Competitiveness Test: Who's At The Moment? Whose Future?

2012 China International Clothing and Accessories Fair ( CHIC2012 The theme is "crossing", which is set up for the CHIC 20 year grand ceremony and for the future of the whole industry.

Based on the theme of "crossing" and the strategic critical period of China's textile and apparel industry, the "China Textile News" and "clothing times" which were deeply integrated at the end of last year decided to define the theme of this CHIC Expo special issue as "Competitiveness - reducing potential", and jointly launched the first "China's most competitive brand news survey", which mainly investigated eight fields: Men's clothing, women's wear, casual wear, designer brand, children's clothing, underwear, cashmere wool and professional market. We found that these important areas of Chinese clothing industry and the achievements of important leading brands have been combined into the existing pattern of the industry, and how their competitiveness will determine the future of the whole industry. Of course, there are unavoidable worries. Especially when the future success of these brands is limited by the existing success, we must rationally recognize a permanent challenge facing the brand: who can control the next moment? Because, in a sense, competitiveness is determined by the "future" contained in the brand "now".

At present, the authoritative media has released the survey list, which has become an international practice, such as "Forbes", "fortune", "business week" and so on. It is the most authoritative and authoritative mainstream media in China's textile and clothing industry. China textile daily. and Fashion times It is the responsibility to track the reports of Chinese clothing brands and push them to the positions they can take, so that they can really play the leading role and accept the public's recognition.

We find that in any subdivision, there are only about 10 successful winners, and one or two or two or three families can be remembered and word-of-mouth. So, every year we will conduct an annual evaluation of the competitiveness of China's clothing brand. What will be the list after 10 years? Let's witness it together.

Men's clothing: large-scale production faces the challenge of personalized consumption

In the field of Chinese clothing, Chinese men's clothing entrepreneurs belong to a group of people who get rich first. Among them are YOUNGOR Li Cheng Cheng, Zheng Yonggang of Shanshan, Zhou Shaoxiong of seven wolves, Wu Zhize of the wedding bird, and Zhou Chengjian of the United States. Some people attributed this to men's clothing, which is more suitable for large-scale production, little change in style, relatively small risk, low popularity of men, and relatively high brand loyalty. Of course, these reasons have gradually returned to history, and the future of men's wear is becoming more and more complicated.

Most of the leading men's clothing brands in China were products of large-scale consumption in China's clothing market in the early twentieth Century. At that time, men's clothing brands in Beijing, Ningbo and Wenzhou were also represented. The men's clothing of these three places also had their own characteristics. Beijing mainly occupied the market of men's formal wear, with Beijing's Shun Mei, Ramon and Hongdu as its main position. Ningbo was the tailor's version of Hongbang tailors, mainly dominated by YOUNGOR and Shanshan, occupying the dominant position in the men's suit market, while Wenzhou was more internationalized. Their fabrics were light and cut, emphasizing their cultivation, and they occupied the position of Pyramid's spire at the time.

However, it is precisely because of this large-scale consumption to promote the birth of large-scale production mode, and one of the inevitable results of this large-scale production is that products win by quantity and homogenization is serious. Slowly, these strong men's clothing enterprises have made men's fashion fashionable in the mass market demand, and their consumption level has begun to slide to the larger and lower Pyramid of the crowd. At this time, some men's clothing enterprises seem to see the upward hope. With the sunshine, Hai Lan group and Ruyi as their representatives, they have followed the Zegna model to launch their own high-end men's clothing brand. However, what really calls the market in China is the "Hai Lan home" of the mass market. The Chinese men's wear brand's disintegration in the high-end market is a result that has already been predicted by the industry, but the result is still somewhat frustrating for the men's entrepreneurs.

But this frustration soon disappeared. The leading men's clothing enterprises made frequent profits in the capital market and real estate. Entrepreneurs' ambition to occupy the high-end market of China's men's wear was gradually vanished. Even the discerning people pointed out that they had been careless about their men's clothing industry.

With the increasing movement of the "adjustment structure" of the state, the leading enterprises that have separated from their main businesses have begun to return in great numbers, but now they are faced with a new consumption pattern called "personalized consumption and customization" (some of which have existed in Europe and America for a long time), and the new consumption mode will undoubtedly start another round of subversive activities.

In this survey, we found that the threshold of Chinese men's suit is still very high, and the market influence of scale enterprises will not disappear overnight. However, the old successful experience is no longer effective. Apart from seeing a new wave of overseas mergers and acquisitions and large-scale industrial chain expansion, we do not seem to see the determination and attitude of menswear brands in the field of independent innovation. As such, the first independent international brand in China's clothing industry may not come from men's clothing, especially the men's formal dress with imported products.

