The reporter saw at the scene that in the old market of Hanzheng Street, messy markets, narrow streets, low shops, crowded residential areas and cobweb-like wires were printed; However, in the new market, we see the opposite of the old market: uniform streets, spacious and bright business districts. The obvious contrast between the old and new markets shows that Hanzheng Street is being upgraded, and it will take some time for it to be completely transformed. We also have to wait and see.
Brilliance and decadence coexist, and prosperity and frustration meet.
Hanzheng Street, the "main street" of ancient Hankou, rose in Chenghua period of Ming Dynasty and was located on the north bank where the Yangtze River and Hanshui River meet. It is a famous commercial port with a history of more than 500 years. Hanzheng Street is the birthplace of "Hanpai" commercial culture. As early as the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, Hanzheng Street has become one of the largest distribution centers of tobacco, paper, grain, wood and medicinal materials in China, showing a prosperous scene of "ten miles of sails depending on the city and thousands of lights". From 65438 to 0979, Hanzheng Street took the lead in restoring the small commodity wholesale market in China, encouraged the development of individual and private economy, and gradually became a famous small commodity wholesale distribution center in China. Hanzheng Street has won the reputation of "the first street in the world" and "the weather vane of China's reform and opening up" by virtue of its geographical advantages. And a TV series called "Hanzheng Street" makes Hanzheng Street almost a household name in the country.
With the pace of reform and opening up, Hanzheng Street has performed brilliantly and profoundly. Since the reform and opening up, Hanzheng Street has experienced 30 years of development. Zou Huilai, deputy director of Wuhan Hanzheng Street Market Management Committee, said in an interview with this reporter that in the past 30 years, the development of Hanzheng Street has been roughly divided into four stages: from 1979 to 1983, Hanzheng Street market began to rise and became the first self-operated road wholesale market in China. In the next four years, Hanzheng Street began to flourish. Self-employed individuals began a one-stop production and sales model of "front shop and back factory, self-produced and self-sold, on-site processing and on-site sales". Many large individual households operate on a large scale by means of leasing, contracting, joint venture, joint venture, shareholding and purchase. During this period, the first professional market building in Hanzheng Street was completed, and the market gradually realized "retreating into the room". From 1992 to 1999, Hanzheng Street is in a prosperous stage. At this stage, the old city has been transformed. After the transformation, the market area of Hanzheng Street is nearly 6.5438+0 million square meters, and there are 64 large and medium-sized indoor professional markets. Around 2000, the development of Hanzheng Street encountered a bottleneck and experienced a trough. In the fierce market competition, the development of Hanzheng Street obviously lags behind other emerging professional markets in China, such as Yiwu Commodity City in Zhejiang, Linyi Wholesale Market in Shandong, Ai Wu Market in Shenyang, Nansantiao in Shijiazhuang, Xinhua Middle School in Zhengzhou and Yueminglou in Urumqi. These wholesale markets are like a fish pond, and your customers are the fish in the fish pond. How to keep the fish in the pond and make more and more fish in the pond requires the market managers to have a long-term strategic vision.
Hanzheng Street has won the reputation of "the first street in the world" for itself with the spirit of being the first in the world. However, in the 30 years of reform and opening up, Hanzheng Street has developed from a road market to a professional market integrating business and tourism, with both good times and setbacks. This is a process that everything goes through, and the development of Hanzheng Street cannot escape this experience.
Hanzheng Street, as one of the earliest wholesale markets for daily chemicals in China, occupies an important position in the Central Plains market. Through Hanzheng Street, the products are spread to markets all over the country. Among them, there are many merchants in Hanzheng Street, and the business is prosperous, which has cultivated a number of large distributors. Just like Mr. Ying Guochu of Konka's daily cosmetics business department, he is a big circulation businessman who grew up in Hanzheng Street. He described the prosperity of business at that time in a very simple sentence: goods were in short supply, and he never worried that the products could not be sold. However, with the competition in the market, the daily chemical merchants in Hanzheng Street also fluctuate with the development of Hanzheng Street. Some businesses are getting bigger and bigger, but most businesses frown all day and even move out of Hanzheng Street.
