The North Face Is Quietly Turning Over.

"The North Face is so busy this year that I have to keep busy."

This is a circle of friends recently released by Wang Haokun, which is the 2017 autumn winter launched by the outdoor brand The North Face and the Japanese brand Junya Watanabe.

One of the models of the series.

As for what is busy, he says, "busy with purchasing".

Wang Haokun has been a fashion photographer and stylist before, according to the world clothing and shoe net.

Magazine editor is a serious fashion designer.

But after he became obsessed with outdoor hiking in 2015, his aesthetic interest shifted from designer clothes to outdoors.

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Now, The North Face is one of his most popular brands.

"Now I don't want to wear uncomfortable clothes." comfort is the reason why many people like to wear outdoor clothes. Uncle's aunt is wearing an assault suit. Most of them go to comfortable two words. But Wang Haokun also gave another reason to buy The North Face. "I really think it's something fashionable."

This may lead to a lot of people's surprise. After all, the The North Face, named after many people in the heart, has always been the brand of assault clothing selected by uncle and aunt customers in the wholesale market or in the goods market. It is hard to imagine that it can enter the fashion profession's legal eyes.

But compared to customers like Wang Haokun, The North Face is even less relaxed: in addition to launching a series of cooperation with Junya Watanabe MAN, The North Face has also taken the functional down jacket and long wind suit with its own trademark to another Japanese brand Sacai in the 2017 autumn and winter Paris men's wear week show; while looking at the trend website HYPEBEAST, about the combination of the "Face" and "street brand" such as the "street" brand, and the introduction of the limited trend products to different geographical markets, it is more dazzling.

Just last week, the brand of Urban Exploration (brand name UE), the main brand of the city's light machinery and clothing that looks more stylish, also held a joint purchase plan with Mastermind WORLD (Mastermind Japan) in Beijing's Taigu south district. "Can the cooperation series still be booked today?" asked a fashionable male customer who did not seem to be an outdoor enthusiast in the Urban Exploration store.

Unfortunately, the clerk told him that the advance order was over.

It seems that it is indeed a blessing to cooperate with each other, so that when it was founded in 1966, it was positioned by the founder Douglas Tompkins as the outdoor brand of "the best mountaineering products in the world" and finally had the chance to turn over in the fashion industry.

"It is this kind of partnership that makes the The North Face become a fashion that can be accepted by fashion week from a street full of" Dad's favorite ".

Dazed, a famous British fashion magazine, summed up the reasons why The North Face became popular.

Among them, cooperation with Supreme has been most influential since 2007, and now, every season's sale can also lead to panic buying.

"All products will be sold out in 15 minutes."

Peter Valles, vice president of global creative vice president of The North Face, said in an interview with the women's Daily that she talked about The North Face's cooperation with Supreme.

There are a lot of brands that The North Face headquarters have received today, but the real long-term partners are Surpreme.

Indeed, the cooperation between them is a milestone on the road of The North Face becoming cool.

But back to 1980s, The North Face has been a "tidal card" to some extent, especially in Europe and America. In 1996, a magazine also wrote a group of young people who played rap, graffiti and skateboard in the streets of New York to enjoy The North Face.

Just The North Face's fashion, for a long time only stayed in a small range of people.

Because it is characterized by comfort, wearable, rain proof, windproof and cost-effective consumer goods, it moves young people who are mixed up in the streets and not earning enough money.

In contrast, Supreme is also popular in the streets. With the marketing tactics of the skateboard culture, and the idol effect of the leader in the small circle, it gradually enters the vision of the more mainstream crowd.

Today, it has created countless marketing anecdotes, and cooperation with Louis Vuitton has proved that it has risen from sub culture brand to consumerism.

This also determines that the two brands of Supreme and The North Face are different from the fashion circle though they all have street culture accumulation.

When Supreme is working with fashion brands, it often gives people a more equal feeling.

And The North Face is more like the one who borrowed the light, because its brand image is still outdoors wearing functional clothing in general. But in fact, whether it is contemporary designer brand or street brand, in addition to the professional advantage of The North Face in functional clothing, in the face of the fashion industry dominated by street style, The North Face has been fundamentally changed by the passive position of the fashionable brand big horse cart.

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It has to be said that The North Face is on the road to fashion and is catching up with the node of the right place and the right place.

Over the years, as an important branch of street culture, functional equipment has reached a high level of penetration of fashion.

OFF-WHITE, Prada, Undercover and other brands all have functional fabrics, or they replace stitching tape bonding skills, putting functional sense into brand design.

