From Young Artists To Fashion Designers, How Does Zhang Naxue Do Business?

Last year, many fashion circles met Zhang Na, who was the heroine in the case of rights protection. When her dress brand FAKE NATOO was plagiarized, Zhang Na calmly took judicial evidence and brought the other party to court.

Back to fashion itself, the introductions of buyer shops usually begin with this: FAKE NATOO is China's mature designer brand.

Just after finishing the latest autumn and winter series, Zhang Na used a cigarette in habitual place to pacify the nerve that had been strained in recent weeks.

Since the establishment of the brand in 2009, she has repeatedly thought about how to pform her inner feelings into clothes that are in contact with her skin.

In the past 18 months, FAKE NATOO has shown the mountains and veins and the lake and sea vertically and horizontally.

She pushed the camera onto the microscopic world of the earth - cells, blood vessels, and figures. The series of "raw flowers" that came out not long ago further explored the character of human being's counter trend.

For her, these stories are gradual and interlocking.

"After looking at the series, Nana hopes to find breakthroughs in the next season." Zhang Na's friend and graphic designer, Zhang soft, recalled the conversation with Zhang Na last spring, when her proposal was to extend the mountains and rivers to the human race and the blood flowing inside the body.

This led to the 2016 spring and summer microcosm series.

In the heart of Zhang soft, Zhang Na is emotional and literary, but Zhang Na, who is the brand leader, is quite rational and restrained.

Wakubo Rei's Comme des Garons is a model of Zhang Na's "standing to earn money". "Always keep the spot marking and breakthroughs in design, and at the same time make the business operation very colorful".

Design and commerce are not the opposite of Zhang Na's view. She even found that the most wonderful sets of clothes in the series just happened to be very responsive.

"How can we master the talent, experience and hard work?"

Zhang Na answered without hesitation. After that, he added a mischievous smile, as if there was no secret.

Taking her designer friend as an example, she said: "it's like the little cloth and little cotton padded jacket used by Zhang Da, the street breeze of zhe Zi (Shangguan Zhe); Uma Wang's Ballet Series last season, everyone has their own way."

Although the eight immortals cross the sea, they are different from each other, but their propriety is reasonable and precise. The starting point of the story can be their feelings, but if they finally rely on speech or atmosphere, the clothes themselves will fall into pale.

In the past Shanghai fashion week, Zhang Na threw away the music, lighting and layout of the show, and did a quiet and static display.

She likened the show to a film that was carefully produced and cut. "It may only be 100 minutes, but the script as a support is usually quite large, with lots of lines behind it."

Zhang Na, who had run 5 or 6 shows in the past, chose to let buyers and media feel the material closely and listen to her telling the story of this season.

In the 6 years after becoming an independent designer, she gradually found out the business principles of China's fashion industry, and gradually found her own brand positioning.

A reasonable pricing strategy is proof.

More than once, Zhang Na had heard consumers complain about the price of clothes, and questioned the designer's "how to open a few stitches to sell thousands of clothes".

"When we jump out of the designer's role and think rationally, we will find that it makes sense, that your things are not good enough, not worth the price."

Zhang Na said: "if you are overpriced because of your own calculation, you shouldn't let consumers pay.

This is a maturity.

Need to be solved. "

Unlike the wholesale price based on cost multiplying profit coefficient, FAKE NATOO pricing focuses on market positioning.

First of all, the brand aims at the target audience, 28-35 year old young women, to understand their consumption ability, then refer to the brand at different price in the same category, and finally, we can draw back to what extent the cost should be controlled and produce certain profits.

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Zhang Na, who was born in 1980, is a Manchu, whose surname is "Ilgenjo Lo".

After graduating from the Central Academy of fine arts, her father was assigned to serve as a soldier in Zhangjiakou. She knew the mother who was there to jump in. The two were then assigned to Hanzhoung, Shaanxi.

Zhang Na was born and raised there.

Perhaps it is because half of the family members are making art, and her aesthetic view is gradually formed in the ear.

"Remember one night when I was a child, I woke up suddenly and got up and walked into a courtyard wearing a white little nightdress.

The air is the smell of earth and rose flowers. Cats and dogs fall asleep, and the cries of crickets are heard in their ears.

In the middle of the summer, I saw only the lights in the studio, and my father painted them with his bare arms.

Zhang Na played the cigarette in his hand and said, "at that time, I will feel very happy."

After 4 years in the middle school attached to the Academy of fine arts, she went to the first fork in her life.

"In 1990s, the Academy of sciences applied for professional examination, not only the national oil sculpture (Chinese painting, oil painting, print, sculpture), but no one read the design, so we didn't even know how to read Comme des Garons."

When Zhang Na found Lssey Miyake, Wakubo Rei and other hot designers in 1980s, she found her way.

In 1999, she entered the Academy of art as a student of fashion design.

After four years of study, Zhang Fei flew to Paris International Fashion Art Institute to study.

"I am not really a good student. That experience is more like studying."

She recalls.

At that time, Zhang Na, 23 years old, and a group of wandering artists held an underground exhibition in the small broken building. They also followed the sketching artist before Pompidou Men to portray passers-by.

This slow trip in Europe lasted only about a year.

After returning home, Zhang Na quickly entered a commercial brand in Shanghai and worked as a designer.

