MINISO Group co-founder Ye Guofu's idea of going out to sea sprouted at the beginning of the establishment of the brand.

October 2013, the 114th Guangzhou Fair. Ye Guofu was shut out a lot at the scene. At that time, in order to find high-quality and affordable suppliers for MINISO Group, he visited a lot of people, but cooperation negotiations were extremely difficult.

After all, MINISO Group has just been established, and it will be a month before the first store opens in Guangzhou. It can be said that a "nascent" new Chinese brand is difficult to get the favor of these enterprises that only supply goods to Japanese and American merchants.

"our plastic products are only for Japan, and last year's order was 80 million US dollars. "A foreign trade supplier simply made it clear that he did not think highly of small orders. Ye Guofu is not reconciled, he explained to each other, "our brand wants to open stores in China and Japan, or even around the world, and then it will be no problem." But the suppliers were not moved by the story of going out to sea.

Because no one is quite sure, at the beginning of the brand, when there is nothing, Ye Guofu envisioned whether the future globalization layout of MINISO Group can be landed. Even, maybe even he didn't really anticipate MINISO Group's running all the way to sea at that time.

In 2015, MINISO Group, who was only two years old, quickly opened more than 1,000 stores in China and achieved 5 billion in sales. that year, the team began to try to open stores outside Chinese mainland.

So far, the brand has set up more than 1700 stores in more than 80 countries and regions overseas. Some data show that the trading volume of MINISO Group in the overseas market has approached and is about to exceed the total amount of the domestic market, and the sales of individual stores in some overseas markets have reached three times that of domestic stores.

In February this year, under the influence of the COVID-19 epidemic, 50 per cent of MINISO Group's stores were suspended for a time, and their performance was severely affected. Under heavy pressure, in addition to opening up online channels and adopting price reduction strategies, an unexpected move by outsiders is that MINISO Group doubles his global store opening plan for the whole year to further increase the size of overseas markets.

In Ye Guofu's view, under the circumstances that the epidemic has hit the global retail industry, a large number of high-quality properties with good locations and low rents are idle, creating opportunities for expansion for famous and high-quality products. "after this epidemic, global spending power will decline, consumers will be more careful, and consumption will return to its essence and return to affordable consumption in pursuit of the ultimate cost-effective ratio. Ye Guofu said in an interview with the media.

This time, "going out to sea" has become the trump card of MINISO Group and Ye Guofu, who have entered a new stage.

01 two models to set up shop overseas

MINISO Group officially marched into Singapore on December 12, 2015. On the same day, Lion City Building store, Harbour Center store and City Union Plaza store opened at the same time. Without exception, the three stores are located in the core business district of Singapore, have absolute geographical advantages and belong to local high-quality business locations.

In Ye Guofu's plan, to ensure the realization of MINISO Group's plan to open 100 stores in Singapore in the future, the brand also needs to acquire more similar high-quality property resources. In offline retailing, which is extremely sensitive to location, store location is extremely important. Aiming at the bustling business district of the city is also the location strategy that MINISO Group has verified in China.

However, in a new market, how to connect local property resources more efficiently and cheaply has become a major problem facing MINISO Group after going overseas. In China, MINISO Group has opened up the situation and has a certain initiative, but when he goes to sea, this advantage does not exist.

"when we first started negotiations with the mall developers, we found that they did not understand our model at all, had never heard of the brand MINISO Group, and did not want us to move in. Except for a few, most shopping malls are not active. In an interview with the media, the relevant person in charge of MINISO Group's Indian business introduced the difficulties of the brand when it first entered the Indian market.

The situation did not improve until MINISO Group opened a store in Ambience Mall, Delhi's Vasant Kunj district, and got a good response from users.

Therefore, in order to maintain the speed of opening stores in the process of going out to sea, and quickly lay out a number of stores in the core business district to form economies of scale, MINISO Group adopted the agent + "full trusteeship" mode of layout overseas.

The relevant person in charge of MINISO Group's overseas business explained to "going to Sea Outlook" that the form of "full escrow" is funded by the franchisee, and the distribution operation and management of the store is handled by the headquarters, the channels and products are shared, and then the accounts are shared between the two sides. In this way, franchisees do not have inventory and sales pressure, but need to bear most of the operational risks; headquarters can achieve unified store management to ensure that the model replication in the process of going out to sea "does not go out of shape".

The agency model refers to the cooperation with local consortia with financial strength and retail experience in the form of a buyout system to make it a national agent. Day-to-day operation is the responsibility of the agent, and the headquarters will provide training and guidance to it. Different from the domestic model of accepting small franchisees, MINISO Group tends to select large groups that meet certain conditions for cooperation, which will help MINISO Group dock local resources and expand rapidly in the country.

