Article | Hedgehog Commune
A few days ago, a piece of news about returns once again appeared on Weibo's hot search - 400 dresses were returned collectively, and the store lost 8,000 yuan. Since this year, customer-merchant disputes caused by returns have occurred frequently, and a raging wave of Hanfu e-commerce store closures will be set off in 2024.
Whether it is a Douyin Hanfu anchor giant with a single sales of over 100 million and 5 million fans, a Taobao Hardware Crown Internet celebrity store for many years, or a new e-commerce newcomer who has just entered the game this year, there is no escape scene. Not here.
It is not only merchants who have difficulty, but also many users told Hedgehog Commune that 2024 will be the year with the most returns and the worst online shopping experience.
Ruilin, an online shopper for 15 years, has always adhered to the principle of never returning items as long as they can wear them. This year, he also launched the "return, return, and return model." She said frankly: "The long pre-sale cycle, serious goods mismatch, obvious signs of being worn and washed after arrival...who can resist returning it?"
Just now, Ruilin sent away a pair of jeans purchased online. There was a large obvious stain on the pocket of the pants. It was unclear whether it was oil stains or blood stains after simple treatment. The customer service responded that "it was accidentally rubbed with engine oil when leaving the factory."
On the one hand, there is the dilemma of consumers not being able to buy satisfactory clothes, and on the other hand, the business is in a difficult situation due to poor management. Obviously merchants and consumers have the same goal - to buy or sell clothes, but Hanfu e-commerce seems to be heading towards a strange lose-lose ending.
Fang Jianhua, the founder of Hanfu brand Yinman, spoke out during June 18 this year, believing that "freight insurance" was the culprit that caused the sharp increase in return rates, and called for the cancellation of compulsory freight insurance. However, some people believe that Hanfu e-commerce has been suffering from problems for a long time, and freight insurance is only an inducement rather than a cause.
In addition to the high return rate, this article wants to explore whether there are more complex structural problems in the current Hanfu e-commerce environment, making it trapped in a vicious cycle and difficult to extricate itself. .
2024, Hanfu e-commerce retreatMola is a Hanfu merchant on a certain platform and has been doing Hanfu for 12 years. In February this year, the store began to clear out its inventory, and by July, she decided to say goodbye to her clothing e-commerce career.
From a recent graduate to getting married and having children, during her 12-year e-commerce journey, she has tasted joy, experienced disappointment, received praise, and also encountered harsh criticism. The luckiest thing is that I have accumulated a lot of users and friends who believe in me. But now, Mora had to press the pause button for herself.
After announcing the store closure, she also received many messages from old customers. She said: "The most touching thing is that some people said that they still wear the clothes they bought at our house many years ago and still like them very much." .
"The quality of the clothes we make is guaranteed, and the fabrics are mostly silk and modal. I personally supervise the work of each batch of goods, and I will repeatedly check even the threads of each piece of clothing." She explained road.
Although Mora has been making clothes seriously from beginning to end, she still cannot resist the rapid decline in overall traffic. 202Since the beginning of three years, the store's sales have declined seriously, and it was even worse in September last year. Even the minimum order quantity for making goods could not reach 100 pieces.
Not only that, Maura also has to deal with people who don’t return the goods until the seventh day, and even the pants they send back have underwear in them, and there is blood on the skirt... On one side, there is someone who maliciously plucked the wool. The number of consumers is gradually increasing, and on the other hand, platform policies, rules and even functions are being adjusted frequently.
All this made her uneasy. She had reviewed and reflected on this many times, but she was still increasingly confused. She didn’t know where she went wrong and whether she should adjust her positioning or change her direction now.
In the end, she accepted the fact that her R&D capabilities and competitiveness were declining, and decided to turn around. Not to continue starting a business when she is confused is her message to herself and her users.
Maura said in an almost firm tone: "I probably won't do e-commerce for a long time in the future." Closing the online store, Maura drew a line for her career before she turned thirty. A period.
On the day of her official farewell, she posted a video to record everything she had struggled with when making Hanfu - design, pattern making, purchasing fabrics, cutting, printing, sewing, buttoning and other processes. At the end of the video, Maura said - the changes in times have forced me to restart my life.
After hearing Maura’s story, Huijun also felt the same way. She believed that Maola was undoubtedly lucky. She caught up with the good times and reaped the dividends; she was also smart. After the traffic declined, she acted decisively. Turn around gracefully and settle down.
Huijun entered Hanfu e-commerce this year and opened a store on a certain platform. Within three months, it was unsustainable. When communicating with peers, the most common sentence she heard was "Retreat if you can. Don't wait until you really lose money before leaving. Safe landing is the most important thing."
Huijun told Hedgehog Commune that selling It is normal to return two out of three items, and it is also normal for a piece of clothing to be shipped 3-4 times before it is sold.