In the past 4 years, she has been promoted to the brand director, who is responsible for the design. On the other hand, she is responsible for ordering the more than 200 stores in the country like a buyer.

It was also from that time that she began to engage in commercial operations.

"I didn't cry so much, and when I order, my hands are shaking millions, and I want to tear up with the sales department to predict the next season."

Fortunately, every quarter of the company's bursting and image payments are basically from Zhang's hand, but the boredom is growing. Zhang Na decides, "it's time to do something."

Despite the strong desire to start business, the Chinese independent designer brand was still in its infancy, and on the road to Changle in Shanghai, Qiu Hao's designer brand shop gradually emerged.

After more than a year's preparatory period, the first FAKE NATOO series, made up of over twenty models, was released in 2009. At that time, One by one and Seven Days were at the front end of the fashion frontier.

However, the global financial crisis triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States swept across Asia, and the parent company of Seven Days in Hongkong collapsed.

In order to get through the most difficult days, Zhang Na and alumni opened a fashion shop in Changle Road from their own pocket.

On the proposal of Shangguan Zhe, she also tried to make a small NATOO sub line on Taobao. It turned out that although sales were good, customer oriented fashion business was not what she loved to do.

Soon after the closing of the Shanghai World Expo in 2010, Zhang Na's physical shop was also quietly closed. First, because the designer buyer shop was gradually emerging, Zhang Na wanted to concentrate on the design.

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"It was a hard time between them, and everyone was stuck there and couldn't see the future - there were not so many buying shops and not many independent designers."

Zhang Na's torment also included the months of breaking his leg and sticking to work, "so some people say that art is to be nourished with pain."

The immature industrial environment has left countless young people who originally made life goals for fashion designers no longer insist. Zhang Na did not make his own design until 2014. FAKE NATOO gradually appeared in more and more buyer shops: BNC, Heng Mountain, and Ji, bryophyte, OSP......

According to Zhang Na's own analysis, there are two factors that can make her come to the present day: first, the smaller scale; second, she encountered many buyer shops, and after the small cycle, the brands gradually returned to the market and made profits.

Despite nearly 4 years of experience in commercial branding before starting a business, Zhang Na will not be able to run into FAKE NATOO at the beginning.

She is not sensitive to numbers. Whenever she goes through tens of thousands, she has to count one by one, but she needs to work as a designer and a financial statement.

Zhang soft is one of the listeners: "how to form a team, pay wages, pay taxes, when you start to do the brand is bound to experience confusion, every day can calm down to draw two pictures are very rare.

Wait until you get started, and you'll be sure of it. "

For example, Zhang Na's team grew slowly from an assistant to 3 or 4 people. She could spare some time herself to develop another public welfare line, "recycling clothes bank".

Now Zhang Na, who can operate FAKE NATOO calmly, will focus more on "Reclothing Bank".

The project aimed at pforming old clothes began in 2011.

Her friend in Beijing appeared to be the first creative public welfare shop Brandu in five Hutong hutongs.

Zhang Na and Xiangzi, who love collecting old objects, hit the nail on the head: she came to pick up old clothes, and Xiangzi was responsible for organizing laid-off women workers to wash, disinfect and split old clothes, and finally shipped them to Shanghai to make Zhang Na design and create.

"Let the clothes with the brand of the times and the mood of the characters come back to life."

This is the original intention of Zhang Na's pformation of old clothes.

The clothes included trousers with Chinese characteristics, well made plum blossom jacket and Dacron shirt.

The staff was very surprised when they dismantled their clothes. They used to make lining in their collar, and such places that they could not see would not lose any process, but now they are all simplified.

"We create while we deconstruct.

To me, FAKE NATOO and reconstituted bank are the same in a sense.

Zhang Na took a piece of long sleeved shirt on the hanger and asked, "can you see the prototype of it?" she found out the white shirt with the right shoulder embroidered with a portrait on the phone in the spring and summer series.

But when the fabric of different colors is spliced together, the wonderful chemical reaction begins.

At the beginning of this year, the studio of "reclaimed clothes bank" moved to an office building on the road to Ningxia, and the space became larger.

As soon as you enter the door, you will see old cloth full of shelves, semi finished products scattered on the worktable, logical and clear pictures on the walls, and kimono and cowboy clothes waiting to be deconstructed on the models.

Just like finding the direction for FAKE NATOO, Zhang Na will take his assistants to study the spirit that the "reinventing clothes bank" wants to convey and the fashion version suitable for reinvention, and their next step is to achieve mass production.

The old master, who was carrying an iron on the side, listened to the "young man" creative discussion while he was ironing ironing the newly completed piece of cloth.

Obviously, this job has never been done in his previous decades of cutting and sewing.

That day, after ending the work of the remake bank, Zhang Na decided to give the members of the studio a few days' leave, but she herself did not really idle.

Although FAKE NATOO has become a mature brand in China, it can not be heard in the international market.

Her studio in Changshu Road, Shanghai has ushered in Losangeles buyer Lorenzo and Vogue Italy edition editor Sara Maino, FAKE NATOO has recently received many international fashion show invitations, but Zhang Na is more cautious.

"What is your purpose? Do you want people to know that I have also gone abroad to go to the show, or do I intend to enter their fashion system?"

It's a long-distance race, and more often depends on success.