US Apparel Retail Giant Vszara Hits China Market

The clothing retail companies GAP (Gai Pu) is coming from the west coast of the United States. It is decorating its first four stores in Beijing, the Wangfujing, Chaoyang Joy City and Nanjing West Road and Huaihailu Road of Shanghai. Compared with the brand of "fast fashion" leisure brand Zara, which has spread all over the mainland, GAP is late. In China, a strong foreign competitor with similar position also has H&M from Sweden, Japan's UNIQLO, Holland's C&A. GAP arrived at least 3 years later, and missed the best time for Chinese people to know it. At this time, the number of luxury brands such as Hermes in China will be comparable to that of other parts of the world.

Over the past 40 years, almost every American family has clothes marked GAP, and has opened numerous chains in Canada, England and France, and entered the Japanese market 15 years ago.

However, the plan to enter China has been repeatedly mentioned, tried and repeatedly shelved.

Globally, GAP's largest apparel retailing brand has been replaced by Zara's parent company, Spain Inditex group.

People living on the west coast of the United States pursue leisure and comfortable lifestyles. This is also the design spirit of GAP, and the spice Spaniard has built a complete set of speed wins for Zara.

Once GAP opens in the 1200 square meter 1800 square meters shop in Wangfujing and Chaoyang Joy City, competition will become wonderful.

Trader experience

"This time we are determined to come."

Yang Deming, President of GAP Greater China, told reporters in Beijing in June 23rd.

Yang has successfully extended the Ports of women's clothing stores to more than 350 stores in China, and even now there are international costumes who mistakenly believe that baozi is China's clothing brand.

Yang has deep feelings for Chinese clothing market. Unlike ordinary Hong Kong businessmen, he can speak fluent Mandarin and Shanghai dialect.

He grew up in Hongkong and studied in Canada. GAP accompanied him throughout his junior and subsequent families.

So when GAP's friends expressed his intention to invite him to join, he had already been the president of best buy Group China and Asia Pacific region.

In February, Yang took office in charge of business development and real estate strategy.

His contribution to GAP is first reflected in the choice of store address.

GAP has many unique single store stores in the United States. One of its exclusive stores in San Francisco is more than 4000 flat, which is a very old building.

Taking into account the traffic in Beijing and Shanghai, Yang and his team abandoned the choice of exclusive shops, rather than renting shops in shopping malls with convenient pportation.

According to past experience, it is very difficult to negotiate 1000 square retail stores with existing stores.

Take Beijing as an example, when Chaoyang Joy City, a COFCO group, has not yet been completed, Yang Deming has negotiated cooperation with the shopping malls. He has wrapped up the places he used to rent to several merchants to ensure the uniform store requirements of GAP1000.

GAP's current team members in China come from different countries such as the United States, Singapore, Canada and Japan.

Yang Yun used the experience gained in the development of the Chinese market, and the store manager was recruited in China, sent to the US for training, and formed an alliance with the store manager of the United States to work in a store in China. The store manager in the United States worked for 6 to 12 months in China to ensure that the Chinese store manager could return to the United States when he was good. Meanwhile, the store manager in the United States will also bring back the experience in China to the United States.

When he was engaged in the clothing industry, Yang once tried to send the store manager of New York to China for training, because the flow of New York stores can reach the level of Chinese stores.

The shopkeeper of the two sides made friends through this training, and Yang Leyi saw it, "when you need it, you can get help from your friends."

Yang Deming is a friend who pays great attention to friendship. From this point of view, it is very wise for GAP to choose Yang as the head of the family when he first entered China. This has helped a lot in developing the Chinese market.

He also received support from some real estate friends from Hongkong, and the next part of the store's address of GAP has been settled and will be opened in succession.

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compete

Zara wins at speed.

In the world, Zara store managers can always see a custom handheld PDA in the store. This is a Zara specially designed for every store manager in Spain. Through this PDA, they can place orders directly to the headquarters, and headquarters can directly grasp the sales situation of each store, and the store manager can also communicate with headquarters product manager in time.

In this way, ZARA can accomplish design, production and delivery within 15 days.

This story has been called "the 15 day myth of Zara" by Harvard Business Review.

Similarly, from the design to the time of selling clothes on the counter, the Chinese garment industry usually takes 6~9 months, and international brand names generally take 120 days.

Zara delivers 2 new products a week, 1 times a month for window display, 24 hours orders from nearly 1000 stores around the world, and 72 hours to ensure that goods are shipped from Spain to any store in the world.

Zara's success has led to the fast fashion market, which has contributed more than 70% of its profits to its parent company.

At present, the storefront has already spread all over North China and the second tier cities with high consumption level.

By contrast, GAP is especially good at making casual casual styles such as jeans, khakis and T-shirts, and even takes years to decide to enter the Chinese market.

In fact, many years ago, 30% of GAP products were produced in China. The Chinese should first know not Zara but GAP.

Yang Deming believes that it is not too late to enter China. It has taken two years to investigate the Chinese market.

Moreover, GAP is not in a hurry to enter the second tier cities of China. Yang Ding Ming hopes that the first four stores that will be open for business will be able to remain steady after 2 to 3 years before considering expanding into the capital city. This is a diligent US West Coast style.

What is interesting is that Zara came in China to choose a direct business operation. GAP is the same.

However, there are many joint ventures and franchised shops in other countries.

Yang Deming said that many businessmen had contacted him to show their willingness to join, but they were all rejected.

You can often see the long queue in front of the fitting room of Zara.

For this reason, Zara needs to arrange full-time staff to collect clothes changed by customers before fitting rooms.

Yang Deming believes that the advantage of GAP is humanization.

According to his own experience, he is now a good time to do service retail in China.

First of all, GAP's design requirements for the storefront comply with the principle that customers can easily find the clothes they want.

Some shortcomings of the existing clothing stores, such as poor lighting, poor fitting environment, long queuing and some sizes are easy to break, Yang said GAP will avoid all of them.

GAP stores will be set up to provide baby toilet, provide Internet services, and can directly order online.

Pursue all humanized details.

Yang did not advocate queuing caused by promotions. He said that the 10 point was the opening time. If customers were already waiting, the opening time of GAP would advance to 8:30.

Another killer of GAP as a backward man is e-commerce, which has already worked with Shanghai Yi Shang Network Information Co., Ltd. and will set up online shopping websites.

The store has not yet opened, and Yang has begun large-scale promotion and publicity.

In September, the founder of GAP will arrive in China. This year's board of directors will also be held in China.