In business administration, there is a concept called "long tail".
To put it simply, it is a relatively unpopular service or product whose sales are reflected on the table, showing a long, tail-like shape.
Generally speaking, most manufacturers will gradually abandon these products with a long cash turnover period to avoid consuming too much management costs.
However, there is a company in Japan that has gone the opposite way and specializes in the long-tail market.
The company's name is "トラスコ中山" (TRUSCO 中山), and it is also one of Amazon's suppliers of goods.
The biggest feature of its house is that it has more strange inventory than it can count......
For example, there are as many as 8,000 types of gloves alone!
There are also 2.1-meter-tall triangular pyramid barricades. No one usually buys this stuff, right?
There are also screws that give off the smell of vanilla...... It's also a very strange product.
Walking around its warehouse, you will be shocked by the large amount of inventory!
It is said that there are still 2 years left to sell one of the items, and it is the huge 87-centimeter-long wrench below!
It is mainly used in large machinery such as power plants and ships, and it is very difficult for customers to wait.
But even with so many strange and hard-to-buy goods, TRUSCO Nakayama has an annual turnover of 229.3 billion yen!
40% of the revenue comes from this "long-tail sales model".
The president of Zhongshan adheres to the concept of "long-tail model" as follows:
"Since this thing will be made, it means that there are people in the world who need it. Even if it doesn't sell much, someone will definitely buy it."
Whenever you see a new product, TRUSCO Zhongshan will buy it; As for what no one makes, the company develops it itself.
For example, this industrial fan is a product made by TRUSCO Zhongshan.
Its selling point is that the square frame can be stacked freely, and it can also be scrolled and rotated freely.
You can also easily build a fan tower with 360-degree blowing!
So the question is, since the company has so much inventory in its hands, won't the management cost be high?
In fact, it is not purchased casually.
The company spent 15 billion yen to build a computer room.
The supercomputer in the computer room will accurately predict the sales of each unpopular product in a certain period of time, so that it will not lead to too many purchases and fall into the dilemma of not being able to sell them all.
Therefore, the goods are unpopular, but they will never be wasted!
Last year, AI predicted that the following glove would sell 290 pairs, but it sold 285 pairs, with an error of only 5 pairs!
Last year, AI predicted that this fire hook could sell 490 units, but it turned out to sell 487 units, with an error of only 3 units.
Since 2005, the company decided to start focusing on the long-tail market, and its annual revenue has risen steadily, and it has shown explosive growth in recent years.
Sure enough, the market is full of business opportunities, break the traditional mindset, maybe the next success is you!