Now, "China version TJX" seems to have become the label of Vipshop, and the words "China version" give Vipshop extra imagination.
So, can Vipshop really become TJX?
"China TJX" with strange appearance.
TJX is a discount retailer in the United States, founded in 1976, which sells shoes, clothing and luggage products at discounted prices. Since the 1990s, the development of TJX has entered the fast lane. Through independent development and mergers and acquisitions, TJX has rapidly expanded its categories and markets.
According to the statistics of Vipshop, the gross profit margin of TJX should be around 40%, which is 16% higher than that of Vipshop. Does this mean that the gross profit margin of Vipshop will still have room for improvement by 16 percentage points?
Absolutely not. The difference in gross profit level between Vipshop and TJX most intuitively reflects the fundamental difference between these two business models. Simply put, TJX provides a one-stop solution for upstream suppliers, while Vipshop only helps brands digest a small part of their inventory, and the remaining "inventory in inventory" brands have to digest themselves.
TJX has established a strong fragmented purchasing ability, and TJX's huge sales terminal can guarantee its sales ability. TJX bears all inventory risks, does not return goods to suppliers, and does not charge other channel fees. In addition, TJX has a fast billing cycle, with an average billing cycle of only 34 days.
It is based on this one-stop inventory digestion ability and good cooperation terms that TJX provides the greatest value to suppliers and brings tangible benefits to itself, that is, the gross profit margin of purchase and sale is as high as 40%.
On the other hand, vipshop. Vipshop rose rapidly during the period when China's clothing industry was facing an inventory backlog, but it was unable to digest 100% brand inventory. In 20 12 years, the average sales rate of vipshop was only about 50%. According to the cooperation agreement, all these surplus stocks will be returned to the brand for its own digestion.
One thing that Vipshop has been advocating to the capital market is that there is no inventory risk, because most of the inventory can be returned. But from another perspective, for brand owners, this means that the value of Vipshop will be greatly reduced.
This "incomplete value" is what distinguishes Vipshop from TJX. Although it is also dealing with the tail goods, TJX can solve it in one stop, but Vipshop will not. Therefore, the profit level of Vipshop is difficult to connect with TJX.
After all, Vipshop and TJX are like gods, because the god of Vipshop is actually a "flash purchase".
Therefore, the tail goods are limited to flash purchases.
We believe that, as far as the flash purchase mode itself is concerned, the success of Vipshop will benefit from the following two points: First, it will use the brand's appeal to build its own influence, and at the same time provide consumers with a standard for participating in the election in terms of price. The second is price leverage, which uses deep discounts to stimulate consumption and attract and retain users.
Group buying is actually a kind of flash buying, and the two keywords of brand and discount are also applicable to poly-cost-effectiveness. However, as a platform from scratch, Vipshop's appeal to the brand is very limited, which is far from being cost-effective. Fortunately, a few years ago, China's clothing industry as a whole faced an inventory crisis, and the tail goods market provided the living soil for Vipshop.
The main feature of the tail goods market is that the inventory is "wide and shallow". In order to adapt to this feature, Vipshop has made targeted adjustments in its operations. For example, the goods purchased by consumers can only be returned, but not exchanged, because many times there will be no goods to exchange, and exchange will also lengthen the period of flash purchase. Not only that, the shooting and editing of goods have also been transformed into a process, thus improving efficiency.
Although Vipshop has initially established a perfect business model based on the characteristics of flash purchase and tail goods industry, the bottleneck of the "flash purchase" model has gradually emerged, that is, it is impossible to handle tail goods in one stop.
Vipshop will sell tail goods, and the appearance of tail goods itself shows the lack of product competitiveness. The characteristics of limited time sales further increase the difficulty of selling. So we can see that in February of 20 12, 12,300 pieces were returned to suppliers by vipshop every day, while in the first quarter of 20 12, the overall sales rate of vipshop was only 50% to 60%. The remaining half of "inventory in inventory" is still a big burden for brand owners. Moreover, the repeated circulation of inventory between offline stores, headquarters and Vipshop will also increase the logistics burden of the brand.
