How Does "Minimalist" Everlane Get A Slice Of "Slow Classics"?

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Magazine brands are hard to find. In recent years, sexy red lips have been reduced, and the temptation curve has been reduced.

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The electricity supplier Everlane is applying this "extreme breeze" to the right example: refusing to be gorgeous and boastful, concentrating only on the classic design of black, white, grey and other colors; not releasing new products and promotional goods at the same time, launching a new single product at a time, directly marking the millennial generation's advocating natural and unfashionable consumption concept.

Positioning high cold, straightforward, marketing is rather "heart".

"Offline store operation costs are too high, and distributors at all levels profit from it, making a foundation.

After the profits are stacked up, the price to the buyer is eight times higher than the cost price.

And we do electric business, is going to subvert the path of innovation of traditional retail.

Everlane founder Michael Preysman explained: copyright design automatically connect to the factory, the middle cost that can be cut off can directly benefit the consumers; and the whole supply chain will be presented to the public before operation, so that the production and retail links become pparent, and the connection between the real and the people is kept simple. This means pferring the pricing power to the consumers, while the new generation of consumer groups want to find the story behind the product and the unique sense of brand belonging.

Any marketing concept must be persuasive through the "touchstone" of the market.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, Everlane, which has been operating for five years, shows a trend of rising: initial revenue of 12 million dollars in three years; revenue in 2014 and 2015 rose to 36 million US dollars and 50 million US dollars respectively; in 2016, the market value was as high as 250 million US dollars.

In the background of fast fashion such as UNIQLO, H&M, Gap and so on, how can "minimalist" Everlane get a slice of "slow classics"?

1, the industry chain is highly pparent to enhance brand trust.

According to the rules of the clothing industry, the rate of brand sales is often regarded as a weapon of profit by the major brands, but as a non regular army, Everlane does not play cards according to the industry.

On the official website, a traditional brand's cost, profit and pricing rules are posted, marking the cost and profit of the general clothing brand.

Many consumers see this clothing enterprise production structure map, all feel the clothing industry "profiteering" and the businessman's "unscrupulous", suddenly realized that he was caught in the merchant's discount scam.

This is not the case.

Although the cost structure map produced by Everlane from the production to the terminal of the traditional clothing enterprises does conform to the general pricing rules in the industry, it does not include the terminal sale discount cost, and other cost expenditures such as enterprise inventory, rent, brand promotion and maintenance.

From this, it is not scientific to calculate the brand profit simply from the pipeline to the final sale price.

In addition to opening the traditional brand pricing rules, Everlane also disclosed all the details of every product on the official website.

"Retailers do not provide much information about goods, and consumers do not know where they are produced and how much they cost. Even when they are told of a commodity price, they can not figure out why it is priced. This is what we have to do."

Preysman, for example, a skirt usually says: the cost of cloth for 22.17 dollars, the labor cost of 12.39 dollars, and the tax of 2.99 dollars...

Such a $39 dress will sell for $190 in ordinary retail stores, and Everlane can be bought for only 98 dollars.

Preysman said frankly, the reason why it can provide much lower prices than traditional retailers is that it has cut off large intermediate costs.

At present, Everlane has been working with 14 foundries in five countries around the world, and regularly inspects new plant equipment to ensure that potential partners are in line with company standards.

For example, the origin of these skirts is Hangzhou, China, and the factory information is also released on the official website, including factory and worker photos.

In the business logic of Everlane, for a garment, people usually have difficulty in associating with where they come from, who they are from, what materials they use, but they do not have "temperature". Nowadays, the consumption concept of young people is different from that of the previous generation. They are still sensitive to price, but they will pay more attention to whether the production is in line with morality or even willing to pay for the product's additional "feelings".

In this regard, Forever21, H&M and other clothing brands have also been selling moral initiatives to consumers: Forever21 announced the completion of the solar panels at Losangeles headquarters in 2015. Recently, H&M also released a $1 million prize for people who proposed solutions to waste and pollution problems.

The standard production process plus competitive price constitutes the core competitiveness of Everlane.

Driven by its brand effect, sales revenue in 2015 increased by 200% over the same period last year.

2, inventory: optimal product mix + user needs

"Highly pparent" ground to consumers, without solid "internal strength" can not be achieved.

Everlane relies on inventory management.

On the Everlane website, we can see that there are 196 styles of clothing for men and women, 10 basic colors and 666 products, ID.

The classification standard of the product on the website is "style + Color + size", not the simple style.

In this way, it is convenient for users to choose colors and reduce search times; two, it can reduce the time cost of uploading model photos because of the simple presentation of styles, and the three is to simplify website design, because no search column and page turn items are added, and the exposure rate of products is virtually increased.

Everlane never discounts, nor releases new products according to season. Even in hot summer days, when all brands are promoting summer wear, you can still buy woolen cardigan and coats on Everlane.

