"Internet" hit. At present, it is in the era of national e-commerce. With the rise of Internet e-commerce channels and the extensive discussion and operation of O2O omni-channel mode in the lighting industry, the Internet business model has already become a major thoroughfare for many businesses to explore the market. However, the author visited a number of lighting city, found that many dealers to embrace the Internet enthusiasm is not high. Some merchants believe that Internet e-commerce is not entirely suitable for the absorption and transformation of traditional physical stores. Careful management and service of the surrounding customers is the core operation of the entity lighting store to open the market.

So for the LED lighting dealers of traditional physical stores, is it to follow the rapid transformation of the Internet or to wait for the end of the mountain? In this sensitive period, what are the dealers most concerned about? Through market research, we visited the dealers in Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places to listen to the real voice of the first-line market. In recent years, Shanghai's lighting industry has developed rapidly. In addition, the regional, economic and cultural advantages of Shanghai have also had different impacts on the development of LED lighting industry. The emergence of major professional lighting stores is also a sign of the prosperity of Shanghai's lighting industry. Although the overall environment of the lighting industry is not ideal, there are still some stores in Shanghai Lighting City that are doing a lot of business. Compared with the stores with poor business, 2015 has indeed become a watershed in Shanghai. From the geographical distribution point of view, because Shanghai Liuying Lighting City has a long history, it has formed a brand effect, and the business is relatively better than Shanghai Lighting City. Shanghai Lighting City is not to be outdone, and is committed to creating a professional-level lighting gathering platform. As a rising star, it attracts consumers through various means such as promotional offers and the publication of the honor list.

In Shanghai, there are many shops and powerful businesses emerge one after another. In the market downturn, dealers can only find their own way. Among them, the dealer's choice of agency brand is very important, which will ultimately determine the sales of the product in the market, and also determine the success or failure of the dealer. During an interview in the two major lighting cities in Shanghai, the author observed that although the current flow of people is not large, many dealers still choose the right brand and choose the right business ideas, so they get a share of the fierce competition.

Ms. Zhang, an agent in Shanghai Lighting City Sunshine Lighting, told the author: "Shanghai consumers are still more inclined to local brands of lighting products, coupled with strong promotion efforts, so more customers come to see the lights." Manager Li, an arc lighting agent who has just received customers, also said that brand is the factor for consumers to buy products, followed by quality, because many customers may have suffered from inferior products before, so this year's dealers with advantages in brand and quality are more "safe".

2. Dealers thinking about transformation have many problems

When asked whether they will try to transform through Internet thinking, many dealers still continue to wait and see. The main reason is that there is no way forward for transformation and development. According to manager Li of arc lighting, e-commerce does not have much impact on its sales at present, because they have accumulated their own resources for a long time, but they will also find that the profit margin is getting thinner and thinner.

A few dealers who took the lead in touching the Internet, such as Shanghai Shunjie Lighting Appliance Co., Ltd., have built their own Tmall flagship store. Its general manager Zou Yulan told the author that apart from the huge amount of online funds invested in the early stage, the most troublesome thing for them is the lack of professional talents to operate the online platform, which means either leaving the e-commerce platform idle or continuing to invest human and financial resources. "Invest heavily without seeing effective output, which is an additional burden that traditional dealers are unwilling to bear." Zou Yulan said helplessly.

In Guangzhou Hecheng Lighting City, Jiang Jincai, head of Qixin Lighting, also said that compared with previous years, the lighting market has been relatively cold this year due to the shrinking development of the surrounding property market. In spite of this, Jiang Jincai did not think about the transformation and expansion of sales in the use of the Internet e-commerce model. In his view, online e-commerce channels need to invest a lot of cost and energy to maintain a good network platform to open up unfamiliar customer areas, which is difficult to support for a long time by relying solely on the weak strength of physical stores. "It is mainly because our customers are mainly new and old customers in the surrounding area, and the market is relatively fixed." Jiang Jincai said, "According to the characteristics of the surrounding low-end customers, we focus on simple, light, and practical popular products, which are more popular."

In the interview, the author found that some businesses have set up special online stores to sell lighting products, but online promotion is not successful. The main reason is that the number of online stores is gradually increasing and the competition is large, which does not reflect the price advantage.

3. Internet, where should distributors go?

In the LED industry, the invasion of the Internet into traditional industries is essentially to break the traditional industry's "information asymmetry" problem. After the advent of e-commerce, dealers have suffered an unprecedented blow, and the era of making money by information asymmetry is far away. The wave of channel flattening and the impact of new channel forces have forced dealers to think more calmly about survival and development, change with the trend, and make corresponding adjustments in development strategies.

The author found in the market survey that dealers began to sort out their core advantages. In terms of management, introduce advanced management systems to ensure the consistency and systematicness of implementation; in terms of product mix, dealers maximize access to superior product resources and share operating costs and risks with products; in terms of brand selection, think more rationally about the market value and rising space of brands; in terms of business, "walking on multiple legs", engineering, retail, wholesale, and e-commerce are all beginning to dabble in. All kinds of changes are nothing more than to seize the opportunity in the troubled times of LED lighting and rewrite the dealer pattern of the traditional lighting era.