What Is I.T, And What Is I.T?

To be honest, this is really a puzzling opening. In December 28, 2010, Village, Sanlitun, Beijing In the 5 story white building with I.T Beijing Market in the North District, the shelves are half empty, and the salesmen are busy finishing ironing clothes. That night, I.T Shen Jiawei, founder and CEO, will announce their opening, partnership, and Japan in the largest and pioneer store in the mainland. Fashion designer Wakubo Rei Also came to the scene.

　　
But even if you go to see it half a month later, there is still doubt about whether or not it is finished. In addition to the covered glass, the outer structure of the whole building is exposed to concrete columns. The narrow rotating staircase is also a cement pavement. It looks more like a popular creative factory, rather than a high-end boutique.

　　
Maybe this is Style. Wakubo Rei The design team is responsible for the interior design of the I.T Sanlitun store in Beijing, and they hope it can be "pure". This store sells Wakubo Rei's BAPE to one floor to four floors. Comme des Garcons Each series is displayed in very few areas. Dior Homme and Maison Martin Margiela Several international designer brands. Each floor has a striking sculpture, with a wooden chair in the Ming and Qing style on the staircase, and at the top level, the two walls are filled with one another, making the old enamel cup with the words "revolution" and so on. The style is back to the creative factory, isn't it?

　　
Anyway, this is I.T The most distinctive shop so far. Before that, Shanghai Heng Lung Plaza The shop on the third floor is quite self-contained. The black main colors make people turn dark at the moment of entering the door. Some semicircular walls display several different brands like labyrinths. After a lap, the light gradually clears up. Finally, a checkout booth like London's red telephone booth can be found before another exit.

　　
   Style Or visual presentation is one of the core elements of the I.T brand. The Hongkong company, which entered the mainland in 2002, relied on this to let consumers remember it. 9 years ago, the clothing retail industry in the mainland was polarized. It was not a decoration that people could not even turn to price tags. Luxury goods Or Baleno. Giordano Such a mass consumer casual wear, "fast fashion" appears at least 5 years later. Chen Yanbing, 25, remembers the IZZUE in Huaihailu Road before. The black and white main color "made it different from all other brands".

　　
Different means opportunity. And many consumers will find that this company will sometimes capitalize the Logo when they visit several times. As for what I.T and I.T are, it may be unclear.

　　
In a complicated sentence, I.T I.T and I.T are not always put together. According to Chen Huijun, general manager of China, I.T is a collection of designer fashion brands imported from Europe, usually with luxury goods. While I.T is relatively middle class, most of them are "Japanese import" brands and I.T private brand (in-house brands), and their design styles are quite different.

　　
Sometimes I.T alone becomes a sales area, such as the South Shaanxi road in Shanghai, which combines 5cm, b+ab and other brands, and the brand types and quantities in similar areas are not consistent. Sometimes, some brands in I.T can also shop alone, for example, once on the first floor of Raffles Plaza, Shanghai. French Connection 。 At present, I.T accounts for seven of the 200 stores in the mainland, while I.T has more than ten, and the rest is brand independent facade.

　　
This is the cleverness of I.T. It's hard for you to define this company. Over 300 brands sold across shops are across all levels and styles. Bold and dramatic. Alexander McQueen to minimalist Jil Sander From the as know as of the national broken flower wind to the April 77 of rock and roll, from the advanced clothing Dior Homme to the Holland minority brand Humanoid, there are more than ten million yuan of fur, and there are also hundreds of yuan Tee. Consumers do not necessarily need to understand the difference between I.T and I.T, and they are free to choose the style they like. If the price factor is ignored, compared with the sales format of flagship store like UNIQLO, the same size I.T one-stop store means more choices and different styles of collision.

　　
Just from the format of "buyer shop", maybe I.T has two competitors, Joyce and Lian Crawford, but their styles are not consistent. I.T The price range and product category are more diverse. "If you want to know who our competitors are, you have to see what brands are around the store." Chen Huijun said. Sometimes, the brand of the I.T agent asks that it should not coincide with the channel it opens, for example. Down jacket brand Moncler When Hang Lung has its own store, I.T will put it in Xintiandi store.

　　
The benefits are more than that. When many retail formats have to close down due to the low profit of single stores, I.T sometimes chooses to turn I.T into I.T, which has a wider audience and a much cheaper price. "We will say that it is not very easy for a single brand to operate successfully for ten or fifteen years in a row, but we are a multi brand store with a much larger space to adjust." Chen Huijun said.