Investigating the reasons for its frustration, the reporter synthesized the answers of more than a dozen new and old daily chemical merchants in Hanzheng Street and came to a conclusion, which was mainly due to subjective and objective reasons. Among them, the objective reasons are mainly reflected in: First, fake and parallel products of daily chemical products flood the market, which seriously affects the market image; Second, professional markets are blooming everywhere in China, impacting the original market space; Third, the commercial layout of Hanzheng Street is chaotic, the commercial space is complex, the traditional market format is backward, and the traffic is inconvenient and crowded. Fourth, the channels of daily chemical products have changed and the terminal market has diversified. Daily chemical manufacturers pay more attention to terminal stores, develop distribution networks and increase market share. For example, the emergence of emerging marketing from EMKT.com.cn mode, such as large supermarkets, chain stores and franchise stores, has directly affected the operation of the daily chemical wholesale market; 5. Changes in product structure, increase in product categories, etc. Subjective reasons are mainly manifested in the failure of market managers to find and adjust market positioning in time, the diversification of market investment subjects, and the failure of daily chemical merchants to update their marketing concepts. These problems are inevitable in development and the result of competition. Therefore, only through development and competition can we break through and solve them, and at the same time, we can solve them one by one in the process of constantly exploring new ideas.
In addition, Mr. Ying Guochu said in an interview with this reporter that the shrinkage of Hanzheng Street's daily chemical market is due to the direct radiation of second-and third-line brand markets, and it does not need to go through the channels of Hanzheng Street's daily chemical wholesale market; At the same time, some bosses have low management quality, difficult to update their business concepts and do not understand after-sales service. At present, in the daily chemical market, 70%-80% of the bosses are fakes and parallel imports, lacking professional ethics, especially for first-class dealers such as Procter & Gamble. In addition, second-and third-tier brands have relatively low prices, small profit margins, and brands are prone to death. In excessive competition, it is easy for dealers to operate badly, which leads to their inability to operate. Finally, due to the particularity of daily chemical products, the requirements for warehousing and logistics are relatively high, but it cannot be solved in Hanzheng Street at present, which is also the reason why many daily chemical merchants have relatively small shops in Hanzheng Street.
It is precisely because of the above reasons that under the form of large-scale operation of clothing cloth, it is difficult for the daily chemical industry to form a big climate in Hanzheng Street, and it also shows a downward trend.
Creating the brand of Han school and remolding the regional culture
In recent years, Wuhan municipal and district governments have attached great importance to the development of Hanzheng Street and launched new projects to upgrade Hanzheng Street. Deputy Director Zou Huilai said that in the face of new competition, Hanzheng Street has been planning transformation and upgrading since 2000. Hanzheng Street has successively introduced five major groups, invested nearly 5 billion yuan to develop and transform them, and built a number of multi-functional, high-grade large-scale shopping malls and characteristic blocks such as Hanzheng Street First Avenue, Jiji Shopping Mall and Hanzheng Street Brand Clothing Wholesale Plaza. At present, Hanzheng Street has a business area of more than 2.2 million square meters, more than 70 professional markets, 27,000 merchants, and a total of 6,543,800 kinds of goods. In 2007, the annual sales of Hanzheng Street reached more than 48 billion yuan, and the market area of 2.56 square kilometers was taxed by 500 million yuan. It is expected to be nearly 700 million yuan in 2008.
500 years ago, Hanzheng Street was built and prospered by water, and the next transformation is still to build a brand around water. Zou Hui, deputy director, said that the development orientation of Hanzheng Street now is to build Hanzheng Street business tourist area on Dover Road, and initially form a central commercial street integrating shopping, tourism and sightseeing. This commercial street will become the first street in Wuhan with the largest scale, the largest area, the best environment and the most comprehensive business varieties. In order to build a brand-new Hanzheng Street business circle, the sidewalks have also been transformed in recent years, requiring a new market environment with high standards and high quality, and finally forming a beautified, bright and humanized new market business environment.
Hubei province is a province with thousands of lakes. Hanzheng Street is located at the intersection of two rivers, facing Hanshui and Guishan, and accompanied by Qintai. Based on this feature, Hanzheng Street will be scientifically planned to meet the development needs of Wuhan, give full play to the advantages of humanities and nature, support the development of the market with tourism, and expand tourism with the market, so that Hanzheng Street will glow with new business opportunities and new development through shopping, tourism and entertainment. In this regard, Deputy Director Zou Huilai stressed that in these plans, it is necessary to create "three characteristics", that is, to create distinctive Hanpai business projects, such as Hanpai costumes and Hanpai small commodities; Create a distinctive retail cultural business street; Create a distinctive Wuhan Bund. Through the creation of "three specialties", we can restore history and reproduce the cultural characteristics of the Han school. At the same time, through the combination of culture and market, we can effectively and rationally allocate market resources, develop industrial clusters, and promote the effective docking and efficient cooperation between industry and market. By building a market platform, the display function and competitiveness of Hanzheng Street will be enhanced. In addition, we can improve the marketing system and highlight the charm and brand appeal of Hanzheng Street business culture.
