Love Is Killing Each Other, Luxury Brands Are Buying More And More Suppliers.

Luxury brands want control, and manufacturers want to make more money. More and more luxury brands are turning their attention to the supply chain.

In September alone, Chanel acquired Spain. Leatherwear Manufacturer Colomer has acquired the equity of French watch brand F.P. Journe 20%. The former allows Chanel to have a more mature leather supply chain and high quality finishing technology, while the latter allows Chanel to upgrade its watch movement.

Earlier, in 2016, Chanel bought four French companies. silk The company is to strengthen the group's high-end silk supply chain. These four companies are suppliers who have worked together for a long time before Chanel, and are involved in every step of Chanel products from silk production, yarn manufacturing, weaving and printing.

At that time, Bruno Pavlovsky, President of Chanel fashion department, said in the announcement that investing in these four companies can make Chanel have enough clothing resources. One of the keys to success or failure of the show and clothing is whether the company has the ability to produce the required fabrics quickly.

In addition to Chanel, Prada bought a leather manufacturing company in 2013. The company is famous for its leather manufacturing technology, such as sheepskin and so on. Most of the products are made of leather commonly used in Prada series. In addition, Gucci's parent company Kai Yun group also bought a minority stake in France Coco, a famous French leather company in 2013. At that time, a spokesman for Kai Yun group told TFL television: "in this way, we can ensure that the Kai Yun brand continues to get high-quality crocodile skin."

In addition to these old luxury brands, Victoria Beckham also set up templates and tailoring positions inside the company when creating the same brand, and these two jobs are usually outsourced to the external factories by the brand. With an internal model designer and tailor, the company has both design team and manufacturing team, and designers can make more flexible and timely changes in creating new series of samples.

It is not hard to see that the main source of brand acquisition suppliers is to continuously obtain high-quality leather, silk and other resources, or acquire the technology that the brand does not have or is not yet perfect. At the same time, brands can also respond to market changes more quickly. After all, with their own manufacturers, they can be more flexible and have more initiative from design to production.

Of course, another obvious benefit of purchasing supply chain manufacturers is to make more money. France fashion Franck Delpal, a professor at the college, once told the New York Times: "if you control the vast majority of the brand supply chain, you will get more profits at every step, and eventually the brand can earn more money and do more business."

"Chanel is already a brand earning close to $10 billion. Its frequent takeover may be because it wants to become a brand of 20 billion or even 30 billion dollars in volume, so it needs more complementary products to help businesses do better. So these acquisitions are actually spanactions done by giants to expand the larger market. Rogerio Fujimori, a luxury analyst at Royal Bank of Canada, told reporters on the interface.

But for manufacturers, they earn less. And as more and more brands move their production to companies, they no longer outsource them to manufacturers. For example, Gucci created Gucci Art Lab last year (Art Lab) to put more manufacturing links into the company, but the manufacturers who worked with Gucci may be very worried. Therefore, more and more manufacturers are looking for new ways to earn money.

According to fashion media Glossy, a company called Italic recently sold goods manufactured by luxury manufacturers and directly butted consumers from manufacturers. That is to say, you can buy handbags made by Prada manufacturers with 1/3 of the money, the same material and manufacturing process, that is, no Prada Logo.

It should be noted that the goods sold on the Italic are different from the usual "tail sheet". Instead of using luxury materials to produce the leftovers, the goods are made of the same materials and processes as commercial and luxury goods, and produce unique products, and no other land can buy them. At present, Italic is a fair only for members to buy products. Members need invitations to enter.

Jeremy Cai, the founder of Italic, said in an interview with Glossy that if a garment factory sells a T-shirt to Calvin Klein at the price of 20 US dollars, the manufacturer may only earn 4 dollars. Calvin Klein can take this one. T-shirt It costs US $100, but manufacturers can only earn $4. It can be expected that manufacturers who do not have much oil and water want to earn more money, and Italic's market is a new way of making money by manufacturers.

But there are risks in the Italic model. For manufacturers, if they take orders from luxury brands, then the factory will only be responsible for the production process, and the number of luxury brands will be produced, and others need not worry. After all, even if the bags are not sold, the brand will still have to pay the manufacturers.

Vendors will directly sell goods to consumers, which will not necessarily be bought after they are produced. If losses occur, they will be borne by the factories themselves. But even so, many manufacturers are willing to take the risk, because once it is successful, it can really get more profits.

Cai is also very clear about the positioning of Italic. He has made it clear that the company does not want to replace luxury brands. "If you need to buy something with a brand name Logo, you won't turn to us. For some people, an ordinary belt can never replace Gucci. Belt " Cai said.