Can China Successfully Replicate The "Cheap" Fast Fashion In The US?

Wang Xiao still remembered one time when she was shopping on the Nanjing road. When she was waiting for a red light at the corner, the girl who stood in front of the two blonde girls turned around and asked, "Hello, where is this brand?" that day, she carried Forever21's shopping bag.

It is said that there are two kinds of yellow color everywhere in the streets of the United States: one is a taxi, the other is a Forever21 shopping bag.

This is a favorite of young people from Losangeles.

Brand ambition.

Forever21 announced recently that it will open 600 new stores in the world in the next 3 years, which means that by 2017, the brand will have 1200 stores in the world.

However, in China, compared with other fast fashion brands, the development of Forever21 is not smooth and slow.

Once crashed into the Chinese market

In September of 2012, Forever21 officially opened in Nanjing East Road, Shanghai.

The four storey building with an area of more than 7000 square meters is the largest flagship store in China.

"Before the opening ceremony, there was a large advertising campaign along the street."

When it was officially opened, Wang Xiao went around in a circle. "People are many, things are many, but the price is cheap, but it always feels like a mess."

Since its entry into China in 2012, Forever21 has not been very active. It only symbolically opened shops in Hongkong, Beijing and Shanghai, and announced no new moves after entering the Chinese market.

Until last year, it opened another 6 shops.

The official website shows that up to now, Forever21 has only 10 shops nationwide.

In the layout, in the mainland, in addition to the northern Guangzhou and Shenzhen these four first tier cities, Wuxi, Hangzhou, Wuhan and Chongqing also have access.

Compared with other fast fashion shops, this brand's development route is almost a strategy of a city store, more like a brand presentation.

Although the global plan for opening stores in the next three years has been put on the agenda, the expansion of Forever21 in China is still more conservative.

The brand in China told the first financial daily: "this year's plan is to set up at least 1 new stores in Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan, Xi'an, Zhengzhou, Hongkong, Macao and Taiwan, with a total of 10 new stores."

If it is counted by 600 stores in the world, China's share is very small.

And why it is so cautious may be able to see one or two from its previous failure.

As early as June 2008, Forever21 opened its first store in China.

With competitors ZARA and GAP coming in, they occupy different cities like Shanghai and Beijing. Forever21 chose to open shops in the four line city Jiangsu Changshu.

In December 2009, Forever21 closed its first and only one store in China, completely withdrawing from the Chinese market due to the location error, the small shop area, and the problems of product quality and style.

A person engaged in the apparel retail industry pointed out that the reason why Forever21 failed was that the brand was the main American style sweet girl dress, compared with "dew", which was too avant-garde for consumers in the country's county-level cities.

Because the design of Forever21 is completely completed in the United States, the distribution of Chinese market can only follow the American market, and there is no way to adjust the regional market.

It wasn't until 3 years later that Forever21 decided to return to the Chinese market and open its first store in Hongkong.

Forever21 brand senior market manager and brand founder Do-WonChang's daughter LindaChang said Forever21 did not want to act rashly again. This time, the market survey was completed before returning to the Chinese market, and the conclusion was that the market was mature enough.

Is "cheap" still feasible?

Vertical comparison of a fast fashion brand, you can find that UNIQLO is the strongest fabric, ZARA strong in design, H&M advantage in the shop display, and Forever21 most relish is very rich accessories line and every day hundreds of new speed.

It is understood that before Forever21 returned to China to test the Chinese market, it had opened flagship stores on Taobao Tmall [micro-blog].

The official website is consistent with the United States and South Korea. It has 50~60 new times each week, maintaining 300~400 new weekly rates.

Far higher than the same fashion fast fashion two times a week's frequency.

At Forever21's shop in Beverly Hills, customers carry large shopping bags and choose what they want.

Many people hardly see the price tag.

In the United States, the clothing chain Empire, which sells more than 3 billion dollars this year, does not sell more than 60 dollars.

LindaChang said, "we also have a shoulder skirt and T-shirt priced at less than $20."

This means that customers do not need to look at labels in a fright.

Such civilian pricing has also been well implemented in China.

If you visit this shop, you will find 19 yuan of suspenders, 39 yuan T-shirts and 100 yuan jeans in the shop.

And the discount rate is very high.

But its user experience is not good.

As Wang Xiao said, "goods are stacked everywhere, and no one collate them at all. The price is cheap, but the quality is really not flattering."

Analysts believe that Forever21 is popular in the United States because it is "fast enough for goods and cheap enough".

But this kind of sales mode does not seem to work well in China.

The quality of goods has been criticized in the Chinese market.

The above analysts said that the difference between Chinese and American clothing culture is very big. Maybe American consumers have been used to throw away a dress once, but most Chinese consumers want cheap and fine goods, and can not accept a dress to wear only once or two times, at least to ensure that they can wear a season.

But under the operating system of Forever21, it is very difficult to maintain the low price and improve the quality of clothing.

In the view of MatthewCrabbe, director of Asia Pacific analysis and research, the Forever21 is also a case of fashion brand developing its Chinese market with its pure foreign brand image.

"If Forever21 wants to win the Chinese consumers, it must produce effective interaction and communication.

The combination of online and offline is a good channel.

MatthewCrabbe said to reporters, "however, it seems that the Chinese websites of Forever21 do not see the content that can be directly related to Chinese consumers.

Clothes are like clothes that can be seen in any shop.

Almost all of the Chinese models on Forever21 are foreign models. Even with an Asian face, they are also a girl with long blond hair.

"There is not a lot of people who know about it.

Image, do not understand what it represents, and if you do not adopt the marketing strategy that focuses on the local market (China), why do consumers pay for a brand that is not much associated with them? "MatthewCrabbe said.

In a competitive Chinese fast fashion market, after all, smarter consumers are not so fooled.