On September 22, Xtep announced on its WeChat public account that Xtep would join hands with Alibaba’s new manufacturing platform “Rhinoceros Intelligent Manufacturing” to use the digital technology provided by Alibaba’s new manufacturing to achieve intelligent, personalized and customized clothing manufacturing, achieving “ One person, one drawing, one manufacturing” is the ultimate small order customization service.
Previously, the Xtep “XiaoIce” project, as an experimental project of the platform, has cooperated with Rhino Intelligence Have had contact with him. In June this year, Xtep officially announced a cooperation with Microsoft Xiaobing. After Xtep and Tmall jointly launched a customized clothing design, production and retail platform, consumers can create their own customized T-shirts at the Tmall Xtep official flagship store. This platform is based on Xiaoice’s powerful ability to generate paintings, using consumers’ zodiac signs, color preferences, hobbies, etc. as inspiration sources to generate paintings, realizing “thousands of people, thousands of paintings”.
Rhinoceros Intelligent Manufacturing is based on Xiaobing’s “Thousands of People, Thousands of Paintings” to achieve “Thousands of People, Thousands of T’s” within 3-5 days , delivering customized T-shirts to consumers. According to the person in charge of e-commerce of Xtep Group, it normally takes 3-6 months for a product to go through research and development, design, production, ordering, and then to the online and offline terminals in the market. However, Xtep, Xiaobing, and Alibaba Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing This joint project breaks this rule.
It is understood that Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing mainly helps small and medium-sized enterprises solve a series of pain points in the production supply chain. For example, it is difficult to predict pre-sales, respond quickly, and digest inventory. The Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing Platform uses Alibaba’s cloud computing, IoT, and artificial intelligence technologies to give factories a “smart brain” to connect consumer trend insights, sales forecasts, and flexible production. , build a new manufacturing system that integrates cloud, terminal, intelligence, and manufacturing, so that China’s garment manufacturing industry can achieve intelligent, personalized, and customized upgrades.
In fact, the small order customization service launched by Xtep this time only applies to Xtep’s main brand. From the perspective of the industry, Xtep intends to improve the sluggish performance of its main brand through this project.
Currently, Xtep mainly has five brands and three categories. Xtep’s main brands are aimed at the mass market, Saucony and Miller are aimed at the professional market, while Gasway and Paladin are targeting the sports fashion market.
It can be seen from Xtep’s mid-term financial report that although Xtep’s new brand has achieved certain growth, the main brand revenue has declined. Data show that in the first half of 2020, Xtep’s main brand revenue decreased by 4.6% to 3.201 billion yuan, but the revenue of fashion sports brands represented by Gasway and Paladin was 459 million yuan, accounting for 12.5%, a year-on-year increase of 35.7 times. Professional sports brands represented by Saucony and Miller had revenue of 20 million yuan, accounting for 0.5%.
However, judging from the current sales, it is difficult for the joint model of Xtep and Microsoft Xiaoice to support the “wealth umbrella” of Xtep’s main brand. A reporter from Beijing Business Daily inquired about the official Xtep flagship store on Tmall and found that there is only one customized T-shirt for Xtep and Microsoft Xiaoice, with monthly sales of 11 pieces. Compared with Xtep’s customized T-shirts for the “beginning of school season”, the monthly sales volume is less than one-tenth. It is worth mentioning that the Microsoft Xiaoice co-branded model does not support 7-day no-reason returns and exchanges.
In the view of economist Song Qinghui, although Xtep’s small order customization satisfies people’s pursuit of product personalization and differentiation to a certain extent, Microsoft Xiaobing’s AI Technology has also made clothing design lose its soul and warmth. While pursuing individualization, it also loses the “craftsman spirit” of Made in China. On the surface, it is personalized customization for one person and one order, but in fact it is still assembly line manufacturing. In the future, if Xtep cannot integrate practical craftsmanship into its products, it will still be difficult to obtain the high premium capabilities of the brand.
Xunxi Intelligent Manufacturing, as one of the “Five New Strategies” – a model of new manufacturing. In Ali’s view, the Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing Factory is a new species that spans manufacturing and sales. This is a factory that starts from customer needs and uses cloud computing, IoT, artificial intelligence and other technologies to connect sales forecasting and flexible manufacturing. Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing hopes that merchants can use Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing services just like cloud computing.
Taking the clothing industry as the entry point, “new manufacturing” uses the blessing of new technologies to produce on demand to solve the “old and difficult” inventory problem in the clothing industry. This makes the industry have to sigh: If Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing operates well, it will not only realize automated production, but also possibly further improve the level of the clothing industry, promote industrial upgrading, and even become a monopoly in the clothing industry.
Fortunately, behind the rhino, we see Jinjiang Enterprises.
Digitalization, installing a “mirror” in the factory
Cooperation of Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing Factory Among the suppliers, there are many Jinjiang companies, and Xiangxing (China) Group Co., Ltd. is one of them. As a leader in the woven industry, Xiangxing has many fabrics selected by Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing Factory. This enterprise, which has made great achievements in technological innovation, in addition to…The treatment cycle was also forced to be shortened. Nowadays, consumers are pursuing personalized and diversified quality consumption. However, there is less integration between traditional manufacturing and consumer demand, and it is easy for problems to arise. Take the clothing industry as an example. It has long suffered from the pain of inventory backlog caused by the half-year gap between production and sales. Small and medium-sized businesses cannot find smart factories that can produce small batches quickly, making it difficult for the clothing industry to respond quickly. , that is, it is difficult for both manufacturing and brand merchants.
