Take the wind of a healthy economy and see how Xiuyu transforms and upgrades to create industry standards.

In recent years, with the continuous landing of emerging technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence, and the welcoming period of a big healthy economy, many traditional industries have perceived new opportunities.

However, in the process of transformation and upgrading, opportunities and challenges often coexist, especially in the traditional beauty industry, whose transformation and upgrading can be called "full of obstacles".

Take Xiuyu, which is now the first in the field of smart health, as an example. It is also after the failure of transformation and upgrading that new business logic and brand trajectory are captured, and the application of artificial intelligence and big data is taken as the starting point to realize the ambition of reducing operating costs, solving the problem of product and service standardization and directly operating thousands of stores.

We often hear the saying, "Opportunities are often reserved for those who are prepared." However, the transformation of Xiuyu 20 19 is forced by the changes of the times. Xiuyu people who participated in this annual meeting were deeply impressed by this annual meeting. "Indifference" and "incomprehension" are the personal feelings of many people.

On the day of the meeting, the lowest temperature in Beijing was-10 degrees Celsius. Before dawn, Xiuyu's senior management team waited for the first flag-raising ceremony to welcome the New Year in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Despite the cold weather, the first thing Li Xiaoning, the founder of Xiuyu Company, said was "a pot of cold water". Li Xiaoning told the participants directly, "The company still has three years to survive. If it can win, it can go to a whole new world. If you lose, the company will not go bankrupt, but it will definitely shrink sharply. "

You know, in the eyes of executives at that time, since 20 16 was transformed into a technology beauty brand, the development of Xiuyu was remarkable. Not only did it quickly obtain the financing of $6,543.8 billion led by Morgan Stanley, but it also completed the holding of Haiyi Yuemei through mergers and acquisitions, further consolidating the medical and beauty sector, with a good development momentum.

Because of this, many people not only don't understand the direction of transformation, but also don't understand the purpose of Li Xiaoning's "tossing".

At this meeting, Li Xiaoning announced three key words: big data, big health and artificial intelligence. Dr. Cheng Hong, director of the doctoral robot research center of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and Ma Junjie, director of the solution architect of Alibaba Cloud West District, were invited to introduce the application scenarios of artificial intelligence in serving American industries.

From the current point of view, the three key words of big data, big health and artificial intelligence can be called the "troika" of Xiuyu, bringing Xiuyu to a new field that the traditional beauty industry can't even think about. But at that time, not only Li Xiaoning didn't know, but even the executives attending the meeting were at a loss. Many executives said that they "don't know what they are talking about".

It is in such a situation that there is no theoretical basis, no professional talent reserve and no preparation that Xiuyu began its inevitable and imminent transformation.

It is reported that Xiao Ning's Talk, which stopped for nearly four months after the meeting, has finally been updated. In What Have I Been Doing in the Past Six Months, Li Xiaoning described himself as "burying his head in the sand like an ostrich, why didn't it happen when he couldn't see it". However, the opportunity of transformation is fleeting, and Li Xiaoning has to return to reality and take practical actions to solve the problem. The first step is to hold a press conference and formally announce the transformation plan.

Why does Xiuyu aim at the wisdom and health in the direction of transformation and upgrading? In fact, this is not a matter decided by Li Xiaoning, but is closely related to the changes in the market economy after the transformation of 20 16 Xiuyu into a beauty of science and technology, and the achievements after the transformation of Xiuyu.

It is understood that with the prosperity and development of the market economy, people's demand for beauty is increasingly diversified. Traditional beauty brands have successively laid out younger tracks, introduced Korean and Japanese skin management methods, and enhanced user stickiness through service and cultural output. At this time, Xiuyu proposed the transformation to scientific beauty, in order to improve the efficiency of skin detection, cleaning and introduction through beauty instruments, optimize the service experience, and thus win the blue ocean market of scientific beauty.

It is reported that in 20 17, Xiuyu took out 200 million yuan of advertising expenses to do the market education of "scientific beauty" and opened 200 scientific beauty stores after obtaining financing of 10 million dollars. Sadly, by 20 18, Xiuyu's performance was declining. According to statistics, since the transformation of 20 16, Xiuyu technology beauty cosmetics has lost 500 million yuan, which is the key reason why Li Xiaoning had to hold an emergency transformation and upgrading meeting on 20 19.

So, what classes did Xiuyu spend 500 million yuan on technology beauty? We can interpret it from the following two levels.

First of all, the beauty of science and technology is actually a false proposition.

On the one hand, the positioning boundary between traditional beauty industry and scientific beauty is not clear. Under the condition of homogeneous service, it is difficult for consumers to define the specific effects brought by science and technology. In Li Xiaoning's view, "the consumer chooses who can help him solve the problem. Consumers choose to buy back because they are satisfied with the last service. Consumers will never choose you because of your advanced technology. "

On the other hand, Xiuyu's wrong market positioning led to its suppression by medical beauty.

