Author | Chi Xiaoyu

Editor Li Yiming

Source | Ma Ye Finance

Once upon a time, having a pair of beautiful high heels was one of every girl's dreams. Nowadays, women wearing high heels are rarely seen in buses, subways, offices and even shopping circles.

With the decline of the trend of high-heeled shoes, the traditional women's shoes enterprises that once dominated the world with high-heeled shoes have ushered in great changes. Even Daphne, who specializes in high-heeled shoes, saw her income in the first half of 2002120,000 yuan in the same period last year drop sharply to 50 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 77%.

Looking back on 20 17, belle, the "king of shoes", suddenly withdrew from the market, and Daphne closed the store with an average annual number of more than 1000. Taking the loss of high-heeled shoes as the main line will lead to the danger of changing the marketing model and design concept of the whole traditional women's shoes industry.

Dilemma At present, some enterprises choose to find another way and diversify their operations, while others choose to follow suit and move towards the road of transformation.

The time has come to 2022. How are the Daphnes now?

Zhang Ailing once recalled in the book Children's Words Are Unbridled: "At the age of eight, I want to comb my hair, and at the age of ten, I want to wear high heels." Contemporary urban white-collar workers said: "When I entered the computer room in high heels, the wind in the computer room blew me into old cold legs."

According to the survey results of American Orthopaedic Association and American National Ankle Association, 80% of the women surveyed felt foot pain, 74% of which was due to wearing high heels. In July last year, one of the "giorgio armani women's high heels" was recalled by the defective product recall department of the administrative service center of Shanghai Municipal Market Supervision Administration because the bending performance of the steel hook did not meet the requirements of relevant standards.

In recent years, the change is obvious-more and more women don't like to wear high heels. Talking about the reasons behind it, some insiders pointed out that the health problems caused by wearing high heels for a long time bear the brunt, and the fast-paced workplace work in 996 makes the existence of high heels more obvious. More importantly, with the rise of women's independent consciousness, more and more women no longer tolerate the male aesthetic perspective behind high heels. Japanese photo model and freelance writer Sukeyoshi Ishikawa once launched a campaign to take off high heels #KuToo, calling on the Japanese government to prohibit employers from forcing women to wear high heels. The petition collected more than 20,000 signatures and was submitted to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

When women are no longer keen on high heels, where should the traditional footwear industry, which once relied on women's shoes for a living, go?

The blogger wrote coldly: "After about 20 15, I put down my obsession with beauty and began to pursue comfort and convenience. I buy two pairs of sports shoes every year and wear them all year round. I walk like a fly. "

20 15 is a node.

Take Daphne, a Taiwanese-funded women's shoe group, which has been the "first brand of women's shoes in mainland China" for many years, as an example. In the past five years from 20 15, its average annual number of closed stores reached 1256. During this period, Daphne achieved revenue of HK$ 8.38 billion, HK$ 6.5 billion, HK$ 5.2/kloc-0.0 billion, HK$ 4.65438+0.3 billion and HK$ 2.65438+0.3 billion respectively, with losses of HK$ 379 million, HK$ 8.65438+0.9 billion, HK$ 734 million and HK$ 994 million respectively.

In 2020, Daphne decided to close all offline stores. At that time, Daphne's share price had plummeted by 98% compared with the historical peak, and the company's total market value had dropped from HK$ 654.38+09 billion at the peak to HK$ 350 million.

Another brand of women's shoes, red dragonfly, has not been spared. Red Dragonfly Store has been in an open and closed state since it was listed on 20 15. As of 20 18, the number of stores has decreased by 5 compared with the year of listing, but in fact, the Red Dragonfly Store has undergone a major change. From 20 15 to 20 18, 483 stores, 672 stores, 600 stores and 469 stores were closed, and 2,224 stores were closed in four years, with an average of 1.5 stores closed every day.

Belle Group, which once occupied half of the category of women's shoes in department stores, was cancelled by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at 4: 00 pm on July 27th, 20 17 after its revenue growth slowed down to about 2% for two consecutive years and its net profit even showed negative growth. The first generation of shoe king suddenly withdrew from the market.

The trend of losing high heels is not limited to China. According to the retail tracking data of American market research institutions, the sales of women's sports shoes increased by 37% in 20 17 years, while the sales of high-heeled shoes decreased by 1 1% in the same period. Among them, the sales of high-heeled shoes with a heel height of 7.6 cm and above declined the fastest.

Today, the situation that the development of traditional women's shoes is trapped still exists. The women's shoe brand's financial report last Saturday showed that as of the first three quarters of 20021,the company's net profit returned to its mother was-65438+46 million yuan, down 28.77% year-on-year; Non-net profit deducted was-65.438+52 billion yuan, down 35.29% year-on-year.

"Changes in consumer demand will lead to dumbbell-shaped growth in the market, and the trend of consumption polarization is obvious. High-end brands and low-end brands will grow rapidly, while a large number of intermediate brands will drop significantly. " Huajing Industrial Research Institute's "Analysis Report on Women's Shoes Market in China in 2020" points out that in recent years, driven by the overall luxury market, women's shoes of foreign brands with light luxury and strong sense of design have a higher growth rate, and with the enhancement of consumers' purchasing power and richer and more rational purchase demand, luxury goods will gradually give way to high-end design brands with reasonable prices. At the same time, due to the growing awareness of consumers' fashion collocation, the brand of affordable women's shoes with heavy styles has developed rapidly in recent years. Many local brands have fierce competition in the middle and low grades, mainly focusing on product fashion, cost performance and other dimensions.

