Offline shopping malls are ushering in the east wind of AI large models.
Text: Xu Xin. Edited by Zhou Luping.
2024 is regarded as the first year of large-scale model application. This means that the large-scale model boom that began at the beginning of 2023 has been brewing for a year, and the product landing and value verification in industrial applications still need to be completed.
However, you may not think that in the field of offline retail, pioneer companies have already used large-scale model technology in some scenariosHelp store operations and shopping guides to complete daily business operationsand generate tangible business value.
Since last year, based on the previous digital infrastructure and the new mall business operating system (MOS system), Intime Department Store has introduced large-scale models to store counters in shopping mallsAI bots are fully deployed
With the support of more intelligent algorithms and AI capabilities, the objects of shopping mall operations have sunk from the original floors and categories to the single products of a single brand counter. The operation logic of "goods" is also changing, and the first-chain management ability of offline shopping malls has been greatly improved. Focusing on the operation of "field", digitalization and AI tools allow online and offline inventory to form a positive cycle of operation.
By the end of 2023, same-store sales growth of brand counters connected to AI robots reached 7%. In the retail industry under AI**, it has accelerated its implementation and become a new productive force
The shopping guide has a super assistant
Zhang Lin, the owner of fashion accessories brand AMAZING, has faced a big challenge in the past two years. She wants to find a way to make this six-year-old growth brand gain a firm foothold in the new business district.
As we all know, the transaction conversion of offline retail mainly comes from the interaction between shopping guides and consumersThe ability level of the shopping guide is closely related to the individual's experience and knowledge
Mature shopping guides know what to do every day and are very autonomous, while inexperienced shopping guides need to be taught by brand managers or store managers.
Another challenge for brand owners is the high liquidity of shopping guides. Zhang Lin found that the resignation of post-00 employees is very random, and there are all kinds of things such as falling out of love, having something to do at home and going back to their hometown, etc., plus the active replacement of counter stores, and it is very common to change a wave of shopping guides in three or four months.
How to make shopping guides with frequent flow and different levels of knowledge and culture more quickly familiar with brand product information, understand consumer aesthetics and preferences, dig out popular models, and achieve better performance conversion is a common problem for all offline operators.
For example, there is a threshold for the production of commodity copywriting, ** and introduction ** that consumers see,".Only 1% of good content can be produced by shopping guides, other shopping guides can't be produced. Xiong Chao, CTO of Yintai Commercial Group, said.
The use of software and algorithms to precipitate industry best practices has become a reality in some industries with a high degree of standardization. For example, in industrial manufacturing, a large number of industry know-how is solidified by industrial software, and the software itself condenses manufacturing knowledge, which is conducive to improving the standardization level of product manufacturing, producing higher quality products, and creating industry value.
* Under the retail scene,Intime Department Store also hopes to use large models and AI algorithms to complete the accumulation of structured knowledge and excellent employee capabilities, so that the basic capabilities and efficiency of each shopping guide can be greatly improvedYu Hao, the person in charge of the technical development of the digital and intelligent operation system of the counter of Intime Department Store, mentioned in an interview.
Zhang Lin has felt the value of using frameworks and intelligent tools to minimize individual ability differences, and her brand counter stores have achieved a big leap from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of yuan in monthly performance in the past year. "Because of the cooperation with Intime Department Store and the ability to be systematic, even if a partner is sick for a few days, I am not worried about a sharp decline in performance. ”
In addition to helping shopping guides, the system capability also allows Intime Department StoreThe role of store operators is changing
Wan Ping, a store operator at Intime Department Store Wuhan Creative City, remembers that when she managed multiple brand counters ten years ago, the operation staff did more than patrol the market and do the best work. Learn about the sales and operation of the previous day from the counter shopping guide, and sometimes it takes four or five hours a day to make**. However, it is usually difficult to really summarize and refine the insights to guide the operation of the mall.
Now, store operators can communicate and interact with AI robotsReal-time monitoring of the sales and operation data of each counter can also realize daily operation and management actions。"Before, Wan Ping's work was actually 'operation', which was important but cumbersome, and they could only understand the part of the operation. With the system's capabilities, their horizons can be expanded to the overall situation, and the number of brand counters that each person can manage has also increased," said De Yi, product manager of the digital and intelligent operation system of Intime Department Store.
