The Storm Of Chinese Designer Brand

"400 dollars?" a man began to spread thin clothes like a cicada on his hands. "This can buy 12 pairs of running shoes."

"But it can also have 12 ways to wear or match."

His girlfriend was arguing on one side.

Such scenes will be staged almost every day in Jiangnan Buyi overseas stores.

Since 2005, the JNBY dress of the Hangzhou clothing group has opened its first shop in Russia. It has built more than 20 stores overseas, but its stereotypes against Chinese clothing brands have not yet been completely eliminated.

It seems a ridiculous thing for ordinary people to see that a garment from the "world factory" is priced between $80 and $600.

This fact outlines a dilemma that Chinese clothing industry is facing: on the one hand, with the pformation of "made in China" and the advent of the era of personalized consumption, it seems that it is time to focus on the rise of brand culture and design rather than the rise of designer brand.

But on the other hand, there is no mature designer clothing brand in modern China. It is truly the only exception of Mark's "exceptions", Yang Ziming's "CABBEEN", Yao Feng's "Jie" and Xie Feng's "Ji Fen".

Internationally, designer brand has always been very important in the fashion industry. The most famous luxury brands in the world are almost all of this kind.

The designer brand does have many natural advantages, such as the brand effect driven by the designer's personal charm, the individualized elements centered on the designer's will, and the customized service of the target group with the social elite.

Although in the 30s of last century, the "cheongsam cheongsam" appeared in Shanghai, China, which was very popular with the three sisters of song.

The reality is that Chinese designer brands such as "exceptions" have not yet formed an international scale effect.

Typical road

In 2003, Wu Xuekai and other six Chinese young designers first boarded the Paris T Le Louvre Museum stage, showing the world the original design of contemporary Chinese fashion.

In 2006, Xie Feng's "Jifen" as the first clothing brand from China successfully landed in Paris fashion week and then continued to participate in the five season.

The next year, mark and his brand "useless" also began to become Paris's "regulars".

A fashion whirlwind from China seems to be sweeping the West.

But in the 2010 autumn and winter Paris fashion week, the "collective absence" of Chinese designers may be the true portrayal of this emerging ecology.

On the surface, the direct cause of this dilemma is the sharp decline in overseas market demand caused by the economic crisis, which has left most Chinese designer brands back to the local market.

At a deeper level, niche positioning between high-end luxury brands and mass consumer brands may be the essential reason for its lack of "winter" protection.

For a long time, Chinese designers were separated from enterprises in general: enterprises still did not raise their design to a strategic height. Designers mostly appeared in the image of artists.

In fact, influenced by the international trend of thought, Chinese fashion designers have branded some unique brands on their brands.

In the early days, due to the excessive pursuit of luxury and misunderstanding of sexuality and taste due to cultural differences, Chinese designer spleen once experienced some detours in style positioning.

However, it has gradually become the consensus of the industry to maximize the Oriental elements that are more familiar to them.

For example, the custom wedding dress brand of Ji Cheng is still using the classic white in the West while using a large number of elements such as red and buckle in Chinese traditional wedding ceremony. The only fashion designer in China, MOUSE JI, who participates in the "world boutique brand exhibition", integrates Chinese traditional art forms such as ink and wash painting into his works.

In order to maintain their high-end quality, designer brands usually attach importance to the control of terminal stores.

JNBY all overseas stores are determined by the Hangzhou overseas department and the agents according to the field conditions and the existing standards.

Despite the fact that Japan has entered the golden section of the Singapore market with the aid of Japan, but in the case of the financial crisis forced the store to discount it, Jiangnan Buyi still gave up its cooperation and found an address alone.

However, the most important thing is that the art brand created by mark after "exception" is "useless". It is not sold at all. It is only used for exhibitions and collections.

It also stems from the control of scale and its artistic attributes. These brands usually abandon the traditional marketing promotion mode, but choose to cooperate with other art forms.

For example, mark co worked with China's new director Jia Zhangke to launch the film documentary "useless".

Contrary to what it says

However, too much pursuit of experimentation on style will not only cause cost pressures, but also make it easier for small brands to fall into the "applause" situation.

In the environment where Chinese design is not mature, how to create a more distinctive brand logo is a serious problem.

In this regard, New York Times is depicted as "JNBY that creates a new style of modernity", or it can be called explorer, which is also the foundation for its successful internationalization.

In fact, the establishment of this style depends on the great breakthroughs of Li Lin, the founder of Jiangnan cloth and his design director.

Li Lin, a science background, began to set foot in the clothing business from a small shop in Hangzhou.

In conversation, she always likes to turn a long series of bracelets that blend the elements of cloth, wood carving, beads and so on. This is exactly the "Jiangnan style" that it admired.

Li Lin has used accessories and details such as embroidery, buttons and so on. Like many Chinese brands, these Chinese elements have been the symbol of the JNBY style since the founding of Jiangnan cloth dress in 1994 to 2000.

But with the popularity of the Chinese wind in the fashion circle in 2000, Li Lin felt that JNBY had entered the bottleneck stage of homogenization.

In search of a breakthrough, Li Lin came to Yin Xiaoyue, who is now the chief designer of JNBY.

In fact, Yin Xiaoyue also has some misgivings about joining JNBY.

She advocates simplicity and believes that details need to serve a more grand style, which is not consistent with the previous positioning of Jiangnan cloth.

After a long talk, the two men finally reached a consensus: Li Lin, who pursued details, focused on the choice of material, while Yin and his team were responsible for the creation of the version.

This process of mutual influence not only preserves the classical charm of JNBY, but also embraces the fashion concept of modern people. The idea of "one coat and more wear" is more suitable for everyday wear.

Those strong Chinese elements are just like Peking Opera faces, but they are just symbols, but they can not go deep into life.

Li Lin said to Global Entrepreneur.

That is to say, JNBY gave up the repeated consumption of "Chinese elements", but tried to show modern people's values through tailoring and matching. It also laid the foundation for moving other countries' consumers and attracting overseas agents to join.

In 2005, a Russian girl was attracted by JNBY's shops and costumes in Ningbo and became the agent of its first overseas store, Red Square JNBY store.

The following year, JNBY emerged from ten local brands in a communication organized by the Hangzhou government and was choosed by the choosy Japanese.

The above two "accidents" have finally touched the nerve of Li Lin's brand export.

She began to build the brand image Department, and recalled his brother studying buildings in Paris, France, in charge of store design and visual display.

In the same year as overseas stores, Jiangnan cloth clothing broke through more than 500 square meters shops in Hangzhou, and laid down its future unified LOFT (Loft) style.

In February 2007, JNBY opened its first store in Hongkong, Hongkong, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. In the same year, JNBY entered the North American market, and Canada's first store opened in Vancouver.

This spring, it pformed its temporary store in Manhattan's Suho District into a 200 square meter brand flagship store and was officially established in New York.

Throughout the world, designer brand has always occupied the most upscale position.

However, such brands as BOSS, GUESS and MaxMara, which still belong to the front line camp, have long been reduced to industrial products, while Dior, Chanel, Versace and so on are still holding luxurious status. Although the founder of the designer has passed away, the fashion named after them is still on the stage of the world fashion, and the brand connotation is also continuing for generations.

Yes, hiding the "ego" style brand remolding and passively as active overseas market strategy, perhaps let Jiangnan cloth temporarily get rid of the trouble of scale and capacity balance that Chinese designer brands are often constrained by the local environment and their own characteristics, but how to keep the designer's temperament and go further in the tide of commercialization, or will be the next challenge facing the brand.