For example, in the Thai market, MINISO Group's general agent is Thailand Xingtai Group, a local jewelry giant in Bangkok and other regions has hundreds of direct stores, franchise stores, market resources are very rich.

This is not difficult to explain. In April 2017, shortly after entering Thailand, MINISO Group opened its largest flagship store in the world in the core business district of Bangkok, with an area of 900 square meters.

"in the layout of the global market, our strategic choice is to operate directly for a single large market headquarters, such as Indonesia, India, the United States and Canada, to focus on resources. And other markets need to establish a partnership with agents to develop. MINISO Group said in charge of overseas business. At present, MINISO Group has also specially set up direct subsidiaries in India and Indonesia, two very important single strategic markets.

02 the price is 60% lower at most

Bilibili Inc., a Korean up owner, "Korean Tak Brother" once made a video of visiting MINISO Group store in South Korea with friends. After entering the store, 11 yuan post-it notes, 15 yuan headphones. These goods, which are much lower than the price level in South Korea, made the up owner, a friend who was shopping in MINISO Group for the first time, shout "cheap".

At the end of the video, the up owner compared the prices of goods listed in MINISO Group stores in China and South Korea and concluded, "before, I thought the prices of these products would be higher in South Korea. After visiting the store, I found that the prices were basically the same, and they were also very cheap." "

This is a copy of MINISO Group's "low price" principle overseas. In Ye Guofu's view, as far as the general consumer psychology is concerned, regardless of nationality, skin color, or class, everyone has the mentality of "spending less and buying better."

In order to maintain price advantage in more than 80 markets around the world, MINISO Group continued to control costs from upstream suppliers.

In the development model, MINISO Group to F2C + physical store model (goods produced by the factory directly to the sales terminal), from the supply side to control costs. After going out to sea, the scope of this cooperation has been further expanded.

It is understood that most of MINISO Group's goods are purchased directly from more than 800 suppliers around the world, such as essence supplier Qihuaton, Italian make-up factory Yingtri and so on.

MINISO Group has local direct procurement projects in most overseas markets, such as India, Indonesia, the United States, Brazil, Singapore and so on. In MINISO Group's three major supply markets-China, India and Vietnam-brands will produce according to different categories and combined with local manufacturing advantages. At present, all overseas markets are equipped with independent standard warehouses to make the market supply more timely.

"We all have a certain proportion of local purchases in overseas markets, and the proportion of local purchases varies in different markets. On the one hand, some countries have local production requirements for the products of foreign retailers, such as India; on the other hand, different overseas markets have different access standards for goods, and we enrich the categories of goods in local stores by way of local procurement. MINISO Group said in charge of overseas business.

Larger stores in the global market also bring greater economies of scale. At the present stage, taking advantage of the global demand for goods, MINISO Group places a large number of orders with suppliers at one time, so that the average production cost can be diluted. When the goods are produced from the factory and sent directly to the sales terminal, there is no middleman to raise the price. Can guarantee the low price of the store. For example, in Malta, where MINISO Group just entered at the end of July, 65 per cent of goods will be priced within $5.

In addition, even for high-priced peripheral products, MINISO Group's pricing is relatively low. For example, the joint products launched by MINISO Group and Marvel in Singapore are mainly priced between S $3 and S $9.9 (about 15,049.5 yuan), which has a big price advantage compared with similar products on the market.

No matter any country or region overseas, MINISO Group follows the same pricing principle, that is, the highest performance-to-price ratio of similar products in the market. The relevant person in charge of MINISO Group's overseas business introduced it to Haiwang, taking the Indonesian market as an example to further illustrate, "compared with bags, digital accessories and travel products sold in the Jakarta market, the price of MINISO Group's similar products in this market is 35% lower than 60%. Absolute price advantage can greatly reduce the choice cost of local users. "

Ye Guofu believes that after the epidemic, the consumption behavior of many overseas young groups has also changed, and rational consumption has gradually replaced "conspicuous consumption", mainly based on basic consumption such as daily necessities.

03 set up a prayer room in the store

Artha Gading Shopping Mall in Jakarta, Indonesia, one of the largest shopping malls in the city, is located in the bustling northern business district, where young people gather. In May 2017, MINISO Group opened his largest store in Indonesia at that time, with an area of 573 square meters.

