"Chinese Elements": New "Chinese Kung Fu"

How can Chinese elements be recognized and popular internationally better and faster?

Will the brand operation methods in the domestic market be successfully replicated internationally?

The brand that had been eliminated in the early days of the country was rejuvenated by the operation of a European Frenchman.

Is this because of the lack of Chinese brand practices or the immaturity of the domestic consumer market?

Or two?

For a long time, "made in China" meant only cheap and old fashions in the fashion circles of Paris, London and New York.

A Chinese fashion designer recalls the experience of selling his designs in London for the first time a few years ago, saying that those Westerners believed that China was only suitable for opening factories to make costumes without good ideas.

This made the designer's first effort fail.

Many luxury brands also have a long way to go for Chinese elements, and a large number of products that contain Chinese elements make them feel headache.

But now, the westerners who think that China is just a cheap manufacturing and fashion copycat paradise needs to be surprised.

In March of this year, Hongkong kylin jewelry opened its store to PalaisRoyale, a luxury shopping street in Paris. The jewelry, pendants, which are not only modern but also reflect the characteristics of Chinese ancient culture, are gored by Western jewellery experts.

And the high fashion that grabs Oriental art inspiration: Shanghai, "exception", "Ji Fen" and designer Tan Yan Yu are frequently expected to be on the T stage in London, Paris and New York.

All these can not help but remind us of the wave of Chinese silk, jewellery and jade in the European Court in 18 and nineteenth Century.

But the difficulty is that, for telecom equipment, IT products and household appliances, "made in China" may be very attractive to Western consumers. For fashion and jewelry, creative luxury, it has a great relationship with people's emotional orientation, and needs a more effective way to watch.

Another problem is how to get rid of the influence of Western consumers on China's existing impression: being good at low cost manufacturing but lacking in unique creativity will only imitate and follow.

These Chinese brands hope to become manufacturers of global fashion, luxury goods and new lifestyles from China.

The "Shanghai made" leap shoe is the latest example.

When 3 years ago, Frenchman Patnce Bastian (PatriceBastian) saw the leaps in the streets of Shanghai, he suddenly fell in love with the "luxuries" in the eyes of countless Chinese teenagers in 1970 and 1980s.

He and his team have redesigned and packaged the leaps and brought them to the European market, becoming the favorite of young consumers pursuing cool fashion.

"Please pay attention!"

Elle magazine exclaimed, "...

(consumers) can feel the Chinese people's Long March feeling in these shoes.

In Champs Elysees, Paris, the famous sporting goods store quarterback, forumdeshalles in the city and Citadium in the bustling commercial block of Osman (Haussmann) and the big fashion shop adjacent to the old Buddha and Paris spring, the new leap shoes are placed in the conspicuous place of the shelf.

Where is the magic?

"Clothing and footwear industry is very easy to accept the trend of nostalgia, so the old brand has the advantage. If we can dig out the internal cultural background and update it with modern packaging techniques, we will get very good business opportunities."

Ogilvy Integrated Marketing Communications Group (China) senior planning expert Zhai Yongkang said.

The shoes of Shanghai shoes, which were born in the 1959 in Shanghai, have experienced many twists and turns. Its old site, No. 207 Zhongshan West Road under the inner ring viaduct of the city, does not see traces of the old factories. It has now become the site of several residential areas such as Shanghai fire command center and Hongqiao Shijia garden.

Its predecessor dates back to 1931. A man named Cui Fuzhuang started a big Fu rubber factory to produce tiger shoes and running shoes.

After liberation, it became a local state-run Daofu rubber factory after being pformed by public-private partnership. It was renamed as the first factory of rubber shoes in Shanghai during the cultural revolution.

In 1959, the "leap" brand of civil relief shoes produced by the Dafu rubber factory produced 1 million 616 thousand pairs of pairs, and in 1964, "leap" brand shoes were rated the first in the country.

A nearby resident named Wu Jinxiang still remembers that the production scale was very large at that time, and more than 2000 workers worked in 2 to 3 floors of a workshop, producing rubber tyres and rubber shoes.

In 1992, the Shanghai rubber tire factory was assigned to the Shanghai tire rubber group (Group) Limited by Share Ltd and merged into the Huayi Group.

In 1997, Dafu rubber factory and another company invested in the establishment of Shanghai big Bowen shoes company, and Shanghai rubber shoes factory was also included.

In the same year, the big Bowen shoe industry was pferred to Shanghai lancen stock company.

Liu Zhimei, who lived in the 279 lane of Changning Branch Road, worked here for 18 years. She still remembered the scene when she entered the production shoe workshop. The sound of machine and manual hammers almost never stopped, and the air was filled with pungent smell of gasoline, glue and rubber.

The workers are divided into two classes each day, from 6:30 to 14:30, and from evening to class, to deal with the process of making shoes, pressing, stretching and washing. Each line has more than 20 employees. Finally, a pair of leapfrog shoes can be produced.

Liu said, at that time, it was the most difficult work in the rubber shoes workshop. "Even the last bathroom needs to find someone to shift."

However, the factory's efficiency is not good, everyone's income is not high. Her family still has a pair of leapfrog shoes, which are issued by factories as wages.

Around 2003, after a huge cost of dismissal, the factory moved to the outer suburbs of Pudong, Shanghai.

Like the leap, the brand of rubber shoes, such as Huili, double money, dragon card and so on, has recorded the history of Shanghai's release shoes.

