Designer Tang Jia Talks About The Balance Between Design And Business

Reporter: talk about the brand style and the spirit you want to convey.

Tang Jia: Jade en plus was founded in 07.

This period was also a time when local designer brands were more active. At that time, a number of new brands appeared on the market.

But I think these designer brands express more concepts such as personality, cool, and fun; because I have always been more concerned about feminization style, and I think this style is relatively vacant in the market at that time.

In addition, because I am also in the French high fashion union school is also a senior women's clothing, emphasizing the beauty of tailoring and structure, so I hope to apply this to the design.

I think the customers of Jade en Plus are beautiful women. No matter she is dazzling or waiting to carve, we can give the owner a unique style of fashion and make more personal charms through three-dimensional cutting and exquisite hand sewing.

So the core of Jade en plus's style is to emphasize women's elegance.

Reporter: before looking at your product, I think your product is strong in both fashion trends and practicality.

Tang Jia: as a designer brand, I think the relationship between design and market will be a bottleneck, and it is also a puzzle for us for a long time.

It should be said that our design style has gradually accumulated through the development of 5 years, and we strive to find the balance between design concept and business.

During this process, our customers gave us many suggestions.

Some of our customers will often communicate with us: your clothes are pretty good, but how can I make them look better and wear more occasions? Not every customer's body is perfect. For example, a designer can design a sleeveless dress from the aesthetic angle, and our customers just need to cover up her stout upper arm. There will be contradictions in it. Our compromise is to adjust the product according to the proportion.

Designer brands will eventually develop. In recent years, more and more brands have entered department stores.

For example, we now have counters in Yi Shi Dan, and beside us are other designer brands.

You can see that your performance is not as good as that of traditional brands or more commercial brands, and the relationship between design and business immediately highlights.

We will keep looking, thinking and adjusting.

Sometimes this is a contradiction: is it a style for more customer service or self persisting? But I think we serve people. This is a good communication. We should give full consideration to customers' opinions.

We have been adjusting, but not enough. This is a painful process.

It is very important for Chinese designer brand to survive and develop.

There is nothing wrong with marketization. We are a brand. The starting point is that more people like you and accept you.

Reporter: so, is a shopping mall a suitable channel for a designer brand?

Don: Yes, channels are very important.

At present, we have four stores in Shanghai, compared with the highest return rate of single store in Xinle Road store.

Traditional shopping malls have the pressure of keeping the bottom because of the cooperation mode, but the pressure of street stores also exists. For example, Changle Road now faces the problem of reduced passenger flow and increased rental costs.

So shopping malls and franchised stores have their advantages and disadvantages.

There is a guarantee in the shopping mall, that is, the flow of people.

Now we have opened stores in the downtown areas of Hangzhou, and there are also agents in Tianjin. This is also a must for brand development.

From the channel point of view, we also want to challenge the shopping mall, because if it has been only a street store, a lot of market factors have made us lose control of the stores.

Now, the performance of shopping malls is not necessarily better than that of ordinary products, but it is not bad compared with our exclusive stores.

Of course, the location of shopping malls is usually more popular, so sometimes the matching degree of targeted or customer groups is not so strong.

We also tried to open stores in other provinces and cities, and concluded that every city is suitable for our products, which once suffered the biggest pain in a city.

Each brand has its own position, we can not satisfy all people, we can only try to meet the people we can meet.

Reporter: what are the mainstream consumer groups of brands?

Tang Jia: according to our observation, many of our customers are engaged in cultural undertakings or corporate management, including performing arts, media, executives, civil servants and some expatriates.

Women aged 30 or above are the majority.

Reporter: talk about your favorite designer or design style? How do you get the trend of every season?

Tang: I like Lavin very much. It means femininity, elegance and uniqueness. And most importantly, though the product will have new changes every season, it will integrate into the new popular elements, but the spirit of design has never changed. The feminization spirit of Lavin is deeply rooted in the bone marrow.

Of course, I also like Phoebe Philo very much. From Chloe to Celine, she brought her bright minimalism spirit into the brand, injected unique style spirit into the brand, and also achieved good results in the market. This is what we call balance.

And what they have in common is what we often say, the trend is changing, but the style is forever.

From my point of view of making brand, I think it is not easy to do this.

For me, to get inspiration or to see trends, of course, fashion week is a very important channel, especially Milan fashion week and Paris fashion week.

Other people who may be in a cafe in a certain afternoon, a street traveler, may also give me new collocation inspiration.

Reporter: as an independent designer brand, what are the difficulties or challenges currently facing?

Tang Jia: from the design director to running a brand, there will be many problems, including rent, personnel pressure, market factors and so on.

A simple example, for a brand, sometimes the sales team's mobility is very large, because this is directly linked to performance, and everyone is very realistic.

Our whole team now looks at it from the designer to the print master. It should be said that it is relatively stable, and this is also something I am proud of.

And how to grasp the style of each season, integrate new elements, and continue to brand style, this is challenging.

There are many things to learn in order to run a brand.

Recently, I am also taking MBA courses, trying to complete a pformation from designer to manager.

Reporter: how do we view the fashion week and whether we will participate in the fashion week?

Tang Jia: at this point, I do not see clearly at the moment. What is the help of fashion week to us? What is the ratio of input to output? Maybe opening a store or holding a VIP afternoon tea party is more effective? Maybe my idea is more practical, and of course, I will not refuse such an opportunity, but before we want to make it clear, we will not try it easily.

Reporter: the inspiration for the new season's design?

Tang Jia: the inspiration for the next season's products is snow white and hunters. In the design, the concept of black queen is introduced into the design, which extends to the strength and discipline of independent women, the whirlpool of the air field and the sharpening character.

On the whole, it is the style of strong women that highlights the fullness and pride of autumn and winter.

Reporter: let's talk about the latest development plan of the brand and whether we should consider some new modes or channels of cooperation.

Tang Jia: there will be another 2 or 3 stores next year. The main business will be direct stores.

As for designer brand integration store, on the one hand, I think the scope of selection is not enough. On the other hand, I think this mode is not very mature in China at present.

It also has something to do with ideas. For example, our products are very strong in series, but if they are ordered very fragmentary, they destroy this sense of seriation.

Including online shopping, it is not very mature at present.

In the process of making brand, there are also some external investments to contact us, but I think the construction of our own brand and the internal construction of the team are the most important.

Only when we are strong enough to control these new opportunities one day can I think about it.