"Monroe Style" Jeans Make GUESS Myth Brothers No Longer Competitive

"Monroe style" jeans have miraculously saved the "cowboy" goods that were on the decline in the 70s.

Also made the myth of GUESS brand.

The business history of the GUESS family has not been written for more than 30 years.

However, after the emergence of new clothing brands such as ZARA and UNIQLO, the GUESS family's "old age" is showing clearly.

The four brothers' respective departure and the company's power to surrender to each other finally announced the official denial of the "cowboy family".

The new CEO Victor Herrero was once responsible for the Zara brand Asia Pacific business, which also indicates that GUESS may finally turn to the world's largest buyer, the Chinese market, from the North American market.

For GUESS, the departure of family management is somewhat sad and lonely, but the establishment of a professional manager system is probably the best way to keep the Marciano family's achievements.

Born in the southern French city of Marseille, Marciano's four brothers did not bury their Jewish genius in business because of slums.

Paul Marciano and his three brothers chose to do the clothing business together for the sake of life.

By 1977, Marciano brothers had opened more than 10 stores.

But the city has been unable to stir up the excitement of the four brothers. The other side of the Atlantic has become a new starting point in their eyes.

After 50s, the star effect made jeans culture the mainstream.

Malone Brando's movies and Elvis Presley's music are popular in Europe and America.

The demonstration effect of jeans began to win the support of star followers, and jeans gradually changed from a commodity to a cultural totem.

Before the birth of GUESS, the United States just ended the years of Vietnam War, and the trauma caused by Vietnam War made the whole American society in deep thought.

On the other hand, the wandering of culture and thought made the jeans begin to be neglected.

Consumers began to dislike the design of jeans, and the retailers are not optimistic about the prospects of jeans. Therefore, even GUESS at that time had little chance of going to the shelves smoothly.

Moreover, compared with the three largest denim brands in the US: Levi's, LEE and Wrangler, GUESS, as the latecomers, faces no big market space.

But the French Marciano brothers are going to use European design to break the calm of the jeans market.

GUESS was formally created in 1981, four years after the four brothers came to the United States, and the four were responsible for costume design, product development, sales channels and advertising creativity.

After the formation of an efficient internal organization system, GUESS quickly stepped onto the right track and launched a red Monroe three zipper tight jeans.

Bloomingdale became the first underwriter to eat crabs. Despite its hesitation, it chose to cooperate with GUESS.

The final result did not disappoint the former. The first 2 dozen jeans on the shelves were sold out in less than a day.

To date, the official website of GUESS is still recording such a story in the brand story: Bloomingdale department store is the first store selling GUESS brand clothing.

The 24 Marilyn jeans sold by the department store were sold out in just a few hours.

During the next year, Monroe jeans were sold out and sales increased at a geometric rate.

That year, self operated stores and Bloomingdale's dual channel sales gained $6 million in sales.

At that time, at the time of GUESS $60 each pair of jeans, GUESS shipped an astonishing 100 thousand in that year.

The rapid growth of sales has forced GUESS to expand its capacity.

To this end, Marciano intends to increase the capacity by selling shares.

As a result, the Jordache brand, also known as sexy and avant-garde, has become a partner of GUESS.

The former won 50% of GUESS brand at a price of 4 million 700 thousand US dollars.

At the same time, as an exchange of interests, GUESS will share the former factory in Hongkong with lower production costs.

At the beginning of the business, it sold so much shares.

A time bomb has been planted for GUESS's future development.

Although the cooperation between the two began with the gentlemen's agreement, the two brands were independently operated, but the subsequent plagiarism storm easily torn the contract - the two sides held court, and it took many years to reach a settlement.

At the same time, there are serious differences in the positioning of Marciano's brand. Georges intends to put GUESS in a more low-end store, while the other three strongly oppose it.

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The three brothers who were very concerned about had to force Georges to give their rights, and their brothers had to settle accounts. They spent 210 million dollars to settle the "Brotherhood".

GUESS's condition has become serious again. In the period of tight cash flow, a lot of "disbandage charges" for GUESS is undoubtedly worse.

As a result, the three brothers began to invest in the GUESS market, and even put GUESS's brand image in a more important position.

Since 1993, in addition to the continued supply of business partners for many years, GUESS has slashed the scale of wholesale business and achieved a 11% decline in 2 years.

This series of measures seems to rescue GUESS from its predicament, and GUESS after the listing did achieve an average annual growth of 10%.

Encouraged by this, the family's colorful GUESS began to ignore the market and become arbitrary.

The three brothers began to set up accessories shops and sell women's boutiques with higher prices.

But the decentralization of business has led Marciano brothers to lose their way, and exposed the shortcomings of too much encouragement of personal worship in the GUESS operation system.

One was employed.

Executives recall that senior executives never stick to a strategic plan. When the performance of a certain accessories store has grown continuously, a 3 to 5 year clothing store plan that you have worked out with senior executives will probably be wasted.

Because, at this point, half the stores will be converted into accessories stores to replicate the success of the accessories store.

At the same time, Zara and other organizations with highly efficient brands began to attack the city.

Compared with the fast response of these clothing brands to the market, GUESS appears increasingly senile.

Between them, Maurice and Al Bellini of the three brothers also left one after another.

Paul was the only one who swallowed the bitter consequences of his crazy expansion.

Under the pressure of the company's performance, Paul began to stop radically expanding, closing the stores that he used to be full of confidence and the new boutiques full of personal style.

"No Zuo No Die", the Marciano family finally had to let go of GUESS, and the CEO post was Victor Herrero, who was once the head of Inditex SA Asia Pacific region of Zara parent company.

Paul said: "fundamentally, he will become me.

As a listed company, you have to spend a lot of time in finance, analysts and things related to Wall Street.

Now, I will not do so.

I love creativity, and I will focus on image, advertising, marketing and products. "