In the market where consumer demand is personalized and fragmented,
e-commerce has become a remedy for Bela to quickly and cost effectively find market positioning
and achieve sustainable and scalable business paths.
In a market environment where supply is less than demand, the lack of innovation in products is often masked by demand,
and once consumers begin to rise, such defects are fatal. The traditional Chinese furniture market is like this.
Faced with the growing personalized demands of consumers, a large number of traditional enterprises that adhere to conventions
are gradually falling into a passive position, and more and more original home designer brands are emerging.
These home designer brands are active in SNS fields such as Weibo and Douban, and their imaginative and bold design concepts resonate deeply
with their target user groups. What's even more interesting is that they are no longer limited to design,
but also cover aspects such as research and development, production, and marketing.
Bela design is such a typical example. In the market where consumer demand is personalized and fragmented,
e-commerce has become a remedy for Bela to quickly and cost effectively find market positioning and achieve sustainable and scalable business paths.
Designer 'Escape'
Bela Design was originally just a design team, not a brand Founder Zhang Fei is not only an industrial design enthusiast,
but also a university lecturer. He told "Tianxia Wangshang" that "Bela Design" had been established as early as 2004.
At that time, Zhang Fei was teaching at a university in Ningbo, and in his spare time, he helped some foreign trade enterprises design products.
Over the course of seven to eight years, more than 70 of Zhang Fei's design products have been put into the market.
For a young product designer, this is a recognition of their professional competence, but for them, behind the high salary is the loss of their ideals.
There are still many products that go against my original design intention in the final production,
"Zhang Fei encountered a common problem faced by designers.
His design philosophy must be completely dependent on the demands of Party A for product development.
This' Party A, Party B 'relationship has deprived him of design autonomy and even forced him to modify the work multiple times according to Party A's requirements.
What disappointed him the most was that since most of the products were sold abroad, it was impossible to obtain specific sales data and user feedback information.
Zhang Fei often goes to the Amazon website to search for products he has designed and to gather feedback from foreign buyers. In his opinion,
not being able to understand the usage of a product is the biggest tragedy for designers. Good design must be creative and practical.
"With a background in industrial design, he places great emphasis on the relationship between products and people.
Therefore, when ideals are on the road but hands and feet are bound, Zhang Fei's design path becomes increasingly lonely.
Many times he thought about "escaping", but ultimately couldn't find a sustainable way of survival until he became acquainted with e-commerce.
Before the Spring Festival in 2009, Zhang Fei used his spare time to design a desk lamp and gave it as a New Year's gift to his friends and family.
This desk lamp is mainly made of natural wood, simple and atmospheric, which makes friends scream uncontrollably and take photos to share on Weibo.
The design, which was originally just out of interest, received much more response online than he expected,
and many netizens expressed their liking and desire to purchase it.
The unexpected popularity of the desk lamp led Zhang Fei to find his escape direction: opening a Taobao store.
I am not very familiar with e-commerce and I am not good at operating Taobao stores, "Zhang Fei admitted.
The first few transactions of the store were completed in a busy and hectic manner. The product has started selling,
and the subsequent packaging, transportation, and other issues have been resolved one by one.
The decision to use "Bela Design" as the brand name was also made temporarily.
The vast majority of initial traffic came from social media platforms such as Weibo and Douban. After the successful trial of the desk lamp,
Zhang Fei began to try to enrich the product line and explore the market-oriented path of original home products.
Searching for resonance
The originally designed product had a sexy slogan called 'touch me', encouraging users to touch the wood and perceive the true charm of the product.
Compared to other materials, Zhang Fei loves wood alone. He believes that wood is used as a material
There was life before. If it is made into a product, then this product also has life. He emphasized the uniqueness of wood grain,
and good wood grain and texture often excite him greatly. After trying and refining various types of wood,
imported woods such as American white wax wood, black walnut wood, German beech wood, and Canadian maple wood became the main materials for Bela's design.
Design is the core of a product, and designers are the creators of its soul. Zhang Fei is not only good at combining technology when designing products,
but also incorporates his own emotions and thoughts. So he strongly opposes simulating product renderings on the computer for a long time,
and prefers to use real materials to make one-on-one samples.
Inspiration does not come from a single blueprint, but rather from continuous sampling, comparison, and selection.
Therefore, the design process is an interactive process with the client, who will try and simulate many usage scenarios.
Just like the first series of desk lamps, he used the simplest lines to showcase "elegance" and "gentleness", so he named them "Man" and "Woman",
"Brother" and "Sister". In his design philosophy, products also have gender and warmth.