Relatively speaking, traditional manufacturing determines production capacity based on the production line’s capabilities and historical experience, organizes production 4 to 6 months in advance, and starts producing down jackets in the summer. This model When the market environment changes, there will either be insufficient preparation for hot sales or unsalable inventory.
Rhinoceros Intelligent Manufacturing, which seems to have emerged out of nowhere, has been dormant for three years. In the past three years, it has conducted pilot cooperation with more than 200 small and medium-sized merchants on Taobao, step by step through the flexible manufacturing model of small order minimum order and rapid response, and achieved unexpected results: through insight into demand and digital manufacturing, Merchants have truly achieved on-demand production.
At the beginning of 2020, the new coronavirus epidemic swept the world, and the Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing Platform ushered in a small peak of orders – new manufacturing can help merchants quickly adjust production, Navigating uncertainty. What many consumers are unaware of is that many of the clothes purchased on Taobao are now produced through new manufacturing. As long as consumers need it, after a hot word is born, such T-shirts can be purchased on Taobao the next day.
It is understood that the original intention of Alibaba New Manufacturing is to help small and medium-sized enterprises solve a series of pain points in the production supply chain, such as difficulty in pre-sale prediction, difficulty in rapid response, and difficulty in digesting inventory, etc. , the Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing Platform uses Alibaba’s cloud computing, IoT, and artificial intelligence technologies to give factories a “smart brain” to connect consumer trend insights, sales forecasts and flexible production, and build a new manufacturing system that integrates cloud, terminal, intelligence, and manufacturing. , thereby allowing China’s garment manufacturing industry to achieve intelligent, personalized and customized upgrades.
“New manufacturing makes ‘Made in Internet’ a reality.” Wu Xuegang said, “80% of the members of Alibaba’s new manufacturing team are engineers. We believe that one day, the factory’s Manufacturing capabilities can be called like cloud computing to realize cloud production and make the clothing and textile industry more responsive.”
“In fact, we can understand it as, It makes the dream of on-demand production come true.” Hong Jingxin, general manager of Trumpeter Apparel, is very concerned about Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing, which runs from industry to consumer platform. Through artificial intelligence technology, from Taobao Tmall, social information, fashion trends, etc. Calculate consumer demand from big data, give clothing brands sales forecast suggestions at the level of “how many pieces of this style can be sold next month”, and guide brand owners to produce hot-selling products… Such “fantasy” may soon be Become reality.
Industry insiders believe that Alibaba’s new manufacturing will not only bring an “earthquake” to the clothing industry, but also lead a wave of Internet penetration into manufacturing and manufacturing industries embracing the Internet. It will become a new outlet for all walks of life to use the power of the Internet to carry out digital transformation.
Exploring new manufacturing
A giant rhino crashes into the clothing industry , setting off huge waves. This is perhaps the biggest topic in the apparel industry these days.
Subversion always happens inadvertently. Just as the rise of WeChat has made traditional text messages gradually forgotten, the popularity of mobile payments has gradually reduced the number of bank terminal outlets. How much change can Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing bring? Perhaps no one can give a precise enough description yet. Is it to solve the industry’s inventory pain points, to adapt to personalized consumer needs, or to make manufacturing smarter… It’s like a kaleidoscope, from which different people hope to find different answers.
Faced with this sudden giant rhinoceros, the reactions of enterprises are also different. Some companies are rejecting it, some are waiting and watching, and some have already begun to try.
From the perspective of each company, different companies have different responses, and of course there are different reasons behind them. However, change never waits for anyone, and progress will not be slowed down by the exceptions of a single company or a single industry.
Today, Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing has chosen the clothing industry as its entry point; in the future, will this giant rhinoceros enter other industries? There is no doubt about this.
As for Jinjiang’s industry, its comparative advantage in manufacturing has always been the envy of the outside world. After more than 40 years of development, Jinjiang has a relatively complete range of products from clothing to sporting goods to snack foods. industrial chain. From front-end research and development, to mid-end production, to end-of-line sales, this complete chain is the foundation for Jinjiang Manufacturing to settle down for more than 40 years. But we should also see that new technologies have brought changes to the industrial chain many times. The most typical one is the impact of e-commerce (including subsequent smartphone sales) on terminal channels. Today, the transformative power of technology has traveled up the industrial chain and reached the manufacturing end.
The future is already here. The exploration of Rhino Intelligent Manufacturing can only be said to have opened a corner of the new manufacturing landscape, and what it can bring is only a possibility of new manufacturing. With the further improvement of technologies such as big data and the Internet of Things, there may be more implementation paths for new manufacturing in the future. For industries and enterprises in Jinjiang, it is more important to find the new manufacturing path that best suits them than to copy the Rhino intelligent manufacturing model mechanically. And this may be a test paper handed over to Jinjiang by the times.
� is a possibility of new manufacturing. With the further improvement of technologies such as big data and the Internet of Things, there may be more implementation paths for new manufacturing in the future. For industries and enterprises in Jinjiang, it is more important to find the new manufacturing path that best suits them than to copy the Rhino intelligent manufacturing model mechanically. And this may be a test paper handed over to Jinjiang by the times. </p
