Wang Liangxing, President Of Li Lang: Really Have The Ability To Compete With Foreign Competitive Enterprises?

"As a garment enterprise founded for 32 years, we know that it takes time to rebuild the brand's profound cognition to consumers."

As a founder of the brand, Wang Liangxing, President of the company, has led and witnessed many "self renovation" in the past 30 years, but he is still cautious and pragmatic. In an interview with reporters, he sincerely said: "pformation is not a short-term matter, and publicity and promotion is a double-edged sword. If it does not match the brand's own ability, it will bring harm to the brand."

In mid March, the company released its earnings report for 2018, and its revenue and profits reached the fastest growth in 7 years: total revenue increased by 29.8% to 3 billion 170 million yuan, and net profit increased 22.9% to 750 million yuan over the same period.

At the same time, it was also the first year since Li Lang increased product and channel management, and the total number of retail outlets has increased by 260.

In 2012, the year when Wang Liangxing began talking about pformation.

In those days, Li Lang set up an international R & D team, from design to fabric, and embarked on the road of independent research and development.

The group that aims at "quality innovation" has more than 400 people. Among them, there are 35 international design teams, 125 domestic design teams, 200 version technology developers, and 50 fabric research engineers.

Upgrading the "product strength" and ingenious ingenuity are the innovation rules of "simplicity" established by Li Lang.

After fully saving for 7 years, it began to express itself more to the outside world.

Cross border fashion, overseas acquisition and opening up are the hottest topics for fashion brands.

But with all this, Wang Liangxing follows the pragmatic strategy as always.

"There are many alternative crossover, but learn to do subtraction.

According to our current design and production capacity, it is very good to make the three hotspots of art, music and Chinese culture.

"If there is no suitable brand, overseas acquisitions are not too hasty.

At present, the two series of the main brands and LESS IS MORE are very large in China.

"Overseas shops have not yet been considered. There is still a lot of room for the first and second tier cities in the country. It is not very meaningful to go abroad now."

Many are puzzled but few are bright.

This was the slogan interpretation of Lee Lang's advertising and its philosophy of change.

It is not a conservative stance that Li Lan's "go to the public to collect and simplify", but the development of over 30 years, let Wang Liangxing see clearly the essence of innovation that Li Lang must pursue: cultivating the quality power with the spirit of pragmatism.

From the beginning of creation, the self renovation of Li Lang has never stopped.

Just 3 years ago, Li Lang was sold as a groom's bride at the time when he was married by the "Li Lang" to his husband's affection. Around 2002, the Chinese men's wear industry was in the bottleneck of homogenization competition. Li Lang proposed the concept of "business casual" Menswear, invited Chen Daoming as the brand spokesperson and enlarged the advertisement of CCTV, so that the brand name of "simple and not simple" business men's clothing brand was deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. In 2009, the lon Lang landing exchange became the first men's clothing brand listed in Hongkong.

After listing in 2009, the company experienced three years of rapid growth.

In 2012, the whole garment industry began to slow down, "Wang Liangxing recalled." at that time, I often went abroad to realize the gap between us and foreign luxury brands and fashion brands, mainly in the supply chain, original strength and so on.

So I slowed down the idea of expanding my scale before making a pition.

In the face of the new trend, Li Lang started a new round of innovation: from scale development to more attention to fine and professional development, from brand image renewal to more quality and force innovation.

After setting up a research and development team in 2012, Li Lang launched the LILANZ LESS IS MORE Series in 2016.

"Now our brand positioning has shifted to" leisure fashion ". The LESS IS MORE series is" city commuter ", style is simple and fashionable, and quality is comfortable. Wang Liangxing explains:" our core customer group is 25 to 40 years old (including psychological age), focusing on its own image, quality and cultural accomplishment. "

After the pformation, the company focused on the mass fashion market, and the brand "simple but not simple" DNA has been continuing.

The strategy of promoting innovation is based on the three dimensions of "people, goods and markets".

1, find the origin of strength from pain spots.

"We are optimistic about the potential of China's male fashion consumer market."

Wang Liangxing believes that with the development of domestic economy and the upgrading of consumption, more and more male consumers are becoming more and more active in fashion. Paying attention to their image and temperament is part of their quality life.

After investigation, he found that male fashion consumption has three major pain points: "self image quality and cognition is not clear", "high efficiency needs to be promoted" and "product quality and price do not match".

