What Is The Future Of Fashion Industry In LV'S Luxury Sports Shoes?

Following the launch of the Archlight sports shoes in February last year, Louis Vuitton launched the 5 sports shoes LV Trainer, which is sold in the WeChat Mini program "LVTrainer show sports shoes limited shop", which is priced at 8850 yuan to 12500 yuan RMB, and supports a variety of payment methods such as bank pfer, Alipay and WeChat.

Taking sports shoes as the breakthrough point for the latest men's clothing series to seize the Chinese online market and young consumers, it has proved the strategic position of sports shoes in the brand's current market strategy.

Unlike the Archlight shoes that first appeared in the 2018 spring and summer women's show, the LV Trainer introduced this year is from the creative director of Louis Vuitton menswear and the founder of the trend Off-White Off-White Virgil Abloh. It is also part of the first 2019 spring and summer men's wear series since the latter took office. At present, the clothing and accessories products of the series are also on sale at designated shops.

In contrast, Archlight was put into fashion fashion on the basis of basketball shoes in 90s by Louis Vuitton creative director Nicolas Ghesqui re re.

The new LV Trainer is relatively simple and direct, with a high degree of re engraving on the shape of 90s professional basketball shoes, directly referring to Air Jordan as the mainstream of the mainstream youth culture.

It is worth mentioning that Archlight supports both men and women, and LV Trainer currently only offers male money.

The comparison of the two sports shoes introduced in one year is aimed at sneak up the change of Louis Vuitton through the prism of sports shoes.

With the trend of the market and the dramatic changes in the market, how to better connect the millennial generation to become one of the biggest challenges facing the luxury brand?

Now sports shoes are starting to play the role.

Just in the past year, the accession of Virgil Abloh is considered to be the most disruptive personnel change in the history of Louis Vuitton, which undoubtedly affects the design language and market business decision of the brand in the future.

Maybe Louis Vuitton is still a novice in the field of sports shoes, but this area is already familiar with Virgil Abloh.

Off-White, which he founded earlier, was on the fashion week of Paris with the combination of high fashion and street style. Since 2017, he has launched the "THE TEN" series with Nike, and has continued to spark consumer panic buying. A total of 31 color matching shoes have been launched, and have been awarded the best selling sneakers for many consecutive quarters.

At the end of 2018, Virgil Abloh announced the end of the series at Instagram, which led to consumer looting and buying.

There is no doubt that LV's sports shoes brand aims to win more young consumers.

As early as 20 years ago, sports shoes had appeared on the T platform. In 1996, Prada became the first luxury brand to launch sports shoes. In 2002, Yohji Yamamoto and Jeremy Scott became partners of Adidas. The luxury brand Lanvin, which had been purchased by Fuxing international, also introduced sports shoes in 2005.

In 2014, the high heels at the foot of the model of the The Grand Palace ladder were replaced by custom sneakers at the high custom fashion show on the theme of feminism in Chanel.

It is reported that the 64 pairs of sneakers launched by Chanel were provided by a senior customized shoemaker, and each pair of shoes required about 30 hours to complete by hand, and still rely on scarcity to attract consumers.

However, the sports shoes at that time provided inspiration and imagination for the fashionable sports shoes, but they did not become the focus of luxury brand marketing for a long time.

It was not until 2014 that the fashion circle began to cause a movement and leisure trend. At first, the shoes that came from the professional sports brand occupied the center of popularity. "Little white shoes" occupied the global fashion media for a long time.

At the same time, the way of dress to dress up and become casual has spread throughout the society in recent years.

According to CBNData's "series of research on sports, sports and shoes related consumption" released in August last year, from 2016 to 2018, the sales volume of Chinese online sports shoes continued to rise, of which running shoes contributed the highest sales volume for two consecutive years, while sales of board shoes and casual shoes increased most significantly. Men were the main players in online sports shoes, and the number of consumers and consumption were higher than that of women.

The report released by NPD, a market research firm, showed that overall sales of American sports shoes increased by 37% in 2017, while that of high-heeled shoes decreased by 11% over the same period last year.

This is more and more busy with modern women's work. Compared with good-looking, comfort and convenience has become the primary requirement for the group to buy shoes.

In the wake of this trend, fashionable sports shoes finally returned from the streets to the T platform of luxury brands, and completed the commercial closed-loop pmission of the trend.

From a commercial point of view, sports shoes are indeed a luxury brand's business.

And sports shoes have greater commercial returns.

However, it is worth noting that in October last year, New York Times fashion director Vanessa Friedman pointed out in an article that since the spring and summer of 2018, some luxury brands' attempts to sneakers have ended in a dismal fashion, and brands like Balenciaga have begun to return to high heels.

She believes that the current luxury brand production shoes have changed from the initial comfort and functionality to production, and consumers are gradually fatigued with it.

Such worries are not unreasonable. In the face of luxury sports shoes, luxury products will be launched under the "fear of missing" the anxiety of the young market, which is likely to deviate from the core of good products, thereby losing the love of consumers.

Josh Luber, co-founder and chief executive officer of sports shoes resale platform StockX, said that luxury brands in the industry are still not good at sports shoes. "People have been asking me about sports shoes for many years. I don't think it's time to break down, but sports shoes have been separated from their original functional needs. Designers are making more sports shoes for market needs, not for brands or consumers."

At the same time, the preferences of young consumers are always more changeable than imagined.

With the trend culture, Millennial Generation and social media emerging, the fashion industry is in a stage of rapid shuffling.

Looking at the market trend for many years, luxury sports shoes don't seem to be so easy to end.

Besides, the business logic of luxury sports shoes has gradually become clear and clear. Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga have benefited from the brand of sports shoes, which has proved that the products have market potential. Some luxury brands selectively abandon sports shoes. This is precisely the return of sports shoes after overheating, which means that the business is beginning to mature.