Facterlier: Can You Overturn UNIQLO In The Future?

The company that I want to introduce to you today, and the founder of this company, is known to be subversive in the future.

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Yes, that's Factelier.

In 2016, 4 years after its establishment, Factelier had a turnover of more than 1 billion yen (around 60 million yuan) a year.

Yamada Toshio, a young talent who is only 35 years old, is called "changing the Japanese clothing industry".

The title of "changing the clothing industry in Japan" is not given at random. Yamada Toshio is very thorough about "making clothes".

He believes that the apparel industry is currently in the alternate stage of cost cutting and value creation, and that the representatives of "cost reduction" are UNIQLO and ZARA.

It is a garment that sells for 50 thousand yen and is now sold in 25 thousand yen; and what Yamada wants to do is to keep the price of 50 thousand yen the same, but offer the value of 100 thousand yen to the customer.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, the sales volume of clothing in Japan is about 10 trillion yen. Among them, the brand that can earn money and give value to the society is about 10-20%.

Yamada Toshio's goal is to create new values in this market.

This market of about 1-2 trillion yen is still lacking in Yamada Toshio's brand.

What he wants to do is this brand.

A little abstract? Let's take a look at the specific story:

Why do you want to create clothing brands?

Born in October 20, 1982, Yamada Toshio is a beautiful Libra.

The birthplace is Xiongben Prefecture, Kyushu, Japan.

His grandparents were also dressed in women's clothing stores. Yamada Toshio was a child.

This coincides with Ryui Masa, founder of UNIQLO, and Ryui Masa is also from a clothing store.

He studied business in University, and then went to France to study and practice in GUCCI in Paris.

In 2006, he entered the SB Human Capital work of Softbank group. He first worked as a business manager of the media department, then joined the Tokyo Girls Collection Operation website Fashionwalker.com, and knew more about the clothing business.

So, for Yamada Toshio, making a brand of his own clothing is not an unexpected choice, but what kind of brand should he make?

The power to arouse a person to do one thing is ten thousand, but there is always a bit of thrust. For Yamada Toshio, when he was studying in France, one of his classmates asked him, "Why are all the clothes sold in Japan by Made in China?" of course, Yamada Toshio knew that the standard answer is, "because the cost of manufacturing in China is cheap."

But being inspired by foreign students, he gave birth to a thought. Why not try "made in Japan"?

Please note that the generation born by Yamada Toshio has actually entered the "low desire society" in Japan (the term comes from Kenichi Ohmae's book "low desire society", which means that Japanese young people lose hope for the future, and there is no interest in buying and buying.

The reorganization of "made in Japan" is an effective stimulus to the young generation such as Yamada Toshio. Marketing is also effective in the market.

In fact, Japan itself is the source of some luxury goods to buy raw materials, and also the place where some products are produced. For example, Giorgio Armani will purchase silk from Kam Ma CHO, Fukushima Prefecture; Christian Lacroix is a performance costume produced by The Paris Opera House ballet dancers, using the cicada gauze of Ishikawa County; the Jean Paul Gaultier skirt is produced in Iwate county.

It is easy to think of it. The most practical problem before Yamada is that the cost of Japanese manufacturing is very high. In fact, it is precisely because of the high cost that the manufacture of Japanese clothing has been moving outward since 1990s, which reduced the proportion of local manufacturing 50.1% to 3% now.

In September 2012, Yamada Toshio launched a project to raise 300 thousand yen on the crowd raising website Campfire, and finally raised 1 million 142 thousand and 500 yen (about 70 thousand yuan), and began to start a business. This year, Yamada Toshio is just 30 years old.

Then, in 2015, Yamada completed $1 million in fund-raising on the crowd raising website Makuaku.

Re combing the relationship between brand and manufacturing

In the first two years of the company's opening up, only Yamada Toshio worked alone - how to listen to almost the same thing as a small Taobao shop - he learned how to design websites according to his book, took pictures of himself, took orders for himself, and delivered his own products.

If I had seen a young boy with a big pile of clothes on the back seat in the street, I couldn't do that.

At first, he couldn't earn much money. He had to work in his spare time to support his daily expenses.

If you eat bitterness, you can't find the most important partner - factories. Most factories do not hang their own information on the Internet.

Yamada tried to find ways to contact these factories. One family called and found the intention to visit the bus.

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How can these factories manage him with a credit card and no business experience?

He has been lobbying repeatedly, and the most important thing is that he will feel the difficulties faced by the other side from the constant communication with the other side, and find out the reason that the other party is willing to accept to convince the other side.

Now, when I recall the time when I first started my own business, Yamada Toshio said that he did not find it difficult or difficult. He was very excited at the thought of what he really liked to do, and that any achievement would give him a feeling of "over boiling point".