Now, they may not exist, or they can only appear in remote rural markets or labor insurance goods stores, and factories are also more interested in competing for international brand subcontractors at very low prices.

However, unlike the 1935 recall of registered trademarks, the leap brand has never registered a trademark in China. At present, although the "leap" shoes produced by the big Bowen shoe industry still have the "Feiyue" logo, the registered trademark is a big Bowen brand, while many manufacturers in the country are producing leaps. Therefore, the sale of big Bowen shoes is not good, the official price is 26 yuan RMB, while the field copycats robbed the market with more than 10 yuan.

Because of its thin profit margins, the Bowen shoes industry's own production line has also been given priority to other best-selling products and processing export orders, and the jump shoes are subcontracted to a small processing plant in Jinshan, Shanghai. Only the words "Shanghai rubber shoes Factory leap card" on the corner of the shoe simple wrapping paper tell people: This is the "orthodox" leap shoe.

Few people know that in October 2005, there were two ambitious French people in the factory.

At the age of 36, pats is a designer, artist and brand management expert. He is also an old qualification "SneakerFreak". He is a fan collector of all kinds of shoes. He is full of two big boxes, including Nike, Adidas and other brand sports shoes, and is still kept in his parents and grandmother's home.

3 years ago, he worked and lived in Shanghai. He joined a martial arts class. He found that all the students were wearing "white shoes" and "blue shoes", but they were not easy to buy.

One day, he told his friend Nicola Seguy that if we find the factory to produce this shoe, we can buy more pairs at a time, and maybe bring back to Paris for ten years. "In fact, if the style of this shoe can be retrofit, it will be very beautiful."

Nicola watched the sketches of some of the pformation shoes designed by pats, quite excited. After joining the new design elements, the old Chinese shoes looked cool, which was very much in line with the fashion tastes of young Europeans.

So they decided to find a leap of old manufacturers to talk about cooperation.

Nicola's experience of visiting the old factory for the first time for pats and Nicola is frustrating.

They found the head of the factory, showed some elaborate sketches on the computer and a simple business plan, put forward to help improve the quality and design of the leap shoes and push them to the international market, but got the unanswered "hum ha ha" answer.

The other side thought they were like the foreigners who had found the factory before, but they wanted to export a batch of shoes.

After several rounds of negotiations, the two uninvited guests reached a cooperation agreement with the company, and agreed to arrange for the production of shoes designed by pats in a processing plant in the suburbs of Shanghai.

Finally, the shoe has undergone numerous modifications, and has undergone a comprehensive improvement from the whole to the details: the shape is more exquisite and fashionable, the fabric quality is better, and the awkwardness of the original "Feiyue" logo is modified. The trademark is registered in the inside and sole of the shoe, and the outer package is also beautifully designed.

In addition, each shoe has its name to enhance its personality, such as a pair of pink shoes, named "sweetwind".

The first batch has three models: classic white canvas, red and blue stripes, Shaolin, and "mantis" and "tiger".

In March 2006, 1000 pairs of leapfrog shoes began to be put on the European market in a small scale. Pats returned to Paris 3 months in advance. The best marketing method that he could think of was to tell the legendary story of the Chinese old brand to a rather unfamiliar European consumer, such as 70 years of long history, such as its special training shoes for Shaolin monks. This story not only attracted a lot of reports from the media, but also made the sellers take heart.

In the first week of listing, about 10 retail outlets joined the retail ranks. After two weeks, the leap shoes were placed on shelves of sixteen seven stores.

However, they have also experienced their own process: to remove the impression that "made in China" is cheap and old-fashioned in Europe, paters label their origin as "MadeinShanghai (made in Shanghai)", do not choose cheap stores such as Carrefour in sales channels, and sell them in professional sports shoes stores and international brands; the price is set at fifty or sixty euros, which is slightly higher than the price of ordinary sports shoes to highlight its fashion positioning.

At present, there are more than 160 retail agents in France, which are also sold in the UK and Japan, and the North American market has begun to open channels.

Now, the future of leapfrog is in 4 small teams: pats, 36, responsible for market and brand development; Nicola, 27, management finance and international sales; Ji Jialun, 28 year old Chinese lad, in charge of production and technology; and 27 year old Clement (Clement).

They do not have regular meetings, mainly express their ideas by e-mail. If everyone answers the "consent", the plan will pass quickly.

Sometimes pats will not be able to restrain his new ideas and call from Paris. Nicola will sleep in a hurry and say, "please, man," Shanghai is now 1 in the middle of the night.

But sometimes they argue fiercely.

The most serious one is about the style of leather fabrics. Patters thinks this is a popular trend in the market, and Ji Jialun thinks it is too early to sell leather when customers are not fully familiar with the leap shoes.

The dispute lasted for several months and proved that sales were not very good before it stopped in time.

It is also difficult for them to face strong financial difficulties.

The shortage of funds has led them to take the initiative to try to save the effective and suitable brand marketing strategy: while establishing retail channels, they also open online stores; the model is played by volunteers in the circle of friends, but it interprets the natural fashion sense of young people; with some artists, the limited edition is released, and when the latter is wearing TV commercials with flying shoes, it has become a good publicity.

The website and the MySpace page do not look like a product sales menu, but more like a group making room, so you can see that the leap shoes have a very humane ID birthplace: Shanghai; status: single; Constellation: