Costume Giant Baleno: From Andy Lau To 3000 Stores

"Natural selection and survival of the fittest" is the crux of the competition in the commercial world.

Whether it is Microsoft, Google, Amazon, or BAT and other technology Internet companies, they are always walking on the tip of the knife all the time, ready to meet the industry's shuffling and competitors' challenges, as well as in the clothing industry.

It is believed that most of the clothing industry giants can call UNIQLO, ZARA, H&M and other brands.

However, apart from these brands, there is also a former clothing giant. "Grade" and "fashion" were once its symbols and pronoun. It can be seen in the busy sections of a second tier city in the past. It is Baleno.

Baleno, a clothing brand that has been popular with post-80s, is now on the way to dusk.

At that time, Baleno was really very popular. At its peak, its number of stores in mainland China once exceeded 4044. In order to promote its brand, it even invited celebrities like Andy Lau and Faye Wong as spokesmen for the image.

For most of the 80 and 90's, it is a special thing to have the iconic little whale on the clothes.

But for various reasons, it has been on the decline.

Today, there are only more than 1000 stores in mainland China, and their revenues are even more deficit each year.

What has happened in recent years?

C position debut

Baleno, formerly a Italy brand, was born in 1981.

At first, it operated in the Hongkong market and took the opportunity to enter the mainland market after being touted.

However, because of the different market situation in Hongkong, Baleno is cold in the mainland.

Just as it was preparing to withdraw from the mainland market, Baleno met its own bole, Germany Yongjia group.

In 1996, de Yongjia bought Baleno brand wholly-owned and repackaged its brand image, thus creating the first place of domestic casual wear.

Under the blessing of Germany's Yongjia, Baleno went all the way, and even returned to Japan's home in the then UNIQLO.

And the reason why Baleno can make C debut is closely related to the hard work of de Yongjia.

First, quality is king.

Because of its own textile and retail business, Baleno has an advantage over quality and price.

At that time, when sweeping the mainland China, the consumer's evaluation of Baleno was "comfortable" and "cotton".

Mothers and other groups are also willing to choose Baleno as their baby's personal clothing.

Second. Clear positioning, strong brand exposure.

Unlike other brands, Baleno started a young line at the beginning, mainly providing casual clothing for men, women and neutrality, covering consumer groups aged between 18 and 40.

At that time, the market competition was not so fierce. Baleno's distinctive brand characteristics quickly attracted many eyes.

After positioning, Baleno began to work hard on brand exposure.

In addition to directly leasing the core business circle of a second tier city in China, Germany Yongjia is spending huge sums of money to hire heavenly stars to speak for the largest brand exposure.

This strategy has proved to be very effective.

Third. A unique business model.

The reason why Baleno can quickly open the Chinese mainland market is mainly due to its sales mode of "self run + franchising".

Franchising is mainly to familiarise the local operation and market companies with the priority of opening stores, thus quickly grabbing the market and avoiding the failure of performance due to "acclimatized". This is also the lessons learned from the failure of Baleno to enter the mainland market at the beginning, while the self operated store has strengthened the absolute control over the whole market.

This two legged business model allows Baleno to expand rapidly to the whole country.

Giant falls

Baleno did not last for a long time. With the tide of the international market entering the Chinese mainland market and the impact of the Internet business, Baleno's crisis has become increasingly apparent.

Since 2006, fashion clothing brands represented by GAP, ZARA and UNIQLO have accelerated to enter the domestic market. Due to their fashionable styles and high performance price ratio, these apparel brands have attracted many consumers' attention online and offline.

On the contrary, Baleno, Han Du Yi, Inman as the representative of the old generation of leisure clothing brand because it can not keep up with the rhythm, in the fierce market competition, Baleno's performance began to decline greatly.

From 2011 to now, Baleno has closed 3000 stores in 6 years.

Its parent company, Germany Yongjia group, is also having a hard time.

In July 10, 2018, the German wing group released its annual report in 2018, and its clothing business associates decreased its revenue by 57.6% to HK $313 million.

In this way, the once fashionable clothing giant fell down.

What is the reason behind this?

There are two points in the analysis of poison tongue.

First, design is the biggest injury and pain point.

In the early days, Baleno captured many users on the basis of fashion trends and high cost performance. When these young people entered middle age, Baleno's clothing style was still the former street boy. This is not only against the attack of other fashion brands, but also can not keep pace with the growth of young people.

In addition, Baleno's inventory turnover is low.

Compared with the operation mode of ZARA and other fast fashion brands, Baleno still follows the traditional production process regularly. It takes a few months from a design to production and listing, while the average shipment time of ZARA is about 2 weeks, so that it can guarantee the production of many different styles of casual wear in one year.

Now, it seems that Baleno's "young" positioning seems a bit out of place.

Second. Narrow minded, too much emphasis on cost performance.

Design can not keep up with the rhythm of fashion tide, which has led to the increase of Baleno's inventory pressure and the sharp decline of sales volume.

2012 is a cold winter for China's apparel industry. Although high-end sports apparel brands such as Nike and Adidas have adopted a low price clearance mode, these brands are also paying attention to brand pformation and upgrading.

Among them, Anta in the field of sports apparel is the representative of successful pformation.

However, Baleno's vision is narrow, and it only sees the short-term benefits brought by the low price mode. When it comes back to the high-end market again, it finds it powerless to return to the sky.

At this point, low-end, cheap and other pronouns began to accompany them.

At the same time, with the increasingly diversified sales channels, such as online e-commerce channels, Baleno has been proud of the "self + franchise" mode has been emulated by other clothing brands, so far, Baleno began to walk down the altar.

epilogue

Brand aging, not keeping pace with the industry, is a common failing of many brands.

For example, there are many times when del Hui and noble birds are once very popular.

If we can not establish a good market feedback mechanism in the brutal commercial competition, it is only a matter of time before we step down the altar.

Have you ever bought Baleno clothes before?

How about quality and experience?

Do you think there are other reasons for Baleno's collapse?

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