Women's clothing: a driving force and foundation

The development of Chinese women's clothing brands also benefited from large-scale consumption in the early twentieth Century. However, because of the diversification of women's clothing consumption, they entered the personalized era earlier than men's wear. After years of personalized consumption market experience, the Chinese women's clothing brand has now come to a good time. Its stamina is even bigger than men's clothing in a certain extent.

Compared with Chinese men's leading enterprises, overseas Chinese brands have been buying overseas brands, but Chinese women's clothing has entered the critical period of frequent acquisition of olive branches by all major investment institutions or international brands. Some experts say: "just like being in love, men like to attack, and women like the feeling of being loved. So you see that men's clothing brands are busy spending money to marry foreign wives, while women's brands are busy getting married." On the other hand, it shows that Chinese men's wear has lagged behind women's clothing because of its emphasis on capital strength and scale expansion over the years.

It is reported that several women's clothing brands have been selected by international luxury magnates. They have become or are becoming alternative brands of luxury goods market for ordinary consumers, such as Mass Phil and European times. They are known as the rudiments of China's popular luxury brands. In addition, women's clothing has become the new favorite of capital from the strategic cooperation between Shenzhen's "Song Li Si" and the global Private Equity Firm Carlyle investment group (150 million yuan for Shenzhen Ellassay Apparel Industrial Co's growth fund to Shenzhen Ellassay Apparel Industrial Co).

Compared with men's clothing companies, the Chinese women's clothing shows two totally different attitudes towards the listing, an expansion type, such as the long posture; a cautious heavy duty, such as white-collar workers. At first, the women's wear of these two camps could not interfere with each other. However, after becoming the first Chinese women's wear listed company, the power of the two camps began to be very different. Although Lang Xianping and other economists rationally recommended that Chinese women's clothing should be carefully listed, despite the insistence of Miao Hongbing, President of white collar, that "capital can also destroy a high-end brand", some experts asserted that the pattern of Chinese women's clothing has been rewritten by the power of capital, but this new pattern needs 3 years or 5 years.

Several women's clothing brands are slightly more competitive than men's in terms of competitiveness. However, Chinese women's wear enterprises have a weak performance in social responsibility and industry. This is also a hidden danger for their future development. Because of the two important indicators in brand competitiveness evaluation index, brand awareness and brand reputation include three categories of public, social and industry. Candidates' brand names are generally not high in the social and industrial categories. Their current recognition of core products or brands is not the key to their ultimate success. The key is how to control and study consumer research in the social and industrial background. Candidates for the most competitive brand news in China's clothing industry

Casual wear: collective weakness in brand competitiveness

At present, China's casual wear has been increasingly subdivided: from sports and leisure to outdoor recreation, from life to leisure to business and leisure. Every field has its own brand name, such as sports and leisure, represented by Lining, living and leisure represented by Mts. Bang Wei, but if the representative of Chinese casual wear is not Fujian, Fujian's representative is not the seven wolves. It is they who set off the most important store in China's clothing industry, the most spokesperson of CCTV advertising. The activity index is far from other clothing categories. Now, some of them are listed companies. They have board of directors, CEO, and all kinds of think tanks. They also have various styles and sub brands suitable for all kinds of consumer groups. However, the risk is not far away from them. Some experts believe that after experiencing a rapid growth period, China's leisure wear brands have entered the inventory examination, talent examination and strategic examination stage. This is from the bankruptcy of the "alien", the "Lining" executive level shocks, and the inventories crisis of Mts. Bang Wei, we can see that the casual wear brand is not facing individual risks, but from a collective level of crisis.

Why should casual wear face such a severe challenge? Here, we should analyze it from the aspect of brand competitiveness.

Brand competitiveness is the competitive power of a brand product that surpasses other similar products. It is the ability of other products of the same kind to be difficult or even impossible to imitate. It is the ability to open up the market, occupy the market and gain greater market share. Brand competitiveness enables enterprises to sell at a higher price than similar products, occupy larger market space at the same price, and even win high profits for enterprises in the environment of market downturn and price cutting competition, and strive for survival and development in fierce market competition.

Casual wear is lower than men's clothing in the threshold, and it is easy to face the impact of new fashion brands directly, and ultimately leads to price war. They occupy larger market space by relying on large-scale production, and the most serious consequence of large-scale production is inventory increase. On the other hand, casual dress has no distinctive dress style and serious homogenization of products. Although they have been emphasizing their attempts in brand design and development, you have to admit that the result is not optimistic. This field seems to form a collective myopia: how many stores are opened by a brand to measure the influence of a casual wear enterprise.

What is worth mentioning is that the key crisis in front of Chinese casual wear is not to die, but to grow old. China's old casual wear enterprises are facing the problem of how to become younger. The crisis is: on the road of these old casual wear, they are full of variables. For leisure wear brands, any step of strategic adjustment is a double-edged sword, which may be even higher, and can also be faced with a disaster.

