Yu Xiaodan: Where Is The Underwear Store?

According to the world clothing shoes and hats net, one day in early October, my micro-blog and e-mail suddenly appeared several very urgent long messages at the same time.

In a hurry, it was an investment company who wanted to talk to me on the telephone.

I know very little about the investment circle. I saw several quite significant names in the investment performance profile of this company, and what attracted me especially was an underwear company.

In the underwear industry, I have noticed that there have been several reports about the company on the Internet recently, all of which call it "profit decline". Even the title of the article is exaggerated: "bra underwear is suddenly sold out", and the underwear industry has encountered "cold winter".

This investment company found me and should be independent of me.

Emily yu began to enter China last year.

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This spring, I started to cooperate with the domestic APP mode "oxygen" underwear company as a designer, and had the opportunity to contact the mainland sales platform and industrial chain.

After 120 minutes of talking with the investment company, I wonder if the other side is too cautious or I am too slow. After hanging up, I realize that winding up for a long time, they want me to answer, "how should the underwear industry go in the future?"

Where is the underwear store?

Not long ago, I have been doing this for many years.

Her friend, sister Hui, was on the phone and heard her depressed mood as soon as she came up.

I met with Hui Jie in 2011, when she had been selling underwear for ten years, in Beijing Xinguang world, Yansha, Seth, and other high-end stores and shopping center underwear areas with retail outlets, distribution of Italy high-end underwear brand DANA.

Later, she worked on her own low priced underwear, sold at several otlas centers, and walked with the same brand, high and low end matching, and the quality and the walk of the same brand, which had been quite mature in Europe and America.

For the first few years, I went back to her shop every year to look at her shop.

The year was not linked, and she clearly lost her former enthusiasm.

It seems to her that the cold winter is no exaggeration.

But she said aloud, "not only underwear, but also all clothing stores."

In the past, merchants who had entered Beijing's Yansha store had to increase their turnover by 10 percentage points a year, otherwise they would be retreated by property. Now they have been reduced to 10 points.

The profit or growth that has not been withdrawn is mostly almost zero.

It can be seen that the retailing of shopping centers is no longer a matter of high or overpriced property, but a question of how property and businesses should tide over difficulties.

"I don't know how many years it will last," sighed exclaimed Hui.

But it seems that the cold store stores are not just China.

I have been to Lyon's global underwear exhibition this year. I went to Tokyo for the two time and stayed in New York for half a year. In addition to Tokyo, these places have given me endless surprises.

Lyon's former underwear exhibition is the largest exhibition in the underwear industry in the world, with the largest scale and the best quality. This year's exhibitors are very few brands and can hardly forget people.

The only high-end underwear buyer shop I visited every ten years ago in Lyon was no longer on Lyon shopping guide this year.

The underwear store in New York has undergone significant changes at large and small levels, with frequent shop closures and area reductions.

Italy's high-end underwear brand La perla left early this year, but now there are only two stores in Manhattan.

My favorite Kiki de Montpanasse withdrew from Soho area in the first half of the year and moved to the relatively cheap rental area of cubeca, which made me feel very sad.

New York's most famous underwear private buyer shop "small tune", and the paving room has been cut from the two rooms to a small room. Now it is hard to see the landlady, Rebecca, who always used to be insolent and refused to enter the designer.

The Barney's New York department store, known as the "young designer's cradle", once occupied the west end of the six building, which was once my favorite part. The area has shrunk by 2/3 two years ago. This year, the brand and category have been reduced more and more. It has become the most surprising corner of the whole Barney 's.

The London luxury underwear brand Agent Provocateur, the largest selling market in the United States, also announced in November this year that the group decided to close 30% of its retail outlets because of its strategic mistakes due to over blind global expansion.

"The secret of Vitoria" is still full of joy and joy this season. It is not easy to see that many of them are rough and cheap.

In the previous year's holiday season, my friend Julia's design occupied the best window in all shops. She was dismissed at the end of last year.

We joke that it is no wonder that this year's holiday season has no bright spots.

Leave a street to visit.

"Why are these changes in the US market?" I asked Julia. Her answer was the shift in the direction of consumer spending. Money spent on clothes has now been spent more on tourism and sports.

Even she herself worked in the sports brand Champion - I regret for her, but there is no way, she said, only Champion can give her the salary she needs.

Indeed, several traditional commercial areas in New York have responded quickly to such pfers.

Last month, I saw a sudden increase in sports shops.

In the first half of this year, the iron iron business district is still the shop front of DKNY, Black and White and other garment brands. In October, it has quietly changed into sports brand Sweaty Betty and Athleta.

