From design to market, I will mainly talk about three points today. Design direction, channels and funds, these three aspects, let me talk about my experience.
My first point, the direction of design.
I think since it is a design, it can't be a purely artistic thing. Design is actually a kind of creation. It must be practical and beautiful. Therefore, there must be an order. We say that products need to be practical and beautiful. Its first core is practicality, followed by beauty. So creative design should serve industry rather than art, which is what I want to say.
The positioning of creative products, that is, how we should plan products. The scope of creative design is too large. For designers, how to define their own product positioning should be the core of design. To position the product, we must first determine the target market, and then clearly find the positioning of the product. Where is the market for products? Is there an audience? Whether someone is willing to pay for your product may be an important issue that must be studied. We can't say that we can make a product for ourselves or enjoy it for a small number of people. We feel that design products, like other industrialized products, must be industrialized on a large scale and not too small. We said that although the concept of 3D printing has been produced, it may take some time for 3D printing to be truly applied to civil and market large-scale applications. From this perspective, it is necessary to consider whether there is a market audience, whether this market audience has a certain volume, and whether this volume can make your product form a scale. Because only large-scale things, you can generate profit space, you can reduce costs, you can generate scale, and finally you will make a profit. Because only profit, enterprises or designers can survive and develop. Therefore, from this perspective, the product definition should first consider the market, not the benefits, and then define the product.
From the personal positioning of designers, I hope that designers must focus on industries or categories. Safran Technology has been engaged in the field of distribution chain integration for so many years. We are also the first innovative enterprise in China to do value integration in this field. The reason why we can develop to this day is that we are very focused. Therefore, we believe that any business needs to be focused, including our designers, and you should also be focused. Only by focusing on the industry, or focusing on categories, can we have enough industry depth; Only the depth of the industry can make you deeply understand where industrialization is; You can figure out the market, figure out the product positioning, find the profit point, and then you can scale up and make a profit.
The second point of view, "Channel is king".
I think no matter any enterprise in the world, you can't be the king of channels, and you can't expand products quickly through channels, so you can't make a profit and generate market scale. So we say that the channel integration of creative products must consider which channels are suitable for you. At present, Safran's sales channels have integrated all Class A supermarkets in China, such as Wal-Mart and Metro, as well as first-line e-commerce and first-line TV shopping. There is also a system, including some specialty stores, dealers and agents all over the country. We have integrated nearly 10000 dealer channels. Among these channels, which channels are really suitable for creative products to enjoy and use, so that it can double our sales, which is the subject we are studying. Rapid dissemination of creative products through channels is a very effective way to generate large-scale sales. But what we need to study is, TV shopping, e-commerce, our monopoly, distribution or gifts, which channels are more suitable for the promotion of creative products? Or some other new channels? For example, mobile Internet, such as Weibo, shopping guide and so on, are these new carriers suitable for selling our creative products? We must expand our channels and sales terminals through various methods, so that our products can really be delivered to consumers. Therefore, in this respect, if we want to industrialize, we must make the channels large enough. Only in this way can we mass-produce and sell your products.
At the same time, as a designer, he is good at designing and creating. In order to realize the industrialization from design, there must be a third-party public operation platform and brand center to provide promotion and services for him, a third-party broker platform, and of course a copyright platform. For example, some enterprises are not professional in e-commerce shopping, but as long as they launch their own products, there will be professional third-party organizations to help them operate, whether it is entering the market, shooting TV dramas, designing lines or interacting on the spot. Since you have occupied the time of the TV channel, the sales of your product advertisements will determine whether you are allowed to broadcast a second program after one program is broadcast. Because any channel has a cost! Only when the income you create can cover your cost and make many parties win, can you survive and develop, including e-commerce.
Also, we need a platform to analyze category data. All creative design should not be blind creative design, but should first seize the market, and then targeted design. So you need some analytical tools. For example, everyone knows that in the concept of e-commerce, everyone will analyze Taobao's data. I think many organizations have made this robot to capture the sales data of Taobao. Because Taobao won't give it to him, he just needs to design some software to capture Taobao's data through software research and development. So here, I think the category data analysis platform is very important. Only when you have clearly analyzed where the market is, where the customers are and where the customer needs are, will you know where my design direction is. Only in this way can we design our own products that meet the market. I think this is also very important. This is a problem that I think we can't avoid in the process of creative products from design to listing. You have to have a channel to sell, and how to build a channel is the core issue.
The third point of view, from design to market, there must be capital docking.
We have many designers, maybe he is a student himself, and his business operation ability is not strong, and his capital docking ability is not strong. Even the lack of operating funds, which involves a big problem, the development of enterprises or projects, how to connect this capital demand, operation and investment. A good product design may be an infinite market in the future; Unlimited market, there must be capital intervention in the early stage to become bigger and stronger quickly. Looking at the current situation in China, the motivation and willingness of capital docking creative design are not very strong. However, there are still some institutional innovations that realize capital docking through financial innovation. For example, including some things we do ourselves, it will have some connection with this piece. By docking with banks, the demand for cash flow in product sales channels is transformed into bank loans, and relatively low loan prices are given to entrepreneurs and designers. There are also many angel investors now. When a product is really good, angel investors will take some risks and invest some money, but they may have to hold some shares. This has always been an area discussed by Safran Technology, which we call business investment. It is how to connect the growth of marketing performance with investment, so that he can find a node connection, when to promote marketing, and when to intervene in capital, so as to better enable an industry to achieve capital operation services during the incubation period and make his good products finally bigger and stronger. This is our thinking in this respect, so this is my third point.