In March of this year, Neiman Marcus strategic investment of American time-honored boutique

The press conference on the charm of the membership shopping website is full of questions. It is not clear why the old department store chose it.

As a form of entry into China, as well as a foreign enterprise that has never opened business in China, is Neiman Marcus enough to understand Chinese consumers?

In the early 2011, China

Electric business is showing explosive growth. Local B2C websites are in the ascendant. Foreign giants are coming in.

However, after less than a year, along with Luisa via Roma, Shopbop launched Chinese services, Net-A-Porter acquired familiar customer network, Macy 's department store and Jiapin network reached a strategic cooperation, and other good news, another group of rapidly rising e-commerce sites are facing a sharp layoff or even close door thanks to the danger.

Contrary to all expectations, the strong demand for luxury goods in China's new rich community has not been reflected in the online shopping field at the same time, and the expected profit is so difficult. At this time, China's luxury electric business market is becoming more and more competitive and difficult to stand on.

Consumers' misjudgement has become a fatal injury to the large number of fallen luxury goods providers. Nowadays, the most purchasing power Chinese consumers are still used to buy luxury goods overseas, while smart shoppers are eyeing Taobao purchasing.

In the eyes of the vast majority of people, online shopping means lower prices and even unimaginable low prices. Columnist Ye Zhengqi asked in an article: can luxury online stores sell "cabbage prices"? In fact, this is the common doubt of most Chinese luxury consumers. When the answer is obviously "no", local luxury shopping websites are almost meaningless to consumers.

The other weakness of luxury electric providers is that they usually do not have enough strong brand relationships. Apart from industry giants like Net-A-Porter, proud luxury brands are unwilling to lower their noble heads in front of luxury electric providers. The problem with them is that these websites that sell top luxury goods and designer brands often have a single product, insufficient supply, no attractive discounts, or even websites that can only survive by selling discounted seasonal fashion products.

Most Chinese luxury shopping websites are far less attractive than Taobao. Taobao has formed a complete ecological model. When it begins to enter the high-end market, it has already had strong support.

Back to the original problem.

Foreign luxury electric providers, represented by Neiman Marcus, do they know enough about Chinese consumers? I believe every company must have done extensive market research before they hit a large amount of dollars. In order to adapt to the Chinese market, overseas electricity suppliers have adopted the way of cooperation with local companies.

Perhaps the development prospects of these e-commerce companies are not good, but for the outsiders, the most valuable part is the company's team and talents who know the local market well.

In the face of fierce competition and fast changing business environment, strong financial support enables these alliances to have stronger ability to resist risks. They can hardly wait for the market to develop a more mature online consumer group.

On the other hand, the connections with Europe and the United States also enable them to get more support from the brand and really provide the same choice as offline shopping.

Whether the combination of outsiders and locals can help to break the status quo of China's luxury electricity supplier market? We will wait and see.

In the face of increasingly fierce competition in the B2C market, some enterprises have begun to try the new O2O mode (Online to Offline commerce online offline e-commerce). The largest US Department Store Macy s has invested 15 million US dollars in the Chinese market to establish entity VIP stores and establish corresponding European and American networks to attract consumers at the same time.

If the online shopping can not bring real experience is the biggest obstacle for luxury goods providers to get over, the combination of online and offline may usher in a favorable turn for the whole market.