Abercrombie&Fitch Is Faced With Bottlenecks Through Naked Man Marketing

The latest performance of the popular brand Abercrombie&FitchCo. ANF.NYSE (A&F) is undoubtedly disappointing. Data show that in 2014, the company's sales fell below 4 billion US dollars, down 9.1% to 3 billion 744 million from the previous year, and last year's profit was only half that of 2012. But this is not surprising - A&F sales have declined in five years in the past seven years. The media broke the news that in 2014, the company closed 60~70 stores in the United States alone.

There is no doubt that this century old brand, founded in 1892 in New York, is facing embarrassment. Although all kinds of changes have been made, the results are not very effective. The group has the same name A&F, Hollister and abercrombie three brands, and not until 2014, the same name brand A&F officially entered the Chinese market, but many industry people do not see its development in China.

According to a data provided by Zhang Ping, general manager of the research center of Ying Shi Group, there are only two stores in mainland China, which are opened in 2014, and are located in Shanghai and Chengdu respectively. Its sub line brand Hollister entered the Chinese market earlier, and its first store opened in Beijing in 2012. At present, the number of stores in the mainland reaches 9.

Of course, when it comes to the name brand, many people still don't know enough. Once we mention the famous marketing done in Shanghai last year, many people will suddenly understand: "it turned out to be it!" at that time, the brand side invited a group of male models with naked skin and eight different abdominal muscles to come to the platform. This once caused a lot of attention on the social network, and ranked the top in the list of popular search, which played a good publicity role for the brand.

"Naked man" is a marketing strategy used by the former CEO Mike Jeffries (MichaelJeffries) to rescue the difficult situation of A&F. This controversial strategy has led A&F to get out of the predicament and become a teenager's heart at the same time. In the first ten years he took over, the number of A&F stores has doubled, and annual sales have jumped from $50 million to $4 billion 500 million.

"Male color marketing", " Sexy marketing "A&F is the most famous and most successful marketing strategy. But now, picky consumers are not buying it.

Zhang Li, who has had experience in the US, is quite familiar with A&F. She used to spend some time in stores in the United States and Hongkong. "Naked men are their consistent marketing practices. Zhang Li said, "I took photos with them at the A&F store in Hongkong, and I could take photos on the spot. But the things in its home have remained unchanged for several years. There is no new element in it, and no vitality and progress of a brand can be felt.

According to Liang Runyi, chief consultant of Hao Tian Jun, A&F stores in China are direct stores. "Management is all in Europe and America. It completely puts the style and form of the United States in a hard way." Liang Runyi said, "some people like the style of A&F, but these people should be only a small part of the country."

In Liang Runyi's view, the target group of A&F is somewhat embarrassed. It is positioned in the United States as a youth brand. "But if you go around the shop, you will find this absolutely unsuitable for Chinese teenagers. Besides, price is also a problem. The location is medium, but the material and type of clothing are not what domestic consumers like.

Zhang Ping analysis said, because China's business accounted for relatively few, the impact is limited, so A&F performance decline is mainly due to other factors such as the local market and other overseas market performance decline.

China's business may be just a small part, but as Liang Runyi said, brand positioning is perhaps the biggest problem.

Let's take a look. A&F The positioning of several major brands: the same name A&F for college students, Hollister for boys aged 12 to 18 years old, and lower Abercrombie for children less than 12 years old. Since the 90s of last century, the brand image of A&F has hardly changed. It sells long sleeved shirts, sweaters, hoodies, patterned T-shirts, polo shirts, jeans and so on. Short sleeve And slippers. Former CEO Mike Jeffries believes that A&F should not be discounted because it embodies "honour and low-key luxury".

I have to admit that today's teenagers have changed. They buy clothes at fast fashion stores like Forever21 and H&M, which are especially cheap.

Forbes once conducted a market survey in the United States, and found that several brands are in danger and may even disappear. They include Abercrombie&Fitch (A&F) and GAP and Esprit.

The pressure of investors and shareholders has led the management to make various adjustments.

For example, Mike finally relaxed last spring to let Hollister store open the lights and remove the shutters from A&F stores. He also lowered the volume of background music in the store, and the amount of Cologne Spray was also reduced by 25%. He also agreed that the company logo should not be too eye-catching.

In addition, the management also plans to transform its brand Hollister into a fast fashion brand, and discuss with suppliers to establish a fast response supply chain. The positioning change of Hollister will mean that the brand may adjust many elements such as price, decoration style and product structure.

But these changes are not effective for the time being. Perhaps its opponents are too strong.

A&F is not the worst in the clothing retailing industry.

In the past four months, 5 clothing retail brands have been declared bankrupt in the United States. In December 2014, the clothing brands DebShops and Delia*sInc filed for bankruptcy successively. In January 2015, the store led clothing retail brand BodyCentralCorp was closed, and in the same month, the WetSeal of teenage women's wear and accessories brand also applied for bankruptcy.

The latest Cache, which has a history of 40 years, is the first women's retailer to introduce European luxury brands such as Armani and Versace to the United States. According to reports, in December 2014, Cache began to evaluate strategic alternatives and consider selling them as a whole, but ultimately failed to escape bankruptcy.

Analysts said that the 5 most bankrupt brands were mainly teenagers (heavy Internet users), and sales mostly relied on large department stores and shopping centers, which were the primary victims of reduced ground passenger traffic.

In the bankruptcy petition, Cache said that as the electricity supplier quickly occupied the market and consumers' tastes changed, the retail market of the entity store became more and more depressed. Many clothing brands of similar young people are under tremendous pressure: young consumers are increasingly favoured with fast fashion, such as H&M, Forever21 and Inditex's Zara, and online retailers are also popular.

The above analysts say that the success of fast fashion brands worldwide is not difficult to understand. They enable every ordinary person to feel the latest fashion trend personally. At the same time, they also choose to hide the design philosophy of Logo. By contrast, it is not surprising that the two brands that have neither the price nor the style have fallen into the middle grade brands.