In such a "normal" environment, many people feel that they cannot breathe. Practitioners have no ambitions and are only left with anxiety.
On social media, every few days a clothing manager will issue a store closing notice and share his own store closing experience, so much so that the topic of store closing has become a tag with its own traffic. , the comment area gathered a group of manufacturers from the upper, middle and lower reaches of the industry chain, all lamenting that the clothing industry is difficult to do.
Shirley is a merchant who specializes in Hanfu live streaming. She said: "The live broadcast is for 6 hours every day, and the transaction amount in the live broadcast room can reach 500,000-800,000. When I go out and tell others that I am losing money, no one will believe it, but the fact is that GMV No matter how good-looking it is, all the hard work is in vain."
Sulli revealed that you can still make some money by making imitations of big-name brands. Clothing manufacturers in Shenzhen are doing this for autumn and winter. clothing season.
Dangerous game in the whirlpool, will the cruel one win?As Shirley said, the living space of original Hanfu, which is currently positioned as mid-range, is severely squeezed, and prices cannot be raised even if costs rise. Once the price starts to be low, it can only get lower and lower. The "Girl Kayla" that has attracted much attention before and ran away due to debt is an example, the "Retro Explosion" with millions of fans in a ten-year-old store is an example, and the "Lola Code" with annual sales of billions is always ranked in the top two. Even more examples.
Many interviewees in the Hanfu industry believe that there are two reasons for the above-mentioned dilemma, namely, collecting orders and only refunding. One is an unintentional mistake by ordinary users, and the other provides space for those who are prepared. In the end, they jointly contributed to the "Hanfu Merchant's Passion".
Various "consumption festivals" on e-commerce platforms are held throughout the year. From time to time, discount coupons and free shipping insurance are launched. Merchants will choose to mark their usual prices higher, and accordingly We have made a 15-day price guarantee commitment to customers. But what follows is rising costs and an increasing return rate.
Take order collection as an example. A considerable number of users bought products they did not want in order to reach the threshold of full discount or free shipping, but forgot to cancel immediately after the order was completed, and waited until the merchant shipped the goods. inform. As a result, merchants not only have to pay for freight and freight insurance, but also waste packaging materials, manual packaging and ironing.
In addition, the store's after-sales service has a direct impact on the store's weight, that is, the higher the negative reviews and return rate, the lower the store ranking, and every time an order is collected, there will be a refund.
In fact, returns not only affect merchants, consumers will also be involved. The more clothes are returned, the more consumers are likely to receive resold clothes, creating a vicious cycle.
Some merchants have settings such as "Pre-sale the first batch" and "Second batch shipped 15 days later" when selling. At this time, the second batch of clothes may even be returned from the first batch, and These 15 days are the time gap reserved for the first batch of consumers to return goods.
For Hanfu merchants, coordinating orders is just a hassle. At worst, merchants can transfer this part of the expenditure into pricing and amortize the cost. However, as long as there are only one or two refunds, it will be a problem. It could be a fatal blow.
The problem is that now only refunding has almost become the standard after-sales method for e-commerce platforms. Why is the Hanfu industry the first to fail?
In fact, the refund-only after-sales method may even be more cost-effective for small commodities that cost as little as a few dollars - no need to reissue express delivery, no need to waste time and effort arguing with users, and no need to remain silent.Digest negative reviews from users and solve all worries with one click of "refund only".
But for Hanfu merchants, especially mid-range Hanfu merchants with higher unit prices and independent design and pattern making, the losses caused by refunds alone are much higher than returns and refunds.
An owner of a custom-made Hanfu shop broke the news on social media that after customizing a suit for a customer for about 3,000 yuan, he was "only refunded" by the customer because the size was inappropriate, and the two sides fought. After a long time, the platform finally determined that the buyer's demands were reasonable and forced only a refund and deduction of the deposit. The store owner immediately decided to close the store and claimed that he would defend his rights to the end.
Once there are "successful cases" to follow, there will be wool harvesting training. Faced with a professional team composed of "wool party members", every businessman will be trembling with fear for fear of being wiped out.
Although in front of the huge number of real users, Woolies are only a very small group, and more of them are consumers who have needs and are willing to pay for high-quality products. But when a stone is thrown into the water, the ripples will become more ripples. the further away.
Hui Jun once said bluntly: "If Hanfu continues to play according to the refund-only rule, the better the things, the faster they will die."
For non-standard products like clothing, only It seems that refunds can only force mid-range merchants to be low-end and low-priced. Otherwise, the higher the quality, the harder it will be to bear the burden of refunds.
Because R&D, design, quality control, quality inspection and other aspects require people and money. Once prices start to drop, merchants can only continue to be backward compatible, shrink positions, reduce costs and increase efficiency.