"In terms of acceptance of fashion messages, they are less sensitive and slightly passive.

Of course, some male head consumers will take the initiative to pay attention to all kinds of fashion hot spots, but after all, they occupy less. "Most of them do not like complicated information reception methods," Wang Liangxing said.

This is definitely the way to enhance our innovation. "

"From the past to the present, he is aiming at professionals.

But before it was dominated by three or four line cities, now it is planning to turn to a second tier city, aiming at white-collar professionals.

In the LESS IS MORE series, executives and white-collar consumers account for 52% of the membership, "Wang Liangxing said.

But the "20+" of different ages has its own characteristics.

At present, along with the growth of the Internet, after 90, or even after 00, has become the main consumer group.

Wang Liangxing said: "personalized customization and modeling services are very attractive to male users.

We have carried out related project tests in a small area, and the consumer experience is very good. In the future, we have the intention of promoting similar services. "

According to the statistics of male respondents in "the new generation of fashion consumption in China, 2018", 48% men and 36.9% men hope that offline stores can provide personalized customization and styling services.

2. Deep understanding of mining requirements:

In 2004, Li Lang began to open up the analysis of sales data and membership management system data, in-depth understanding of consumers.

Wang Liangxing said, Li Lang's commodity planning department, sales department, commodity research and development department will conduct research on consumers and the market separately. The research objects can be divided into two modules: "stock consumers" and "potential consumers". After collecting and finishing, three departments will collide together to confirm the quarterly commodity plan.

"Our current membership is 4 million people," Wang Liangxing said. "Li Lang has analyzed the user data in detail. We need to get a deeper understanding of why the customers buy and why not."

At present, the three major crossover directions of "art, music and Chinese culture" are determined by young male consumers.

From the statistics of male respondents in "the new generation of fashion consumer white paper 2018", we also see that fashion products containing Art (50.4%) and Chinese elements (31.4%) attract more male consumers.

1, create original design trend.

The key to this round of reform lies in quality innovation and independent research and development.

Wang Liangxing said, "we must make the best design, version and comfort.

Such a goal requires excellent creativity and advanced supply chain support. "

At the same time, the younger generation is also trying to find a "better know yourself" brand through the original design of the product.

IP, a self created product, is a major breakthrough for change.

"First of all, Li has invited a group of top designers from Armani, Fendi and other brands to join overseas. At present, these overseas designers who have been waiting for the longest time in Lang Lang have 6 years," Wang Liangxing said.

Now, the man is wearing original design to make himself more and more cool.

In 2019, the spring and summer series of Li Lang not only had the "fresh color" shirt with the sun and sand palm leaves as the element, but also the "racing style" clothing with black, white, red and yellow mixture. In the 2019 autumn new conference, its professional series used more fashionable color matching, and joined the popular corduroy and cotton chemical fiber material, even the suit suit, also used the color grid fabric to highlight the "retro cool tide" personality.

2, fabric innovation support creative pformation

Wang Liangxing said frankly that the independent design of clothing enterprises should not be limited to styles, crafts, and plates.

Fabric innovation is the foundation to support "creative pformation".

"Most of China's garment enterprises used to be ODM before.

But when foreign designers join in, the supply chain of the whole enterprise can not support their creative pformation, "Wang Liangxing explained." if you don't do your own fabric research institute, you will not have a big breakthrough in fashion design, many clothes can be developed, but you can not achieve mass production according to the standards of sample clothing.

We recruited many engineers from overseas to try and fumble.

After the establishment of the Textile Research Institute, the classification center, craft center and factory were graded from the source of yarn, fabric, printing and dyeing, homemade design to later laboratory testing, insisting on original homemade.

In 2018, 70% of the garments were designed or original.

Positioning in the public fashion, fabric development must take into account fashion trends and professionalism.

Wang Liangxing said that the texture and color of fabrics are the key to clothing to lead or cater to the fashion trend. Many new material fabrics, blended fabrics and style fabrics do not have corresponding color schemes. They must rely on their own fabric color research and development ability. But at the same time, the quality and comfort of clothes are also the key factors for consumers to choose.

"1s single handed quick release slippery T-shirt" is an innovative star product released by Laurent last autumn. Its fabric is a pure natural wood fiber reconstituted by the European shrub wood slurry after the blending process. It is slippery, soft, hanging, wrinkle resistant, dry and sluggish, and the single hand wear is only 1 seconds away. It fits the pursuit of "lazy and casual" of young customers.