In the 2017 autumn and winter fashion week in Shanghai, designer Wang Tianmo's The Museum of Friendship and Li Jiapei's Andrea Jiapei Li also use functional fabrics to increase the uniqueness of the design.

At this node, The North Face will be noticed by more fashion brands because of its functional advantages.

The North Face Urban Exploration Senior Brand Manager Tim Sedo also told the interface news that since opening up the concept of UE, he can receive many cooperation invitation from brands and designers every day.

And its own products also catch up with the trend, and it is easier to get public aesthetic approval.

From another point of view, no matter when in 2003, The North Face opened the first sub line Purple Label, or in 2007, it launched a joint partnership with Supreme. The brand's appeal in the global fashion industry has not aroused much cooperation in the past one or two years and opened up a new branch line.

This has little to do with the size of the brand itself.

It's still a matter of cliche. This is due to the development of social networks, because information has been spread more rapidly and widely.

At the same time, the development of social networking has also diluted the authority of the past fashion media.

Like Sabrina Fung, executive director of Fung Retailing, a private retail company in Hongkong, Li said, "we do not believe in single brand led brand strategy because single brands are too easily controlled by fashion trends."

This does not make any brand dare to believe in its power at this moment, and feel that it can rely on the dissemination ideas of past T stations to create a fashion.

This gives The North Face the opportunity to create popularity through joint efforts.

Another key point is the degree of concern of the audience.

In this era of almost every new joint news, customers are familiar with and accepted this form. Although some people are tired of it, The North Face can still attract a lot of attention when it announces cooperation messages with a broad consumer base brand.

"We will continue to promote cooperation between The North Face and fashion and art personas and brands." apart from manufacturing topics, Peter Valles believes that joint cooperation is mainly to help The North Face access to new market opportunities. "We are creating products that are suitable for customers of urban life. We also see that (through cooperation) customers are beginning to accept us in the urban environment and allow us to compete in this field."

This is the "sky time" factor reversed by The North Face.

In line with the 2021 performance outlook released by VF group, the parent company holding the brand, and the strategic planning made by The North Face at its group earnings conference, it will better understand the intention of Peter Vallis to gradually shift its attention from the wild to the city.

According to the VF plan, from the 2017 fiscal year to the 2021 fiscal year, the VF group will maintain a compound annual growth rate of 4%-6%.

90% of the growth will come from its brands Vans, Timberland and The North Face.

The growth target set by The North Face is higher than that of group level, which is 6%-8% for compound annual growth.

At the same time, it also made clear the way to achieve this high growth: Aiming at the core Mountain Sports, which will always account for 60% of the brand income, and the new Mountain Mountain Athletics, mountain life (Mountain Lifestyle) and urban exploration (Urban Exploration) and other business segments, for more targeted design, marketing and production and pportation work.

It is worth mentioning that, apart from the mountain sports plates with high functional professional equipment, such as assault clothing, compressed trousers, hiking shoes and so on, the other three businesses have been weakened in the same way as those in the urban market.

The North Face estimates that the annual average sales growth rates of these three businesses from 2017 to 2021 are higher than those of 4%-6% for the mountain sports sector.

Specifically, mountain fitness refers to exercising outside the gym, either in the wild or in the city.

The North Face opened the world's first Outdoor Training Station (outdoor training station) in Shanghai in early April this year, which is a specialized store to promote the business sector.

Most of the products sold in the store are different from those of Under Armour, Nike, etc.

The growth rate of this business is stable at 11%-13%.

Mountain life refers to outdoor camping out of the city. At present, there are no independent stores in the business, but the products involved include clothing and tent lights.

Its growth rate is also expected to reach 8%-10%.

The North Face Urban Exploration is the highest fit among all the plates. It can be said to be a complete development of life and sports in the urban environment.

Its first name store in the world also opened in Shanghai, opened in K11 shopping center in 2015, and then went to Hongkong, Beijing, Taiwan and London, England.

Approaching the shops of UE, consumers can intuitively find the difference from the main line: "UE's box will not use red diamonds, but use black; store decorations, UE uses wood, cement and black iron, and the theme of publicity images in shops is not climbing mountains, but climbing buildings."

Tim Sedo said.

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UE is the main customer group, that is, those fashionable users who often browse the trend websites such as HYPEBEAST and Highsnobiety.

The North Face also set up a Urban Exploration Black Series which can only be sold in its exclusive store. Its annual sales growth rate is estimated to reach 9%-11%, and Mastermind WORLD is its latest joint target.