When it comes to the beauty industry, beauty in life, science and medicine are unavoidable choices. At that time, Xiuyu thought that scientific beauty was the transition from life beauty to medical beauty, so she positioned herself in the scientific beauty plate.

However, with the rapid development of the medical beauty market, the beauty of life and medical beauty have been seamlessly connected. Rich and efficient consumers choose medical beauty, while cost-effective consumers choose DIY skin care, which does not leave enough market space for scientific beauty.

According to statistics, the medical beauty market in China was 80.9 billion yuan in 20 16, and it will reach179.5 billion yuan in 2020. It was also during this period that domestic beauty instruments and domestic beauty brands rose one after another.

Under this trend, Xiuyu's transformation of science and technology beauty ended in failure, but the spring rain of Xiuyu medical beauty plate has achieved high growth rate. In 20 18, the spring rain introduced Sino Show and Honeycomb Picosecond, used a variety of photoelectric equipment for combined treatment, and introduced compound water phototherapy in skin nutrition metabolism, providing customers with more than 654.38+10,000 injections of beauty services. I have to say, nature makes people.

Secondly, the rising labor cost has increased the overall operating cost of Xiuyu.

The high labor cost in the beauty industry is a well-known problem, which is also the key factor for countries with high labor cost to develop medical beauty but not live beauty. At that time, although the labor cost in China was rising, in Li Xiaoning's prediction, the beauty of life and science should have a demographic dividend time of about 10 years.

However, things are unpredictable. China's labor costs are rising much faster than Li Xiaoning's forecast. 20 19 labor costs in China are rising rapidly. Under the tax process of ensuring employees' five insurances, one gold and legal compliance, the actual operating cost of Xiuyu is more than 30% higher than that of its peers. The problem of low revenue and high cost brought by scientific beauty has enabled Xiuyu to open the road of transformation and upgrading again. This time, after many investigations and reflections, Li Xiaoning turned his attention to the field of big health, hoping to revitalize Xiuyu with new business logic.

The transformation of the traditional beauty industry is not to defeat competitors, but to become a better self. The transformation to scientific beauty before Xiuyu is essentially the progress of replacing backward productive forces with advanced productive forces. While proposing to transform into the field of smart health, Xiuyu hopes to explore more possibilities in the direction of industrial internet, capture new track opportunities, and create high-tech and high value-added services. On this basis, Li Xiaoning explored two main directions.

First of all, Xiuyu should be down-to-earth and think and solve problems from the standpoint of consumers.

It must be said that in recent years, with the concept of consumption upgrading put forward, many beauty brands began to work hard on store design and decoration, forming an "involution" model in the industry. Everyone is scrambling to follow suit, attracting customers' attention with "good-looking" storefronts and enhancing their competitiveness. But in fact, these can't meet the core needs of consumers for beauty, nor can they promote the benign development of the industry.

Therefore, Xiuyu does the opposite, hoping to provide consumers with products and services that can meet their core needs and quickly perceive the effect from the pain points of consumers.

Secondly, looking up at the starry sky, Xiuyu aims at a new development direction from the perspective of the future, based on consumers' demand for health.

It is also after the failure of the transformation of science and technology beauty that Li Xiaoning determined the transformation direction of the big health industry from the perspective of consumer demand and the future.

In terms of consumer demand, 70% people in China are in sub-health state, and 15% people are in sick state. According to this trend, in the next 10 years, various chronic diseases will plague every family.

From the perspective of health conditioning, Xiuyu has higher requirements for technology and investment, but the effect is more intuitive. When Xiuyu can help consumers solve specific problems, it can attract more users, form a more stable membership system and promote the high-quality development of Xiuyu.

From the future, although the traditional beauty industry is gradually shrinking under the attack of medical beauty, the big health industry has just emerged and is in the cusp period. According to the data of the World Health Organization, China's per capita health expenditure is only 20% of the global per capita health expenditure. 20 161in mid-October, the central the State Council released the planning outline of Healthy China 2030, which once again boosted the popularity of the big health industry. It is estimated that in 2023, the scale of big health industry in China will exceed 14 trillion.

In order to implement the grand health strategy, Xiuyu has invested a lot of money and talents in this new track with artificial intelligence and information technology as its important starting point. In the past three years, "Heaven rewards diligence". At the US Expo in March this year, Xiuyu, which turned into a big health track, received much attention and recognition for its first large-scale appearance. According to on-site reports, exhibitors in the beauty industry surrounded Xiuyu's booth, and they were even more amazed when they were curious: the traditional beauty industry could really turn into a technology company.

Therefore, Xiuyu has applied advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data to enterprise products to realize brand change, which has also become the focus of attention inside and outside the industry.