Every product designed by Bela has an "ID card", which is Zhang Fei's design concept. For example,
the popular product "Eight Sound Box" online today was designed based on Zhang Fei's accidental experience.
He described in the product introduction: "Our lives and work are full of noise and restlessness.
The clear, transparent, and clean sound quality of the music box can make me instantly quiet."
The design concept of the wooden candle holder comes from the combination of "rhyme" and "movement".
Art originates from life, yet transcends it. The original design goal was to ensure that the product's functionality meets both the rational
needs of users and their emotional needs. I have always believed that product design is not about pursuing beauty or comfort,
but about pursuing uniqueness, "Zhang Fei said. He definitely doesn't make things that look good but are not easy to use.
Just like the "smiling puppet" he designed, it looks like a ornament, but its real function is the small magnet
in the middle that can attract various paper clips, making it convenient for people to place them.
Due to the fragmentation of personalized needs, the design was originally aimed at meeting the needs of a small group of users from the beginning.
In response to the demands and enthusiasm of this small group of people, the design has been actively coordinating the relationship
between people and products. At first, the lampshade of the wooden desk lamp was made of nylon fabric material,
but many users who choose wooden lamps actually prefer a milder and more low-key lighting atmosphere.
According to feedback, Zhang Fei changed the nylon lampshade to a cotton and linen texture.
The lampshade tilts at a 45 degree angle to the ground, resembling a small person with their head tilted.
For the convenience of transportation, he put a lot of effort into the design of the packaging box,
and the placement of the lamp posts, light bulbs, and lampshades inside the packaging box is extremely scientific.
From the analysis of early sales, this is a group of young consumers around the age of 30 who are more independent about life and do not care much about brands.
They agree with Zhang Fei's design philosophy and can resonate with the product.
Due to the fact that the main raw materials used in the original design were imported and required manual polishing,
the selling price was not low. But this does not affect the love of this niche group. As long as a new product is released,
it will definitely be purchased first, and many coffee shops and lifestyle cafes have become loyal users of the original design.
However, this is a pressure for Zhang Feilai. Many users often ask on Wangwang or through private messages when new products will be launched,
but currently there is no fixed product development cycle for the original design. Our products are mainly household items, but
I don't know exactly what products will be designed Zhang Fei is a designer with a "cleanliness obsession"
and does not agree with overly commercialized market operations.
He believes that commercialization is an effective way to sustain dreams,
And his dream is to give products lasting vitality.
The product doesn't need to be too big, but it must be 'heartfelt'. Before mass production of many products,
Zhang Fei would first conduct small-scale trial production to give to friends around him or post on Weibo. His tolerance for imperfect design works is extremely low.
Bottlenecks beyond design
When ideals meet reality, various problems arise as scheduled. Original designers encounter many problems in the market.
The original design point was the design chain. At present, the originally designed sales channels include Taobao distribution and Tmall flagship store,
There are also offline experience centers and export channels throughout Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other places.
The most difficult thing now is hoarding goods, "Zhang Fei told a reporter from" Tianxia Online Business ".
At first, the design was to find a processing factory for outsourcing processing. Due to the difficulty in controlling quality
and low efficiency, he had to build his own area in the end
The factory covers an area of about 400 square meters and has also hired several experienced carpenters.
Even so, it is only barely achieving production capacity. During the period after Double 11 and Double 12,
the original design was severely out of stock
We still have a lot to improve in the supply chain Zhang Fei said.
Wood, on the other hand, emphasizes the importance of slow work to produce fine work.
From cutting wood to applying glue, bonding and other processes, workers need to be extremely careful and focused.
But it's not easy to find workers with woodworking experience and attention to detail, as there aren't enough workers on the production line
It is difficult to achieve expansion in a short period of time.
Often, due to a large order, there is a shortage of stock in other channels, "said Zhang Fei.
Since the originally designed product became popular on the internet, he has been invited to attend exhibitions i
n Frankfurt and other places. Through the exposure of the exhibition, the product has gained recognition in the industry
It has gained a certain level of popularity and received numerous large orders from around the world. Meanwhile,
with the continuous expansion of online word-of-mouth effects, there are significant conflicts between online and offline prices and sources of goods.
Faced with such a difficult problem, Zhang Fei, who is not good at marketing and marketing, sighed, "I really envy foreign designers
who don't have to worry about the market and sales, as long as they focus on design." For a long time, there hasn't been a real designer in the design team
The salesperson does not have an operations team, but he knows that a true original designer should not only understand design,
but also focus on "cross-border" aspects beyond design. In 2014, Zhang Fei had new considerations for products, marketing, and the market.
When everything is mature, I hope to open an experience store.
