How Should Apparel Retailers Help Themselves In The Face Of The Continued Downturn In The Clothing Market?

According to the latest retail statistics released by the National Bureau of statistics in July 17th, the total retail sales of consumer goods in China in June totaled 29808 billion yuan, up 11% in nominal terms.

The data of household income and consumption expenditure in the first half of 2017, which was released on the same day, showed that per capita consumption expenditure in the first half of the year was 668 yuan, up 2.4%, accounting for 7.6% of total expenditure, and the consumption price of residents also rose by 2.1%, of which the clothes were up 1.6%, and the daily necessities and services were up 0.5%.

A series of data shows that Chinese consumers' spending on clothing consumption continues to decline, while traffic, communications and entertainment expenses continue to rise, which is also due to the current downturn in the clothing market.

Fashion retailers' biggest worry: consumer clothing spending continues to slump

Today's clothing retailers face not only the sluggish market, the picky consumers, but also the new wave brought by the brand line of the electricity supplier. The apparel retailing under the line has been thinking about the retail pformation in order to survive. At the moment, many brand names have been looking at improving efficiency, upgrading consumption experience and new technology.

The picture shows the per capita consumption expenditure and composition of residents in the first half of 2017.

Data driven production can quickly and better understand "hearts and minds".

A number of surveys show that in the next 5-10 years, the millennial generation represented by post-90s will become the main consumer group in China's consumer market. One of the characteristics of such a consumer group is the "three minute heat".

Clothing brands want to keep changing consumers, and they must be faster than them.

In the traditional supply chain, a finished product needs 6-9 months from customization, design, processing, clothing, pportation and sales. Fashion and consumer demand are not static. Such inefficient supply chain is far from satisfying consumers.

On this issue, we can refer to the designer fast fashion brand KM. As one of the few fashionable men's clothing brands in the market can be continuously loved by consumers, to a large extent, it is attributed to its efficient use of data and effective output.

Its efficient use of data is represented in two aspects: first, consumer data, that is, the acquisition of consumer demand data.

In the early stage, through in-depth study of the target consumer group, we learned that their target products are fashionable products built on the economic basis, which can meet their various lifestyles and wearing scenes.

In contrast, KM has built a strong trend database, combining trend and demand to produce marketable goods.

At the same time, they also learned that the new generation of consumers, though they love fashion, do not know how to match them. In order to meet their needs, they launch various collocation strategies on official WeChat, and get first-hand demand information in interaction with fans, so as to do the basic work for the next push and next product planning.

Second: supply chain data, in the highly competitive garment industry, the efficiency of the world, the optimization of supply chain management is the result of a significant increase in efficiency.

To improve supply chain management and coordinate upstream and downstream is the key. In order to achieve efficient KM, a data processing center has been built. Information from all aspects of design, production and sales can be queried on this platform, and problems can be known and processed immediately.

At the same time, it can track the sales data of each product in real time, adjust product structure in time, and even conduct a new round of consumption forecasting.

Consumers love shopping experience Max brand

Young people who become mainstream consumer groups

And personalized demand has already exceeded the price. Clothing retailers should "keep people in mind" not only have good products, but also have a good experience.

To create a new consumption experience and better meet its personalized needs has become a plus point for the brand.

The new brand will try the appearance of the clothes room, not only to really get through the online and offline, but also to refresh the consumers' cognition of the experience.

The biggest difference between the fitting room and other clothing stores is the electronic doors at the door. Consumers need to spend 5 yuan to buy tickets to enter.

This practice, which seems to keep consumers out of the door, has not only made the shop cool, but also aroused the curiosity of consumers, and also made consumers more precise.

In trying out the experience space of the clothing room, there are 11 fitting rooms with different themes. The customers can take the self time, walk in the show and watch the exhibition at random, and get 1 to 1 professional image guidance.

All goods in the store can be purchased directly, just by sweeping the corresponding two-dimensional code, and consumers can choose to pick them up directly or choose to send them home by express.

If you bring the Internet gene, try it in the form of "under the fitting, online sale", which is similar to the three squirrels in the same brand as the Amoy brand.

This will not only bring the advantages of offline store experience into full play, but also solve the long-term quality and after-sales problems of online brands.

Such an unprecedented sense of experience is enough to make women scream and add points to the brand.

The emergence of new technology and black technology brings more surprises.

With the development of science and technology, "black science and technology" is becoming more and more popular, and many amazing science and technology have been applied to unexpected fields.

In the future, more and more high-tech will be applied to the apparel industry, bringing more unexpected surprises to consumers.

The recent 3D printing technology is spreading to our lives in a thunderbolt. Sports brand Adidas is the first to catch up with this trend and launch 3D print running shoes Adidas 3D Runner.

At the same time, RFID technology will also be widely used. Take the Japanese clothing Flandre store as an example. When the customer tries out, the electronic screen on the Flandre fitting room will display a virtual designer. The equipment in the fitting room will recommend the clothes to the customers according to the storage information of the customers.

The customer can feel the upper body effect without undressing.

This shopping experience benefits from the RFID technology, which reads the clothing with RFID tags, and then communicates with other devices to update the information in real time. This provides consumers with big data and also serves as a reference for consumers to enter the store next time.

If clothing retailers use RFID tags on each garment, they can trace the single product from production to sale, which greatly improves the efficiency of enterprise operation.

Future,

Technology will be widely used for unmanned shopping, and no shopping will be a major trend in the future.

Whether using big data, upgrading consumption experience or introducing all kinds of new technologies, in the final analysis, is to make the brand know more about "people's hearts". Clothing retailers want to make brands and extend their lifecycle. The first thing to do is to understand people's hearts.