Zara'S New Opponent&Nbsp; GAP, The Largest Apparel Retailer In The United States, Enters China

GAP, a clothing retail company, has come all the way from the west coast of the United States and is decorating its first four stores in China in Wangfujing and Chaoyang Joy City in Beijing and Nanjing West Road and Huaihai Road in Shanghai.

Compared with the situation that Zara, a leisure brand with the same positioning of "fast fashion", has spread all over the mainland, GAP has come late. In China, similar strong foreign competitors are H&M from Sweden, Uniqlo from Japan, and C&A from the Netherlands. The arrival of GAP was at least 3 years late, which missed the best opportunity for Chinese people to know it. At this time, the number of luxury brands such as Hermes in China will be comparable to the total number of stores in other parts of the world.

For more than 40 years, almost every American family has owned clothes with the logo of GAP, and has opened many chains in Canada, Britain, France and other places. It entered the Japanese market 15 years ago. However, the plan to enter China has been repeatedly mentioned, tried and shelved.

Globally, GAP's position as the largest clothing retail brand has been replaced by Spain Inditex Group, the parent company of Zara.

Living in West Coast People of Zara are pursuing a leisure and comfortable lifestyle, which is also the design spirit of GAP. The Spanish who love excitement have long created a complete model for Zara to win with speed. Once GAP stores covering an area of 1200 square meters to 1800 square meters are opened in Wangfujing and Chaoyang Joy City, the competition will become wonderful.

Trader experience

"This time we are determined to come," Yang Deming, president of GAP Greater China, told reporters in Beijing on June 23. Yang has successfully expanded the women's clothing chain Ports to more than 350 stores in China, so that until now, there are still international clothing professionals who mistakenly believe that Portress is a Chinese clothing brand.

Yang has deep feelings for the Chinese clothing market. Unlike ordinary Hong Kong businessmen, he can speak fluent Mandarin and Shanghainese. He grew up in Hong Kong and studied in Canada. GAP accompanied his whole childhood and later family. Therefore, when GAP's friends expressed their willingness to invite him to join, he hardly considered it when he was already the president of Best Buy China and Asia Pacific.

Yang formally took office in February this year, responsible for business development and real estate strategy. His contribution to GAP is first reflected in the choice of store address.

GAP has many unique single family stores in the United States. One of the stores in the headquarters in San Francisco has more than 4000 square meters, which is a very old building. Considering the transportation between Beijing and Shanghai, Yang and his team gave up the choice of a single store, rather than renting a store in a shopping mall with convenient transportation. According to past experience, it is very difficult to negotiate a 1000 square meter retail store with an open mall. Taking Beijing as an example, before the Chaoyang Joy City belonging to COFCO Group was completed, Yang Deming negotiated cooperation with the mall. He packaged the space originally rented for several merchants, ensuring the unified store requirements of more than 1000 square meters in GAP.

GAP's current team members in China come from the United States, Singapore, Canada, Japan and other countries. Yang Yun used the experience he had gained when expanding the Chinese market. The store managers were recruited in China, sent to the United States for training, formed an alliance with the American store managers, and returned to work together in the Chinese stores. The American store managers worked together in the Chinese stores for 6 to 12 months to ensure that the Chinese store managers would return to the United States when they were able to do a good job. At the same time, the American store managers also brought their exchange experience in China back to the United States. When Yang was engaged in the clothing industry, he once tried to send the store managers of New York stores to China for training, because the customer flow of New York stores can reach the level of Chinese stores.

It is also Yang's pleasure to see that the store managers of both sides become friends through this training. "This is the way to get friends' help when necessary." Yang Deming is a person who attaches great importance to friendship. From this point of view, it is very wise for GAP to choose Yang as the leader when it first enters China, which has brought great help to the development of the Chinese market. He has also received the support of some real estate friends from Hong Kong. The next part of the store addresses of GAP have been agreed and will open one after another.

compete

Zara wins in speed.

In the world, it is often seen that Zara store managers always take a customized handheld PDA to patrol the store, which is specially configured for each store manager by Zara headquartered in Spain. Through this connected PDA, they can directly place orders to the headquarters, and the headquarters can directly grasp the sales situation of each store, At the same time, the store manager can also communicate with the product manager of the headquarters in a timely manner. In this way, ZARA can complete the design, production and delivery within 15 days.

This story was once called "Harvard Business Review"“ Zara 15 day myth ".

Similarly, the time from design to putting ready to wear on the counter is generally 6-9 months for Chinese clothing industry, and 120 days for international famous brands.

Zara receives new products twice a week and displays them in the window once a month; Deal with orders from nearly 1000 stores around the world in 24 hours, and ensure that goods are transported by air from Spain to any franchised store in the world within 72 hours.

Zara's vigorous action has successfully led the "fast fashion" market, contributing more than 70% of its parent company's profits. At present, stores have spread all over Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and China's second tier cities with high consumption levels.

In contrast, GAP, which is especially good at making casual style jeans, khakis and T-shirts, even took several years to decide to enter the Chinese market.

In fact, many years ago, 30% of GAP's products were produced in China. Chinese people should have known GAP first, not Zara. Yang Deming believes that it is not too late to enter China now. It has taken two years to investigate the Chinese market in the early stage. Only when you have full confidence can you have a good idea. Moreover, GAP is not eager to enter China's second tier cities. Yang Deming hopes that the first four stores to be opened will be able to steadily expand into provincial capital cities in the next 2-3 years. This is a diligent American West Coast style, which is not a bad thing. The industry has never been short of examples of rushing to push and failing.

Interestingly, Zara's choice in China is direct marketing. The same is true for GAP, which does not take agency or join in. But both sides have many joint ventures and franchised stores in other countries. Yang Deming said that many businessmen have contacted him and expressed their willingness to join, but they have been rejected.

You can often see the long queue in front of Zara's fitting room. For this reason, Zara needs to arrange full-time staff to collect the clothes changed by customers in front of the fitting room.

Yang Deming believes that, GAP Its advantage is humanization.

Based on his personal experience, he concluded that now is a good time to do service retail in China. First of all, the design requirements of GAP for the store fully comply with the principle of making it easy for customers to find the clothes they want, as well as the decoration. Some shortcomings of existing clothing stores, such as poor lighting, poor fitting environment, long queues, and the situation that some sizes are easy to run out of stock, Yang said that GAP will avoid them all.

GAP stores that are about to open will set up baby toilets, provide online services, and can order online directly... pursue all humanized details.

Yang does not advocate the queuing caused by sales promotion. He said that the original time of opening the store was 10:00, but if customers were already waiting, the opening time of GAP would be advanced to 8:30.

Another killer of GAP as a latecomer is e-commerce, which has reached a cooperation with Shanghai Yishang Network Information Co., Ltd. to open an online shopping website.

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

In September this year, the founders of GAP will arrive in China, and this year's board meeting will also be held in China.