First of all, we should make clear the goal of channel construction. At the beginning of the establishment of Blue Imagination, the goal was to become a textbook publisher. Our mission is to serve the education industry, and our vision is to build a national brand. We should start with textbooks, but not limited to textbooks. Because the channel has its enjoyment, there are many things that can be circulated after the channel is established, but they are all related to the education industry.
So how to build a mid-disk? We are the coexistence of self-built channels and cooperative channels.
In fact, if we want to study distribution, I personally think we should pay attention to the sales of home appliance enterprises. In channel construction, our country is the first home appliance enterprise to make a difference. Publishing houses are manufacturing industries, and so are Haier, TCL, Gree and other home appliance enterprises. Haier has 42 companies in China, TCL has built many specialty stores, and Gree has established joint ventures ... These home appliance companies have adopted the way of self-built channels to make their products sell better. Higher education society is somewhat similar to the household appliance industry, and has also carried out the work of self-built channels. Self-built channels are a long process, and we also want to let the red flag spread all over the country within one year, but it has not been successful. We have established our own channels in nine provinces, two of which are not general agents yet, and only seven provinces are general agents. In other words, at the same time of self-built channels, a large number of sales have to be completed by cooperation, and dealers can't get around it. You need someone to help you achieve the last mile. I judge that self-built channels and cooperative channels may coexist for a long time.
For self-built channels, Blue Imagination adopts this model: head office-subsidiary-university bookstore. At present, the head office has not become a mid-market yet, but our subsidiary is indeed a regional mid-market Last year, its sales volume was 240 million, of which 654.38+300 million were sales of textbooks outside the higher education edition, which means that other editions sold more. Channel is * * *, I think, the competition of each publishing house should be upstream competition. Especially for some small and medium-sized publishing houses, self-built channels have high maintenance costs and are not cost-effective.
The last terminal is called the University Bookstore, and Blue Imagination is pushing the University Bookstore now. I am a firm promoter of this matter, which is also a goal put forward by our president when Blue Imagination was established in 2003. I was lucky to visit America in 2005. More than 98% of the textbooks in the United States are sold through bookstores established by universities. However, the model of building a store is different. Bookstores are 50% cooperative stores, 30% self-built by schools, and the rest are built in other ways. There are about 4 100 universities in the United States. How many university bookstores are there? In other words, some universities have two university bookstores. After I visited that year, I decided in my heart that the present of America must be our future. The bookstore is located in the school, and the service should be the best, closest to the teachers and students. The university bookstore I have been to, 1000 square meters, two floors. The first floor is "warehouse-style", selling teaching materials and social books; Stationery is sold on the second floor. How much is the "warehouse"? Is to hang the teacher's name on the shelf. Students should find the teacher's name when buying textbooks, and then buy them according to the teacher's recommendation. At the same time, there are new books and second-hand books to choose from on the bookshelf.
The pattern of blue imagination is slightly different. Simply put, it is "store+resource platform+online bookstore". Our store is similar to American university bookstores, and it also sells teaching materials, general books and stationery. Our resource platform is actually to integrate the resources of publishing houses and create more value for the school. Blue Imagination Now all bookstores cooperate with schools, and all textbooks are supplied by us. In fact, it is a combination of wholesale and retail. The difficulty of online bookstore is payment and logistics. Logistics, we have a physical store to deliver goods, and we can also pay in the store, because teachers and students are in our store.
Our self-built channel thinking is the thinking of industrial chain. By opening this chain, we can serve the upstream and downstream and let the self-built channels move forward steadily.
Judging from the current textbook market, most of the sales are through cooperative channels. Our cooperation with other channels may be the same as our cooperation with our own employees. For example, why this employee works in your club and your company is nothing more than three aspects: salary retention, career retention and emotional retention. This is the same as other channels of cooperation: first, can he see the benefits of cooperation with you; Second, whether his cooperation with you has developed; Third, is he comfortable working with you?
This spring, we set up a "regional consortium", which is actually a "growth alliance". We select three to five A-level and B-level customers in each province to become the main members of our consortium. Together with our company and our sales director, they will do a good job in the market in that province, make good sales and plan the future. When the consortium was established, it emphasized three words: stick to a strategy, innovate a model and build a culture.
The so-called "strategy" means that we are partners with other manufacturers. There are two trends in the development of channel cooperation: one is to pay more attention to customer experience and be closer to customers; The first is to form a strategic partnership with the channel. At present, because the sales of teaching materials are on credit, the quality and quantity of channels, especially the "quality" of channels, I think are determined by relationships. As long as the relationship is good, the "quality" of the channel may be guaranteed. We have cooperative relations with other suppliers, and we are a team. The so-called "model", I think, if our consortium works well, it is loose first, and then "almost central". Members should hold regular meetings to guide this market regularly. The so-called "building culture" means that our partners come from different places, some are enterprises, some are individuals, and each side has different perspectives. To cooperate, we must first have a culture of cooperation. If all this is done, the consortium can operate, which will be beneficial to the adjustment of sales and local market. Then when building cooperation channels, our starting point is to unite to create value for dealers and build a win-win channel.