According to Deputy Director Zou Huilai, in recent years, the quality of goods in Hanzheng Street has been greatly improved, and the market has developed indoors, professionally and characteristically, striving to create a good business environment. At present, the market structure is basically the coexistence of primary market and secondary wholesale market; General distributor, general agent and self-produced and self-sold coexist; There should be general commodities of low-consumption groups such as rural areas and high-end commodities such as white-collar workers. In addition, we will open up production bases in the surrounding cities of Wuhan and build Hanzheng Street Commercial Park. In particular, Korean products should have their own production bases, so as to form strong competitiveness in packaging and brand.
As a region of Hanzheng Street, the gap between the daily chemical business district and other professional markets is obvious. When the reporter visited some daily chemical businesses, he found that daily chemical businesses were deserted, and few people entered the store to see products and ask prices. When reporters came forward to interview shopkeepers, most shopkeepers complained to reporters that business was difficult to do and now they can only maintain a simple life. Later, the reporter learned that these shopkeepers have been operating in Hanzheng Street for a short time, usually only two or three years. The shopkeeper who has been operating in Hanzheng Street for more than ten years told reporters that the business is good. At present, it is the off-season of daily chemical business, mainly selling summer products such as sunscreen, toilet water and shower gel. They already have a group of regular customers. These customers mainly buy the products they need by telephone, and do not need to go to the store to purchase. Customers who come to the store to ask questions are generally mobile customers. After one year, about 100 pieces will be delivered every day on average.
At present, there are more than 500 daily chemical merchants in Hanzheng Street, and the daily chemical merchants are mainly concentrated in the Li Ji section of Hanzheng Street. According to Li Chuanhua, director of the Commercial Office of Hanzheng Street Market Management Committee in Wuhan, compared with more than a decade ago, the product structure of daily chemicals has been quite rich in recent years, and the product segmentation trend is obvious, from the past single product structure of care to diversified development, such as washing, cosmetics, children's products, women's products and men's products.
In order to better manage the daily chemical business area and create a good daily chemical business environment, Hanzheng Street Cosmetics Chamber of Commerce was established in 2004. Its main purpose is to standardize the daily chemical market operation, put forward strict requirements for product quality, and require daily chemical merchants to conduct self-management, self-development and self-improvement. According to Director Li Chuanhua, there are many large dealers in Hanzheng Street, such as Industry and Trade Detergent, Li Biao Daily Chemical, Schwab Daily Chemical and Konka Daily Chemical.
Mr. Ying Guochu, a big distributor of daily chemical products who started from Hanzheng Street, said that at present, many daily chemical businesses have set up facades in Hanzheng Street, or simply have a small office to answer the phone, while warehouses are generally located in other emerging markets around, such as the rudder market, and delivery is sent out from other emerging markets around. At the same time, as the vice president of Hanzheng Street Cosmetics Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Ying Guochu said frankly that the Chamber of Commerce did not play a big role in Hanzheng Street daily chemical merchants, nor did it do anything practical for them. Especially those new businessmen, few people know about the existence of the Chamber of Commerce, hoping to do something for them in the future.
Both Mr. Ying Guochu and Director Li Chuanhua denied the statement that many daily chemical distributors moved out of Hanzheng Street. They said that at present, many daily chemical distributors have stores in Hanzheng Street. With the expansion of business, they have set up branches in surrounding markets or large shopping malls to expand their scale. The reporter also found in the rudder market that almost all the facades of the daily chemical business area were closed. After a walk, more than a dozen daily chemical distribution shops are open, and more are logistics transport vehicles. The reporter interviewed some daily chemical dealers randomly in the rudder stock market. They said that only building materials, motorcycles and other industries have developed in the rudder stock market, and others are not ideal. Almost all daily chemical business areas are leased to logistics companies. When I bought the facade at the end of 2005, I hoped that this market would work, but now it seems to be contrary to the original intention at that time, and now it can only be regarded as an investment.
At the same time, when the reporter visited Hanzheng Street, he found that the clothing wholesale market in Hanzheng Street had an elegant environment and a prosperous business. However, the environment of the daily chemical market operation area is far from the clothing wholesale market. There are some small daily chemical shops on both sides of the narrow street. When visiting Hanzheng Street Market, the reporter saw that besides the concentrated daily chemical shops on Li Ji Road, some daily chemical shops were scattered in every corner. This is the most consistent answer that the reporter got when interviewing the daily chemical distributors: At present, the daily chemical business is still in a decentralized state, and it will take some time to concentrate.