And unlike all fast fashion brands that produce hundreds of new products a week, Everlane launches only one new product at a time.

What is the reason?

"When the brand is not big enough, instead of expanding, it's better to put all of its energy on one category of products and increase the number of products."

Preysman said that this approach gave the design team enough time to ferment an idea and test the samples on different consumption items before putting it on the market in large quantities.

"Everlane has a story behind every new product. They will think about every detail before the product is launched, such as product positioning, whether consumers need it, whether they will respond to the product, and designing team to study the above problems and do it well is not an overnight thing."

Everlane investor 14W partner Nick Brown believes that this "Minimalism" is the reason why brands are favored. People appreciate the convenience they provide, and can choose from a limited number of T-shirts and pants after registration, instead of providing goods stores with super negative loads as fast fashion as UNIQLO.

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In the design process, Everlane did not take the route of the old fashion enterprise.

Take Gap as an example, designers first design different styles of clothing, and then send them to the purchasing department. The purchasing department decides which styles will be put into production according to sales data and business objectives.

Preysman believes that this process model is not desirable. Designers should establish "user led" thinking and communicate directly with consumers.

Specifically, the design concept of Everlane should be consistent with the existing product line style and echo the prevailing fashion.

Take the new SwingTrench windbreaker series this year as an example. Because it is the first time to try new functional fabrics, designers will first make detailed optimization based on the market test and then according to the feedback from consumers, so that the sales rate can be maximally increased if the word of mouth is guaranteed.

3, "many to many" dissemination of visitors.

Unlike some Chinese business practices, Everlane does not open physical stores, nor does it set up counters in the mall. Instead, it locks the sales channel to the brand official website, thus avoiding the high rental pressure of shops under the line, and does not have to bear the cost of large e-commerce platform sales and traffic costs.

Such a plan seems logical, but for a small start-up company, how can it be easy for consumers to shop on their own platforms?

In fact, the cost of Everlane advertising accounts for only 5% of the total expenditure, which is hardly seen in traditional media.

Its strategy is to focus on social media and expand the word of mouth by using "many to many" forms.

Consider popular social networking sites as their own department stores.

Tumblr and Instagram (hereinafter referred to as "ins") are the main promotion platforms for Everlane.

On INS, all the pictures of Everlane are full of brand's simple, fresh and fashionable "high cold fan".

Preysman compares these social and cultural venues frequented by young artists to "department stores", where people can get access to brands that have never been heard before.

At present, Everlane's ins interface has gathered 250 thousand active fans, and some pictures below show the interaction information between fans and fashion bloggers.

Organizing offline activities will lead to false social networking.

On ins and Tumblr, strange people interact with each other because of their interest and experience, but on the Internet, who knows whether a computer sits over there is a person or a dog, which is dubbed "pseudo social interaction".

Smart Everlane successfully organized such false social networking by holding offline activities.

For example, the office open day, they will invite fashion bloggers and fans to entertain, provide food and cocktail, and have a part of "black five" in one year to build basketball courts for Chinese manufacturers.

This kind of "illusion" that allows consumers to participate in every step of the decision-making process is no more fascinating and willing to pay for the game than "developing games".

The flash shop is for experience, not for sale.

Everlane has been emphasizing the internet background and not being a physical store, but it has taken the design of women's shoes to the line.

These shoes are placed in a high-end hotel in New York, San Francisco and Losangeles. Consumers can try them on when they make an online appointment.

This is the offline experience that is launched to prevent online uncontrollable risks of buying shoes, but even if consumers try very well, they can't buy it on the spot, but they still have to order to the official website, and they are responsible for delivering goods under the line.

During the year's activities, Everlane sold thirty thousand pairs of shoes.

Stick to old customers.

To provide more seamless shopping experience, Everlane has invested heavily in technology. In July 2015, the first iPhone shopping and weather dual function application purchased the mobile terminal from the PC side.

But unlike most App providers, the purpose of mobile terminal download is not to drain, but to maintain the old users through better user experience.

Everlane expects users to increase App frequency and stick to them by watching weather routine functions.

In addition, for many people who don't know what to wear today, Everlane recommends appropriate tips for users through detailed analysis of meteorological conditions.

Management comment: Everlane brand positioning can be summarized as "business democratization, minimalism, high cost performance".

"Business democratization" means making the business span the space and time through the Internet and winning the trust of users with the high pparency of the industrial chain. "Minimalism" means that the minimalist design and the limited edition category should be made to focus on the users' attention, and the brand differentiation should be further molded by "no discount" and "new high cooling strategy" at the same time.

In general, Everlane's "play" is the same as millet's secret of success in seven words: "focus, extreme, word of mouth, fast".

In the Internet age, either to save money for customers or save customers, Everlane has done it all.

More interesting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing shoes and hats net.