First of all, the introduction of artificial intelligence technology, Xiuyu to achieve management standardization and service standardization.

In the eyes of many people, the existence of artificial intelligence as a human substitute can greatly reduce labor costs. Indeed, according to internal sources, Xiuyu's new generation of artificial intelligence robots is under development, and it is expected that it will replace 90% of manual services next year, with remarkable effect in reducing labor costs. But more importantly, artificial intelligence is more effective in improving management standardization and service standardization.

Although the temperature of manual service can't be replaced by machines, people will feel emotional fluctuation and fatigue, and can't provide high-quality services continuously, while machines can bring more stable and lasting high-quality services, which is also the service "ceiling" that manual services can't reach.

"People's service fluctuates back and forth in 60 100 minutes, but the machine can keep it for 90 minutes." This is the most intuitive feeling of many xiuyu users.

After solving the problems of labor cost, standardization of management and service, Xiuyu has set a scale expansion goal of "making the number of stores exceed 5,000 in the next five years". Based on the current development speed of Xiuyu and the prospect of artificial intelligence, I believe this goal should be achieved.

Secondly, by building an information system, Xiuyu's ability to manage employees and customers has reached a new level.

The importance of digitalization and informatization for enterprises has long been self-evident, but in the process of practical exploration, Xiuyu has also hit many walls. After more than a year's exploration, the person in charge of Alibaba Cloud found Xiuyu. At that time, Ali was promoting the new retail strategy and preparing to build Box Horse into a future retail brand.

Although the communication of "value100000" described by Li Xiaoning didn't cut into the demand of xiuyu, the business logic of "people and goods yard" of Box Horse made Li Xiaoning "begin to understand". Therefore, Xiuyu has established a complete information system by solving the problems of customer management and employee management, which can not only track consumers, but also restore consumer portraits through every consumer behavior, and strive to achieve precise marketing.

Xiuyu solved the following three problems by building an information system.

First, strengthen the management of customers and further strengthen the centralization of headquarters.

In the traditional life service industry, there is a phenomenon that customers are firmly in the hands of employees. Once employees leave their jobs, customers will be lost to varying degrees. Li Xiaoning once used such a metaphor to describe the subtle relationship between employees and the company. "Instead of opening 65,438+0000 stores and recruiting 65,438+00000 employees, we divided the company into 65,438+0000 and set up 65,438+00000 competitors for ourselves."

Therefore, Li Xiaoning believes that the number of stores and employees of chain brands is expanding, but it does not mean that the advantages of brands are improving. Only by centralized management of customers through informationization can we achieve the consistency of government decrees of all stores and make each store a force to increase brand image. This is the embodiment of the centralization of Xiuyu headquarters.

Second, solve the inventory pressure and improve the efficiency of financial management.

Another advantage of digitalization and informatization is that it can solve the inventory pressure of enterprises and improve the efficiency of financial management.

When there is no information system, all the stores in Xiuyu report a rough figure to the purchasing department according to the personal experience of the store manager, which is easy to cause the backlog of goods or the need for replenishment. When the digital system was involved, all stores in Xiuyu realized automatic delivery and return, which greatly reduced the inventory pressure and improved the efficiency of commodity circulation.

At the same time, taking advantage of the information system, all the financial processes of Xiuyu can flow in real time on the system, which not only improves the efficiency of audit and management, but also further ensures the accuracy of data. At present, Xiuyu Audit Department and Finance Department, two teams with more than 100 employees, have reduced their staff by more than half, but their efficiency has been greatly improved.

Third, the satisfaction of precision marketing, symptomatic service and xiuyu service is amazing.

What is good service? In Li Xiaoning's view, a good service is to hand over a pillow instead of a cup of coffee when the customer wants to sleep. It is precisely because of this that we can find such a phenomenon. In many American stores, the harder employees try to sell, the more disgusted customers are.

In order to provide accurate marketing and symptomatic services, Xiuyu has set up a professional data team to understand customer needs, create customer labels and improve data models.

With the help of the information system, Xiuyu's operational efficiency has been improved and customer satisfaction has soared. It is understood that Xiuyu is the first in the industry to launch the "no reason to refund" policy, that is, consumers are dissatisfied with the service and can directly initiate a refund application on their mobile phones, but the current refund rate is only 0.3%, which shows that users are satisfied with Xiuyu and trust.

To sum up, capture the great health period in time and make full use of the advantages of artificial intelligence and big data first technology. After the failure, Xiuyu finally succeeded in transformation and upgrading, realizing the leopard change. This process may be painful and difficult, but it is very valuable and meaningful.

Yu Xiuyu still has a long way to go in the field of smart health. It's not a bad thing to walk slowly and steadily. For the traditional beauty industry and even other industries, this is a successful case worth learning, which can strengthen their confidence in transformation and upgrading and the pace of progress.