But the cruelty of the market does not stop there. The decline in store traffic and the increase in traffic costs are also happening at the same time. The faster the decline, the more exposure resources merchants need, and the more sales expenses they pay for this. High, whether you are looking for experts to bring goods or information flow, these will naturally be counted as costs and added to the pricing.
This is one of the reasons why many users feel that "clothes are getting more expensive, but the quality is getting worse and worse."
At this time, there are only two options left for mid-range Hanfu merchants, either to be ruthless and sacrifice quality and start to compare prices with low prices; or to be ruthless and transform into high-end or high-end products. Replicas of big brands.
In the autumn and winter of last year, there were many former Internet celebrity Hanfu stores that transformed into replicas and replacements of MaxMara coats. After changing suppliers, they opened new stores on multiple platforms and increased prices, reducing the prices of in-store products from hundreds. Yuan was raised to 5,000 Yuan in order to screen out some consumers with “low net worth”.
But for more small and medium-sized businesses, low prices are a battle royale, and mid- to high-end products are just playing with funds and not taking risks. Therefore, closing the store may be a safe choice.
The Hanfu market destroyed by "hot styles"So far, the online Hanfu market has fallen into an embarrassing situation that has caused merchants to complain and left consumers with nothing to buy. I believe many people can’t help but wonder – what exactly destroyed the Hanfu market?
Some people place hostility on freight insurance, pointing the finger at freight insurance for the high return rate of Hanfu, and regard it as a lifelong enemy.
Freight insurance accelerates the order conversion rate, but it also increases the return rate. In the era when there was no freight insurance, everyone could play around with the "people and goods yard" on their plate and clearly know how many people there were and how much goods were prepared.
But with freight insurance, what lies behind the false prosperity of the conversion rate is not the real GMV, but the huge unknown and uncertainty. Blindly adding leverage when there is no ability to resist risks will eventually lead to oneself. Caught in the whirlpool.
Especially for small and medium-sized businesses, you cannot overestimate your food intake. Only when you eat food that is within the stomach capacity can you eat delicious food.
Some practitioners believe that the last straw for the Hanfu industry is freight insurance, but the structural problems reflected in the Hanfu environment can be solved by more than just banning a small freight insurance.
Shirley once mentioned her extremely tangled state of mind: "I'm afraid of not selling, and I'm afraid of selling out."
Because, compared to not selling, selling out is The risk is greater, and once it collapses, it will become a disaster. She explained that not being able to sell the goods became a pressure on the inventory, which piled up in the warehouse would make her anxious at night and unable to sleep all night; if the goods were sold out, all the employees would have to work day and night and work overtime.
But the result may be - buyers run away from orders (returns during the pre-sale period); opponents copy.
When the market is bad, no one cares about the research and development of new products. When they see a hot product, everyone flocks to it. Even pirated copies are likely to be faster and cheaper than the originals. At this time, piracy only needs to increase the intensity of precise distribution. The price comparison system of the platform will deliver the same style of clothing at a lower price to users, especially to users who have already purchased the same style.
You must have experienced a similar scene. When you have just placed an order for a popular original dress from a certain store, the price of those dresses marked "same style, same origin, same place of shipment" is less than half and exactly the same. All the dresses appear on your homepage, but you can’t tell which of the good reviews are genuine, and which one’s data is fake. Finally, after comparing prices everywhere, you’re so confused that you have no choice but to return it.
Image source Weibo
When involution, plagiarism, and low prices become the "standard features", the situation of Hanfu merchants will only become more dangerous and embarrassing, and ultimately consumers and high-quality merchants will also We can only look at each other across the sea, and have no chance to go in both directions.
"It is too easy to copy the market. There are sellers with no source of goods on every platform. Many of the so-called hot products are obtained by middlemen on 1688. Everyone does not know and does not care who is the original." Huijun explained.
An industry insider who is engaged in fashion consulting believes that those who really want to make good Hanfu should avoid three things: hot girl costumes, "Maillard" clothes, and "new Chinese style". The return rate of these three categories is very high, especially the hot girl clothing, which has been verified by the market several times.
The truth is actually very simple. Do not follow the trends that are just to meet one-time needs for film production or are styles that are popular in the season but not practical to wear. However, few people can achieve the goal of "watching others make money quickly." Money does not move the eye but the heart.”
When there are only hot girl clothes, Maillard and new Chinese styles on the market, it is also the most boring moment for Hanfu. Consumers who cannot buy suitable clothes will naturally "return as much as they buy".
At this time, popular items are easy to come by, but the online Hanfu market will also be destroyed by such "explosive items". Perhaps this is the tragedy of non-standard styles.
(At the request of the interviewee, Ruilin, Mocha, Huijun, and Shirley are pseudonyms in the article.)