Compared with the loneliness of high-heeled shoes, in recent years, driven by the awareness of healthy life, the sports and fitness crowd is growing day by day, and sports shoes are highly sought after. The 20021second quarterly report of Anta group shows that the retail amount of Anta brand has increased by 35%-40% compared with the same period of last year; In the first half of 20021year, this figure also increased by 35%-40% year-on-year. In addition, with the continuous subdivision of women's shoes, old shoes, canvas shoes, loafers and other hot-selling shoes are also carving up the traditional women's shoes market.

Sadly, ten years ago, in order to focus on the development of women's shoes, Daphne gave up the agency rights of sports shoes and clothing brands, including Nike and Adidas. Nowadays, sports style is still a hot category, and Belle's Topbo Sports is even listed again.

In addition, the rise of rookie also brings pressure to traditional women's shoes enterprises. For example, the brand of high-heeled shoes "7or9" has completed financing twice a year. "7or9", which was officially put into operation on February 20 18, completed the millions of angel round financing exclusively invested by Nut Capital in September 20 19, and completed the Pre-A round financing exclusively invested by Zhonghui Capital again in July 2020, amounting to tens of millions of yuan.

It is worth noting that "7or9" is different from the traditional shoe enterprises in China, and it was developed through online channels. According to public information, more than 90% of the revenue of the "7or9" brand comes from online. At the beginning, it relied on the private domain traffic of more than 200 WeChat groups (200-300 people) and the promotion of e-commerce platforms to enter the public eye.

Insiders pointed out that with the rise of e-commerce platform, the traditional footwear industry had to go online, but its thinking failed to keep up with the trend, resulting in repeated layout mistakes. Take Daphne for example. When e-commerce platforms such as JD.COM, Taobao and Vipshop were in full swing, Daphne chose to invest in 10 with Baidu. With the low-price strategy, Yaodian 100 maintained a good development momentum for several months in the early stage of development, but the financing quickly burned out and continued to "burn money", even dragging down Daphne's e-commerce department as a whole. The latter's e-commerce business was once "stagnant" in media reports. Since then, Daphne has been defeated in the melee of e-commerce, and her first defeat was ushered in 20 15.

After the online defeat, Daphne positioned her products in the high-end route and regarded the shopping mall counters as important sales places. Online channels have become Daphne's tool for clearing inventory, and her online store has been selling off-season products for almost 365 days. This not only greatly damaged the brand image, but also made Daphne fall into the first loss in 10 years in 20 15 years.

"The outdated and backward product design has made many women's shoes, including Daphne and Belle, still have their own classic models after years of precipitation." Analysts in the industry pointed out that the aesthetic migration of women's shoes has certainly brought an impact to the whole women's shoes industry, but the deep-seated reason is that the traditional footwear industry is still conservative, and neither the product nor the sales model can keep up with the development of the times. The abandonment of high heels is a phenomenon. What the traditional shoe industry really needs is the change of thinking and marketing mode.

At present, the traditional footwear industry has begun a long road of transformation.

Some enterprises began to weaken women's shoes business and turned to diversified development. Take Saturday as an example. From 20 10 to 20 16, the performance continued to be sluggish on Saturday. Due to strategic considerations, the company name was changed from "Foshan Saturday Shoes Co., Ltd." to "Saturday Co., Ltd." at the beginning of 20 16, and then it began to increase its investment in Saturday Internet business. And acquired Wang Yao Network on 20 19 to develop Internet advertising and social e-commerce services. As of the first half of 20021,Roy's online sales GMV (e-commerce turnover) reached about 3.6 billion yuan, about four times that of the same period last year.

There are also players who died on the track and found the rising curve again. For example, in 2020, Red Dragonfly actively tried a new marketing model and spread the brand concept through the founder's live broadcast; Live broadcast through brand spokespersons to attract fan traffic; Through the live broadcast of celebrities on the head network, the explosion sales will be promoted, and the online store will experience drainage to realize online and offline marketing. According to the data of its 2020 annual report, the proportion of online channel sales of Dragonfly increased from 23.7% in 20 19 to 30.8% in 2020, and the annual online sales increased by 12.68% year-on-year, among which the online sales in the second half of the year increased by 73.2% compared with the first half.

Belle, who owns many brands of women's shoes, began to make products that make young people scream. In terms of brand connotation, image and communication, it has been greatly upgraded according to the needs and preferences of young people. For example, upgrading the original Belle Red logo to a simple and neat all-black cool logo is more in line with the aesthetics and attitudes of young people. At the same time, in the external image, through the official announcement of Chris Lee as the new spokesperson, consumers can also feel the brand connotation of Belle's constant innovation and change. At the same time, Belle actively created explosions, and its explosive "whale shoes" sold more than 50,000 pairs during June18, 2020, helping Belle's official flagship store become the first in Tmall fashion footwear.

"A thin camel is bigger than a horse." Industry analysts pointed out that women's shoes still need the market, but how to get their cake back is not just to reduce the heel from 7 cm to 3 cm. After breaking through the limitation of thinking, the traditional footwear industry still has room for development.