozens of core garment manufacturers.In terms of downstream channel development, Metersbonwe has opened more than 1,900 specialty stores in nearly 1,000 cities across the country, of which 80% are franchise stores, but there are also nearly 20% directly-operated stores. "If it does not adopt light asset operation, Metersbonwe will be difficult to break through the small-scale bottleneck at that time, and it will not be able to make it to today." Wang Quangeng believes.Metersbonwe's sales last year were more than 4 billion yuan, and this year it is expected to reach more than 6 billion yuan. Driven by Metersbonwe's demonstration, many garment enterprises in Wenzhou have broken through the bottleneck of enterprise development through asset-light virtual operation, and have become well-known domestic garment enterprises.Well-known clothing enterprises in Wenzhou, such as Semir, Gaobang, Bailed, Life Show, Linzhongniao, and Crosspoint, have become direct beneficiaries of virtual operations.They have achieved rapid development by outsourcing heavy asset links such as production and sales. Although Metersbonwe is a model of asset-light operation in the domestic apparel industry, according to Wang Quangeng, Metersbonwe is currently opening its own directly-operated stores in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other strategic cities. The investment is at least tens of millions of yuan.These investments are due to the fact that outsourcing channels cannot be completely controlled by ourselves, and Metersbonwe must deploy fully controllable "guard forces" in strategic locations. Compared with Metersbonwe, asset-light clothing companies such as Heilan Home and ITAT that emerged at the beginning of this century chose the method of light asset management by strengthening management and control capabilities-they have no "direct descendants" at all. And the concept of "non-direct lineage", using management and information systems to turn outsourced production and sales functions into "outsourced capital investment". For example, franchising is also implemented in the channel, and the sales scale is expanded by external force. The men's clothing brand Heilan House adopts a fully managed franchise model, and lowers the franchise threshold to 2 million yuan.Franchisees only need to invest 2 million yuan to start a Heilan Home franchise store, which includes a deposit of 1 million yuan, which can be returned after 5 years, and another 1 million yuan is start-up funds such as rent, decoration, and distribution. The key point is that Heilan Home manages each franchise store in a model similar to direct sales, including product delivery, store management, operation, store location, etc., are all standardized by Heilan Home. Franchisees Responsible for liaising with local administrative agencies such as industry and commerce and taxation.To some extent, this is equivalent to franchise stores undertaking capital investment and daily operations, while the real sales management is in turn outsourced to Hailan Home. In order to gain the trust of channel partners and consolidate the channel alliance, Heilan House adopts a transparent business