Independent Designer Wang Zaishi: Retro Style With Practicality

Designer profile: Wang Zaishi

Graduated from the women's wear Department of University of the Arts in central London, Saint Martin, and became the founder of VEGA ZAISHI WANG women's wear brand in 2008.

Adhere to the neat line design, with cool literature and retro wind, nostalgia for the cool color of the majority, emphasizing the high degree of practicality and overall shape, often from more complex and rigorous men's tailoring inspiration.

She insisted on building a complete product and sales team at the beginning of the brand building, and regarded the brand as the most important thing, while the design was to serve the brand.

Wang really likes to introduce his name like this. "My name is Wang Zaishi. I really do."

Dad's friend took the English name "Vega" to her. After many years, she realized that "Vega" means Vega.

Wang is 8 years old from northeast to Shenzhen, 16 years old and went to Britain, and gradually explored her own direction from industrial design. When she was a child, she often moved and formed a nostalgic character. Wang Zaishi liked traditional and historical things very much, just now she would wear her mother's coat once more.

Wang is in his studio in Dongcheng District, Beijing, East Fourth South Street, performing 63 Hutong hall. There are all kinds of wooden or iron ornaments in the log structure, making old leather sofa, restoring ancient sewing machines. Just like Wang's real brand, "it's a state of retro and classic. I hope my clothes can stay in the wardrobe of the guests for a long time".

Therefore, based on such a positioning, Wang Zaishi emphasized the high degree of practicality and overall shape, and insisted on both fabric and plate. In autumn and winter, the fabric was usually uniform and warm, but in spring and summer, silk was used. Her design generally had a cool literary atmosphere, and most of the cool colors were used. Women's clothing was also designed with more complicated and rigorous men's tailoring.

To give her brand a spiritual core, "independence", she thinks, "girls should have their own dreams and careers, do not attach too much value to life on other things."

This is also Wang Zaishi's own way. She is soft, bright, with her own personality, and has strong adherence to the direction she has identified.

Over the past 6 years, the 85 girls have been leading the brand across every bar.

The threshold of team development

In 2008, Wang Zaishi graduated from the most famous women's clothing department of the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in the United Kingdom. At that time, Wang Zaishi returned to the Chinese fashion industry like.

Mother drove 9 hours to bring Wang Zaishi from Shenzhen to Xiamen. She also met the young designer Shangguan Zhe in the seaside city. In the studio of Shangguan Zhe, Wang did his first series in the first 10 months of his practice, only taking pictures to take pictures in Beijing, but it changed the direction of Wang's real brand development.

While filming in Beijing, Fan Bingbing was advertising a brand on the wall next to Wang. Her assistant came to see Wang's clothes, and then bought the whole series of Wang's reality.

On that occasion, Wang decided to move the brand from Xiamen to Beijing, and also registered the brand Vega Zaishi Wang in Beijing.

Compared with other designers, Wang Zaishi's more obvious characteristic is that she has been building this studio into a complete structure of the enterprise.

In the first few years of the brand, Wang Zaishi spent more energy on building a stable team, which was her style of doing things.

"We must stabilize the team, and things will happen later."

During his stay in Xiamen, Wang Zaishi found two experienced print masters and sample makers. "Sample clothes began to make clothes when they were 15 years old. There are many small villages in the mountains of Fujian. Every time they celebrate holidays, he will carry sewing machines to the villages and sew clothes from house to house."

They had life experiences that Wang Zaishi could not imagine.

The two old masters also came to Beijing with Wang. They have been working together for nearly 7 years.

"They have nothing in mind but clothes." the brand also had a very stable base at the beginning of its development.

But in the first three years of the establishment of the brand, Wang's real team has not yet fully formed, and the cooperation with the cooperative factory is also running in. Every season, Wang needs to work together with the workers in the real city. He eats with them all week, and communicates with them their demands for embroidery.

Until you find a production manager who has more than ten years of experience.

In 2012, Wang has just expanded from the construction of foreign SOHO to the performing music Hutong in the real studio, and soon expanded the sales team. The studio also changed from a small team of 5 people to a team of 10 people. But management is not usually the designer's strength.

"I only know that I want to build a team, but at the very beginning, everyone's responsibilities are very confusing."

After several rounds of large staff turnover, Wang is exploring and designing a management framework to bring the studio back to a stable orbit.

Now, Wang has completed the procurement, production, public relations, sales, warehouse management and personnel management team in the studio.

The business explored while walking

Wang Zaishi has a strong purpose in doing things. She thinks that designers do their own show with two meanings. A small part is to publicize the brand and express to the outside world, but a more important part is business. It needs to attract buyers to place orders at the order meeting.

So until 2014, Wang made his first fashion conference at the ripe moment, but before that, the domestic market did not have a mature buyer system.

"I am not in a hurry. When to do something, this is the most important thing."

In 2014, Wang did two shows in a year. After the third day of the conference, more than a dozen buyer shops had been placed in Wang's studio.

But even now, many of the shop operators themselves are still not professional, so Wang Zaishi attaches great importance to the brand positioning of the buyer's shop, and has always used his own professionalism to drive the professionalism of the buyer's shop.

Wang in the real sales team every season in the goods on the shelves will shop, training buyers shop clerks, tell them the advantages and characteristics of clothing, why in what parts of embroidery, there are manual details in those parts, so that buyers shop service personnel to convey this information to customers.

The sales team will also be responsible for the inventory flow, and adjust and rotate the bad sales styles among different stores. If the buyer shop has stock, then Wang will send someone to solve it in the past. "What I want to do is a long-term business".

Of course, the environment of Chinese independent designers has been much better than that of brands. At the very beginning, Wang Zaishi built a brand by a venture capital fund from her parents. In 2010, the designer's brand integration shop appeared and slowly relied on her works to support the studio. "Until 2012, we opened the shop of Lord Buddha, and we haven't had any big problems in operation."

In the past few years, I have been communicating with fabric producers and producers in the factory. The brand building of Wang in the past 6 years has come down to earth.

But Wang is very aware that China's fashion environment may take more than ten years to complete and even need one or two generations. She is not in a hurry to sell for a while.

Design for brand service

Wang's real design is more like her own life record. For a time, her own life often moved, and she made a series of autumn and winter inspired by nomadic people. But every time she persisted, the neat line design, the texture of woolen fabrics, the nostalgia color, and the precipitated design belonged to her style.

But Wang Zaishi sees the brand as more important than anything else, even if the core design is based on the brand.

In fact, building a designer brand is a complex project. It needs to build up its own brand culture and need loyal customers to follow the brand. These are accumulated and established bit by bit.

Although Wang Zaishi did not learn to do business, his parents had their own company. His father went to sea from an electronics engineer in 1990s. When Wang Zaishi was 12 years old, he was taken home by his parents and worked with the workers.

From the first day of her brand building, she knew what the brand was like.

And the design she understood was actually the product, and the design of clothes until the press conference was just launched the door, and there was still a long way to go.

"They need to be sold by the salesmen to reach the guests. After giving them feedback after a certain period of time, the design process is really over."

The high heeled shoes that you want to do have begun to develop some of the more fashionable accessory products.

But through the ignorance and fearlessness of youth, Wang now hopes to let his brand have more things to settle down.

"In fact, who comes to the end is still unknown, and no one knows what will happen tomorrow."

But Wang Zaishi is sure that everything must be prepared before the start, and if she wants to be a brand, she is sure that she will serve it for decades.

"Even if I do not serve it one day, the brand will still exist here."