How to make selling socks a big business?

Miss Lin's hometown is in Datang, Zhuji, a place that immediately reminds people of socks. Inthe socks market stalls of Datang Town, there are thousands of socks for wholesalers and retailers from all over the country to choose from.

However, in this market with a high concentration of commodities, Cai Shanni found that the commodities were highly homogenized, and black, white and gray occupied the main colors of the market. The merchants competed with each other on the price difference of a few decimal places. As her father said, this is already a very low-profit, hard-working business.

In Cai Shanni's eyes, young people pay attention to the matching of socks with the overall shape, and socks have become accessories as important as bags and earrings.

So, Miss Lin, who graduated from the Fashion Design Department of the China Academy of Art, returned to her hometown to make trendy socks despite her family's opposition. Although the three physical stores she opened went bankrupt one after another, she formed a professional team in 2016 and made full efforts on Tmall to expand the Caramela brand. On Double 11 in 2018, Caramela sold 12 million yuan on Tmall, a year-on-year increase of nearly 50%. In the past Christmas, Caramela's Christmas socks series sold 100,000 pairs, becoming a dark horse in the category.

As far as Miss Lin can remember, her grandmother sat in front of the hand-cranked sock machine and knitted socks day and night.

In the perception of Zhuji people, the most difficult part of the socks industry chain is the production and sales at the end, and the best part is the raw materials for making socks.

After the efforts of Miss Lin's parents, the family gradually stopped producing socks and transformed into a supplier of raw materials for socks. Miss Lin, who has loved painting since childhood and made clothes for dolls, was admitted to the fashion design major of the China Academy of Art as she wished.

After graduating in 2008, she became a teacher at a junior college in Hangzhou. Originally, all this should have ended here. But in 2010. Miss Lin, who has always been "other people's children", resigned and returned to her hometown, announcing a major news: starting a business. The entrepreneurial project is nothing else but making socks.

Miss Lin took two college classmates to start a socks business together. However, the idea of ​​making socks trendy did not make the market buy it. At that time, Ms. Lin developed a pair of special flower socks, and the patterns of the two socks were composed of the twelve zodiac signs. "We thought it looked good, but no one bought it." Ms. Lin recalled.

Although the product was adjusted in succession, the business was not hot. Later, Ms. Lin had to close three offline stores one after another, and the two classmates returned to their hometowns.

The stubborn beginning ended in failure. Ms. Lin stayed at home for a long time. In order to relax, accompanied by her husband, Ms. Lin went to Shanghai. She brought her previously designed socks and went to the Qipu Road Clothing Wholesale Market for self-promotion. Here, she encountered another turning point in her life.

A boss in his 40s not only bought the socks she brought, but also directly transferred 20,000 yuan to Ms. Lin, leaving a sentence: "Send me as many goods as you can."

In just half a month, Ms. Lin's more than 20,000 pairs of inventory piled up in the warehouse were all cleared. It seems that it is not the wrong goods, but the wrong market. This time, Ms. Lin slowed down. She spent a year flying to South Korea and Japan to study their patterns and raw materials, and calmed down to learn from them and make up for her mistakes.

In 2012, the popularity of Japanese style allowed Ms. Lin to catch the first hit. A pair of cute lace socks sold more than 200,000 pairs. In 2013, fluorescent colors were the most popular in the clothing market. Following this trend, she launched a pair of fluorescent trend socks, which sold more than 500,000 pairs in one year.

With the continuous emergence of hot products, Ms. Lin also received orders from all directions. The offline and distribution channels have consumed almost all of her production capacity, and the original small online channels have almost been stranded by her.

The problem broke out like this.

In 2014, the team of only a dozen people ushered in a huge explosion in sales. Almost every one of the more than 200 socks released that year became a hot product. Design comes first, production capacity is insufficient, and the market is flooded with counterfeits. Ms. Lin, who was walking on one leg, fell into a trough again in 2015.

Ms. Lin felt that she urgently needed a channel of her own to strengthen the brand imprint of Caramela. The visit of Tmall Xiaoer to Datang gave her this opportunity. In the small shop in Datang Market, Ms. Lin's colorful trendy socks were obviously eye-catching.

In 2016, Tmall Xiaoer took the initiative to find Ms. Lin to participate in a category event of Tmall. That time, the Tmall store, which had been "free-range", won a turnover of 250,000 yuan, which made Ms. Lin start to examine the online channel carefully.

In Ms. Lin's cognition, socks have long been not only responsible for warmth, but also become a single product for young people to show their individual taste.

Therefore, when launching new designs every season, she needs to determine the theme of the socks, such as cartoon series, secret garden series, or sports series, and then determine the color and sock shape, and allocate the quantity, which is the computer proofing.

Gradually, as Ms. Lin's "small business" grew bigger and bigger, she single-handedly built a team that focused on design. "Sock design", a field that had not attracted much attention before, has truly become a profession.