“Today, designers have become the largest traffic entrance for home consumption, especially high-end home consumption.” Guo Xin, chairman of the Interior Design Committee of the China Construction Association, said bluntly that as consumers’ demand for home environments tends to be personalized ation, home decoration increasingly relies on the professional services of designers.
As early as many years ago, many brands in the ceramic industry launched an offensive towards the designer channel. Compared with the fine decoration and complete decoration channels, which mainly target customer groups with rigid needs, the customer group of the designer channel is obviously more high-end, with lower operating risks and more substantial returns, and it can also play a certain role in brand promotion and construction.
It is precisely because of this that almost every brand wants to go through the designer channel, but the actual situation is that there are thousands of troops crossing the single-plank bridge, and very few have actually achieved results. Many people in the industry shared their experiences and opinions about the designer channel with Zhongtaojun, from which we can discover several keys for brands to do well in the designer channel.
Recognition
Designer channels in the new era
At the end of September, at the Exploring the “Flow” of Pan-Home Furnishing Design - Pan-Home Furnishing Brand Design Channel Positioning and Operation Sharing Conference jointly hosted by the Haoxuequan, China Ceramics Network - Design Planet and Country Garden Century Riverside, Haoxuequan & Zhuchang Zheng Shousheng, the manager of the classroom brand, mentioned the changes in the designer channel from the 1.0 to the 3.0 era.
From 2010 to 2015, the designer channel was in the brand era of 1.0. This stage is a state of disorderly expansion. Some brands spend huge sums of money to organize large-scale design tours, European study tours and other designer activities, forming a certain influence in the circle. A large number of post-80s designers are also in This stage gradually rises.
From 2016 to 2020, the designer channel is in the production value era of 2.0. This stage is gradually changing from disorder to order. Designer activities are showing the phenomenon of a hundred flowers blooming. There are many forms of study tours, awards, courses, salons, etc., especially the talent show competitions, which have cultivated a large number of young designers born in the 1990s. teacher group.
In recent years, the home building materials industry, including ceramics, has accelerated its reshuffle under the impact of the epidemic. The overall consumer market has been greatly affected, and brands with a single channel have borne the brunt. Zheng Shousheng believes that designers canDao will begin to enter the 3.0 era of brand magnetic field after 2021. If a brand wants to deeply link with the designer group and form a competitive barrier at this stage, it needs to have core competitiveness, brand label and systematic operation capabilities.
Clear the logic
Designer channels require admission tickets
“The designer channel is difficult to establish, and it is not thankless to spend money and effort.” “I have mastered a certain amount of designer resources through designer activities, but cannot realize the conversion of output value.”…Many brands are in When working in the designer channel, you will encounter a similar situation. Even after a lot of trouble, you find that the problem is still "unsolvable", and finally choose to fade out of the designer channel.
In fact, not all brands are suitable to go through the designer channel. If you want to enter this field, you first need to find an "entry ticket" for the brand. You must know that a designer who can create high-quality living space must have taste, experience, and pursuit. They will only be attracted by things of the same frequency and height.
Liang Xueqing, general manager of Ouwen Lai Brand Marketing Center, believes that many brands have not succeeded in using designer channels. The fundamental reason is that the brand tone and brand culture are not consistent. This will be directly reflected in the products. If they are products that have no characteristics and are not differentiated enough, no matter how well the relationship with the designer is maintained, the designer will not use products with a "popular face".
As mentioned earlier, the designer channel is entering the era of brand magnetic field, and "magnetic field" is the key to a brand's success in attracting designers, and it mainly consists of three aspects. The first is a product with core competitiveness, which needs to meet the needs of a large house and can be used by the entire project; the second is to form a closed-loop technical service system, and a complete service system helps dealers complete resource transformation; third It is the brand label, which is often referred to as brand tone. Customers are obviously more willing to pay for brands with personality rather than mediocrity.
Value-led
How to deep link to a group of designers
Some people in the industry admitted thatIn other words, if a brand wants to go through the designer channel, it is not actually doing marketing, but doing social networking. The essence of social networking is value exchange. Liang Xueqing believes that the form of holding designer activities is not important, but the content is important. Taking design study tours as an example, the process of getting along with designers during the study tour is also a process of knowledge sharing and exchange. Only by meeting their needs from the designer's perspective can we exchange more value with designers.
If a brand has a user mindset and pays attention to user experience, it will find that the designer channel is not price-driven, but more about outputting brand concepts with design as the core. Especially high-end brands, these brands need to have the mindset of operating luxury goods and bring a sense of identity to customers through a lot of value creation.
For example, a professional and slightly accomplished designer must have his own understanding and pursuit of lifestyle, art of life, taste of life, etc. Some designers like coffee and red wine, and some designers like coffee and red wine. Some designers like fishing and golf, and some designers like calligraphy and musical instruments... If you don't have a basic understanding of these, there will inevitably be a lack of topics when communicating with designers.
There is a brand in the industry that has done a relatively good job in brand circle activities, called Nalai Micro-mat ceramic tiles. The brand will regularly organize designers to carry out Italian salon activities such as coffee and red wine. Through the sharing and exchange of life taste and knowledge, it will increase the stickiness with designers, thereby using designers to link to more high-end customers and achieve output value transformation. .
Find the right location
What role should dealers play
Looking at the entire industry, you will find that those brands that have done well through the designer channel have basically broken away from the role of material suppliers and iterated into brand owners. For dealers, the power of brand can also play a role in the development and construction of terminal channels. Not only that, if dealers want to establish a long-term, mutually empowering relationship with the designer community, they also need to find their own position.
What role do dealers play in the designer channel? First of all, dealers are operators. Zheng Shousheng believes that being a designer channel is to be a supply chain, and being a supply chain is equivalent to doing business. The essence of the business logic is "people × store × product × activity". This means dealers need to know how to build teams, promote products, build stores and host events.
Secondly, dealers are also service providers. Most of the current customers who are willing to pay for design are well-educated and high-income groups. Therefore, when designers choose materials, they pay special attention to the actual implementation effect. This means that in addition to using good materials as a stepping stone, dealers also need to establish a complete set of service processes and service standards to protect the implementation of products.
Finally, for the entire brand's dealer system, some individual dealers are role models, while others are learners. It is understood that when many brands promote the designer channel, they start with some dealers who have a foundation and strength. After setting benchmarks and creating a replicable model, they gradually help more dealers to incubate the designer channel.
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Relevant data from the National Bureau of Statistics and Aowei Cloud Network show that in 2021, 4.3 million houses nationwide will be decorated by independent designers and design agencies, accounting for approximately 19%. Obviously, the designer channel is important.
However, the designer channel is also difficult. The ceramic industry has never lacked brands that have risen to the challenge. They can always rely on the strength of the brand, the ability to innovate, and long-lasting endurance to step by step find their own characteristic development path.
