Behind this was a four-year consecutive loss of nearly HK $3 billion.
In 2018 alone, Daphne's revenue fell by 20.8% and lost nearly HK $800 million. In the past year, 1016 outlets have been closed, with an average of 2.8 stores per day closed.
Although she has long been committed to reform and transformation, Daphne seems to have never touched the door. Is Daphne able to break through the difficulties?
One out of every five pairs of shoes sold is Daphne
At one time, Daphne was a synonym for fashion trend, and was once robbed by young girls.
In 1988, Zhang Wenyi and Chen Xianmin from Taiwan smelled the business opportunities in the mainland and set up their factory in Futian, Fujian Province. Two years later, the Daphne brand was founded. Relatively bold design and color matching emerged in the then closed mainland of China and were favored by consumers.
With the deep experience of OEM and shoe making as well as the grasp of the whole industry, Daphne mainly focuses on "parity" while its relative fashion advantages make it quickly occupy the mainland market. Five years later, Daphne went public.
In 2006, Daphne copied the model of the mainland to Taiwan, and invited she and Liu Ruoying to act as spokesmen for her two series products, D18 and D28. It was the golden age of she that attracted many fans to follow. Liu Ruoying's intellectual and elegant temperament is also in line with Daphne's brand.
In terms of sales channels, Daphne eschewed the strategy of belle opening a store to the shopping mall in the same period, and instead opened the store to every street side store. In this way, it not only dilutes the cost, but also helps to establish consumer awareness and expand online and offline rapidly.
After 2003, Daphne has expanded at the speed of opening more than 300 stores every year. The number of stores has expanded rapidly from 739 in 2003 to 6881 in 2012. At its fastest, 800 new Daphne stores opened each year.
In 2005, Daphne sold 50 million pairs of women's shoes a year, accounting for nearly 20% of the market share at that time. That is to say, at that time, for every five pairs of shoes sold in the Chinese mainland market, one pair came from Daphne.
In 2012, Daphne's revenue exceeded HK $10 billion for the first time, with a market value of HK $17 billion. It was Daphne's most glorious year, but it was also a turning point.
How does "goddess" fall into the world?
"Because I bought a pair of Daphne's high-heeled shoes, my boyfriend said that my taste was poor." I don't know what time make complaints about the Internet. It's hard for Daphne to hook up with fashion again.
In fact, it's not that consumer tastes are getting too fast, it's Daphne that hasn't changed.
For a long time, Daphne has paid more attention to the construction of sales channels. In addition to the crazy expansion of stores, the short board of design has been exposed in the later stage.
At the same time, Daphne also faces the market competition of incentive. Belle, hot wind, Lili's shoe cabinet and other women's shoe brands are making efforts in the new retail. Some brands follow the fast fashion model and keep a new pace. I wish they had a new one in two weeks.
People immersed in the impact of new products, Daphne's unchanging style becomes more and more dull and old-fashioned.
In contrast, Daphne shoes' production process is lengthy, which takes more than half a year from design and production to being presented to consumers. The number of days spent in the whole process is about 128 in 2010, increasing to 188 in 2012 and 198 in 2018.
Due to its large size, Daphne's new products are designed a year in advance. Most of the time, designers only fine tune the old ones. If there is a big change, it needs to be communicated layer by layer, and the decision chain has been unable to keep up with the pace of consumption.
A year ago's money, in the eyes of consumers has long been behind. Even in today's Daphne containers, there are slope heels and riveted shoes that have only been popular in the past few years.
Although Daphne has established a perfect offline channel, once faced with more and more serious inventory backlog, the operating cost becomes more and more unbearable. Daphne's 2018 annual report shows that in the number of core brand outlets, the number of Direct stores reached 2401, accounting for 91%. Such "heavy assets" operation mode will cause huge inventory pressure once the goods are unsalable.
In 2015 and later, in just four years, Daphne closed 3860 stores, 2.6 stores per day.
In addition, in order to clean up the inventory, Daphne, who is "beautiful without discount, beautiful with 100 points", also started a crazy discount.
Offline, buy one for free, as low as 99 yuan has become a routine operation of Daphne. It has also become a necessary choice to sell the tail goods at pinduoduo and vipshop. The reporter found that the footwear products of pinduoduoshang Daphne store ranged from 14 yuan to 62 yuan.
Store closing and sales promotion became Daphne's stop loss action, which was regarded as the "temporary pain" that it had to bear for long-term development.
However, in this way, its brand image was created, and "cheap" and "local flavor" became embarrassed labels. The "goddess" finally fell to earth.
Where is the way out?
As a traditional women's shoe brand, Daphne has not thought of changing in the face of new consumption and market environment.
For example, the stores that once expanded rapidly are shrinking rapidly, and the shops on the pedestrian street and Commercial Street are transferring to the shopping center.
In addition, Daphne is increasing investment in product research and development, and launching more fashionable sports and leisure shoes and other categories.
Unfortunately, in order to focus on the development of women's shoes ten years ago, Daphne gave up the agency of sports shoes and clothing brand,