Domestic Fiber: How Far Away From Branding?

On the way to a conference, the reporter asked a professor at a Textile College of the same car: "made in China."

It is gratifying to note that at the seventeenth China International Chemical fiber conference, which was not long ago, Duan Xiaoping, President of China Chemical Fiber Industry Association, made special elaboration on the research and development of new fiber products, especially the market promotion and brand building, and plans to cooperate with various enterprises at home and abroad in a variety of ways.

This indicates that the industry association will continue to guide the industry to pay full attention to fiber during the "12th Five-Year" period.

Is product and market orientation clear?

Drawing lessons from experience can lead to less detours, and the same is true in fiber marketing and brand building.

Industry insiders told reporters that famous foreign fiber brands such as "Leica", "moder", "American cotton", and so on, one of the most significant features of its product positioning is very clear, and the positioning of the product itself is closely related.

For example, "Lycra" combines the characteristics of excellent elasticity of spandex and so on. It is positioned to be fashionable and comfortable, and its market target is targeted at the middle and high income group. "Lan Jing" is positioned as the leader of the global cellulose fiber, and each of its sub brands, modal, Tencel and Lesel, has special positioning; the idea of "American cotton" is "from cotton field to fashion".

On the contrary, many new fibers in China are obscure when they are popularized, or they are widely publicized, or directly hyped up. Finally, they create a vicious circle. They not only fail to promote themselves effectively, but also disturb the market order.

Today, the case of soybean fiber is still repeatedly mentioned by the industry.

At the beginning of the emergence of soybean fiber, in the absence of a clear target market, a large area of market promotion, excessive publicity of fiber function, such as soybean fiber can prevent skin diseases, can produce negative oxygen ions, antibacterial and antiseptic effects are very confusing, it is difficult to get the approval of authoritative departments and consumers.

Xiaoping believes that only focusing on marketing and despising the cultivation of the market has resulted in a wide range of consequences. A large number of marketing offensives are not directly proportional to the market's recognition of the products themselves. At the same time, the soybean fiber has continuously expanded its production capacity, and has not strengthened the monitoring of product quality. It has not conducted guidance to manufacturers, nor has standardized usage standards, so that the quality of downstream products is uneven, and the market space is getting smaller and smaller.

However, there is no successful experience in China. Bamboo fiber is the regenerated fiber product which is developed and applied in the domestic market at home and abroad.

The positioning of bamboo fiber is becoming clearer in the process of research and application.

At first, people just wanted to develop a product to solve the problem of insufficient viscose fiber materials, so bamboo fibers were positioned instead of viscose fibers produced from cotton pulp and wood pulp.

With the maturity of R & D and extension applications, bamboo fibers are found to be functional in moisture absorption, moisture release and bacteriostasis. They can be used as skin care products, which are not available in other viscose fibers.

As a result, it has changed to skin friendly products.

But the industry still reminds us that the next target market of bamboo fiber needs to be further explored.

Is there a leading idea and capability?

China's chemical fiber enterprises have strong manufacturing capabilities, and their products are more popular around the world, but they are extremely short of influential brands.

Xiaoping analyzed the reasons for this situation. First, the industry developed late, and the industry has not yet formed a strong "century old shop".

This strength is not only manifested in having strong financial resources to carry out brand promotion continuously, but also shows that it has sufficient funds to carry out preliminary market research, product design and development, etc. Two, the enterprises themselves are eager for quick success and instant benefit, only do sales not to do the market, pay attention to profits, do not pay attention to customers, only pay close attention to the downstream market, and so on.

It can be said that the most important thing in Leica's promotion is the use of value chain marketing.

Lycra, the founder of DuPont Co, established the industrial chain management plan with Leica as the center, linking the textile enterprises that use Lycra (including textile raw materials factories, cotton weaving mills, weaving factories, garment factories, etc.), and through the establishment of the Leica's recommendation factory, the global network and cloth manufacturers will directly share new concept technology cooperation.

The right of franchising is provided for fiber sales and spinning manufacturers; the strategy of factory certification for fabric manufacturers is also provided.

Through value chain marketing, DuPont successfully promoted a highly specialized chemical fiber into a brand favored by the end consumers.

Consumers may not know spandex, but they must know about Lycra.

Similar to the Leica's value chain marketing and success, it is the promotion of "Tianzhu" fiber.

"Tianzhu industrial alliance" is an industrial alliance founded on the basis of absorbing international experience and combining with Chinese characteristics. It is composed of 78 related enterprises in the textile industry chain.

The enterprises in the industry alliance cover various fields such as raw materials, spinning, weaving, dyeing and finishing, garments, trade and testing, etc., and have advantages in cooperative development and extensive promotion of new products.

In terms of brand promotion, the alliance mainly promotes Tianzhu brand, and effectively distinguishes it from competitors through tag.

Establishing a new product promotion mode with Chinese characteristics

At present, domestic product development has entered a new stage. At this stage, enterprises should not only pay attention to the growth of quantity, but also pay attention to the improvement of quality and efficiency.

The market promotion and brand building of new fiber products have attracted the attention of the industry, but there is still no effective promotion mode. Enterprises have already realized the difficulty of the successful listing of new products.

In order to change this situation, Xiaoping put forward the way of marketing new products with Chinese characteristics. The key points include official promotion, standardized use, third party agencies' hanging cards, the establishment of fast standards, and the borrowing of terminal brands.

Because domestic enterprises have too little or too much publicity on fiber products, the vast number of consumers are not only lacking the necessary recognition and lack of confidence in the market.

The combination of government related departments can not only make the product get a high recognition mark and pform it into a brand with innate reputation, but also can obtain strong resource support.

Standardized use is the most important part of establishing brand reputation, mainly through effective cooperation of industrial chain.

Judging from the fiber industry, the value of fiber products will eventually be reflected through clothing. Once the quality problems arise, the reputation of fiber manufacturers will also be affected.

Therefore, fiber manufacturers should choose excellent partners to conduct directional sales, and provide specialized technical guidance for quality investigation and confirmation.

In order to standardize the market, the adoption of the third party mechanism is commonly used.

The certification scope of the tag includes two aspects, one is safety and functional certification, the other two is fiber composition, content ratio and other components authentication.

However, Xiaoping emphasized that for the actual situation of the domestic chemical fiber industry, the tag should also contain the core element of "exclusiveness", which is mainly embodied in two aspects: exclusive use and brand protection in a single field.

The third party mechanism will become the new carrier leading the domestic innovative high quality fiber to the market.

Since the formation of brand takes a long time to accumulate and a large amount of capital to invest, and only by relying on fiber enterprises can not directly display their raw materials in front of consumers, it is a good policy for them to form joint brands through the end producers.

In addition, in order to solve the practical problems faced by enterprises in the vacuum period of the lack of standards, the China Chemical Fiber Industry Association will formulate industry association standards for specific problems according to the application of enterprises, and help promote product promotion and brand building.

In analyzing the composition of "Lycra" brand value, Xiaoping pointed out that the value of Lycra brand accounted for 50%, the value of brand value created by certification and standardized use was 30%, and the proportion of brand value of product quality contribution was 20%.

The quality of domestic spandex brand products is close to 80%.

Because of this, Lycra can create value for customers through its own brand value, and it can also standardize the market through perfect certification and testing and tag system, which is naturally favored by downstream manufacturers and consumers.

There is still a long way to go for domestic fiber enterprises to achieve this level.