In this store, in addition to the regular goods display and cashier and storage area, an inconspicuous setting is a prayer room for Indonesian employees. In Indonesia, the "land of thousands of islands", most of its citizens believe in Islam, as well as Christianity, Catholicism, Hinduism, and so on, respecting the religious beliefs and cultural customs of local employees. Setting up a prayer room in the construction of the store is only a microcosm of MINISO Group's localization in accordance with local conditions.

In terms of personnel structure, the relevant person in charge of MINISO Group's overseas business said that in the early stage of the development of the Indonesian market, MINISO Group set up a local training system and built a local talent incubation base in order to improve the situation of "disobedience between soil and water". Continue to recruit and train Indonesians as employees and increase the proportion of local employees.

In order to understand the consumers of the Indonesian local consumer market, MINISO Group conducted detailed user research during the three years since he entered the market, and has made many product adjustments on this basis.

MINISO Group, a person in charge of Southeast Asian marketing, told Haowang that MINISO Group consumers in Indonesia are obviously different from those in other countries. Single women under the age of 30 account for 90% of their users. and user portraits are clear: Indonesian women who are young and fashionable, walk at the forefront of the trend, have a certain economic level but rational consumption, are active in social networks, rely heavily on mobile phones, and dare to try new things. For bags, perfume, skin care, beauty tools and other products show obvious love, "basic digital products, seasonal textiles are also good." "

Combined with such user portraits, MINISO Group focuses on subdividing and building goods in the Indonesian market and adopts many ways to cater to the market. For example, he first tries to retain more than 20 best-selling items among MINISO Group's annual 10 million subdivision categories, including satchel, women's perfume, shoulder bag, ear-in headphones, nail polish and so on. At the same time, the team developed local direct mining to meet the needs of Indonesian users, as a supplement, "this proportion accounts for 15%." "

This targeted localized product development not only improves the SKU fit of MINISO Group Indonesia market with high efficiency, but also enhances users' acceptance of its brand. It is understood that MINISO Group has nearly 150 stores in Java, Sumatra, Bali and other major islands and more than 70 cities, with a market share of more than 70 percent. At the beginning of landing in Jakarta, after three hours of trial operation, the turnover of the three stores exceeded 100 million rupiah, and the sales of the three stores reached 550 million rupiah that day.

From team building, commodity production to marketing promotion, MINISO Group needs to find the optimal solution of methodology suitable for various overseas markets in the process of going out to sea.

Take South Korea, where star-chasing culture prevails, where MINISO Group sponsored the 31st Golden record Awards ceremony as soon as he entered the market, which is one of the well-known annual music events in South Korea. With this sponsorship event, MINISO Group has a certain degree of discussion among the groups that follow South Korean idols, especially the MINISO Group chicken doll held by members of the Korean boy band EXO in their acceptance speech, which has become a hot product in South Korean stores.

In addition, MINISO Group also implanted popular South Korean dramas such as "Ghost" and "when you are Sleeping". The location of "Ghost"-MINISO Group's store in Rakuten World, South Korea, has directly become one of the places where fans sign in.

The continuous precipitation of this localization methodology has become a major premise for MINISO Group to gain a firm foothold after entering various overseas markets.

At the present stage, MINISO Group has successively entered more than 80 countries in Asia, Africa, America and Europe. Over the past five years, MINISO Group has maintained an average rate of opening about one store a day, with most stores covering many countries along the "Belt and Road Initiative" route. Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East are MINISO Group's three major overseas regional markets.

In the first half of this year, MINISO Group stepped up his expansion in the European market, opening new stores in Spain, Romania, Hungary, Turkey and the Netherlands. MINISO Group opened its first store in the Maltese capital Valletta on July 29th, and MINISO Group is expected to add three more stores in Malta this year.

While vigorously laying out overseas channels, MINISO Group is also building online business in overseas markets. "more than 90% of our overseas markets have already laid out online business." The relevant person in charge of MINISO Group further added, "overseas does not have such a mature e-commerce environment at home, and it has not taken us a long time to prepare this area, so the proportion of online sales is not high for the time being. "

In 2018, MINISO Group received the first round of external investment from Tencent and Hillhouse Capital, totaling 1 billion yuan. After this round of financing was completed, MINISO Group accelerated his overseas expansion plan and launched the "100 million Store Plan", which will open 10000 stores in 100 countries.

Now two years later, this medium-term goal has basically completed the part of "hundred countries", but there is still a certain distance from "Wandian". After the epidemic has hit the global offline retail industry, and after the adjustment of agents in countries such as Canada, MINISO Group still faces more tests if they want to accelerate their run on the sea and also ensure that they do not "deform" in the course of rapid expansion.