Ai Chis, The Father Of "Positioning": The Need To Create A Clothing Brand From "Small" Thinking

According to the statistics in the first half of this year, domestic clothing retail sales increased by 9.82% in the 1~6 months of this year, which is about 12 percentage points from the same period last year.

It is worth noting that in the first half of this year, the total volume of clothing retail sales increased by only 0.99%.

This means that the growth of clothing retail sales is mostly driven by the rise in clothing prices.

A clothing brand leader believes that the current sales situation is better than that in 1 and February, but the hope of "warming up" has not yet been seen.

Recently, several major domestic clothing brands have fallen into the predicament of high inventory. The seven wolves and nine Mu Wang grew by more than 60% last year. The stock growth rate of Lining, Anta, and the news birds was about 40%.

Economist Lang Xianping said, "

The crisis brought the garment industry to the M consumption mode. 14% of the rich people buy high-end products, 86% of the people buy low-grade products, and the mid-range products are shrinking.

At the same time, with the appearance of the clothing brand ceiling, the brand layout of the major clothing enterprises such as the wedding bird, the fir clothing, YOUNGOR, the seven wolves and the Li Lang surfaced.

However, "domestic multi brand strategy is hard to see success stories".

Reporter: in the face of China's "M" type of consumption structure, how should China's clothing enterprises locate?

M consumption structure is very common in many industries and countries.

Therefore, for a clothing brand, the first thing to decide is whether to become a high-end brand or a low-end brand.

In addition, it is not that a market (such as high-end market) will be better than another market, such as low-end market, which is entirely dependent on competition.

If the high-end market is competitive, then the low end market is a better choice.

For example, WAL-MART has become the world's largest retailer by focusing on the low-end market. Last year WAL-MART's sales volume reached 447 billion US dollars and its net profit margin was 3.5%, which is a very good result.

Last year, Sears, the largest mid market retailer in the US, had a turnover of US $41 billion 600 million, losing 3 billion 100 million US dollars.

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Next is the category problem.

"Clothing" is a very broad concept that can not be recognized as a specific category.

Therefore, enterprises need to decide what kind of clothing their brands represent, because strong brands are built in narrow categories, such as advanced women's wear, senior men's wear, casual wear, sportswear, etc.

Finally, it is the most important problem to solve the problem of "positioning" in category.

Is your brand the leader of the category or the second brand? Or even worse? The best position is to occupy the leading position for a long time.

If your brand is the first brand in a single category, it can enter other categories.

Just like Nike has developed considerable clothing business on the basis of its successful sports shoe business. If your brand is not the leader in the category, a better strategy is to narrow the focus and focus on the niche market that gives the brand the most chance to occupy the leading position.

Reporter: under the domestic low consumption environment, how can Chinese clothing enterprises break through the brand under the cost pressure of raw materials, labor and terminal channels?

Ai Chis: expand to other countries.

In fact, this type of expansion will not damage the brand, because in the long run, the best and strongest brand is global brand.

Every Chinese brand leader in the category has a good chance to become a successful global brand, especially in the apparel industry.

The reason is that China has many high-end products around the world.

Production of clothing (American Olympic athletes wear Lauren brand clothing is made in China).

However, expansion to other countries needs to be a leader in the category, otherwise it will be difficult to build up a global brand.

Reporter: in order to get rid of the obvious disadvantages of the market profit situation affected by climate, Bosideng pioneered a unique strategy of four seasons.

How do you view this strategy?

Ai Chis: Bosideng's four seasons strategy may sound a good idea, but it is very difficult to carry out it. It is mainly faced with the problem of modifying the existing cognitive problems.

Unless the company spends enough funds to educate the consumers on the concept of the strategy of four seasons, consumers will only be confused.

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Reporter: what kind of enterprises are more suitable for launching multi brands? How to implement multi brand strategy?

Ai Chis: the general principle is that only a market leader can adopt a multi brand strategy.

In other words, before the second brand is launched, it is the first to win in the first battlefield.

When the market leader is in an ideal position, it can launch second, third or even fourth brands, but they should launch only one brand at a time.

This is the successful way of P & G company.

Decades ago, Procter & Gamble became the market leader through Ivory soap. With the passage of time, P & G launched many new brands, and the goal of every new brand is to occupy the leading position in the market.

Today, P & G has 24 brands with annual sales of over $1 billion, while the other 20 brands sell between 500 million and 1 billion dollars. Most of the 44 brands are leaders of their products.

Multi Brand Company is the trend of the future, but it is only aimed at the market leader.

If your brand is not a market leader, launching the second brand is like building a house on the sand. It may stand for a while, but it will collapse in the long run.

Rees partners (China) marketing strategy consulting firms localization view:

Thinking about creating clothing brand from "small"

Historically speaking, the textile industry represented by silk is China's most intellectual resource industry.

For a long time, silk from China once became a luxury for the upper class in Europe.

Today, the first-line clothing brand from Europe repeats the brilliance of ancient Chinese silk and becomes a luxury in the Chinese market.

In contrast, China's clothing brand is basically limited to the domestic market, and few real strong brands, especially the strong high-end brands.

The reasons for this are objective factors such as time, creating a fashion brand for a long time, especially for high-end brands. As culture and modern clothing are foreign, Chinese brands seem to be at a disadvantage.

But subjectively, the blind expansion and diversification of garment enterprises and the misunderstanding of brand strategy are the main reasons leading to the weakness of Chinese clothing brands.

We have always emphasized that the best way to create a brand is to create a category. The most common and effective way to create a category is to focus on the category. Practice has proved this view.

YOUNGOR focuses on shirts, seven wolves focusing on jackets, nine herding kings focusing on trousers, and Goldlion focusing on ties.

Almost every famous brand is built on the focus category.

The principle is obvious and simple. Focusing on a certain category can make the brand more professional and unique, thus making it easier to enter the minds of potential customers.

However, after the initial establishment of reputation, these brands can hardly wait to choose category expansion.

A typical example is the king of nine shepherd, relying on the success of the "trousers expert", after the success of the "nine trousers", the king of nine herd went into the bigger market of men's clothing.

As a result, the nine shepherd after entering the men's wear market is just one of many men's wear brands. At the very best, its popularity is slightly higher, but this is obviously not enough to support its development in the men's wear market. Finally, it has to fall back on the category of "men's trousers".

In fact, the "men's pants" category itself has been divided, including trousers, casual pants, jeans, etc. it is not easy for the king of nine to dominate the whole "men's pants" category. The best choice is to dominate the category of trousers, and expand themselves by promoting the expansion of the whole category.

Another expansion is brand expansion, that is, multi brand strategy.

The purpose of many enterprises to launch multi brands is not to discover new opportunities, but to try to occupy more existing markets.

Eventually, although many brands are owned by enterprises, most of them are very weak and become typical shrub enterprises.

This is the reason why the domestic brand strategy of garment enterprises has rarely been successful.

If the premise of the expansion category is to dominate the original category, the premise of expanding the brand is that the original brand is in the leading position.

From the perspective of domestic garment enterprises that we are in touch with, few enterprises can really accept and practice their focus. One of the reasons is that they are misled by "example".

Although cross-border and multi category has become a common practice of international apparel brands today, it has no reference to Chinese garment enterprises.

Chinese garment enterprises should study the strategy of these brands before they succeed, instead of blindly learning their practices today.

Back in history, we will find that almost all luxury clothing brands first establish their reputation in a certain field and category.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and the wisdom and courage to create a clothing brand need to be "small".