Pricing War In Clothing Industry: Price Rises And Discounts Are A Cycle.

"Summer wear in 2011" Discount War is earlier than ever. " It sounds like a lyric, but it is a fact. Since June, the major clothing brands began to plan the discount scheme for summer wear this year, and entered the July, and the discount storm intensified. Recently, reporters conducted a market survey of discount sales activities in Beijing's clothing market. The main respondents included 18~35 years old consumers and some brand retailers.

The results show that this summer clothing Prices generally rose by about 10%. Brands want to increase sales to appropriately shift cost pressures, but consumers do not seem to buy it.

In a period of time, consumers and brands are fighting against each other secretly, and both sides are looking forward to a favorable turn in the market. With the arrival of the summer season, the situation seems to indicate that enterprises have released the signal of compromise to consumers. However, it is hard to say that the battle surrounding clothing prices may be far from over.

Shen Qing Price increase view

"Three years ago, a suit that went to work could be bought for almost 1000 yuan, and this year, the same suit with nearly the same amount of material is missing 1500 yuan." Shen Qing has much to say about the changes in the clothing market over the past few years. Shen Qing is a marketing salesman of Wujiang Mei Shang Mei fabric design service company. He often deals with fabric suppliers all over the country.

In recent years, in Shen Qing and customer's "chat record", "price increase" is the most frequent word. Behind this reaction is actually the trend of the domestic clothing enterprises to raise the selling price. In Shen Qing's view, as a consumer, a suit of similar styles and fabrics has risen by 500 yuan over the past 3 years, which is not enough to control consumer behavior. But she also stressed that from the price increase, 50% seems a bit too much.

Compared with ordinary consumers, Shen Qing's understanding of the clothing industry is different because of the particularity of his job status. In Wujiang, Shen Qing said he was watching the fabric prices rise one by one in the market. It goes without saying that Shen Qing's work is not directly related to the clothing market, but in the upper reaches of the garment industry, when a wave of service purchasing managers came one after another, Shen Qing began to realize that the entire garment industry is changing.

"Now in Wujiang to make fabrics, it can be said that people who have approached customers know that almost all customers want to keep the price down again and again." At first, prices in Wujiang and other places are not necessary to negotiate, because many enterprises are long-term cooperative customers, they also have a general understanding of the price range of fabrics. Shen Qing understands that the market is like this: in recent two years, with the rising price of raw materials of cotton and some chemical fibers, Wujiang's fabric enterprises have also made different price increases, so more and more buyers are beginning to talk about prices.

Shen Qing gave an example. In recent years, the price of polyester DTY has entered a steadily increasing range. Since last year, the average price of polyester DTY has been maintained at about 15000 yuan per ton, but by the middle of this year, the price of DTY has reached 19000 yuan per ton. The rising cost of raw materials has led to a rise in fabric prices in the Wujiang market, which may be the reason why most fabric suppliers can no longer easily satisfy the demand of clothing companies.

On the one hand, as a practitioner, Shen Qing has seen the general experience of clothing enterprises in the upstream of clothing production, and on the other hand, as an ordinary consumer, although she knows more about the phenomenon of clothing price increase than ordinary people, the impact of price increases on ordinary people is also there. When buying clothes at a local shopping mall in Wujiang, Shen Qing said she often hesitated to see if it was worth it. Most of the time, if not for special needs, Shen Qingning would like to bear with it first, and then buy the new clothes that he likes when the stores or stores discount.

It is not worthwhile to buy full price clothing when it first appeared on the market. This consumption concept can be seen everywhere in this summer wear market. For consumers, the expectation of clothing discount seems stronger than before. Almost everyone in Shen Qing's circle of friends had such an idea. {page_break}

Is the discount season ahead of schedule?

From the beginning of July this year, the "textile and clothing weekly" reporter in Xidan, Beijing, Wangfujing and other business circles for Zara, H&M, MissSixty, izzue, SELECTED, GUESS and the United States, and so on and many other clothing stores conducted a month of market survey, the results show that many consumers are looking forward to the clothing brand early discount, promotion.

According to a reporter's survey, the price of summer wear in Beijing's main business circles has generally risen this year. Apart from the fact that H&M is almost the same as in previous years, the managers of Zara, SELECTED and GUESS all indicated that the price increase was about 5%, while the brands such as cotton clothes workshops, MissSixty and izzue indicated that the price of summer wear was about 10%. Among the surveyed brands, the price of the price of the price of the Tallis summer was the highest, about 15%.

