Fashion Designer Brand: Walking On The Balance Beam Of Business And Personality

In recent years, fashion designer brands have mushroomed in China's international fashion week in the two quarter of each year.

Even in the 2008~2009 year, which is most affected by the financial crisis, the designers' brand of the 2010 spring and summer series of China Fashion Week is still increasing. The power of fashion is proudly standing in the cold winter of the economy.

However, behind the seemingly beautiful scenery is not a clear sky. There are still many conflicts and difficulties in the commercialization and personalization of fashion designer brands.

How to identify the brand positioning in the current domestic situation? How to find a balance between the style and the market? How to achieve a win-win between scale and profit?

Fashion designer brand:

Walking in business and personality

Dilemma 1

Small or public?

Question: is it designed for its own preferences, or for the product's connotation? Is it for "aestheticism" or for customer service?

Weapon: from the successful designer to the successful designer brand, the designer himself should have the dual performance of reason and irrationality.

Whether customized or batch, precise positioning and specialization are prerequisites for survival.

Bao Lvfei: the concept of designer brand, for designers, is to be a mass brand or to be a niche brand.

At the beginning of the brand building, the designer is a niche brand. It has strong vitality and will always exist in parallel with the popular brands. The characteristics of the minority brands are small and exquisite.

However, such designer brands must be supported by very loyal customers.

The niche brand must be product oriented, and it is the same as the mass brand. The designer must know that you are not designed for your hobby, but for the design of the product. This must be clearly considered.

Otherwise, even if designers have higher talent, they can not create their own designer's brand career.

Guo Pei: my series of thoughts on designer brand originated from the "Guo Pei plagiarism" incident in 2008. Before that, I didn't really consider the relationship between designer creation and market demand.

Now I think that when a good designer builds designer brand, he must face the market with two kinds of mindset: the first is open, the second is stubborn.

In front of the market, I never considered myself a celebrity or designer. In fact, I am a tailor, serving customers. In this respect, my mindset is open. On the other hand, when I show up for my own clothing conference, I will take myself as the core and stubbornly refuse to be allowed to speak. At this time, I am a designer.

Mao Jihong: brand is not the strength of single product line, but the ability to integrate culture advocacy, life attitude and aesthetic taste into products.

Through brand, I need to convey a way of life, through clothing to bring people a new way of life.

Such ideas often stimulate our creativity.

Because of this, I think the so-called innovation is not in the form or superficial publicity.

I often say that EXCEPTION (exception) is counter - productive. In fact, EXCEPTION is anti - internal and external.

Because of this, consumers who share the same idea with us are also increasing.

Xie Feng: as consumers mature and market segments become more and more obvious, designers will play an increasingly important role, and will also get better opportunities for development. Their business successes will become an important fashion power source in this industry.

Niche and the public will be subdivided into different consumption areas. They will also present different consumption patterns. Whether customized or batch, precise positioning and specialization are prerequisites for survival.

CABBEEN: many consumers think that the designer brand is a small group. In fact, this is a misunderstanding, or because the designer's brand positioning is clear and distinctive, but it creates a fault in the process of cognition.

I think the characteristics and strength of the designer's brand are just being able to satisfy more different people, because the costumes on different occasions need different design contents, need unity and consistency of style, and need distinctive brand personality.

For example, no one will question the excellence of ARMANI (Armani) as a designer brand. In fact, the top end of ARMANI products is Armani Prive, which is for advanced customization; and Giorgio Armani is the best choice for celebrities to attend formal occasions; Emporio Armani is a slightly lower priced garment sold in the mall, which is more popular among young people; but the most popular ones are AJ (Armani Jeans, AJ), which belong to leisure series. In fact, there are also home series, children's clothing and so on. I believe that consumers' understanding of "designer brand" is constantly internationalized.

On the individual or on the team?

Problem: designer brand building is dominated by designers, which means that designers are the core of brand, but they also need to consider financing, production, management, sales and other aspects at the beginning of their business.

Weapon: build a team that can complement the designer, from capital operation to logistics distribution, to market promotion, cooperate with designers in an all-round way, and present the brand personality with a unified value system.

Xie Feng: Chinese designers are attached to the rising market of China. This is a very important reason why Chinese designers are now attracting worldwide attention.

Some time ago, we went through the international financial crisis. This impact on the international fashion industry is not small. Especially, many designer brands have gone bankrupt in the crisis, and the enterprises in the Chinese market have recovered the fastest in this crisis, and even have been growing rapidly.

Taking JEFEN as an example, we achieved a growth rate of over 30% in 2009, mainly because the rate of opening shops is increasing.

This shows that in the financial crisis, such as our high-end brand, the impact is still relatively small.

In the future, China's designer brand is mainly to grasp the future with a more independent style and more distinctive market.

Mao Jihong: "exceptions" since the beginning of its business in 1996, it has been developing with an independent thinking attitude. It has become the thinking mode of enterprises in all aspects.

We have a team, including space and plane, there are twenty or thirty people, which is also the designer brand in the competition with the peer brand, how to give full play to the advantages of the designer.

In our designer team, there are material designers, packaging designers, and there may be color professionals in the future, as well as version designers.

In this team, from product design to fabric research and development, after finishing technology and processing technology, brand building and service mode, brand communication mode, etc., we all proceed with the value system of humanistic care that we identify with, so that we can show the brand personality as a whole. Only when every link takes into account the output of value can we have strong vitality, because at this time, the whole staff is creating a viable value.

Ceng Fengfei: as a designer brand, from the role of the former designer to the dual role of the present, all kinds of obstacles at the beginning of the business are normal. Foreign designer brands have experienced the long process from individual to team tacit understanding.