model and a fixed sharing ratio.Heilan House and its franchisees share the sales at 65:35. The former has opened up the IT system of its investment stores to the franchisees, so that he can keep abreast of the sales situation.After closing every day, the store manager of Heilan Home will transfer 30% of the day's sales to the franchisee's fixed account, and transfer the remaining 5% to the investor's account at the end of the month. Hailan House not only outsources production functions to upstream manufacturers, but also adopts the method of "outsourcing capital investment"-Heilan House more strongly adopts the method of getting the goods first and paying later.At the same time, Heilan Home promises 100% return to franchisees, and all these unsalable products will be returned to upstream suppliers instead of bearing the pressure of inventory and backlog of funds. The reason why Hailan House can push this pressure upstream is due to three methods.The first is the superior voice of its own national channels; the second is to adopt the method of opening the IT system to suppliers, allowing suppliers to inquire about the sales of their products through a transparent IT system, and timely realize some products that are unsalable due to seasons. Adjustment of goods; Finally, Hailan Home settles payments to suppliers on the 3rd of each month, which is also the key to making suppliers willing to make some inventory sacrifices. Obviously, such an asset-light strategy makes the cash flow of Heilan Home smoother, but the management of the entire chain is tighter.In recent years, the scale of Heilan Home has expanded rapidly. Last year, the sales of Heilan Home was close to 1 billion yuan. By the end of 2006, Heilan Home had developed nearly 300 stores in 22 provinces and cities across the country. From January last year to In October, the overall sales increased by 66.7% year-on-year, while its franchisees can get 20% return every year. The typical example of an asset-light enterprise rising at the same time as Heilan House is ITAT (International Trademark Agent Trader, an international brand clothing member store). Its founder, Ou Tongguo, chairman of the board of directors of ITAT, aimed at the excess domestic clothing production capacity and excess properties, and take advantage of this general trend to outsource financial pressure, and run light and fast. In the industrial chain of the garment industry, ITAT is positioned as a branding channel, which is characterized by "zero payment for goods and zero rent for venues". "Zero payment" means that ITAT conducts consignment sales to more than 700 upstream suppliers, and the inventory pressure and logistics distribution are all borne by the suppliers.Like Heilan House, ITAT has also opened its IT system to upstream suppliers. Each supplier can check the sales status of its own products and allocate goods in a timely manner across the country. In terms of channels, ITAT insists on a floating rent of 15% of monthly sales, and settles with each shopping mall instead of signing a lease contract in advance.In addition, when ITAT sets up special counters in each shopping mall, it strongly implements