　　
In 1988, Shen Jiawei opened the house. Green Peace The 200 square meter shop will not expect him to close to 300 brands in the future and create 11 brands, and the store will become I.T, a listed company with a market value of more than 8 billion Hong Kong dollars. The secret of success, which is written directly on the official website, is multi level and multi brand management - not what he planned, but looks like a combination of luck and choice.

　　
"Hongkong is very small. If you only represent a limited number of brands, you can only open some sales outlets in all regions, and then you will stagnate. So we will continue to introduce new brands so that we can continue to develop. Shen Jiawei said to the first financial weekly.

　　
I.T started with British fashion, and the first top designer brands included. Katharine Hamnett and Jean Paul Gaultier 。 In 1991, Shen Jiawei happened to meet in the streets of England. Katharine Hamnett The clothing fair, which was hit by mistake, found that the brand that he liked very much had no agent in Hongkong. Because Hongkong fashion brand agency was not popular at that time, Katharine Hamnett did not mention too many sales targets and signed a contract with Shen Jiawei.

　　
The buyer's role is now replaced by a professional team of about 40 people. Each year they send teams to and fro in the four fashion week and brand stores. Each group of 4 to 6 people has to respond to new trends and find elements suitable for I.T on the spot.

　　
For buyers, the two things of fashion sense and market performance are almost like "chicken first or egg first". "Most of the time, fashion is dominated by the market, the desire of consumers, so some elements will be sold." I.T purchasing director Joe Lee told the first financial weekly, "but we still hope that every season can bring different things to consumers, so some things may take some time to receive and appreciate them."

　　
Joe Lee is the voice of the buyer team. Almost every day, she and her colleagues are deciding which brands should continue to cooperate, which should be cultivated more, which should be expanded on the original basis, whether the marketing plan should be increased and how to maintain customer relationship. She and the purchasing manager communicate ideas to buyers, and buyers have their own assistants. In I.T, the data of each product category are updated according to the frequency of days, weeks, months and Ji Henian, so as to help the purchasing department to determine the relationship between discount and sales, stock ownership and competition with other brands.

　　
The same work took place in the design department, which is also a team of 40 people. Unlike the purchasing department, they are responsible for the design of their own brands, such as b+ab and 5cm, and place orders with the OEM factories. They are also responsible for the planning of most store styles. To such a busy season like Christmas, a team like "visual display" will be especially busy. Their duty is to let them have impulse buying before consumers come into contact with them. It's like the impulse of fans in November when BAPE entered I.T Shanghai Xintiandi store, and Nigo signed the limited commodities in Shanghai.

　　
Like many companies bumping into the mainland, I.T has "paid some annual tuition fees". But when recalling the decision at that time, Shen Jiawei did not think it was too early to enter because "fashion is a very abstract thing, and it takes enough time to cultivate and accumulate customer groups".

　　
In 1997, Shen Jiawei came to Shanghai for the first time. In the next few years, Xintiandi was completed in the first phase. This place, which packed many restaurants, bars and shops in Shikumen style, made Shen Jiawei feel that this should be the first place where I.T was located. Then, in 2002, I.T opened its first store in the mainland. I.T and JEANSWEST's Sunrise International Group set up a joint venture in the mainland, accounting for 50% of the shares. I.T hopes to expand the mainland market with the latter wide channels at that time.

　　
Because of the lack of cooperation, Shen Jiawei bought another 50% stake in the joint venture in 2007. In the same year, he moved to Pudong, Shanghai for two and a half years. During this period, I.T actively opened up stores in the mainland and straighten out marketing. Even in the financial crisis of 2008, it still opened stores in Hongkong and the mainland, hoping to seize the opportunity when most brands stop. I.T was next to the more than 2000 square meter Hong Kong Hui square shop near the subway line 1 in Shanghai, where the tenant originally intended to be a tenant was ZARA. In 2013, I.T will cooperate with Galeries Lafayette, a famous department store in Paris, to open a store in Xidan, Beijing, and their immediate plan is to increase the total area of the mainland business by 30%.

　　
I.T set three principles for opening a store: the best city, the best shopping mall and the best location. Every new store will be seen by Shen Jiawei before it finalise the contract. These principles may not always be what they want. For example, they failed to defeat the good place that UNIQLO robbed Nanjing West Road. UNIQLO's flagship store opened there last summer. In Chen Huijun's view, the competition between I.T and ZARA and UNIQLO multinational companies is like "tortoise and rabbit race". He feels that everything is just beginning.