Glamour Sales receive a large investment from US based retailer Neiman Marcus. Can you tell us more about that?
Neiman Marcus invested in Glamour Sales for two purposes. Firstly, because they believed in flash sales in China, and half of investment was for that. Secondly, to launch their own full-price (e-commerce) business in China. Neiman Marcus then decided that their full-price move into China was probably a bit too early for the market’s needs and they decided to change the business model. Neiman Marcus’ own full-price e-commerce service has now relocated and so the to the US and there will be a Chinese website operating from Dallas to supply the Chinese customers.
Neiman MarcusがGlamour Salesに投資したのには、2つの狙いがあります。一つは、中国でのフラッシュセールの可能性を信じているからで、投資の半分はそれが理由です。もう一つの理由は、中国で定価（eコマース）販売を始めるためです。Neiman Marcusは、中国市場に定価販売で進出するには少し時期尚早であり、ビジネスモデルを変更することに決めたのです。Neiman Marcusの定価販売eコマースサービスはアメリカに移転している最中であり、中国の顧客に対応する中国語のサイトをダラスから運営するのです。
Neiman MarcusがGlamour Salesに出資した目的は2つある。第一に、Neima Marcusは中国でフラッシュセールスが成功すると確信しており、出資の半分はフラッシュセールス向けである。第二に、中国での定価販売ビジネス（eコマース）をローンチするためである。Neiman Marcusは、マーケットニーズから考えると、中国においては定価販売ビジネスへの移行は時期尚早であったと結論付け、ビジネスモデルを変更することを決定した。Neiman Marcus独自の定価販売eコマースサービスはアメリカに移転し、中国カスタマー向けの中国語ウェブサイトはダラスで運営する予定である。
Glamour Sales operates at the intersection of retail, fashion and technology, how do you balance the different needs of each industry and also find staff who can work across these areas?
I would say we began as a ‘retailer’ and the market forced us to become much more open minded and we are now spending much more time developing the (technology) ‘product’ so far as the web platform is concerned.
With staff, we first focused on people with a retail or fashion background who had skills like merchandising and customer service. Then we added an extra skill dimension which you could call ‘data sensitivity’, so this would include people with marketing, user experience, merchandising and obviously IT and finance people because they are all very data focused.
Now, we are focusing more and more on CRM and the integration and convergence with social networks.
マーチャンダイジングや顧客サービスの技術に優れた者に焦点をあてた。
そしてさらに、“データセンシティビティー”、つまりデータに関しても通じているスキルに長けている、つまりマーケティング、ユーザー体験、マーチャンダイジングともちろんITとファイナンスの人間のようにデータの扱いに強いスタッフ望んだ。
現在では我々は以前にも増してCRM、そしてソーシャルネットワークの統合と収束に焦点を合わせてきている。
現在我が社は、より一層CRM、およびソーシャルネットワークの統合とコンバージェンスに力を入れている。
The challenge today is tracking a customer who uses Glamour Sales via their phone in the morning, an ipad in the afternoon and desktop computer in the evening. Moreover, their use of social networks is changing all the time. Last year Weibo was clearly the dominant SNS platform in China and now this year its Wechat. A few years ago Google was still in China, now its gone! So tracking customer engagement, comments and buying etc. across multiple devices and platforms, to interact with her according to what she wants, through the channel she wants, when she wants while presenting a consistent Glamour Sales experience is critical.
This requires a very strong CTO who is constantly scouting and searching for what is happening [in tech], but its not only him. We developed a department called the BSM team which is specifically to interface between the marketing and IT teams [who may not always ‘get’ each other] and really their job is to scout and follow all the IT trends from mobile apps, payments, social commerce, mobile advertising and to them guide and push the direction that we should go towards.
ありがとうございます！！