There are only 36 sports brand shops listed on Google on the SOHO area. The old ones include Addidas, Northface and so on. The new ones include Lululemon, Athleta, Under Armour, Nike, Sweaty Betty and so on, but my favorite and the most expensive VPL is closed.

Nike originally had only a small experience shop in the SOHO area. Instead of a coffee shop in the second half of the year, a corner of the Broadway and Spring Street replaced a five storey building, which is no less than 57 Street flagship store.

Today, Nike Town, which has two stores in New York, is surging at any time. The salesmen are overwhelmed. It is no exaggeration to say that it should be the busiest shop in New York.

On the contrary, the clothing brand DKNY only left a store on West Broadway Street by November of this year. All the others were shut down, and even the flagship store of Madison Avenue, which was counted by feng shui master, was not spared.

Many shops that have not cut clothing brands have added "resort" (holiday) categories, such as Ralph Lauren, Micheal Kors, and even Coach.

When I first arrived in New York twenty years ago, the underwear brand La Perla was a small shop specializing in swimsuits. This season there was a series of "holiday underwear" which started at the beginning of the season.

China's western style underwear industry has only started for thirty years, and has not been as mature as the European and American markets. Many categories are not perfect yet, but unfortunately, there is no opportunity for the physical store to get full development.

The impact of e-commerce on the store is certainly not only in the underwear industry, but also in the fashion industry, which has been discussed many times for a long time.

Like the Italy brand sold by Hui Jie, everything is really good. Of course, the price is really expensive. There are thousands of tens of thousands of thousands of customers. It is impossible for her consumers to buy them online.

If the physical stores disappear, this good stuff will lose the chance to see the market. People who have seen good things will be fewer and fewer.

Without the picky consumers, there will be no picky products and stores.

What kind of consumers can Taobao shop cultivate and what kind of brand they can nurture? We all know it.

For online shopping, American brand operators seem to be conservative in recent years after their initial blind enthusiasm.

Excluding some consumer goods that do not need to preserve physical stores, for example, the brand shops of health care drugs have a high degree of activity on the Internet.

At least, the brand itself will protect its own stores, and will not compete with the brand shop too much.

Compared with China, online shopping in the United States should be far too far away. Many high-end brands do not even have online shopping functions.

For these large capital brands, it is certainly not a matter of funds, but rather to a large extent.

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I have also noticed many times that the price of some brands on the Internet and in the store will be slightly different or the reservation time is poor.

For example, they are also in the price reduction season. The price reduction in Polo stores is usually larger than that in the website, or the price is lower than that in the store.

Only in this way can I have the power to go to the store to consume, and the shops can maintain the volume of pactions.

From the perspective of the city as a whole, such protection measures are very necessary. Otherwise, like today's Beijing, there is no decent street that can be seen. If it is not protected, many of the five boutiques will be poured out, and more fast fashion shops will be flooded with more money.

If the high quality five Avenue is gone, New York will lose a landmark.

Although it is a market economy, the interests of the New York government and smart businessmen should be consistent, and they do not want to see this scene.

Minimum! Difficulties and difficulties of new designers

In July, I met Tina Wilson, a well known designer in the underwear world of Lyon, and invited her to make a series of Christmas Day designs for oxygen.

She designs, we produce.

All the way down, Tina was excited because it was the first time that the independent design with her name was put into production and finally entered the consumer's hands.

I see this as an innovation of the buying system, which is more flexible than the old American department stores' buying system, and the resources are more mutually beneficial.

Looking back at the beginning of the year, I decided to accept the invitation of "oxygen" again after seven or eight years of "rest". That is to say that it is a scarce role in China, and it is very impressive for them to be bold enough to support such an independent designer.

However, obviously, only the buyer has a lot of advantages and disadvantages, so the department stores that insist on the buying system in the United States mostly have their own private label.

"Oxygen" is also now on this path, so that the old system can be used in a new form, and there are also adherence to the old in innovation.

It is not all roses that appear on this road.

One of the advantages of online shops is to lower the barriers to entry, so many young people are now creating underwear brands or ready to create brands, but it is not so easy for them to mature.

I just finished a "underwear class" for young people like this last week, and found that many people actually don't know where to get the design inspiration. All the libraries and art institutes haven't provided the record room for underwear design reference. None of our clothing colleges have set up underwear specialty. Young designers want to start from the starting point, and their reserves are very thin.

The design is not easy, but it is still more difficult to produce later.

Last month when I returned to New York, Tina and I finally got the chance to sit down for tea and chat.

We actually worked in New York's largest private underwear company, K, and talked about the biggest change in the company during the last ten years when I was in the company and in the ten years when she was in the company. Tina said that the price was depressed even lower the selling price and the cost price.

Executives seem to think that prices are low and people will buy underwear in department stores.

It may turn out to be the opposite.