How can a cardigan sell thousands of pieces
Even if you are not a person in the beauty industry, you may be familiar with names such as "black bandage", "small brown bottle", "red waist", etc., which means brand power and also reflects the ability of first-line big brands to operate popular products.
Explosive style is the best advertisement of the product, which can greatly drive the sales of other products. With a history of 40 years, Estee Lauder's popular skin care essence "Little Brown Bottle" sales data is amazing, according to its official ** information, in 2019, Little Brown Bottle can sell 22 bottles per minute in the world.
It's no surprise that superbrands are capable of creating blockbusters, and for a long time this has been exclusive to big brands. However, with the blessing of AI and digital tools,The offline counters of ordinary brands in Intime Department Store are also capable of operating explosive products
Lai Yan, a woolen sweater brand, officially entered Intime Department Store in July 2021. This offline counter of woolen sweaters, which is not a first-line brand, had a remarkable achievement last year, and the store successfully sold six or seven products with a single sales of more than 1,000 pieces.
"Qianpin" is a new thing to offline shopping malls, traditional shopping malls and department storesIt is very difficult to sell a thousand units of any category in a short period of time
In the clothing and cardigan subcategory to which Lai Yan belongs, the difficulty will be further increased. After the epidemic, the competition in the offline clothing industry has become increasingly fierce, and as a highly seasonal subcategory under the clothing category, the sales of woolen sweaters have obvious off-peak seasons, which will further affect the sales of individual products. Usually, the sales season of woolen sweater products is from October to March of the following year, and in the summer sales season, the brand will produce some short-sleeved and mulberry silk products to fill the revenue gap. But this seasonal nature is not conducive to the creation of best-selling models.
Intime Department Store's ability to sell a single inventory across the country allows waist brands like Laiyan to operate popular items. "It is equivalent to using the power of AI to make use of the original traditional ERP system and data assetsYu Hao, head of the technical development of the digital and intelligent operation system of the counter of Intime Department Store, said.
With the help of these capabilities, the store operation staff of the mall has a stronger ability to operate the brand counters. "In the past, we could only know the sales data of brands and single products in the store, but now each product and each model can be compared with the sales data, and the data of the whole country can be used as a reference. Wan Ping said.
This also means that in the current department store retail industry, the pioneer explorer's ability to operate "goods" has entered a new stage.
Looking back on the business development process of the shopping mall, there is a consensus in the industry that the efficiency of the first chain determines the operating efficiency. WhileMore accurate matching of people and goods is undoubtedly the key link to achieve a more efficient ** chain
Almost a decade ago, observers often criticized offline retail for its inefficiency, "they didn't know who the people were coming into the mall, their needs and preferences, or what they had in the mall." Since then, the digital upgrading process of the retail department store industry has gradually accelerated, and the purpose is also to complete the matching of goods more efficiently. However, from the perspective of the development process of the industry, the first digital links occurred in transactions and other linksThe digitization of goods is more difficult in the whole process, and a step that is more difficult to advance.
After years of investment and polishing, Intime Department Store now has the insight into "what goods are in the mall", and can grasp the indicators of various models in real time, such as the best styles, best-selling models, and unsalable models, and the operation and intervention capabilities of the mall and the brand side for individual products have also been greatly improved.
At present, Laiyan is not alone in Intime Department Store, and there are already a number of mid-waist brands, which can sell thousands of products by tapping out potential explosive products. With the support of digital tools and AI capabilities, the shopping mall's grasp of goods is no longer floors and counters, but has really entered the stage of "products".
The road to an offline store
There are many secrets hidden in the offline store management system of big brands.
For example, do you know the biggest difference between Nike stores in street neighborhoods and Nike stores in core urban business districts? The most intuitive answer is store size. The area of the street store may be less than 100 square meters, and the store in the core of Wuhan Jianghan Road is several times the area of the street store. Depending on the size of the area, the number of products that can be accommodated is also different. The larger the store, the more goods there are in the store, and the difference in the amount of ** also affects the turnover and profit
These are explicit differences.
But outside of the dominant factors,There is something more essential hidden。Dealers don't just want to open as many stores as they want. Brands link turnover and store size levels to the products that can be sold one by one, and there is a strict correspondence between the people who come to the store to the goods that can be sold - the size of the marketDealers must pass the test of turnover at all levels in order to climb to a higher level in the store system.
The higher the sales turnover, the larger the store area, the more upscale the decoration system, and the more complete the products that can be sold in the store, including more scarce new and limited edition products. Therefore, those stores that can sell more goods will be able to get better and scarcer new products, and will occupy a more advantageous position in the next round of competition for consumers.