On the other hand, the impulse consumption brought by flash purchase will also bring challenges to the return. The overall return rate of Vipshop will remain at around 20%, of which the return rate of clothing category is close to 30%. A large number of returns have increased the operating burden of Vipshop.
Looking back, Vipshop will be the last product. Looking ahead, Vipshop will be restricted by flash purchase.
There are good and bad changes coming quietly.
The performance of Vipshop is still bright: the sustained high-speed growth in revenue and the substantial increase in profits are enough for Vipshop to continue to be a successful story.
However, we will find that some changes are taking place quietly under the glamorous appearance of products. These changes are good and bad.
In 20 13, the sales revenue of vipshop increased from $690 million to $1680,000, a year-on-year increase of 143.5%. However, the number of flash purchases of Vipshop decreased from 29,000 in 2065,438+02 to 20,000 in 2065,438+03. As a result, the average sales in each market increased significantly, from $23,600 to $83,500, a year-on-year increase of 253%.
In the same period, the number of suppliers of Vipshop also increased significantly, from 2,759 to 4,287, and the brand supply was further enriched. However, the average number of flash purchases by a single supplier also dropped significantly, from 10.6 to 4.7. However, the average annual sales of suppliers still kept growing, from $250,000 to $392,000.
We believe that the above changes have very positive significance. In 20 13, the frequency of flash purchase of vipshop decreased, but the effect of single flash purchase was greatly improved, and the inventory digested by vipshop for various brands also increased greatly. It should be said that in the past year, Vipshop's tail goods handling efficiency has been greatly improved, which is good news.
On the other hand, Vipshop is not smooth on the road of category expansion. In 20 13 years, although all categories of transactions of vipshop achieved year-on-year growth, the growth rate showed differentiation. Among them, the speed of cosmetics and sporting goods is less than 100%, while the speed of cosmetics is only 42.3%, which is 143.5% compared with the overall sales growth rate of Vipshop.
The absolute sales amount of Vipshop cosmetics increased from $75 million to $65.438+007 billion, and the sales proportion decreased from 65.438+00.9% to 6.4%. 20 1 1, and cosmetics account for 12%. In the same period, the proportion of sporting goods also decreased from 1 1.8% to 8.4%.
There are many big brands in the upstream of cosmetics and sporting goods, which makes it more difficult for Vipshop to negotiate with brands. At the same time, cosmetics and sporting goods are also standard products, whose product life cycle is relatively long and the tail goods are relatively few, which inevitably makes us question the adaptability of these categories to the Vipshop mode.
This Valentine's Day, Vipshop will complete the holding investment in Le Bee Network, which can be regarded as the "rescue" of Vipshop's cosmetics business. In the first quarter (from the completion of the transaction), Le Bee contributed 1 10,000 active users and10.3 million orders to Vipshop. The total GMV of Vipshop Cosmetics also reached $6,543.8+67 billion.
Therefore, for the next Vipshop, we pay attention to its value in the industrial chain and the boundary of the tail goods flash purchase model, which determines whether this successful enterprise can become a great enterprise.
The value of Vipshop is to help the brand deal with the tail goods. The pre-sales rate of Vipshop is only over 50%. If it can raise this index to 80%, its value to brand owners will be qualitatively improved. Only when the index reaches 100% can Vipshop be regarded as the real China version of TJX.
As for the boundary of flash purchase mode, as far as categories are concerned, this is already faintly visible.
Of course, Vipshop has accumulated a large number of loyal users and cooperative brands, and its supply chain advantages are also taking shape, which makes it possible for Vipshop to cultivate new business. From the perspective of enhancing the value of industrial chain (sales rate), B2C mall is a good direction.
The market value of Vipshop is currently hitting tens of billions of dollars. We estimate with a price-earnings ratio of 20 times and a net profit margin of 5%, which requires the revenue of Vipshop to reach 654.38+0 billion US dollars, while the revenue of Vipshop last year was only 654.38+0.7 billion US dollars.
Vipshop will carry too many expectations, and the road ahead is not easy.