Later this year, black label will also launch a joint series with Sacai.

When the sales growth of the core business of the brand has already met the bottleneck, according to a set of data quoted by New York Times in the market research organization SportsOneSource, in 2012, The North Face has achieved 33.5% market share in the birthplace and largest market of the United States, leading to second percentage points of Columbia's more than 20 percentage points. It is a wise choice to find and develop new growth points.

And the city is the growth point that The North Face needs.

Finally, according to the planning of VF and The North Face, the business developed in the city in 2021 will be expected to contribute 44% of the sales volume to the brand.

This figure was 39% in fiscal year 2016.

However, unlike many people's expectations, The North Face's exploration of urban market opportunities is far ahead of the division of the business sector and the growth plan, even earlier than the first joint cooperation between the brand and eYe COMME des GARCONS Junya Watanabe MAN in 2006.

The specific time can be traced back to 2003.

That year, The North Face signed a brand authorization cooperation agreement with the Japanese outdoor apparel brand agency GOLDWIN, and launched the The North Face PURPLE LABEL (Purple Label), which was designed and produced by another local city functional fashion brand nanamica.

For those fashionable customers, the purple label is a kind of existence that will catch up with each other.

On the one hand, it broke the The North Face functionality, but it was less fashionable and attracted a group of fans.

On the other hand, the purple standard can only be sold in Japan's The North Face Standard, The North Face March and nanamica stores, which also makes the branch more mysterious and attractive.

So many brand buyers in China have bought goods in a non conventional way similar to purchasing or parallel channels.

"Because The North Face's trademark owners in Japan are different from other regional markets in the world, so we are not allowed to export purple labels to other markets," said purple and Nanamica Eiichiro Homma in the interview with the trend website Highsnobiety, giving the reason why the purple label is only sold in Japan. "And purple has an important product development principle that is tailored for Japanese wear."

After that, GOLDWIN also developed the same Unlimited series for Japanese market in 2005.

The branch line is similar to the purple design style, but emphasizes the functionality of the product.

In 2014, GOLDWIN entered the Korean market and launched the The North Face WHITE LABEL series with faster fashion attributes.

The existence of these branches, as well as their cooperation, is regarded as the help of The North Face to fashion and market segments.

At present, apart from purple, white label and Unlimited, two branches have been brought into the Greater China and other overseas markets by UE stores through purchasing and inventory.

"Our customers are from the mainland, Hongkong and Taiwan. They will always pay attention to the purple and white labels of Japan and Korea, and also to the shops in China and ask why the Chinese market does not sell these branches."

Tim Sedo said in an interview with the interface news, "so we feel that we have the opportunity to do the retail concept of UE, which is initiated and managed by VF Asia."

According to public information, the The North Face direct market managed by VF Asia includes mainland China, Hongkong, China and Taiwan, China.

Unlike GOLDWIN's larger autonomy in controlling the Japanese and Korean markets, VF Asia's decisions generally require approval from VF headquarters in the US.

To a certain extent, this has delayed the progress of The North Face becoming more and more cool in China.

But from another perspective, the Japanese market does have the capital to fashion the The North Face first.

Because compared with China, and even many European and American markets, its practice of integrating foreign cultures and localization has even elevated the "foreign monks" to a new level.

Similar cultural learning and self extension have always been what Japanese are good at. This is evident from the country's cultural experience of China, Europe and the United States, which is based on Disney's authorization of OLC.

To say that Japan is well prepared, one is that after Japan's economic take-off in 1980s, the level of disposable income of the residents has been greatly raised, providing an economic foundation for outdoor sports and outdoor equipment; and then the broken consumer bubble in 1990s has led more people to feel uncertain about the future and let them move away from the city, which further stimulated their interest in outdoor sports and outdoor equipment.

In addition, since 1980s, Japan, driven by a wave of avant-garde designers such as Yamamoto Teruji, Lssey Miyake and Wakubo Tose, has gradually become the birthplace of the design capital and trend that has impact on the global fashion industry. The aesthetic demand of the whole society in Japan has been continuously improving, which puts forward rigid requirements for the fashion of outdoor products.

Of course, Japan's rich designer resources also provide a boost for the fashion of The North Face.

Just like several brands that have been jointly launched with The North Face, except Supreme, almost all come from Japan; and the UE Black Series, which is a base camp in Greater China, has also found Japanese brands mastermind WORLD and Sacai cooperation to launch the 2017 autumn winter men's and women's clothing cooperation series.