self-checkout to speed up cash flow turnover.In order to gain the trust of the mall owners, ITAT has also opened up the IT system to the malls. The mall owners can check the sales of ITAT counters at any time and calculate the amount they deserve. "There are a large number of clothing SMEs in China looking for sales, ITAT is equivalent to building a huge sales platform for them for free. The infrastructure boom in the past few years has also created many second- and third-class business districts. The model has also found a new revenue growth point for them.” Ou Tongguo said. In the ITAT model, suppliers, ITAT and shopping mall owners are divided according to a fixed ratio of 60:25:15.With light asset operation, ITAT has rapidly expanded its scale. Last year, ITAT’s sales reached more than 700 million yuan. At present, it has opened 420 member stores and 17 clubs. A department store that implements the model. The second-generation asset-light enterprises in the apparel industry, such as Heilan House and ITAT, already have the potential to drive the supply chain to become "lighter", but they have never solved a problem, namely inventory and funds.Whether it is Heilan Home or ITAT, although the enterprise itself is a low-risk asset-light operation, the indisputable fact is that the risk of inventory has been transferred to the upstream of the supply chain, and the pressure of opening funds has been outsourced to channel companies. The third-generation asset-light companies, represented by PPG, first adopted self-built methods and completely compressed their channels in low-cost methods such as the Internet and call centers, which solved the problem of channel funding pressure.Later, although the production link was also outsourced, the real-time control of demand information and a certain degree of on-demand production effectively released the inventory pressure of the supply chain and drove the entire supply chain to become lighter. PPG currently only has 7 garment manufacturers. Through the interconnected IT system, PPG and suppliers have achieved close cooperation.When PPG's inventory is alerted, the purchasing department can obtain the information at the first time and pass the information to the fabric supplier in real time, who will deliver the fabric directly to the garment processing factory at the fastest speed to achieve rapid production. PPG does not have a physical store, and its channels are the Internet and call centers. Compared with the previous two generations of asset-light companies, it appears to be more "light".Through these two centralized information portals, PPG can more accurately collect feedback information from the market.Using a powerful IT system for forecasting and market analysis, PPG reduced its inventory to 7 days, that is, the production cycle of upstream processing enterprises is scheduled in units of one week.为PPG代工令这些企业规避了更多的库存风险——传统服装企业通常会提前几个月生产下一季的服装，一旦某款产品不受市场欢迎，那么这批货将遭遇降价打折或者积压仓库的危险。 在ITAT和海澜之家，实行的100%退货制度，其实是供应商承担了库存风险，PPG的7天库存周期不仅让自己对市场反应更灵敏，也有效地分散了供应商的风险，令代工企业的生产计划更加灵活轻盈。 另外，传统的衬衫加工企业有淡季和旺季之分，每年的5月和10月，是衬衫加工企业的淡季，往往在这两个月，衬衫OEM企业将丢失大量订单，由于PPG是以7天为周期向供应商发出订单，因此也令代工企业在淡季的萧条中获得更多收益。 