When online shopping has become a trend, e-commerce is no stranger to cabinet companies. But overall, the road to online sales of cabinets has not gone smoothly, and the e-commerce of cabinets is still in the growing stage of groping. Judging from the current situation of e-commerce operations, it is difficult for cabinets to enjoy the fruits of the growing e-commerce boom. The reasons are mainly in the following aspects:
The lack of consumer experience
'As far as cabinet consumption is concerned, compared with traditional home furnishing stores, the biggest gap between e-commerce and traditional home furnishing stores is experience. I can touch and try things in physical stores, but I can only watch them online. I bought the cabinets and installed them, but I found them inappropriate. I can’t return them?” In the opinion of the general manager of a cabinet brand, cabinet products are different from general consumer goods. They are closely related to the sense of experience, and there will be many lack of sense of experience. 'Electric shock' cabinet companies must face a big dilemma.
There is a dispute over the division of interests
Judging from the reasons for returns on Double 11, the proportion of unreasonable returns exceeds 50%. This shows that there are not many quality disputes caused by e-commerce products, but many consumers have made impulsive consumption after Double 11. But because of the lack of experience, I was worried and finally chose a refund. If you want to break this shortcoming in the experience of home furnishing e-commerce, the only breakthrough is to connect online and offline channels. However, for the cabinet industry, which mainly relies on distributors and agents, to open up channels, it is difficult to achieve in the short term due to the problem of profit division.
Transportation and installation are difficult to place
As the cabinets are bulky goods, ordinary courier companies cannot be used, but there are not many logistics that specialize in large items, and most of them are not delivered to your door. This means that after consumers buy large cabinets online, they must pick up the goods themselves, and the cost of moving the goods is not low. In addition, the transportation mode of a logistics company is usually just a driver and a worker. The logistics staff usually drag things away, and damage to the goods is almost inevitable.
Domestic consumers still continue the consumption habit of cabinet distribution and installation in one step. The reporter saw on a well-known furniture e-commerce platform on Tmall that the refund rate reached 13.15% when it was the highest. In this regard, the clerk explained: 'The high refund rate is because there are too many orders received on Double 11 and the logistics can't keep up. Some people can't wait to apply for a refund; and some refunds are due to installation problems.' So the cabinet Companies must avoid these problems if they want to develop e-commerce.
