GUESS Goes Downhill, The Founder'S Arbitrary And Ambiguous Position.

GUESS is located in the Potland Warsaw store in the US.

From the store display to the product itself, GUESS feels increasingly unfashionable.

Speaking of GUESS, many Chinese consumers may have a vague impression of it.

But this name is synonymous with sexy, comfortable and fashionable jeans for the US market.

But all this is "once". Now, when it comes to fashion, few people will think of this brand.

Just like A&F has to rid the "naked man" to attract more consumers, "sexy card" is no longer popular. It has become a consensus of the entire fashion industry.

In particular, the trend of "sports wind" has become more and more popular all over the world, and the trend of "fast fashion" brand has gradually occupied the market. This trend is more obvious.

However, Paul Marciano, co founder and current CEO and vice chairman of the board of directors of GUESS, said in an interview with Forbes that GUESS will remain firmly committed to the foundation of the brand and will not waver.

What Paul calls the foundation of his fortune is a series of washed skinny light tight jeans designed by his elder brother Georges Marciano, and the American sexy wind based on this.

In the past more than 20 years, such products and stylistic positioning did help GUESS establish its influence and achieve rapid development.

For example, in 80s, Georges designed a tight denim shorts with zippers on the side of the trouser legs, which had sold 100 thousand pieces in one year.

For example, many of the new models chosen by GUESS, including Naomi Campbel, Claudia Schiffer, and so on, rely on the endorsement of GUESS to break into the public eye and become popular.

However, at this time, Paul also said that it would be a bit of a "stubborn" taste to stick to the foundation. Sales of GUESS in the past three years continued to decline, from 2 billion 540 million US dollars in fiscal year 2013 to US $2 billion 310 million in the 2015 fiscal year, and the profit dropped to 95 million US dollars, the lowest in nearly ten years.

Correspondingly, as a listed company, GUESS's share price has dropped by about 65% compared with its peak in 2007, while the standard & Poor's 500 index in the same period has increased by 40%.

The stubbornness of Paul is closely related to the whole company's business mode.

Even though the company went public in 1996 and introduced a professional management team, GUESS is still a real family business. As the company started, big and small businesses should be Marciano brothers.

In 1981, the older Georges and Maurice of the Marciano brothers co founded the GUESS company, and then the third brother Armand and Sidi Paul joined it.

Four people have a clear division of labor, all internal operations are internally digested: Georges is responsible for design, Maurice is responsible for product development, Armand is responsible for distribution channels, and Paul is responsible for advertising promotion.

In the process of development, Georges and Armand have left GUESS completely and seek another industry. Maurice is now just a nominally chairman of the board. However, the single person Paul still cares about GUESS very much, and his authority has not weakened due to the departure of the brothers.

It's like an advertisement poster now standing in GUESS's headquarters in Losangeles. The slogan "The World is Our Field (the whole world is our position)" is modeled and inscribed by Paul herself.

The only one of the brothers who still sticks to GUESS is Paul.

The words "The World..." appeared in his poster behind him, and he formally wrote and inscribed slogans.

Such a family oriented business model will bring many problems. One of the most prominent ones is that if the leader lacks a long-term strategic vision, the whole company can only go downhill.

"You really will be professional with your company.

Go together to set up a 3 or 5 year plan for the company, but for example, if Marciano brothers find jewelry products sell very well in a store, they will immediately allow more than half of the stores to start selling these jewellery so that they will not manage the long-term planning of the management team.

A former vice president of GUESS, who declined to be named, said in an interview with Forbes.

In fact, closing stores to save the market is what GUESS has been doing for two years.

According to the GUESS2015 annual report, the number of all sub brands in North America has decreased from 512 in 2013 to 481, and most of them are stores that Maurice and Paul insist on selling jewelry products.

Then, the thinking of leaders' aging also determines that the company is too conservative and conservative in the operation process, and has not been able to keep pace with the market changes.

The GUESS of every season and the new Zara and H&M ratio each week have no advantages in terms of product update speed and type. No wonder from the annual report, the most profitable sector of GUESS has now become the brand authorization department, which generates only 4.6% of the total revenue, but it contributes 80% of the profits of the whole company.

In addition, GUESS's brand is too large and its overall positioning is fuzzy, making it difficult to really grasp the core consumer group's heart.

At present, GUESS has five retail brands, including the main brand GUESS, GUESS, factory stores, G by GUESS, GUESS accessories store and high-end secondary line MARCIANO between discount brands and main players.

In order to cope with the declining sales and profits, GUESS has deliberately shifted the scale of MARCIANO in addition to constantly closing up accessories stores, and has begun to sell high priced women's clothing that was originally sold in MARCIANO to more famous brand GUESS for sale.

At the same time,

The scale of factory shops is expanding, which has risen from 132 in 2013 to 143 in 2015.

As a result, the original location is the GUESS of the middle end brand, and it also sells high priced goods, and the large-scale factory shops will give people the illusion of being cheap.

It really makes people want to ask, who is the target consumer group of GUESS?

GUESS high-end vice line MARCIANO takes the route of this hexagram.

However, perhaps many people do not know that MARCIANO is the Deputy card of GUESS.

"No matter what, I believe in my brand".

"If it means closing half of the store, I'll shut it down."

But my brand will be there in 10 years, and it will be the same in 20 years.

This is my dream. "