Taking Nike's store system as an example, its most basic is an SP discount store. The store can sell basic lifestyle, running, and leisure products, while some of the brand's latest limited editions and new products are basically invisible.
When the store's turnover reaches a certain level and the store's area can be upgraded to 350 square meters, there will be more basketball and Jordan star items for sale in the store. Some consumers come to consume star items, and the turnover of the store is basically guaranteed.
When the turnover of the entire store exceeds 20 million yuan, the area of the store can be upgraded to 550 square meters, and the most popular co-branded models will appear in this store, and there will be some star models on sale. In particular, the sale model is a scarce resource, which can attract more brand fans to the door. The highest level of stores, with an area of 750 square meters, and the most complete range of products
Under the strict matching of resource energy levels, if the basic goods configuration of a counter is average, the surrounding commercial infrastructure has not been greatly upgraded, and the portrait of the consumer group has not changed much, it sounds unrealistic to achieve a big leap in sales doubling and store level.
The Nike counter of Intime Department Store Wuhan Creative City has been open for five yearsIt has realized the upgrade from a discount store to a 550-level counter store, and the annual revenue of this counter has exceeded 20 million yuan, ranking first in the annual sales of all 550-level stores of dealers. The Onitsuka Tiger brand counter in the same shopping mall has also changed from the original first-class business operation to brand direct sales due to its excellent performance.
Stores with the same specifications and the same goods, their ping efficiency and operational capabilities can be said to have reached the first place in the national single-cabinet sales in the system. What sustained their counterattack? The answer lies in the power of digitalization and intelligence. Since 2018, Intime Department Store has started its digital transformation and upgrading, and by 2019, all Intime Department Store stores have been migrated to the cloud, fully integrating online and offline, and selling all goods nationwide, greatly improving the synergy and capabilities between shopping malls.
Chun Ling, Head of the Operations Management Department of Yintai Retail Group, believes that compared with other brick-and-mortar department stores, the digital transformation and upgrading of Intime Department Store enables the brand counters to reach and serve consumers nationwide. High-quality brands and high-quality goods can be matched more accurately through digital operation, which naturally brings more business conversion.
The performance growth of offline brand counters, the improvement of ping efficiency, and the increase of gross profit margin have also given dealers the motivation to upgrade, with better goods and better shopping guides. From this,The advantages and achievements of online counters are fed back to offline physical stores, and the level and potential energy of offline brand counters can also be upgraded step by step, further feeding back online, the two form a virtuous circle.
In addition, AI tools are also helping shopping malls accelerate the digitalization of goods and achieve better integration of online and offline. For example,Intime Department Store's algorithms and dataIt's better to capture certain items, and they'll suggest that the counter prioritize these items and launch them on Meow Street. At the same time, they alsoThe tools of the AIGC were developedto help the counter shopping guide lower the threshold for digital production of goods, so that the efficiency of digital goods in offline stores can be greatly improved.
AI technology and insight capabilities also guide the investment attraction and layout of offline physics. For example, last year, Intime Department Store found that young people prefer gatherings and activities on the negative floor of the mall, and laid out a large number of formats such as milk tea and coffee that young people like, which has achieved a significant increase in business performance.
Conclusion
At present, large models in many industries are still in the stage of being visible and unavailable. In the first shopping mall, its completion depends on Intime Department's continuous investment in digital infrastructure.
To enter the intelligent stage,First of all, we must have a relatively complete digital infrastructurein order to complete the implementation of large-scale model technology. At the same time, as the large-scale model technology is implemented in the retail scene, they also do a lot of specific engineering work and make up for it to reduce the illusion of the large-scale model and ensure its usability in the specific scene.
The emergence of large-scale model technology is also changing the technology application path in the retail industry. In the stage of digital development, all kinds of software systems are usually top-down to empower shopping guides and individuals, and the accumulation of knowledge is mostly completed by the organization. However, after the era of large models, the precipitation of knowledge in the future may be even moreCentered on people, the usage habits and work scenarios of individual shopping guides will also shape the application scenarios of technology from the bottom up.
Overall, we are on the eve of a large-scale transformation of offline retail with digital and artificial intelligence technologies, and pioneer companies have reshaped offline retail from different dimensions of people, goods and places in the pioneer scenario, and have become a force that cannot be ignored.