Gap Wants To Learn From Her Brother Old Navy One Or Two

One day in September, a mobile display bus of the US brand Old Navy stopped at the gate of the 800 Show of Shanghai creative community.

Inside the bus is a variety of tannins from Old Navy. From shirts, coats to jeans, there are splicing patches, designer sketches, and fashion designers explaining the most popular tannin dressing rules.

In the background, the wall reads prominently, "we believe in We believe in the democracy of style".

"It all reminds me of 10 years ago.

"

Pan Ning, who studied at University of Pennsylvania, said at the scene.

As a low-priced brand of Gap, the Old Navy entered China formally in March 2014.

But now its popularity seems to have gone beyond the unknown brand Gap.

"Gap is old. It's not cool."

He added.

This year, the Gap group has undergone a series of management changes, including the resignation of the chairman and CEO Glenn Murphy, who worked for 7 years in February.

This series of changes may stem from the dismal performance of Gap.

The Gap group's earnings figures are indeed disappointing.

In August, Gap's same store sales fell 8%, which is the sixteenth consecutive month of decline.

Its high-end brand Banana Republic is also facing a declining trend, and the same store sales decline has expanded to 11%.

Only Old Navy still maintained a good momentum. The same store sales grew by 6%, compared with 2% in the same period last year.

Gap's khaki trousers, jeans and shirts used to be the classics of American popular fashion, but now it is no longer the first choice for consumers.

As a brand of the same group, the price of Old Navy is much lower than that of Gap and Banana Republic.

It costs only 30 dollars for a man's jeans.

Old Navy general manager of China

In September last year, reporters told reporters that Old Navy is a more approachable brand than consumers are familiar with traditional fast fashion brands.

In China, it takes the family line, emphasizing that only 300 yuan is needed for every family member to find suitable tannin products.

The competition between fast fashion brands seems to be tilting towards the "cheaper than" direction.

The expansion of Primark illustrates this point.

Its selling price in the US market is 20% cheaper than Forever 21, 33% lower than Old Navy, 40% lower than H&M, and sales capacity per unit area surpasses all fast fashion brands and department stores own brands.

Erwin Penland, chief planning officer of Erwin Penland, expressed his view on commercial website Business Insider: a simple plan can make Gap return to the root, that is, close to the price of the public.

The emergence of Old Navy is just to make up for the competitive disadvantage of Gap group in price.

In 1990s, when Gap upgraded its brand positioning to the middle end market, it was far away from the original intention of "popular fashion".

The Old Navy, which goes on the pro democracy route, has gradually surpassed Gap and has become the most profitable brand of the group.

It is because of the support of Old Navy that Wall Street has no opposite to this company.

But there is no doubt that Gap has been on the decline.

A statement from its San Francisco headquarters said that in the next few years, the company will close 175 stores in North America and lay off about 250 people from headquarters to reverse the decline in sales.

Owen Shapiro, a retail analyst, thinks that

Many brands make mistakes after they succeed.

On the contrary, the consumption concept of young people is endless.

They are easy to be tired of a brand and easy to follow suit.

Just like the decline of Levi's and the entire cowboy category, one of the problems of Gap is also that it has not been able to create the trend of keeping pace with the times to attract young consumers.

The heavy use of social media in the fashion industry exacerbated the process.

"Today, everyone can notice the trend of popularity on the Internet, everyone is a critic, and the brand like Gap will be very outdated."

Luxury accessories website The Editorialist co-founder Kate David Hudson said to New York Times.