The key to breakthroughs in the research and development of garment fabrics lies in the textile fiber ends. At present, there is still a gap between our counterparts in Korea, Japan and Europe.

This year, Mr. Li also set up his own textile fiber research institute. Wang Liangxing said: "market and practice force us to keep moving forward. This is the fundamental reason for our development."

3, horizontal crossover + vertical category expansion

More than ten years ago, the purchase logic of consumers was relatively simple.

Now, besides the excellent design, the version and the fabric, we must have the added value of "content".

Cross border is the fastest way to increase the content attribute of fashion products.

In 2015, Li Lang and the "immortal Van Gogh" had cross-border cooperation. Although there was not much publicity, the pformation effect of the Lai Lang store was quite impressive. A series of related products reached nearly 40 million sales, though they were seasonal products, and the sales cycle reached 12 months.

In addition, Leon also took the world cup and organized the "walking around the world" activity. He also made Rap H5 LILANZ WINNER with the help of sub culture, and leveraged music marketing to increase the goodwill of young people.

"Cross border cooperation, the biggest attraction for male consumers is to find their dressing styles and fashion attitude. On the other hand, it can also enhance the brand experience of consumers." Wang Liangxing said: "it is not easy to find a suitable entry point from a wide variety of art, music and Chinese culture and create appropriate content to interact with users.

We are still in the exploratory stage, and we are not prepared to be silent. "

In addition to underwear, socks, accessories, in 2019, Li Lang wore a three-dimensional matrix of all categories, and will also join the footwear industry.

The new footwear production line of Li Lang integrates structural mechanics, high elastic shock absorption and antiskid glue surface engineering, and adopts the requirements of running in the bare design. The shoes are light and soft.

In addition, illustrations, graffiti, music and other artistic elements will also be integrated into the design, and match with ribbon, rope, rivets and other decorative elements to enhance personalized expression.

Behind the upgrading of quality and category, is there a price increase?

Wang Liangxing said positively: "we will not raise prices, nor will we make cheap products."

1, constantly refreshing offline scene experience

In 2018, Li Lang remodeled the channel from wholesale to retail, expanded to a second tier city, and opened more terminal stores in shopping mall.

By the end of December last year, there were 2670 retail outlets in the country.

Brand content and image output, offline experience is an important scenario.

How to create pient viscosity through offline experience and interact with fans is the focus of the channel construction.

"Le Lang has been upgrading the store experience continuously.

We design the theme concept of stores based on the positioning of designers and creative directors.

For example, the seventh generation (store image) expresses "go culture". Recently we are working with the team in Italy. In 2019, the concept of a new generation of stores will revolve around the concept of "Mount Everest", Wang Liangxing said.

In addition to the simplicity and freshness of the store image, the key is to enhance the efficiency of the touch group.

He explained that the layout of offline channels should be close to the life circle of male consumers; we should improve the static display of store displays and communicate with consumers; we should strengthen the store's value-added services for male customers about fashion information, clothing collocation, dressing skills and other information dissemination, and also enhance the number and quality of flat visual and short videos.

2, new retail should return to nature.

New retail is the focus of the long-term development of the group.

Wang Liangxing also has his cool understanding of the current hot trend of "new retail" and "smart retailing".

"They are not divorced from the nature of retail.

"The essence of retail is always commodity plus services", Wang Liangxing analysis said: "online channels, it is easier to grasp more habits of consumers through data. In fact, they are using new technology to make user portrait more accurate, to understand the demand more clearly, and then carry out the docking and pformation of production."

In 2018, the total retail sales under the "double eleven" line increased by about twice as much as in 2017.

He said that Memae Toshiro's sales were mainly offline, and the construction of online channels began only two years ago. The proportion of online channels will gradually increase in the future.

Last year, the company also built its own artificial intelligence commodity platform, which has achieved initial success through the machine learning and calculation of the deep utilization of data, and "free from the interference of artificial strategies for commodity management".

Reform has not been accomplished overnight, and it is always undergoing rapid iteration.

As Wang Liangxing once said in an interview, "in this era of rapid change, a successful business model is out of date in almost three to five years".

And slogan, a well-known well known person, is not too simple to read.

After decades of collisions with the market, Li Lang recognized the "inner strength experience" in the direction of design, product technology and materials.

"Transformation is just beginning," Wang Liangxing said firmly. "Our goal is to really have the ability to compete with foreign competitive enterprises."