In fact, there is no difference between the domestic designer brand and the international designer brand in the enterprise structure. They have no difference between the process and the post department. They all need an internal and external complementary team. The only difference is the maturity of the team.

I have no commercial consciousness, but I have a commercial intuition. My essence is that I can never be a businessman at all, and ultimately can only be a designer or a designer.

So I need a team that can complement me.

From capital operation to logistics distribution and market promotion, I can concentrate more on design rather than on trivial business management.

Dilemma 3

Market or creativity?

Question: as the main designer, on the one hand, it is the CEO of the enterprise, on the other hand, it is the pillar of the whole design and creation. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the market as well as some less practical aesthetic feeling, and how to deal with the relationship between these two aspects.

Weapon: a good designer is the most market-oriented designer. He knows how to turn ideas into commodities under the premise of cost control, and at the same time meeting the needs of customers, he uses his professional standards to grasp the quality of products.

Guo Pei: I once worked in the market of Tianma costume for 10 years, and then turned to be my own company. At that time, I wanted to achieve an unrealistic beauty, not to say that I could wear the clothes that I could make money for the boss on the street, but wanted to design the beautiful works that I was pursuing in my heart.

However, 12 years ago, I thought things too simply, because when I was doing it, I found that I had to locate the company when I wanted to survive. At that time, I also wanted to make a brand, and then made product development for other brands, and then I finally pferred to the customized service.

Later, I had my own work release conference. At that time, I also felt that my dream had come true. No one was interfering. That's my work.

But now, my idea is also changing, more customization is regarded as a service, so I will meet all the requirements of customers, but I have professional quality and professional standards.

So, in many ways, I use professional skills to grasp market demand, but I will not put it in my works.

Ceng Fengfei: designers focus on self-expression, while investors focus on profit, and their concerns are different.

The development of designer brand needs a long process, and there are few immediate results.

From this perspective, communication and communication between designers and investors is very important.

I do not need investors now, I do not need money, but I can support myself, I want to try to use my own ability to regulate.

For me, finding a good investor is more difficult than finding a wife.

Because the intention investors want is the scale, this idea and I do not agree.

What I am going to do now is to maintain this high-end brand by grasping the pace of opening shop. After all, every piece of clothing is made by hand. If the quality develops quickly, it will lose its characteristics.

Bao Lvfei: a good designer is the most market-oriented designer. He knows how to turn ideas into commodities under the premise of cost control.

I was born as a product manager in the US in the 90s of last century, so I want to reach a tacit understanding with my designer in every detail.

My experience is that professional product managers want designers to coax kids into business goals.

I need to tell the designer clearly that you can't walk out of the design framework of the established market theme within this time limit.

Xie Feng: as the main designer, on the one hand, it is the CEO of the enterprise. On the other hand, it is the pillar of the whole design and creation. The biggest advantage is that I am the boss, I has the final say.

As chairman and art director of JEFEN, I often need to face the balance between design and market, which may not be called an obstacle, but more like a groping process.

The market will be the ultimate touchstone, allowing the market to accept its own design, and let the consumers love their designs to be the successful designers.

Dilemma 4

Westernization or localization?

Question: compared with international brands, the biggest gap between domestic and original brands is still on creativity.

Under the impact of the international brand, how should the original designer brand deal with it?

Weapon: to foster strengths and circumvent weaknesses, adhere to Chinese genes, and truly rely on their own development and creativity to achieve their own high value positioning.

CABBEEN: the history of Chinese designer brand is relatively short. Most of them are built in 10 years, and Cabbeen is a relatively long history.

However, compared with the mature designer brand in Europe and America, the experience of domestic designer brand is not enough and precipitation is not enough.

In addition, our consumers' rational understanding of designer brand and original Chinese brand is still in a state of development, which is not mature enough. Therefore, the biggest bottleneck of Chinese designer's brand is the problem of being bigger and stronger.

There may be many ways to solve this problem, but I think first of all, we must not lose no time to lose money, but we must not lose the rhythm of the market.

In the market competition, we should stick to the characteristics and seek the combination point with the market. I think this is a big direction.

From the perspective of world market, the brand diversity of domestic designer brand is a trend. Chinese designer brand is bound to be a strong team in many brands.

We can see the four international fashion week, and the designer brand is dominating the international fashion trend.

So I think designer brand has become the mainstream of China International Fashion week. It's a good phenomenon.

Xie Feng: the big international brands we are seeing now, like Chanel and Gucci, all have 100 years of development history, which are very different from our short history.

Of course, the funds invested are also different, and the scale is totally different.

Besides, our biggest gap is mainly in creativity.

I think Chinese brands rely on their own development and creativity to achieve their own height value and positioning. Therefore, if China wants to pform from a big garment country to a strong garment country, it should pay attention to the creativity of clothing, develop original brands and intensify efforts in design, and intensify efforts in culture.

To enter the international market, we need a complete and mature commercial operation process. We need a complete professional team to make full preparations, not one or two individuals or designers.

If we want to succeed internationally, we still need to explore and learn more.

Ceng Fengfei: there must be some impact from foreign brands, but there is an example of impact.

The only thing we can do is to foster strengths and circumvent weaknesses.

As a Chinese designer, my idea is to drive the brand with personal charisma, and then master the local market and culture. This is the only capital to support the design style, and the only capital for PK, which is the foreign designer brand.

Chinese designers have their own ideas, but no matter how far their minds are radiated, they can not forget the Chinese gene base.

Source: China business newspaper - China business network