在服装业三代轻资产公司的演进过程中，外包什么其实并不重要，重要的是要掌握什么。这些核心企业经历了从掌握品牌、到掌握管理运营、再到掌握关键数据塑造精准供应链的过程。这些企业掌控的要点看起来越来越“虚”和“轻”，但这些要点却越来越接近企业运营的核心。所以新一代“轻公司”往往都比上一代更有组织者的势力，对整个产业链条的非资本控制力更强；这也让新一代“轻公司”往往都比上一代用更快的速度获得了高速的增长。 这从某种程度上证实了一个结论——全链条的效率提升永远比某一个环节的改进更影响最终结果。 在珠宝首饰行业，电子商务正在以你想象不到的速度发展着。比如戴维尼（中国）科技有限公司就是依靠服务器卖钻石的公司之一。自2006年底创业以来，这家没有现实钻石店铺的珠宝公司，每月的销量增长率都达到100%。 “按照这种趋势，年底销售收入可以超过2000万元。”戴维尼公司董事长兼CEO聂文彪说。与之类似抛弃传统零售渠道，在网上销售钻石首饰的公司还有瀛金钻石网、九钻网、八佰拜等，它们在网上销售的钻石产品都要比线下同类产品便宜30%至50%左右，主要原因就是因为它们节省了一大部分用于线下渠道扩张的成本。 同样的故事在手机行业被演绎得更加精彩——北斗手机网正以其高速的增长成为手机渠道中的新势力。2006年北斗手机网的总销售额达到了4.8亿元，而今年的销售额则有望突破6亿元。北斗手机网的董事长谭文胜也同样认为网络渠道使得北斗的运营成本比传统的手机连锁渠道要低得多，正是依靠互联网，使得自己的公司在组织上变得更“轻”更“柔”，由此也使得北斗手机网获得的销售毛利率达到了10%左右，这比任何的手机渠道商都要高。 依靠互联网向消费者做直接的销售，这本身不是什么新玩意，自从有互联网的那一刻起就开始有人尝试这种直接面对消费者的电子商务模式了。不过，与亚马逊第一轮开辟电子商务疆界的公司相比，这一代的“轻公司”不仅仅只是减少了中间渠道环节这么简单，它们开始摆脱库存、开始从综合卖场走向垂直产品、也开始摆脱销售渠道的形象成为自有品牌。 第一轮中国电子商务B2C的公司中，当当、卓越这样的网上零售商有着自己庞大的库存与物流体系，它们采用的是购销型的B2C模式。这样的模式会增加资金占用、商品滞销及库存增加的风险。在当当及卓越上有30万至40万种不同的商品，这意味着在它们的仓库中，这些商品种类的存库量要达到50%以上才能做到及时的配送。 而以PPG、戴维尼为代表的新一代轻型组织则采用的是一种Just In Time模式，它们的做法是通过IT技术及互联网组织起了一个产供销的联盟，利用信息流的快速流转指挥着这个联盟中不同公司要在某一时刻该去做什么事情，将自己的库存分散在了联盟中不同的合作伙伴那里，把自己的库存量降到了最低。它们在商品种类上大都单一集中，这也使得PPG这样的公司看起来像一个有着生产、供应、销售等多个环节的全能大企业集团，而不是一个专职销售的渠道公司，而事实上，它们不过是一个依靠服务器生存的几百人的小公司而已。 传统上，一个全能的企业集团要实现自己的设计、生产、营销、财务、设备等管理职能，要做到这些就得有相应的投资，形成相应的实物资产。这样的资产一经形成，便有了经济学意义上的沉没成本、专用性等特征，适应市场变化的能力就会比较差。而在PPG这样的轻型公司里，仅仅只保留了最具竞争优势的核心能力（数据的挖掘与信息快速传递），其他不具备优势的职能如生产供应等则交由了中国遍地的小生产加工企业，借助它们的外力来完成前端的生产制造，达到以较少职能带动较多职能的目的。而强大的IT系统也可以使PPG等轻型公司将自己的库存保留在了那些合作伙伴的仓库里。 再以珠宝行业中的戴维尼为例，戴维尼拥有一个与其他钻石首饰电子商务网站不一样的重磅武器，即“全球钻石搜索引擎”——凭借12年来在钻石行业的资源，戴维尼的CEO聂文彪说服了全球26家钻石切割供应商，将实时在线的钻石库存数据开放给戴维尼。顾客可以根据钻石价位和切割形状，进行二维交互式搜索，查看来自全球的不同净度、颜色的钻石，每款钻石都配有国际认证证书。同时，这个搜索引擎还以图标的形式提供了切工、颜色、净度、克拉、价格等搜索条件，以便对钻石一窍不通的顾客更加方便地选购。 当选中某款钻石后，戴维尼网站提供了多种个性化的钻戒托架，供顾客选择。订单将远渡重洋自动发送给远在比利时、以色列或者任何一个国家的供应商，他们将以最快的速度进行加工，并用国际快递交付给戴维尼，完成这一切流程只需要6天至8天时间。 “由于钻石是奢侈品，每一颗钻石的库存和流向都需要掌握，因此整个行业的数字化程度都很高。”聂文彪介绍说，每家供应商原本就有成熟的IT系统，而戴维尼与他们进行了系统对接，这也为26家海外的钻石切割供应商开启了中国这样一个具有潜力且正在成长的珠宝消费市场。在戴维尼珠宝网，目前用全球钻石搜索引擎进行个性化定制的比例达到了40%，并且呈上升趋势，聂文彪预计很快会占到60%。 “钻石搜索引擎”让戴维尼将其他钻石供应商的库存数据囊括到自己的资源库里，而自己的库存却始终处于很低的状态。 PPG、戴维尼及北斗手机网等新型公司之所以能够如此之“轻”，是因为它们生在了一个生产与供给都过剩的丰饶时代，这让他们有资格依靠信息技术成为组织者，进而整合整个链条，而不是仅仅成为链条在互联网上的一个延伸。 无论是在服装行业、手机行业甚至于珠宝行业，中国都是全球的制造中心，大量的制造工厂与制造作坊在全国各地都存在着，这给了轻型公司运用IT技术及互联网来整合这些过剩资源的机会。 在竞争激烈的手机市场，根据信息产业部的数据，2006年我国手机产量达到4.8亿部，比2005年增长了58.2%，占全球总产量的47%，而今年中国还要新增手机企业十余家，而目前国内市场的年需求量约为6000万到1亿部左右，供需比例严重失衡。对北斗手机网来说，这就成为了机会。“手机市场供大于求，所有手机厂商都想把货处理掉，都要送到消费者手里，北斗手机网无疑就成为了最有效率的新平台之一。”谭文胜说。 同样，中国的珠宝加工业也是世界的中心。在中国，尽管钻石交易中心设立在上海，实际交易地却在深圳，因为国内几乎所有的钻石镶嵌加工厂都集中在深圳，而且中国又是世界钻石的加工中心，加工费相对于海外便宜很多，一些国际品牌，如蒂凡尼（Tiffany·Co）、卡地亚（Catier）等都在深圳做OEM贴牌。这种全球分工的方式，让戴维尼这样的钻石网上销售公司更能容易地掌握供应商的信息，资源整合及沟通也显得相对方便。 产品制造及供应过剩、行业的竞争加剧、全球化下行业格局的调整，再加上信息沟通成本的降低，这让“轻公司”作为组织者用IT技术及互联网整合资源成为了可能。他们借此降低了自身传统门店扩张及库存的风险，并最终让个性化和保持价格优势成为了它们的核心竞争力。 其实，每个供给过剩的领域都是轻公司诞生的温床。他们与第一代电子商务企业相比，不仅仅摆脱了店面，更在向摆脱库存迈进。这不仅让他们变得更“轻”，而且作为真正的“产业链组织者”，他们也不再仅仅是新渠道，而可以成为新的产品品牌。 “轻公司”的出现，对于很多行业也有着正向的全链条促进作用。在某种程度上，我们可以把PPG、戴维尼及北斗手机网这样的“轻公司”看作是一个各自行业中的过滤器。在它们所属的行业，那些数量众多的小制作作坊以及供应商组成了一条长长的尾巴，当消费者进行选择的时候很容易忽视掉或者接触不到这些长尾巴上产生出的商品，但是“轻公司”能够将这些分散在长尾不同段落中的小企业们用IT技术及互联网组织起来，在前端用一个统一的形象与具有竞争力的价格去面对消费者。 通过技术手段完成一个“虚拟产业整合”的过程，供应链上游的零散企业也将由此获得新的成长机会。