As the price of branded clothing has been raised, the sales volume has been affected. As with Shen Qing in Wujiang, Beijing consumers also take a wait-and-see attitude towards summer wear. According to the survey results, in the summer market in Beijing, except for the slight rise in the price of mus bond, H&M and Zara both indicated that they were flat in the same period in previous years.

However, for most enterprises, sales volume is a rather difficult question. In fact, from the market strategy of some garment enterprises, we can see that in the first half of this year, some enterprises also increased their sales volume due to the increase of product prices, while the number of shipments that really reflected the level of enterprise productivity did not increase significantly.

Li Wenwen, manager of the Xidan flagship store in the United States, said that the increase in summer wear prices was also decided by many Brand Company on the basis of full consideration of production costs. Compared with previous years, the sales volume of spring and summer clothing early this year is indeed affected. In order to alleviate the pressure brought by inventory pressure in a timely manner, many brand sales terminals of Li Wenwen's Xidan commercial circle began brewing this season's sales promotion plan in June. In addition, some brands have decided to lengthen this year's sales promotion cycle and give discounts ahead of time.

In the Beijing market, the clothing that participated in this year's discount activities is basically seasonal clothing, which is quite different from the previous year's special sale, refund and reduction activities. In order to deal with the sales bottlenecks caused by price increases, the sales promotion period of the United States has been about two weeks earlier than before. It is one of the earliest brands in Beijing market. Zara, H&M and MissSixty also followed a discount sale. In most cases, the discount period of most brands is about one week ahead of the previous years, which seems to satisfy consumers' expectation of the price of brand clothing this summer. {page_break}

How much more will this autumn winter rise?

Clothing discount is certainly a good thing for consumers, but if the clothing brand always keeps the trend of raising prices, it means that many consumers can only expect the discount of brands when they buy clothes, which will definitely hurt the interests of enterprises and consumers. In Shen Qing's view, in fact, with the increase of production costs, garment enterprises pass on the cost by raising the selling price, which is beyond reproach. However, it is worth emphasizing that spanferring the cost to the market terminal must have a reasonable range, and the price of the product should not rise or fall.

As a consumer, Shen Qing's views may represent the aspirations of many consumers, and tell consumers what they most want to say to enterprises. But as a textile and apparel industry, Shen Qing is more aware of the pressure faced by enterprises in the raw material market. To cope with the uncertainty of the market, some brand enterprises have considered the 2011 autumn and winter product ordering meeting.

On the other hand, the off-season sale of summer wear and the advance of the discount period also objectively stimulated the decision of the enterprise to hold the order meeting ahead of schedule. Many professional clothing markets such as Shanghai new seven Pu, Nanchang Wan Ma and Guangzhou Baima garment city have also launched the new product order meeting in autumn and winter of 2011 in early June this year.

Wan Chunhua, general manager of Wan MA Fashion Plaza, said that this year, some brands of new products in autumn and winter will be ahead of schedule. The main reason is that the spring and summer clothing sales have arrived earlier this year. If the garment factory price has not been determined, dealers will not dare to place large orders. Many agents take on the characteristics of less batch and multiple batches of goods. Therefore, enterprises will prepare early orders.

Although companies have made plans ahead of time, there seems to be no signs of loosening in future market pricing. According to the announcement made by Li Ning Co recently, the Lining brand's new product orders in the fourth quarter of 2011 will end in June. The order amount determined at the order meeting will increase by more than 5% at the retail price year-on-year, and the average retail price of clothing and shoes products will increase by more than 10%. Other domestic sporting goods brands, such as Anta, XTEP, PEAK and 31st degree, will also hear the news of price increases, including the average price of sports shoes and clothing, which will rise by one to 20%.

This year, whether it is sporting goods enterprises, or home textiles, men's clothing and casual wear enterprises, raising prices has become a key word in its order meeting, and has become an important factor in the growth of some textile and garment enterprises. But the industry is also worried that the price increase has a certain crowding out effect on sales volume, and the promotion of price increases on industry sales growth is also difficult to sustain for a long time.

I wonder if consumers like Shen Qing will continue to be patient next spring. Perhaps the answer will only be announced until the next discounted season.