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7- 1 1 is a convenience store with thousands of stores in China. However, to really understand why this groundbreaking convenience store is so successful in Japan and China, it depends on getting close to the story of its founder. The book "The Philosophy of Retail" is not only a vivid biography of Suzuki Wenmin, the founder of 7- 1 1, but also reveals 7-1's unique understanding of business and retail.
First, the initial heart: the first principle 7- 1 1
Suzuki's first principle is not just to start a business, but to start from his own work. As a young man from the grass roots, although he is full of ideals and business inspiration, he failed to find his position in the first company, Dong Fan Company. He used his market research to design a new marketing plan for the company. But all I got was the minister's cold reply, "You don't have to worry about this anymore."
It may also be Suzuki's own first principle that created the first enterprise standard after 7- 1 1.
After leaving Oriental Publishing Company, Suzuki did not give up active learning. Later, I entered the Ito Hall with less than 500 people at that time and took a job of business development by mistake. His first stop on a business trip was America. In the late 1960s, he was sent to California by the company, and it was on a street in California that Suzuki first met 7- 1 1.
Only at that time, 7- 1 1 was an authentic American enterprise, and its parent company was a southern company. Suzuki paid attention to 7- 1 1 because he found that the logic of this convenience store was different from that of ordinary shopping malls at that time-shopping malls wanted to be big and 7-1/wanted to be small. Suzuki is keenly aware that in Japan, where the aging was serious at that time, the business concept of 7- 1 1 providing convenience for consumers was advanced, even advanced-because in Japan at that time, the biggest shopping trouble for many elderly people was that shopping malls were always too far away from their homes. For the elderly, it is obviously not so convenient to go to a big shopping mall once a week to "sweep" and "stock up". Along this line of thinking, if there is a small shop in front of the elderly to meet their basic shopping needs every day, it will greatly solve the pain point of shopping for the elderly.
Based on the above research and judgment, Suzuki convinced the management of Yanghuatang of the importance of 7- 1 1 to the future development strategy of the enterprise, and through its own continuous efforts, it finally promoted 7- 1 1 to cross the Pacific Ocean and come to Japan from the United States.
Suzuki Wenmin believes that both the vision of the enterprise and the organization and guidance of employees should adhere to principles. This principle is what enterprises should do and should continue to do in their business strategy. Under the guidance of this principle, enterprises can continuously optimize their products, operations and management around their goals. Suzuki called this "principle" the "first principle". And 7- 1 1, under the leadership of Suzuki Wenmin, also defines the first principle of business strategy as "providing convenience and continuously providing convenience".
Two: Play: "Don't step out of jiangdong district."
On the basis of the first principle, 7- 1 1 is constantly based on how to improve the competitiveness of products and services, on the other hand, it is also committed to creating specific marketing programs. 1974, Ito Yokado reached an agreement with American Southern Company: American Southern Company agreed that Ito Yokado would open 1200 stores within eight years.
After obtaining the franchise of Southern Company, Suzuki has formulated several important measures, the first and most fundamental of which is the centralized strategy. In Suzuki's words, never set foot in Tokyo jiangdong district!
Why does Suzuki attach so much importance to the centralization of shopping malls? You know, in fact, 7- 1 1 has always adhered to the strategy of centralization since then-for example, even though thousands of stores have been opened outside Japan, many counties and cities in Shikoku Island of Japan are determined not to open one because they do not meet the standards for opening stores. Although this is another story, it is also in the same strain.
Suzuki's answer is clear and specific. He believes that adhering to the centralized strategy of convenience stores has three important advantages:
First, logistics can keep up;
Second, form a brand advantage;
Third, promotion does not require much effort, and it is easy to promote policies for each store.
Under the guidance of the above three very specific business strategies, Suzuki's centralized strategy has been well implemented. It was not until 199 1 that Suzuki Wenmin was able to acquire the American Southern Company, which also changed 7- 1 1 from an American company to a Japanese company.
From Suzuki's insistence on "never stepping out of jiangdong district", on the one hand, we can see the prudence of business decision makers, careful study of the market, and the most reasonable play of their own strategies. On the other hand, we can also see that Suzuki is constantly dismantling and refining the enterprise's strategy, so that the business strategy is no longer empty talk: he dismantled the "continuous convenience" of the first principle into the implementation of centralized strategy to better serve consumers, and then tapped the three advantages of centralized strategy, so that the implementation of all strategic issues lies in whether the best dismantling method of the strategy can be found in the implementation; To test whether a strategy is really valuable, the standard of evaluation is nothing more than whether such a strategy can really be disassembled.
Third, innovation: the height of innovation lies in the tenacity of persistence.
During the operation of 7- 1 1, Suzuki Wenmin created many innovative management methods, which were completely unheard of at that time, and some of them were even considered to be whimsical. For example, the conventional way of traditional shops is to purchase goods from suppliers in bulk, but Suzuki believes that this is not conducive to the preservation of products, so it insists on small-scale distribution by suppliers; In the process of distribution, he took temperature as the only food classification standard, which led to many competing suppliers' products being put together and needed their cooperation, and then their products were transported to the store at 7- 1 1. More boldly, the store opened a banking service of 7- 1 1, but the bank only insisted on providing one service-providing paper money for red envelopes for weddings and funerals and charging a lower handling fee. ...
When asked how these seemingly whimsical plans were finally realized, Suzuki simply insisted. For example, when suppliers are angry about putting their products and competitors' products in the same car, Suzuki will visit and persuade suppliers to settle accounts for them: such a plan has no influence on their sales, because 7- 1 1 was almost the only convenience store that was open all year round at that time, which gave suppliers more shipping channels, and finally the suppliers cooperated with Suzuki's proposal after weighing the pros and cons. For another example, the idea of opening such a strange bank has always been puzzled by many managers of 7- 1 1, and Suzuki explained that it is the company's long-term and strategy to provide unexpected convenience, create surprises and let consumers form new shopping habits.
It can be said that the innovations of Suzuki and 7- 1 1 have never been on paper or behind closed doors, but at the same time they have not lost their persistence because of other people's opinions. As Suzuki Wenmin said, this is persistence. There is no right or wrong business strategy and management mode of an enterprise, only the level is high or low.
In the book Philosophy of Retail, we actually see not only the story of an entrepreneur, but also the process of 7- 1 1 from obscurity to becoming a global convenience store leader. The deeper level is how a person and an enterprise achieve each other and think about each other, which brings a lot of torture and tests to each other because of the process of starting a business. I hope this book can make everyone think about the interactive relationship between enterprise, management and personal work, study and development, and let us see some deeper propositions after busy work.