"Japan is really ahead of us in this respect, and less than ten to twenty years," Wang Haokun observed with his own observations in Japan. "I see that even in Japan, even if it is a simple hiking line, the Japanese will still wear equipment to climb snow mountain, which is not necessary at all, but you can see how much they attach importance to the aesthetics and functionality of the equipment."

But in the past, the Chinese market may be just like Japan in the past, providing a precondition for The North Face.

For Chinese consumers, the enthusiasm for The North Face may not be just as simple as the numerous bombardment on the fashion platform.

We have mentioned more than once in our past reports that today's Chinese society is very similar to that of Japan around 1990s.

For example, there are also some people in China who have already completed certain wealth accumulation and want to escape from the city in the face of high housing prices, falling stock market, fast pace of life and tremendous pressure of work.

Like lyrics, they want to pursue "poetry and distance".

More than one report on China's "middle class" lifestyle has also mentioned that outdoor sports have become one of the new interests of the middle class in China after the purchase of luxury goods.

"More and more Chinese like outdoor," Lin Haiyun, senior Asia Pacific Marketing Director of The North Face, told interface news. "Although the complexity and maturity of the sports market has not been abroad for thirty or forty years, it has grown very fast, because once interested, this lifestyle is very addictive."

Wang Haokun's experience is proof of Lin Haiyun's statement.

In 2015, he was tired of the same urban tour and began to try outdoors hiking.

Now he always keeps the habit of going hiking every weekend.

He also set up his outdoor hiking club, attracting more and more like-minded members to join in outdoor sports.

"However, many of our members are not very willing to buy and wear professional outdoor equipment." although we see more and more people playing outdoor sports, Wang Hao finds that most of them are holding the mentality of playing tickets, so they rarely want to buy specialized equipment. "But on the whole, everyone's attention to equipment, especially the attention to equipment and fashion, has been greatly improved. Just like many male members have seen that I often wear a pair of shorts after shorting my pants, and also start to imitate wearing, I often demonstrate myself now."

It is precisely because of the climax of consumerism that has gone through before, that Chinese customers, while consuming physical strength for spiritual cultivation, are worried that they can not look too outdoors.

Lin Haiyun also feels that the aesthetic demand of the Chinese market for products is getting higher.

He said that without sacrificing functionality, The North Face has made overall adjustments in the fashion of the mainline products, in addition to launching a new concept store like UE.

He added that The North Face wanted to design products that are stylish, good-looking and social needs.

When social networks are becoming more developed, customers can share the needs of the United States in addition to keeping pace with global trends in fashion and fashion.

It sounds that the Chinese market has been in a situation of homeopathy.

But it seems that the Chinese market seems to have an opportunity to think of the world's first UE store and outdoor training station Theme Store in Shanghai.

"I find that in addition to young people, the elderly in the Asian market are also very concerned about fashion.

In the United States, at the age of forty or fifty, if a person is very concerned about fashion, you may think he is a bit strange, so I think consumers in the Asian market should be more willing to accept new things.

Tim Sedo supplements the reason why UE first opened stores in the Greater China market.

Judging from the volume and growth speed of the whole market, the UE market and its exclusive Black Series, as well as the theme shop of the outdoor training station opened soon, have enough tolerance in the Chinese market.

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According to the 2016 China outdoor products Market Research Report released by the China Textile Business Association outdoor products branch, in 2016, the total retail sales of China's outdoor products market totaled about 23 billion 280 million yuan, up 4.91% over the same period last year.

VF expects that with the opening date of the Beijing Zhangjiakou Winter Olympic Games approaching, China's outdoor sports market will usher in a round or even more rounds of growth.

All this will bring opportunities for The North Face and its various sections of the business to develop in China.

As a global brand, the Chinese market is large and potential, indeed providing a space for The North Face to test new water business.

But so far, the Chinese market is still only a small part of the whole brand. The whole Asia Pacific region will only account for 11% of the total brand size by 2021.

Therefore, if the brand wants to achieve fashion as a whole, it needs more efforts in other markets.

UE is now expanding into overseas markets.

According to Tim Sedo, the stores in Germany and California are already planned.

In the planning of VF 2021, UE will open 100 stores worldwide by 2021.

Peter Vallies has also prepared a joint candidate. For example, Olivia Kim, creative director of department store Nordstrom, is about to debut in the second half of 2017.

It seems that more fashionable trends will continue to float from the north, and it is certain that people's attitude towards this gust is like spring breeze.

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