Podcast note: 7. About LIFEASE

This blog is the note and review about the podcast for 两个穿着严选拖鞋的人聊严选 in 疯投圈.

Podcast link

LIFEASE

The property

product: Like Muji, filter out high quality product

surprise: It involved into manufacturing and high quality product not only traffic to cash model

Three reasons

supply chain: China has powerful supply chain -> support Alibaba while Ebay in USA is not much powerful

new brand with high quality: consumer desire for consuming high quality and reasonable price

NetEase focus on product quality manufacturing

The operation in NetEase

Design -> produce -> quality inspection -> Logistics ->sell & customer service

NetEase: quality inspection -> Logistics ->sell & customer service

other online platform: Logistics ->sell & customer service

Supplier concern

Supplier concerns the stability and cash flow (when can we get the cash?) -> NetEase has the advantage for it. (cash flow huge)

Why NetEase focus on Daily Necessities?

Different cross the countries: Daily Necessities is most different

However, for clothing, makeup, people also can purchase that in China.

Consumer trend (culture)

Why Daily Necessities is so popular in Japan.

In 70s, Japanese can purchase most of things (cars, houses), so that they tend to purchase the something to express their personality and in-house design.

In 80s, Muji starts in Japan.

It also depends on culture:

In United State, DIY items are popular.

In Japan, because the size of house is smaller, they prefer to purchase the small items with design.

China shares similar culture with Japan. It looks following Japan consuming culture.

However, Muji is single style, standardized. More personalized and diverse products would be popular in the future.

Luxury goods

Below 1% monthly income, the price is ok for Luxury goods.

Luxury goods: for $10 item, after branding it, it can sell as $40.

Muji

Experience is hard to replace but product is easily replaced.

For Muji, the sales in China is larger than in Japan and there are many competitive products.

Therefore, Muji decides to run Muji hotel for experience.

E-Commerce Trend:

Before

Platform is the king, channel is everything, controlling users

After

Running the branding, product quality

LIFEASE does not care channel and focus on the brand (product quality)

LIFEASE manufactoring

Xiaomi v.s. LIFEASE

Xiaomi is good at Xiaomi phones and already has bargaining power for suppliers.

If Xiaomi wants to do smart homes, it is easy for suppliers, just add some deals -> good at manufacturing

LIFEASE is good at traffic (LIFEASE emails), Daily Necessitie.

Conclusion

LIFEASE has weapon (large traffic) -> It can do NetEase

Xiaomi has weapon (phone, supply chain purchase ability) -> supply chain

For advices for startups

Startups must have niche!

niche: price / cost is best, no one can replace you!

Like even LIFEASE has core product: slipper. Even LIFEASE has many SKUs, the items are slippers in homepage