Blue Imagination was established in 2003, and we have been committed to building a professional company with professional channels and professionals. There is a book that says that professionalism is the focus on spirit and the focus on customers, which is a personal specialty. The so-called "spiritual concentration" is whether you can persist in doing one thing. It is difficult for us to be a bookstore or a company, and it is a manifestation of professionalism to stick to it.
Serve a good school in all directions.
We have done the following work to serve the school well: First, we have adopted mortgage and quota management for dealers, which was first proposed by us in 2006. At the end of last year, we launched the dealer's commercial credit evaluation system, which scored the dealer's credit through seven or eight indicators, thus dividing the customers into three categories: A, B and C. Why do we divide them like this? Because our teaching materials are mainly sold on credit, considering that a customer runs away, there is no money. What should we do? He can only mortgage in advance, and the mortgage amount can be determined according to the level. Therefore, from the current operation, the situation is still relatively good. This is just a technical means to reduce our business risk to a relatively low level.
The second is market supervision. At the dealer conference held in Sanya in 2004, we took the lead in raising the banner of market norms. The so-called "market regulation" is to crack down on low-priced sales and vicious cross-selling. I think market supervision needs all publishers to do it together. If we don't pay attention to these behaviors and let them disrupt the market, it will be a great blow to the whole publishing industry.
The third is customer relationship management. The higher education society used ERP earlier. In my opinion, our sales should be technical, based on a technical platform, based on a database and accumulated. Through technical analysis, we can know exactly what the market is like, how much our sales fell in the first quarter, why, which subjects are more competitive in the market, and so on. Customer relationship management includes contract management, marketing management, 360-degree customer management, final statistical analysis report management and even activity management. Through activity management, we can know what the region has done and what the salesmen have done every month, which plays the role of performance appraisal. In short, we have a very good overall understanding of the sales situation through analysis.
The fourth is the flow of product information. I think this is not only for the school, but also for the publishing house. For schools, to highlight good teaching materials, we want to know where their products went, which province's market they occupied and which school they occupied, so that we have a goal in research and development. Therefore, for products, we ask for feedback. In fact, this is to do a good job for the upstream publishing house and improve the information service quality of the channel. In fact, what we want to do more is to pass the teaching material information to the downstream, especially the self-built channels. We have subsidiaries. If we can push the good teaching materials to the teaching materials department until the teachers in the school, our work will be done well and we will create unique value for our customers.
Fifth, the service of teaching resources. There is a saying in our blue imagination that our channels cover paper textbooks, social learning books, academic books, digital resources, teaching instruments and so on. This matter has been piloted by subsidiaries in seven provinces. Now, higher education is improving the teaching quality, and one of the links is the excellent course project. In order to enjoy the relevant resources, the Ministry of Higher Education has set up a resource platform, which is currently maintained by the Higher Education Society. A steady stream of resources are uploaded to this platform and downloaded by users. The teaching resources mentioned here are a part of "excellent teaching materials+subject websites+teaching resources", which means that we not only provide teaching materials, but also provide teaching resources.
Judging whether an industry is good or not depends on whether the added value of this industry is high or not, while the added value of products in the publishing industry is extremely low. At present, the competition of teaching materials is fierce, and the homogenization of products is serious, which is deeply understood by higher education society. Therefore, industries should be upgraded and enterprises should be transformed. Last year, our society proposed a transformation from a product economy to a service economy. I hope I can sell teaching resources in the future, so that products will have added value and services will be in demand. The mid-market can not only make money selling products, but also make money selling services. The Institute of Higher Education has developed some teaching products, which are currently being tried out in some provinces. In fact, this channel can also have more things circulating. In Hunan University the year before last, we conducted a pilot project in the form of "platform+resources". The platform is equivalent to a highway, and the resources are equivalent to cars. First build the platform, repair it to the school highway, and then sell the car. I deeply realize that it is best to sell the "car" produced by the school, let the academic affairs office take the lead and let the school teachers upload resources. In this way, these resources will sell well. If we can really do this, it will be a real transformation of the publishing house, so this year we plan to fully tap the channel potential and sell teaching supplies such as resources and teaching instruments.
In short, it is to build good channels and serve the school well. The so-called good channels are smooth and safe channels, and the so-called good service for schools is to provide personalized services for schools and highlight the value of information.
(Hu Tao: General Manager of Blue Imagination Book Distribution Co., Ltd., Higher Education Press)