Designer brand: the golden key to enter the high-end door

From the survey of Chinese clothing competitiveness, we find that the brand of Chinese fashion designers has emerged the first generation of luxury brand. Among them, the most representative ones are "Shanghai" and "up and down". "Shanghai" is the designer brand of Hongkong. Later, it was seen by the international luxury group, and became the third most profitable brand of the group. Now, the "upper and lower" were born with the direct lineage of Hermes, but there is also a mysterious figure Chiang Qiong, who has been remembered in the most valuable luxury list recently released by the World Luxury Association. Although the two brands now have the characteristics of "mixed blood", the consensus reached at home and abroad is that "Shanghai" and "up and down" are all Chinese local luxury brands. Compared with the profitability of "Shanghai", "up and down" is obviously still in the incubation period. It is reported that the sale of "up and down" has not been very good in the Chinese market for more than 4 years, but the Hermes group has shown great patience with them. They seem to be using the action to prove to the domestic counterparts: "how is the luxury made?" it can not help but recall that very similar phenomena occur frequently in the forging of Chinese men's high-end brands, but the way that Chinese men's wear chiefs choose is that the market is slightly bad, and they will change their minds immediately.

When it comes to China's luxury brand, there is a brand of pure Chinese blood that has to be mentioned. It is "NE TIGER", which is called the first luxury brand in China by the media. With the same positioning as "Shanghai" and "up and down", Zhang Zhifeng, the founder and art director of the brand, has put more labels on the Chinese culture for the brand. He thinks: "although Chinese clothing is still different from the international brands, we are not backward at all from the cultural point of view. We are even very good."

In this survey, we see two tendencies, one of which is the international designer brand. For example, givin, Xie Feng, the founder and design director of his brand, has a prominent background of returnees, and has led givin to Paris fashion week several times. The other is a designer brand with Chinese element labels. Apart from the "Shanghai", "up and down" and "NE TIGER" brand names, the exceptions, Liang Zi and Yi Hui Hui are also interpreting "Chinese culture" in their own way. Obviously, this is a fashion code waiting for Chinese fashion designers to crack. Some experts believe that the determinants of the password may not be in the cultural field, but in the economic field.

Although most of the brands of Chinese fashion designers are still in the list of designer clothing brands, the key to China's clothing entering the high-end door is undoubtedly in their hands. Of course, the designer's personal charm also occupies a certain proportion in the evaluation of designer brand's brand association. After all, this is a group of fashion brands that paste personal faces on product trademarks.

Single category brand: balance between competition and monopoly

Single category brand refers to those brands that are mainly produced by a single product. For example, Bosideng down jacket, Heng Yuan Xiang woolen sweater, Chuang-tzu leather clothing, love underwear and so on. They are leading brands in various fields, and in their single market, they have huge capital and market share. These leading brands have formed scale effects in many years of market competition, and they can control some key points of the industrial chain and value chain, so as to balance competition and monopoly.

In his theory of competitive advantage, Potter, a famous management scientist, believes that there are five factors that affect the competitive situation of the industry, namely, "the threat of new entrants", "the bargaining power of buyers (customers)", "the threat of substitutes (or services)", "the bargaining power of suppliers" and the "confrontation situation of existing competitors". In the struggle against these five competitive forces, there are three kinds of successful strategic thinking. These three ideas are: 1, total cost leadership strategy; 2, differentiation strategy; 3, specialization strategy.

The analysis of the single brand strategy in China's clothing industry is largely a strategy of specialization. They rely on this strategy to make the operation of enterprises superior to those in industrial competition.

In the survey, we found that there are some successful single brand brands in China's clothing industry, but there are still many deficiencies in brand competitiveness.

First, the lack of popular discourse power. For example, if people want to buy a cashmere sweater with pure cashmere, they will think of Ordos, but if people think of fashion taste, they will not choose a single category brand. Therefore, a single category brand controls huge capital and market share in its single market, but it can not control popularity.

Secondly, the lack of cultural connotations. A single product brand is easy to produce a contradiction is that its products easily become a functional product of a certain aspect, for example, people think of Yalu down jacket, the first thing that comes to mind is winter warmth, rather than a culture, a style, or even an identity.

In addition, some single categories of seasonal sales are obvious, which makes stores not comfortable with these single category brands, and this embarrassing image of the store can easily lead to misleading consumers and degrade the competitiveness of the brand. Therefore, we can see that there are many single brand brands starting to shift to many categories, such as the extension of Bosteng to men's clothing and women's clothing, Kaiser's fur clothing to start production of four seasons clothing products, etc. However, due to the single operation of many years, their success in restructuring has yet to be tested by the market.