Now go to Macy "s", "Lord and Taylor", these relatively middle department stores look at the products of K company, which still occupy half of the underwear area, and are much more boring than before. At least I have no desire to buy.

Tina said that the biggest drawback of the underwear industry in the United States in the past few years was the monopoly of big companies, which created problems for creativity.

From 1999 to 2009, I was in New York for ten years as a full-time underwear company. It is the process of witnessing the big capital of the underwear industry and the monopoly of small capital formation. Almost every day we hear the news of merger and reorganization. It is also a witness to the trend of the underwear industry of these big companies and the process of reducing the price.

Lowering the price and "taking the quantity" is the general demand after the monopoly of the big American companies.

When I worked for K company 12 years ago, the company sold a summary meeting every month. If a particular style got less than 1200 orders, the style would be thrown directly into the wastebasket by the boss.

According to another former colleague of mine, this is still one of the company's systems.

Over the past ten years, the amount of underwear production has moved from mainland to China step by step, and a large number of workshops and factories have been closed down in New York.

It is also because of the large number of foundry in China that large American companies can achieve a breakthrough of three again and again.

At present, the impact of this large order system on the Chinese factories has gradually emerged, and it is huge and far-reaching.

On the positive side, it is to cultivate a large number of qualified factories for the country, to understand professional norms, to have excellent technical standards, and even to communicate in English; the negative is that as China's accession to the WTO and the increase in labor costs, many European and American orders are pferred to cheaper areas such as Southeast Asia, South Asia, or even Africa and South America, or after accounting for costs, they simply turn back to the mainland, and China begins to produce a large number of idle productive forces.

It is extremely difficult for these idle productive forces to change their thinking and production methods to adapt to the mainland market, especially to adapt to the new small brand companies.

For example, it is said that Nanchang has about 400000 people's productivity, and now only make a few yuan T-shirts every day.

This summer, some companies invited me to do activities in Nanchang. They asked me if I could do anything for this. I said, I would like to do it, but they may not.

Most of these factories shake their heads when they hear that the number of young designers is less.

Recently, too many young people who want to do underwear brand find me and ask me how to do it. I hope I can introduce manufacturers to them, but I can not give them happy answers.

This is almost an insurmountable doorstep in front of every young designer.

I have encountered too many factory owners in China in the past few months. Although we all know each other's needs clearly, we may eventually lose cooperation because of a problem: minimum!

This is the word I most want to hear and hear most at this time, and it hurts every time I hear it, because it means that your design is not only subject to what is outside the design, but also may lose the possibility of realization.

Why do factories not want to do it? For example, to make a bucket cloth with bra steel rim, we must first debug the machine.

Debugging is not easy. Therefore, after debugging, do 150 thousand parts and do 150 things. Manufacturers certainly like the former and reject the latter.

The same is true for suppliers such as fabrics and accessories.

For example, when I looked at a beautiful lace and finished the sample, the supplier found that this lace didn't have any stock and the production was too small.

At this time, I must reluctantly give up looking for alternatives, which is a great psychological torture.

Big to lace, rubber band, small back hook, zero word buckle, all suppliers will ask: how much quantity do you have? Because the dyeing factory is used to large orders, the large dye vat is already standard, and the manufacturers often tell me embarrassly to charge extra cylinder for dyeing.

All these costs will be reflected in the final pricing of products, which is why new brands are often more expensive than big brands.

To tell you the truth, in the first three months of entering the Chinese industrial chain, I spend a lot of time every day in dealing with various problems that arise due to "quantity".

The same is true for manufacturers and our designers.

Therefore, factories collapse.

Hui said that many people with factories around her simply sold the factory buildings, no longer in love with them, even without rent. They showed absolute pessimism about the future of the industry.

When chatting with Tina, she was optimistic that the monopoly situation of big companies in the US has been improving. As in China, a large number of small creative companies have also emerged, bringing fresh power to industry.

"How can small creative companies and independent designers survive?" I asked her.

She sighed, "some suppliers have realized that small businesses can become big businesses one day, so they can often negotiate and compromise on small orders."

Such an answer seems to have failed to solve my question. Small businesses have become big enterprises. What are the implications of these new small businesses now? Can small businesses really not be small businesses? Do we really have to figure out the way out?

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With the same problem, I went to Tokyo on business this summer to meet with the design director of L Angelique, Japan's high-end underwear brand, Tomoko. I hope to know if they are also facing the same problem as me, because the Japanese market seems to be moving in a different way from the United States, which is full of originality and richness.

Tomoko listened to my question and said, "you are a designer, why do you care about this problem?" I asked her, "what do you care about?" she replied, "I only need to care what kind of design is the most beautiful."