Refined management, bigger and stronger brand
In the 1980s, daily chemical businesses in Zhejiang and other regions gathered in Hanzheng Street to operate daily chemical products. Until the mid-1990s, the specialized market of daily chemical products was opened, the categories of daily chemical products gradually increased, and the number of shops increased greatly. After several years' efforts, Hanzheng Street's daily chemical professional market has been formed, becoming the largest daily chemical market in the Central Plains.
According to Director Li Chuanhua, because the formation of the professional market for daily chemicals at that time quickly promoted the large-scale operation of the daily chemical market, many businesses flocked to Hanzheng Street. At present, the daily chemical business area is relatively scattered compared with other professional markets. In order to change this decentralized state, the relevant management departments of Hanzheng Street are making efforts to negotiate and prepare to build a brand-new professional market for daily chemical products, and gather the general distributors and general agents of daily chemical products, so as to let the famous brands in China go out of Hanzheng Street and enhance the market level of daily chemical products from all levels, such as brands. At the same time, through upgrading, we will continue to give play to the advantages of first-class brands, step into the forefront of fashion and beauty, beautify people's lives, and position the daily chemical market as a national fashion and beauty distribution center.
At present, the average daily passenger flow of Hanzheng Street is nearly 200,000, including 6,543,800 customers. Due to the particularity of the transportation of daily chemical products, the old market in Hanzheng Street is difficult to meet the transportation of a large number of goods, and the traffic in the market is inconvenient and the logistics transportation is not smooth, which directly affects the development of the daily chemical market. In this regard, Wuhan will prepare to invest 2 billion yuan to improve the infrastructure construction in the whole Hanzheng Street area. First, establish Hanzheng Street International Modern Logistics Center, and a logistics base covering an area of more than 500 mu is under construction. The second is to transform the first Hanshui Bridge in Hanzheng Street into Qingchuan Bridge, and build a1.700m Hanjiang River beach. The third is to transform the traffic circulation lines in the market, including all wires buried along the way, environmental greening, facade renovation and so on. Strive to build Hanzheng Street into a professional, serialized and modern national commodity circulation center, information center, exhibition center, tourism center and logistics distribution center, and become a modern commercial and tourist area with high openness, beautiful environment, strong radiation and distinctive cultural characteristics in the central region. The implementation of these measures will help to change the current predicament of Hanzheng Street daily chemical market.
Zou Huilai, deputy director, said that the future development direction of Hanzheng Street has been made clear, mainly including establishing characteristic commercial and tourist areas, establishing folk cultural commercial streets, gradually restoring old brands in a certain area, and establishing folk cultural streets to realize the combination of leisure, shopping and tourism. In April 2008, several domestic travel agencies signed an agreement with Hanzheng Street. Therefore, future group shopping will also bring Wanghanzheng Street into the future commercial and tourist areas.
After experiencing rapid development in the 1980s and glory in the early 1990s, Hanzheng Street once fell into a trough. The market manager saw the problem and tried to solve the problem of Hanzheng Street. In addition to the introduction of large projects, the overall layout of Hanzheng Street market is also planned reasonably, the industry is clustered, the functional division is implemented, and the differentiated competition is realized, which fundamentally changes the previous situation that Hanzheng Street market is small, chaotic, dirty and poor. In addition, it is necessary to change the extensive management of the market in the past, adopt refined management, survive and develop in the fierce competition in markets all over the country, establish relevant industrial chains, and make Hanzheng Street market bigger and stronger.
Some new merchants in Hanzheng Street said in an interview that they are still at a loss about the future of Hanzheng Street. The only requirement is to do a good job in today's business. Most daily chemical businesses said that Hanzheng Street itself is already a big brand. In addition to the customers accumulated before, Hanzheng Street has many mobile customers. It is hoped that the relevant management departments of Hanzheng Street can adjust their strategic thinking in time and expand their business with the brand advantage of this platform.
Note: this "stove" is not another "stove"
Wuhan is known as one of the four furnaces. This reporter's trip to Wuhan really experienced the taste of "stove". When other domestic wholesale markets, large and small, were in full swing, Hanzheng Street in Wuhan suffered from Waterloo. The market scale has expanded, but merchants have moved out of Hanzheng Street. The reason is that emerging formats such as terminal retail and chain operation are impacting the traditional channel model. The terminal has changed, and so has the channel. It is doomed that the role of Hanzheng Street daily chemical wholesale market has changed and entered an unprecedented predicament. The daily chemical management in the wholesale market is in trouble. In the past, when business was booming, we could only sit back and enjoy it. It seems that it is not so easy for the daily chemical wholesale market to go against the trend.
The original text was published in issue 6 1 of China Washing Cosmetics Weekly.