In fact, Japanese factories, like the Chinese factories, are very small in the upper reaches of the industrial chain.

For example, a Japanese clothing factory can only get 2000 yen, or 20%, for a price of 10000 yen.

Yamada Toshio had a subversive approach. He invited the factories to participate in the pricing of the products, and openly stated that half of them were for factories and half for themselves, that is, 5:5.

This means that he earns a lot less than other clothing brands, but he thinks it will make the factory more attentively to make his clothes. "Factories earn money, and I earn quality."

The original operation cost of Internet brand is lower than that of ordinary physical stores. Besides, Yamada does not use intermediaries, but directly lets factories send clothes to Facterlier's warehouse in Tokyo.

In the manufacturing industry, especially in the garment industry with a low threshold, because of the fierce competition, factories are constantly being squeezed by brands.

Therefore, Yamada Toshio's practice is to rethink the result of "made in Japan", and how to distinguish the "made in Japan" from the manufacturing in other countries. This is the answer he gave.

In order to show respect, he will also print the name of the factory that produces this garment under the logo of each Facterlier garment.

This has made factory workers full of honor. In the past few decades, Chinese factories have taken away most of the Japanese factories, and these factories haven't had such a sense of superiority for a long time.

In fact, the name Facterlier reflects Yamada's attention to the factory. Facterlier=Factory+Atelier, Factory refers to the factory, Atelier refers to the studio.

Over the past 5 years, Yamada has visited more than 500 Japanese factories, and he spent almost half of his work in factories.

After the assessment and screening, Factelier now has 40 partners, including T-shirts, shirts, jeans, bags, accessories, and so on.

As orders rebounded, the factories that worked with Yamada began their recruitment for the first time in decades, and recruited young craftsmen.

You know, before the loss of factories and the reduction of key technologies and handicrafts, the garment industry is no longer attractive to young people.

In fact, it can not be said that Yamada Ichi began to feel confident that he was doing the right thing.

However, practice has proved that the relatively equal relationship with the factory does make Facterlier's clothes better and has more than 50% of the total purchase rate in the market, which is higher than the average level.

Yamada Toshio himself thinks, "customer loyalty is most important to him."

After 2 and a half years of business, Facterlier began to make profits.

Sales growth after that has reached three digits per year, and Yamada expects to grow by 300% in 2017.

A low cost entity store

Factelier's style is simple and comfortable, typical Japanese style. It does not seem very special on the surface. But Yamada is pursuing the feeling of "wearing up".

"Now is a time of fast fashion, but I hope I can change this value and convey to you a concept of" good clothes can wear for a long time, "though this is not achieved overnight.

The price of Factelier is about the same as that of high street brand's high-end product line. A shirt is about 9540 yen and more than 600 yuan.

Like most of the new brands of this era, Factelier started on the Internet.

Open Factelier official website, the style is simple and clean, you can choose according to the type and price of clothes.

Buying things on Factelier can be delivered to Japan every other day, while overseas customers can receive goods 3-4 days later.

Now, Factelier also has its own physical store, which seems quite logical to Yamada Toshio.

Since Factelier products are getting more and more, why do not you have a space to put these things? In the store, the brand feeling that Factelier wants to express is actually clearer. Customers can also directly touch and try on these clothes.

In December 2014, Factelier had a physical store in Tokyo, the name is "Ginza Fitting Space".

However, like most clothing brands on the Internet, Factelier stores only have samples and customers can't buy them directly. After the test is finished, they place the order with iPad in the store.

This reminds me of a recent meal with a friend. After buying a bunch of things, she went directly to the nearby stores and paid them to send things back to their home in the same city.

Placing orders directly in a store is really an attraction for these young people.

As for Factelier, it doesn't need to pile up inventory. Store planning can be as simple as possible, so that Factelier stores can save about 2-3 times more space than general stores, and the cost of operation is much lower.

In January 2017, Yamada Toshio began to aim at the overseas market. The first overseas market he entered was Taiwan, China, mainly by the invitation of the Japanese bookstore, the red bookstore, and entered Taiwan together.

The plator said Yamada Toshio stood in the Factelier shop for a whole morning wearing his signature white shirt and jeans.

Sometimes we can observe the response of customers quietly, sometimes in English or Japanese, and explain the special selling mode of Factelier to the customers on the scene.

According to the original plan, Factelier will also enter New York in February 2017 and London in March, followed by Hongkong, China.

Of course, these places are not Yamada Toshio's brains, but the number of online stores.

At present, sales in overseas markets account for about 10% of Factelier's total sales, and Yamada hopes to reach 50% in the near future.

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