I asked, "when you choose a lace, when you enter the production line, you find that the lace was replaced by someone who did the cost statistics in the company and changed to another cheaper kind of lace. Have you ever had such a situation?" she was very surprised.

Though indirectly, Tomoko's answer has also given some explanation to the Japanese market, which is a thirst for design, a positive recognition of uniqueness, a sense of creativity, and a client terminal willing to pay for uniqueness.

I often buy cloth in Japan, and I can see a lot of cloth and materials shop doing "small" business.

Whether it is fiber street or the high grade cloth shop of Jixiang temple, I buy a cloth, and I want to buy it again after a month, and I often find that it is out of stock.

And no more, no more, no more production.

Japanese businessmen do not make long lines, do not make big bills, update rate is high, initially I envy and feel slightly uncomfortable, and later learn how to deal with: the materials to be quickly stored.

Tina agrees with that.

"When you focus and trust your brand, you may end up using all the fabrics you ordered," she said.

This is actually a process of training and testing designers' vision and decisiveness, which will make designers less hesitant and more accomplished.

After all, the completion of a certain meaning means that our game with life has a temporary result.

But all of these are people who are willing to help me achieve their production. Otherwise, I will not be able to finish my work.

More possibilities in fragmentation

Cilia, a designer friend in the US, worked with my friends in the children's clothing company. When we met in New York in October, she told me anxiously that the company's orders fell a lot this year.

I thought the order was reduced, but she said that the number of customers is still increasing.

That is to say, although the number of customers is large, the number of orders per customer is less, and the market becomes fragmented.

Even discount supermarkets like T.J.Maxx used to choose the right styles from their existing designs, and now they require exclusive designs.

This is consistent with my recent observation that smaller and more targeted products will be the way forward.

Many boutique boutiques in the US have been very sophisticated, such as Le Petite coquett, Journelle, etc. but I came back this year and found that they are all more refined without exception.

In the past, although selling sexy products mainly, they usually matched several special basic styles, but this time, many basic funds were laid off.

Boutique stores have fewer categories, smaller price spans, and a narrower customer base.

The fragmentation of the market is definitely a response to consumer demand.

A few days ago, my assistant Fancy and I passed through a small town in Pudong. We saw two familiar shops along the roadside. It was the underwear brand founded in Guangzhou in 1998. It was also an early urban commercial street and pedestrian street. It once had 8609 stores in the whole country.

The little assistant sighed that her mother in Jiangxi Nanchang would never visit such a shop because she had bought 1000 yuan of underwear ten years ago.

What is a store like this? At least in our eyes, its display contents, whether in style or color, lack international language, and the way of chain operation is also old. The less the chain is, the less attractive it is.

Fashion is the latest.

Europe and the United States in the past twenty years, the rapid development of fashion, the speed of its imitation from the beginning of the limelight, although the price is cheap, consumers on the "mass" this thing still produced an aesthetic fatigue.

Fast fashion chain brands themselves have long been aware of bottlenecks before consumers, and H&M, ZARA and others have begun to pform new directions. They are actively looking for niche products, regularly launching designer brand cooperation funds, small batch and exclusive funds, and can sell them in a day, or some studio edition (limited edition), trying to attract customers with a small quantity of "hunger sale method".

People are tired of wearing similar cheap clothes, and they are desperate for something small and refined.

Especially now that every woman's personality is getting stronger and stronger, she is more and more taboo against others.

Although underwear is worn in "inside" clothes, it may not be that important for most people to bump into shirts, but when feminism has taken the body as a weapon, underwear is not just "inside" clothes.

In my view, oriental aesthetics is more delicate.

Besides, when we were young, most of us passed the experience of sewing clothes by our mothers, and their sewing was definitely the only one. So we had been dressed differently from other people.

In this sense, Taobao has its roots and enthusiasm for its existence, at least its richness and envy make the world envious.

To tell you the truth, what can't be found on Taobao now? Even if Taobao can't find it, now all kinds of APP platforms, such as little red book, one article, and refined interest, will be more active in helping us find it.

So if fragmentation can make us have more choices about life, we will not lose one of the best.

Now some domestic APP platforms come to me to order, and they will directly say that we are different from others.

This should be the sensitivity and progress of business.

So, does the producer also lay down their inherent illusions and find reasonable configuration as soon as possible, like Japan, to make necessary preparations for the design force, so as to help the Chinese underwear really produce the original high-quality brand?

Maybe underwear is getting more and more attention. I interviewed a lot this year.

Most interviewers will ask: what's your ideal brand in the end? My answer is mostly: to run a very small brand of myself, and to produce a group of satisfactory designs every quarter, so that those who like me continue to like me.

Though it is not easy to achieve, it is also an ideal.

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